Interview with The Wild Frontiers: ‘There’s no greater therapy than performing’

Dallas-based sparkling alt rock band The Wild Frontiers will give us an EP later this year which tells a linear tale of a dystopian world at war that, somewhat presciently, was written before COVID struck.

The band comprises frontman Trent Rush, James Wilson (guitar /multi-instrumentalist), Travis Hepler (lead guitar) and Josh Reed (drums). Formed in 2017, they have been wowing the Dallas music scene with their energetic live rock ‘n’ roll shows and their from-the-heart songwriting. ‘I was in a band in high school and the band drifted apart but I knew I didn’t want to go to college,’ Rush said. ‘One night, I had a gig out in the sticks – the club didn’t even have a roof, it was very punk rock! – and there was me, the little singer-songwriter acoustic kid and them. They asked me to be their singer after our sets, I turned them down actually but then I played solo gigs alongside them afterwards and realised that I missed being in a band. They were already called The Wild Frontiers, their drummer was my guitar player and he wore me down! We wrote ‘Drive’ in the first rehearsal.’

They were on the cusp of releasing their upcoming EP just as quarantine hit last year. ‘We were going to make a 30 minute short film to accompany the EP, which tells a story,’ Rush explained. ‘It’s a concept album. I didn’t see my band mates for a year, it was tough.’

‘I’m a giant nerd so I love post-apocalyptic books, games and movies’

The soon-to-be-released EP has an unconventional but intriguing structure: it will comprise three songs and three interludes, with an interlude appearing between each track: ‘The three songs tell a perfect beginning, middle and an end,’ Rush explained. ‘It’s about a dystopian world on the brink of war but everyone is in denial. The songs tell the story of the end of the world, they’re a combination of dystopia and a self-indulgent paradise,’ he laughed. ‘I’m a giant nerd so I love post-apocalyptic books, games and movies. I love Falllout. (An Interplay video game which takes place in a post-apocalyptic Southern California, beginning in the year 2161.) Think of it as Fallout meets Fahrenheit 451 (a 1953 dystopian novel by American writer Ray Bradbury)!’

The title of the EP is not being revealed yet, although Rush jokes that it’s long, at 12 words, and that the word ‘story’ appears in it: ‘I love long and strange album titles!,’ he said. ‘I called my last solo album Thank You. Please. I Love You. I’m Sorry!’

Later this summer, they will release the EP’s opening track. ‘Nighttime USA’: ‘“The past is in the past. There’s no more time to make it on our own. You got the fire inside your soul. Visions of burning light inside your mind. It’s the power of the city sky. In the absence of sun, we all come back to life” is my favourite line from the song,’ Rush said. ‘It’s essentially a commercial for this self-indulgent city inviting you to embrace your vices and forget the world around you as much as possible. Instrumentally, it is incredibly anthemic, upbeat, happy, etc. but the dark mystery behind the true meaning of the song is found in listening to the entire EP consecutively. We’re having so much fun telling this story in pieces and we hope people will like it as much as we do.’

The three interludes also move the story along and Rush describes them as ‘like spoken stories set to music’: ‘It’s very interesting to have the story told in a literal sense, it came together so serendipitously. The interlude before the final track gets me emotional, I’ve never gotten to create something that’s pure acoustic self-indulgence before.’

‘I’ve always enjoyed playing around with phrases that have multiple meanings’

Earlier this month, they released the single ‘This Feeling’, the first to be released from the new EP and the second track on it: ‘My favourite way to describe “This Feeling” is that it’s a love song about the end of the world,’ Rush said. ‘The music is melancholy but highly energetic. The lyrics are mournful but still talking about “falling in love all over again”. That could mean so many things when the world is ending. It doesn’t have to have any romantic connotation and I’ve always enjoyed playing around with phrases that have multiple meanings. “This Feeling” is a radio-ready banger but it has a deeper meaning that I hope people will connect with.’

Last summer, when they initially considered releasing it, the atmosphere in the US felt too apocalyptic: ‘We decided to wait to release it because last summer, when we already had it, it DID feel like the end of the world, especially with the police brutality,’ he said. (He’s referring to the riots in Cleveland in May following the police killing of George Floyd, which later spread to New York, Atlanta, Oakland, Dallas and many other cities across the US.)

