The Bronx is Burn­ing deliver a sound that is straight­for­ward and sim­ple.  You won’t find any celebrity hook singing, or orches­tra accom­pa­nied inter­ludes in TBIB’s record­ings.  There are no gim­micks to this band.  This four piece ensem­ble  spe­cial­ize in fast-paced, dri­ving punk and hard­core.  The tracks are short, and they don’t leave much up to the imag­i­na­tion.  The hon­est lyrics are about the city they love, their beloved Yan­kees, and the strug­gle to get ahead.

Recently, I got a chance to let TBIB’s gui­tarist, John, field some questions.

John:  The Bronx is Burn­ing is made up of:

Mario-Vocals
John-Guitar
Brian-Bass
Danny-Drums

Mario and John write the music and lyrics.

John:  Before we started TBIB, we all had played with one another in dif­fer­ent bands.  Mario and Brian played together when they were in high school with our first drum­mer (Chris) in a band called Boomhower.  Mario and I played together in a band down in Philadel­phia (Pre­ston).  We all went out in dif­fer­ent parts of the coun­try play­ing music and just wound up right back in New York where we grew up.  We started TBIB becuase we were never all in a band together at the same time.  We all have dif­fer­ent likes in music rang­ing from punk, hard­core, metal, folk, coun­try, and hip-hop.  We started out just writ­ing hard­core stuff, but about a year into it, the addi­tion of our cur­rent drum­mer, Danny, helped to bring out our dif­fer­ent influ­ences and give new life back to the band.

TO: You guys turned down some con­sid­er­able money from ESPN for rights to your web address a few years back. You put your feet upon the rock and stood up for some­thing. How does it feel to have the chance to lit­er­ally “sell out” and push the money back across the table?

John:  At the time the TV series (The Bronx Is Burn­ing) came out we already had the web­site up for about a year or so and knew noth­ing about the show.  We came up with the name from a book that I read called:  Ladies and Gen­tle­men, the Bronx Is Burn­ing. The first time we were offered money was from some­one who we think just bought and sold web domains.  The offer was for $2,500. We were later con­tacted by some­one in the cre­ative depart­ment of the series and asked if we were will­ing to sell.  They made a counter offer of $10,000.  I’m not gonna lie, it was a hard offer to turn down.  We made the deci­sion not to turn sell because we hon­estly felt that we would get more pro­mo­tion by keep­ing it.  We never played music together for the money, so why should we start now?  It was our name that we came up with, we’re from the Bronx, the name rep­re­sents our music and its not for sale!  I don’t think ESPN and the peo­ple that worked on the show were very pleased about a hard­core band from the Bronx hav­ing the web­site.  I’m sure it hurt their ad cam­paign.  So that was like a “fuck you” to the cor­po­ra­tions com­pli­ments of the Bronx. They need to know that (they) can’t always just buy every­thing, not even for $10,000…

John:  Yeah, the record­ing process can be a pain. We just fin­ished up record­ing two of our songs:  No Rest for the Wicked, and Red­sox Win in Seven. Its crazy that you can play a song 100 times live, and have no prob­lem, but you get in a record­ing stu­dio and theres some­thing about that record but­ton that can make you for­get a riff and you def­i­nitely can become stiffer with your play­ing.  We just try to go in clear-headed, as loose as pos­si­ble and try to think of it as if we were play­ing live.   We’ve had some prob­lems with stu­dios when we’ve recorded in the past, so we basi­cally track the drums and scratch a gui­tar track and then do the rest of the record­ing our­selves.  Thats how we did the lat­est record­ings.  I really love record­ing music just as much as play­ing it live.  I love sam­pling clips and using them in our songs and mix­ing it together.  A record­ing can really reflect how you feel, and kinda cap­tures a moment in time.  We have ear­lier record­ings of our songs and you can tell a lot by the dif­fer­ent times they were done.   Its really cool to hear the changes in style, gui­tar dis­tor­tions, and inten­sity in vocals, etc.

