A Jew For Jebus

A Houston Band –

This week Houstonist made the drive to catch up with energetic Eastside pop-punkers at their practice space in Galena Park [yes, you read that right]. They’re dropping a new album tomorrow at Bohemeo’s, so we thought we’d get to know them a bit better. You can listen to the full audio here, including their abundant shoutouts and their lack of beard-growing ability.

H-Town Rock: I am sitting in ‘s practice space in Galena Park. Go ahead and introduce yourselves.
Art: I’m Arthur, I play bass and do some vocals.
Oscar: My name is Oscar Flores, I play lead guitar, and some vocals.
Ray: Ray Acevedo, I am lead vocalist and rhythm guitar.
Jebus: Jesus Acevedo, also known as Jebus, and I play drums. And I don’t sing, that’s why I play drums.

HTR: So how long have you guys been together as a band, at this point?
Jebus: It’s a bit of a long story – we can give you the Cliffs Notes version. [Ray, Oscar and I] started playing together when we were still in high school. People got girlfriends, people got into fights, and so we kinda split apart. [Ray] started a new band, which was and he got two members who are no longer with the band. At this time, both Oscar and I were still playing drums and bass, and Arthur was playing guitar on his own. When the opportunity came to get a bass player, Ray found Art, and he convinced Art to play bass.
Art: I came in as a guitar player.
Ray: The power of MySpace – we found Arthur Atkins – dun da dun!
Art: We practiced a few times, and Ray & I had a talk, and he was like, “Uh, we kinda need a bass player. It sounds empty with just two guitars and drums.” I ended up getting a bass.
Oscar: Ended up being freaking good at it…
Art: After that our drummer left, for dumb reasons that we don’t need to talk about, but we needed a drummer so we got Oscar. And then we were like, “Man, we should get you to play guitar.” We got a lead guitarist and then we still didn’t have a drummer. So we found Jebus again, who’s Ray’s cousin.
Ray: He wasn’t supposed to join the band originally. He was just filling in, helping us out.
HTR: And you can’t get rid of him now, right?
Ray: He eats my food now…
Jebus: It’s almost like it’s destiny. [Ray, Oscar & I] started together, and now we’re back together, and just picked up a bassist.

HTR: You guys have a record release coming up on Saturday. Who’s playing that with you?
Art: Low Frequency – a band out of League City, and also The Failed Attempt, who is a band out of Houston. Low Frequency is kind of pop-punk, and Failed Attempt is ska, old-school.

HTR: That’s Saturday night at Bohemeo’s?
Jebus: Bohemeo’s. Be there at 7 pm.
HTR: How much does it cost?
Jebus: 10 dollar cover charge.
Art: But, you get the CD.
Oscar: So it’s the show, and the CD for ten bucks.

HTR: The album is called Tuesdays And Thursdays Off. Where did the name come from? That reminds me of college, but in college I always tried to get Fridays off.
Ray: Basically, we were trying to figure out what days we could get off from work to be able to practice, and it ended up being Tuesday & Thursday. It just kinda stuck. What’s weird is that this week, the week of the show, we actually didn’t practice on Tuesday or Thursday.
HTR: So you’re off Tuesday/Thursday this week…
Jebus: Literally off this week. That’s how dedicated we are to the album.
Oscar: Honestly it feels weird.

HTR: You guys have a pretty throwback pop-punk sound. It reminds of a lot of mid/late nineties stuff. Where would you say your influences lie?
Ray: I don’t know… in the beginning I used to be really into metal. I think it was VH1′s Insomniac, and Green Day came on, and I just fell in love with pop punk. I went out and started looking for a lot more. So when I started playing guitar that was what I knew. It came out how it comes out, and that was pop punk. We like to have fun, and it comes out in the music – high energy, makes you feel good.
Jebus: The core is always pop punk, but we touch on many different genres.
Oscar: A little taste of everything.
Ray: We just say it’s INH punk.
Art: I think that’s why our name works – it’s Insert Name Here. We’re pop punk, but we touch on everything else, so you can call it what you want. At the heart, it’s pop punk.

HTR: How did the name develop?
Ray: Honestly, it was back in the day. We sat around trying to think of a name.
Jebus: I was here actually – I wasn’t even in the band.
Ray: We came up with a bunch of ridiculous names. My girlfriend at the time suggested it, and we moved on but wound up coming back to it. Our bassist at the time said, “I don’t know, Insert Name Here kinda sounded awesome. We decided “it’s that for now until we find something else” and it just stuck.
HTR: It’s recognizable.
Oscar: People seem to catch on to the name.
Art: And of course the brackets.