‘Ironically, this last year has been the best for our work flow’

Their last EP, ’17’, was released in 2018. Recording has become more difficult since then because Rush is currently living in Pittsburgh, while his band mates are in Dallas: ‘We have an incredible backlog of songs right now,’ he said, looking visibly excited. ‘We all lost our jobs and got more from unemployment than our jobs, so we were all able to buy Macs and recording equipment, although any song we release is recorded in a studio, not at home. Ironically, this last year has been the best for our work flow, I think it helps to have a visual representation on the screen, to see the guitar part, for example. Usually, it’s me writing the lyrics 85% to 90% of the time but James – who plays the semi hollow body – he’s usually the one that helps out and everyone else does their part. We are so in tune with each other, it’s amazing. It feels gifted to you, like the songs are writing themselves. It’s a magical feeling.’

I tell him that when I first heard his voice, he reminded me of Luke Spiller, the frontman in English rock band, The Struts, who it turns out he knows. ‘I have a funny story about The Struts,’ he said, laughing. ‘It was a few years ago, I was 20 and it was my birthday. It was around the time their song ‘It Could Have Been Me’ was out. So my buddy was a sound man for a club down town and I’d driven him home after my birthday, when he was drunk! It was a Sunday and he wakes me up at 11 a.m. to say another club has flooding, so the gig will have to take place at his club. I ask him who’s playing and he says The Struts, so I’m like ooooh, can you get me in? He gets me in, I meet Luke who asks me where to eat, so I tell him about a great sandwich shop, and he asks where the green room is. At one point, I ran the lights for the show and then we spent a night drinking with them. Everyone was telling me I looked like Van McCann from Catfish and the Bottlemen, so I put on this fake British accent and pretended to be him. Luke tried to kiss me, it was wonderful! He thought I was Van! I kept telling him that I wasn’t and he looked at me and said “You’re even sexier”. Haha, his girlfriend was right there! Luke’s very outgoing, on and off stage.’

I say that he has Spiller’s same onstage energy and charisma, the kind of presence that big arenas are made for and I ask him how important that kind of presence is to him: ‘When I see a show, I don’t want to see the same thing each time, I want to give people an experience they feel connected to and inspired by. I’d say I grew up inspired by a big town in Texas but, at the same time, it was hard as a gay kid. There’s no greater therapy than performing, it’s an elimination of that traumatic past, the need to be witnessed and heard. It’s religious, sexual and intimate – I must never stop performing!’

‘I love clothing so much, I was 21 when I discovered fashion’

On and offstage, he shares Spiller’s love of gorgeous, glamorous clothes. Even on our Zoom, he’s wearing a very elegant red, frilly paisley shirt (the same one as in the photo above) with a lovely necklace. When they played at Sofar Dallas before lockdown, Rush wore an incredible gold, shimmery scarf, paired with a black shirt with tiny sparkly threads running through it, a leopard print jacket and a beautiful, intricate silver necklace. ‘Ooooh, which necklace?,’ he asks when I mention it. ‘Hey, I’ll google it.’ He starts typing and bursts out laughing: ‘It’s soooo weird googling yourself!’ He finds the clip. ‘The silver necklace, it’s one of my favourite necklaces, my mom got it for me. She saw it in a jewellery store and thought of me. I’ve worn it more than anything else when I’m performing and I have a lot of necklaces! I love clothing so much, I was 21 when I discovered fashion. The secret is $2 bins at women’s thrift stores. My favourite pieces are special pieces that I’ve found there. I’ll buy a shirt for $3 when I’ve only got $200 in the bank and don’t know how to pay the rent.’

Next up for The Wild Frontiers is a move to LA, something that they’d originally planned to do before the pandemic struck and where they’ve already played the renowned Whisky a Go Go club in West Hollywood. I tell him that I have the impression from bands I’ve interviewed there and having lived in LA myself that the music scene in the city is very close-knit: ‘I think so, too,’ he said. ‘That LA energy, it’s not replicable, you either get it or you don’t. It’s what you said about taking a chance, trying to do this for a full living. I grew up in the Dallas scene, which is so cutthroat, bands got mad at us or treated us weirdly if we got a better spot on the bill. I do think that bands should come together more and in LA I think that’s happening.’

Interestingly, their previous EP, ’17’, is partly a reference to a song of the same name that they have yet to release: ‘I wanted to call the EP ’17’ because it was my favourite song of theirs before I joined the band,’ Rush said. ‘James was the singer at the time but I really, really wanted to do it. It references being seventeen and youth in general.’ I say that my favourite song on ’17’ is ‘I’ll Kiss You When I Get Home’ because it’s such a big, uplifting song that builds and picks up the pace as it races along and it turns out that it’s his favourite as well. ‘We did a version of it in the studio with Paramore’s drummer, Miles McPherson, who I’d been listening to since I was a kid, it was so unreal, but that version wasn’t right. The version that Miles created was fantastic on its own but just didn’t fit in stylistically with the other songs so we decided to save it for another day. I actually thought about trying to sell the song to another artist. That’s when I took it to The Wild Frontiers and they pulled the vision straight from my head. The original solo version had more of a country rock vibe and definitely had that Nashville twang to it due to the Nashville band but The Wild Frontiers’ version is just straight up alt rock. It has a stronger energy, more fast paced kick-ass in-your-face guitar and drums. The guys really helped bring that song to life and it was an incredible experience to watch it all come together on that second pass.’