John:  Thats a really hard ques­tion. We all like a lot of dif­fer­ent styles of music, and I think that really helps us when it comes to writ­ing our stuff.  For me per­son­ally, I have a lot of influ­ences.  Two of my favorite bands are Strung Out and Life­time.  They are a big influ­ence on me.  Guns ‘N Roses album Appetite for Destruc­tion was a huge influ­ence for get­ting into music. I lis­ten to a lot of big band music and (I) am big into old coun­try music like Hank Williams Sr. and Johnny Cash.   DJ Clue was a big influ­ence, not with the style of music he brought, but I loved the way he pro­moted his early work. Back in the day he used to sell mix tapes on the street cor­ners and in stores, pretty much wher­ever he could. They were themed tapes too like “Hal­loween Havoc”, which came out in Octo­ber. A lot of the hus­tle in the rap com­mu­nity stood out to me. Its hard to get a great sound­ing record­ing unless you have money to go to a good stu­dio.  The Bronx is Burn­ing is con­stantly writ­ing music, why shouldn’t we be able to put it out?  Thats why we record, not always for qual­ity, but for con­tent.  So the ear­lier songs aren’t recorded that great, but its ever improv­ing and it shows the growth and effect we make.  This goes along with the hip-hop greats like Wu Tang, Jay-Z, Big­gie Smalls, etc.  Fat Wreck Chords (NOFX, the Descen­dants, Less Than Jake) and Fear­less Records (At the Drive-In, Aqua­bats, Big­wig) put out some great music, but the qual­ity wasn’t there in the (end).  I really liked it when things were done DIY and it was a lot more under­ground.  That all brings back a lot of mem­o­ries and really inspires me to try and do the same thing.

John:  I can’t say that it has really influ­enced us as much as it has made it tough for hard work­ing bands like us and oth­ers like us.  It really changed a lot in that it killed a big part of the local scene by mak­ing a cer­tain sound come to be expected.  It turned the whole punk and hard­core atti­tude into some­thing that can be bought and sold in stores at your local mall.  A lot of the new bands come out of nowhere because they have huge mar­ket­ing and artist devel­op­ment teams that con­struct them.  Kinda like what they did with boy bands like N’SYNC in the late 90’s and early 2000’s.  The songs have that just crawled out of bed look, but with a very styl­ish, well groomed, expen­sive sound.  There’s really noth­ing new about that, its just some­thing that had been going on for awhile, and has come to a new mar­ket and made it main­stream.  I’m happy that its helped some of the older bands get known…they deserve that.

John:  Being a band in New York, the pros and cons are kinda the same.  New York has a great scene and a huge fol­low­ing for music.  The biggest ben­e­fit for band’s is that there are a lot of places to play, but at the same time, that makes it harder for you to get known (being at the right place at the right time).  You have to really stand out in order for peo­ple to come and see you because there is just so much going on.  Right now, a lot of the big name clubs like CBGB’s are gone, so there are spots com­ing up to replace the old.  Its really an excit­ing time for music in NYC.  So the con of being a lit­tle fish in a big pond is some­thing we have to deal with.  But, thats all the more rea­son why we do what we do.  Its alot of hard work get­ting your name out there, but its fun.  If we can’t make it hap­pen in New York, we can’t make it any­where is our attitude.

John:  We’ve played with a few big­ger, well know acts a cou­ple of times, and are try­ing to get the oppor­tu­nity more often!  A lot of the big guys we have played with didn’t go out of their way to help us, so I don’t wanna help them out (we played with Big­wig, Murphy’s Law, 5 Cent Deposit and a bunch of signed bands at a ben­e­fit show and Warped Tour a few years back).  One of our favorite bands to play with is a band called Seizure Crypt. They have helped us out so many times and the work they put into play­ing and putting on a show is amaz­ing.  They have a real heart and pas­sion for the NYC scene.

John:  For me, music is really a huge part of life.  I’m also really into draw­ing and paint­ing.  I’m cur­rently work­ing on build­ing a site for show­cas­ing my work and other artists.  Mario is a magi­cian and into mechan­i­cal art.  Brian is into art design.  They both just had exhibits last month for their work.

John: www.myspace.com/thebronxisburning

We are also on face­book and twitter