Interview With Regional Rock Band: NEVERTEL

Band: Nevertel from Tampa, Florida consisting of Jeremy Michael on vocals; Raul Lopez on vocals and guitar; Alec Davis also on guitar; and Kyler Worley on Bass

INTERVIEW:

1. What Does Your Artist Name Mean?

"Unfortunately, our band name doesn’t have any deeper meaning haha.  We tried a lot of different options, but at the end of the day we wanted something that sounded cool to say and only showed stuff from our band when you searched it.  Someone added “Never Tell” to a Google Docs sheet we had started and we really liked how that sounded.  So we dropped the last L and pushed the two words together to make Nevertel.  Once we did the google search to make sure no one in and other medium used the name, we knew our search had ended."

2. Who Are Your Biggest Music Influences?

"Currently?  Bring Me The Horizon, Joyner Lucas, I Prevail, The Band CAMINO, and Normandie.  These are artists we reference a lot right now.  But one of our collective “all time” favorites has to be Linkin Park."

3. How Did The Band get into music?

"Oh man, each one of us probably has some crazy deep story about how we made our first connection with music and I don’t wanna make this too long.  SO, I’ll just say we got into music together as a band because most of us knew each other since high school.  We’ve always been creative in our lives leading up to that point and once we met through classes/mutual friends, we just kept in touch and kept writing until we wanted to give it a real shot in 2014 with Nevertel."

4. What’s The Craziest Thing That’s Happened within your music career so far?

"This past year we’ve had so many moments I look back on with 17 year old Jeremy eyes and get giddy about.  But if I had to pin one thing, I’d say our first show at House of Blues Orlando.  The stage was something we’ve always dreamed of playing on, coming from tiny sketchy bar stages.  We practiced a new set for months 2 - 3 times a week, hired our first stage hand, and played to a crowd of just under 1,000 people.  We actually have an entire documentary we edited about it on YouTube that dives deep into the prep we did for it."

5. How’s your album coming along?

"It’s grueling man haha.  But it’s everything I love about being in a band.  Writing tons of songs, narrowing it all down, reworking the best ones, tracking, filming the process, all of it.  We’re trying something new where we track all of the vocals first, and then finish the instrumentals later once we have the message and pacing of the song figured out.  So far it’s looking like it’ll be our most creative and vulnerable release yet because we have Raul producing and mixing it all just like our first album, Living Fiction."

6. What’s Your Songwriting Process?

"For a typical song, it starts with Raul uploading a short instrumental of something.  If I connect with it, I start making melodies and seeing if I can make the song feel huge and catchy.  If I can, then I bounce my vocals with no lyrics to Raul, who mixes them in and fleshes out the rest of the instrumental.  Then, as Alec and Josh are re-writing new guitar and drum parts for the song, I’ll finish the lyrics and tidy up the melodies.  At this point, it’s ready for final tracking, where harmonies, lyrics, and pacing get touched up one final time before Raul mixes.  That’s an overhaul of our ENTIRE cycle for an average song we make."

7. Who Do You Sound Like?

"Based on what people hear from us NOW, I’d say Linkin Park, Slaves, Issues, Too Close To Touch, and Dangerkids. BUT, our newer stuff draws inspiration from bands like BMTH, I Prevail, Chase Atlantic, Joyner Lucas, and LP’s A Thousand Suns record.  All while staying in a lane that we think is entirely our own now."

8. What are your goals?

"We have our yearly goals and our big picture goals.  Our goals for this year are to hit 100k monthly’s with no label, get on a Spotify official playlist,  and start touring.  We actually have hit a Spotify official playlist, so now our goal is to hit more, and as for touring, well that's not happening any time soon haha."

9. What kind of background does your band come from?

"We actually all come from vastly different backgrounds.  Rauls’s family is from Cuba.  The originally relocated from there to Miami, FL before he was born.  Josh’s family is of Hispanic/American decent. Josh’s grandparents (Mother’s side) arrived in US in the 60s and served the US army.  Alec had a pretty religious Jewish upbringing.    Both of his parents were born in the states but his father's parents were immigrants from Hungary.  And me (Jeremy), I'm a German/Cherokee descendant that grew up in a very religious Christian background.  Although I don't practice anymore, I still have a lot of respect for those that do."

10. What do you think of Linkin Park and Breaking Benjamin?

"Absolutely love them.  They’re insanely huge inspirations for us.  Linkin Park is the reason why most of us got into heavier sounding rock music.  And Breaking Benjamin’s track “Blow Me Away” being used in Halo 2 showed us the crossover potential of our trip favorite artistic mediums.  It’s still something we dream about doing someday."

11. If you could tour with any bands, who would you tour with and why?

"Number one has to be Being Me The Horizon.  That’s just a huge crossover band for all of us that we completely respect and hold in such high regard.  Following that, we’d love to tour with I Prevail, Dangerkids, Issues, and DON BROCO.  All these bands have inspired/motivated us to aim high and showed us how to put on a great show."

Thank you Nevertel for interviewing with us. Look out for their new single "Another Lie" this band is absolutely amazing and reminds us a lot of Linkin Park.