HTR: Who came up with that idea?
Art: I think we were in the car trying to come up with t-shirt ideas. I thought we should have a guy standing there with his brackets up, and we could tell people “Put your brackets up!” and send us a photo.
Ray: It’s worked, we’ve gotten a bunch of photos.
Oscar: It’s actually very exciting to get a photo of someone that you don’t know, throwing their brackets up.
Jebus: So send us a picture: insertnameheretx[at]gmail[dot]com.

HTR: Do you guys have other songs? Have you started working on new material already?
Ray: Yeah, definitely. I have a bunch of recordings.
Art: Ray’s always writing. He’s always coming in, “I got these lyrics, check ‘em out…”
Ray: I have a bunch of recordings – a piece here, a chorus there.
Art: I think we have four songs ready, and like 89 clips.
Jebus: Usually, Ray will bring in a clip and we start to work on it. Everybody throws their two cents in and it builds from there.

HTR: Are you guys gonna get to go out on tour at all?
Art: We’re still booking dates right now; we’re trying to wait until school’s out to try to plan that. We’re playing a show at A&M in April.
HTR: Yeah, I saw you’re getting radio play up there [on KANM].
Jebus: We’re doing an acoustic show on Riot Hour [a KANM program] and then we’re playing a show at the campus.
Ray: You can see the interview. It’s on April 16th – they’ll interview us first and then allow us to play an acoustic set.
HTR: That’s cool.
Jebus: We have plans to play more out of town dates, on the weekends.
Ray: One thing we’re going to try is at least one [show] in Houston, Dallas, Corpus, San Antonio, Austin every month. We want to try to build something here in Texas.
Jebus: We can’t forget about Houston, though. We had kinda stopped playing shows like two years ago, when we went into the studio. I think we’ve played four or five shows since then.

HTR: So you’re anxious to get out and play some more.
Jebus: Yeah, we live for being on stage.
Oscar: Come check out a show and see the energy. It’s a good time.

HTR: Do you guys have a favorite memory from the Houston scene?
Ray: I’ve got one. It was the first time Oscar jumped off the kick drum – he didn’t tell anyone, and I swear I thought he was going to land on me. I turned around and he was in the air, and it freaked me out.
Jebus: It was at Super Happy Fun Land – he jumped off and we all were shocked.
Oscar: It felt like slow motion. It was pretty wild.
Art: Two things stick out for me. One was that same show – my bass got stolen like a week before that show. Deer Park police got it back for me eventually. So I’m playing on my girlfriend’s mom’s bass – I had to borrow it to play the show. In the middle of Groundhog’s Day, where it breaks down and it’s just bass, as soon as it comes to that part, my freaking [amp] head dies. Another one was at Fitzgerald’s, after we got done playing. We call Oscar Shorty But Yummy because chicks are always like, “what’s up Oscar?”
Oscar: Oh god…
Art: So this chick walks up, and we’re packing our stuff up. She starts talking to him, and the chick licks Oscar’s hand.
Ray: “Oh, I gotta go, it was nice meeting you…” and she shook his hand, and then grabbed it and just licks it.
Jebus: One of mine – we got to play Fitz upstairs. Just being up there, we felt like we belonged – like we made it.
Art: Yeah, I’ve watched so many bands play there, thinking One day we’ll play there.

HTR: Do you guys have anybody in town that you think people should really pay attention to, music-wise?
Art: Mechanical Boy, The Last Place You Look. Wayside Drive.
Ray: Nothing More. They’re from San Antonio.
Jebus: One that I liked, that broke up, was The Jane Frequency. In Alvin there’s this band called Candid. They’re young, like 16 & 17, but they show a lot of promise.
Art: Low Frequency, too.

HTR: What’s one thing you want everyone to know about ?
Ray: Man. Well, we’re dead serious. We won’t let you guys down, if you come see us. We work really really hard, and we’re in it for the long haul.
Art: We’re fun guys – and we try to express that with you, but we don’t mess around. We’re not here to waste your ten bucks that you paid to see a show.
Jebus: We just want people to have fun, when you hear us. Tap your foot, shake your head, shake your booty, whatever. You can talk to us after the show, we’re friendly guys & we know about movies, music, comics, video games, we know about everything.
Art: We’re geniuses… [everyone laughs]
HTR: Knows Everything.
Art: That’s a good tagline.
HTR: I want royalties on that one. Just kidding.

HTR: You guys have anything else you want to add?
Art: We just launched our website, inhpunk.com. Anything you want to know [about us] is up there, and if it’s not let us know.
Jebus: We’re on Twitter [@inhpunk].
Ray: Check out the site, and remember that the show is Saturday night.

On our about page… all the way from the UK! Thank you Karl Parkes!