‘I’ll Kiss You When I Get Home’ is about Rush’s first boyfriend, whom he met when he was 19: ‘We had a polyamorous thing going on at the time, one of the guys wanted to go his own way. We were together for several years, very happily, but I’ve had the quarantine break-up like a lot of people. ‘Cigarettes’ on my solo album is about him as well.’

‘Dallas has a charm to it that I can’t quite explain’

For my generation, Dallas is most strongly associated with the assassination of President John Kennedy and for the TV show in the 1980’s, so I ask him what he most associates the city with: ‘When you live somewhere, everyone has an association,’ he agreed. ‘Dallas has a charm to it that I can’t quite explain. In my youth, it represented the unapologetically gritty rock ‘n’ roll scene but it doesn’t have it as much anymore, although some clubs are still kicking ass. Dallas represents a lot of hardships and bigotry but it taught me to be who I am. My dad was the drummer in an industrial metal band, Ugly Mustard – think Nine Inch Nails – so I grew up backstage. He sheltered me a lot from the hardships, I wish he’d let me see a lot more. My folks gave me the coolest rock ‘n’ roll name, as if they knew this would be what I ended up doing! Actually, my dad was my drummer with his band on my solo project before I had a band. We went on the road, these two old and two young guys. We played the Trees club in Dallas together to around 1,000 people, it was so great. I’m so lucky to have the relationship with my mom, sis and dad that I do, they’re the best parents I’ve ever seen, objectively.’

He tells me the sweet story of how they met: that his dad was working at Ticketmaster in the 80’s when his mum applied for a job and his dad, already half-smitten, asked for her to be hired. It was apparently love at first sight and they’re just as crazy about each other today as they were then, according to their son, and we both marvel at people who manage to stay married for that long.

Rush attributes his love of music to their family road trips when he was a kid: ‘They would blast their favourite artists, like U2, like really blast! Every major influence that I have comes from that. My Chemical Romance was the first band that I discovered on my own outside of my family. It was the first band that I really connected to without someone else showing them to me. So musically, they have influenced me from day one on so many levels as well as my other bandmates. I can’t quite put my finger on it but I can hear a MCR influence somewhere in almost every song of ours. If I ever get the chance to meet Gerard Way, I’m going to thank him for saving my life. And maybe to write a song or two together, haha!’

I tell him that I had their song ‘Welcome to the Black Parade’ on my playlist last week and that I really love it. ‘That song changed my direction,’ he said excitedly. ‘You can hear how it influenced me on ‘This Feeling’. It’s the most timeless album (The Black Parade, 2006), it will never date. We are going to see a huge culture shift,’ he predicted. ‘After every major disaster, there are all these new things that come out of it and I want to have a say in how we treat creativity and expression when this is over. I was raised with a middle finger up to George Bush and Linkin Park’s song telling him to fuck himself. I want to talk about queer expression and black lives matter. Kink helped create Pride and black trans women are why I’m here today. The lack of empathy in the world today is troubling and I want to talk about it in my music. People can be so horrible about immigrants in the US, about Mexicans working here. I read a stat – I’m not sure about the figure – that if 8% of them stopped working, the economy would fall apart.’

I ask him which TV show he would like to hear one of his latest songs on. ‘That’s a fun question! I’ve got multiple answers! ‘This Feeling’ would work for a post-apocalyptic narrative or ‘Drive’ in a bad ass car scene where they’re flying down the road, I would kill for it, and they always say that getting a song on Grey’s Anatomy is the holy grail. Actually, I’d love to hear one of our songs on an adult animated series because I identify with those more, something like BoJack Horseman (an American adult animated tragicomedy story about an anthropomorphic horse called BoJack Horseman, the washed-up star of a 1990s sitcom who plans his return to celebrity relevance with an autobiography.) It’s the most human show! I think I’d pick a very emotional, very anthemic song, one of the newer ones, maybe the final one on the new album because the end of things is beautiful, it means something to be celebrated. It’s like the Bon Iver song ’22 (Over Soon)’, which goes ‘it might be over soon’. Whether it’s something good or a hardship, it will end.’

(Photo: front row: Josh and Trent. Back row: Travis and James)