PORTRAIT OF THE ARTISTS
Interview With Bootleg Brigade
Simi Valley
February 27, 2019
OXNARD, CALIF. – The chill’s starting to set in as the afternoon wares away on the Strand.
Everyone’s hanging out after San Gabriel band Slum Brigade ended a show at Pepe’s that also included Bootleg Brigade, Civil Conflict and 1034. Bootleg singer Austin Boutell suggests checking out the beach, just steps away, before heading back to L.A. He’s pointing out landmarks of a neighborhood steeped in nardcore history. Later, Civil Conflict singer Dorian Hill is tossing a football around, Boutell is back on “stage” for an encore and the rest of Bootleg – guitarist Eliel Herr, bassist Trebor Herr and drummer Dalton Cruz – along with everyone else are hanging out.
One says Oxnard and the knee-jerk reaction is to think hardcore and then, of course, the mind wanders to the usual set of bands and now, more recently, there’s been plenty of buzz surrounding Civil Conflict. Bootleg Brigade sits in an interesting spot within the local music spectrum. Just a week before the Pepe’s show, the band played a Ventura backyard, joking to the crowd about their age – older in comparison to the teens making up the majority of those assembled. They’re slightly older (“older” being a relative word) than some of their contemporaries, but far younger than the bands that put the area on the map in the 80s. And Bootleg’s persisted for eight years now – no easy feat as anyone in a band or just going to shows would attest to.
The band’s members chat after their Ventura set, talking about the usual antics that go down at a show – well, maybe usual for them: concussions and a broken toe for Boutell, throwing up during a show at an AA meeting, a showgoer being stabbed, another breaking both wrists and on. They also reference something called the “nardcurse” and a mix of procrastination that’s kept them from releasing an album.
“We just don’t take ourselves too seriously, except when we do,” Boutell said.
Fast forward past both the shows on the Strand and in Ventura, it’s now pouring rain and the conversation’s slightly more serious. The Bootleg boys are assembled at Love Sushi in Simi Valley. The waitress brings them practically the full menu: spicy tuna, salmon, Philadelphia, Hawaiian and chili rolls.
Cruz and Boutell cheers each other over sake as they start talking about the album they were joking about at the Ventura backyard show. Well, it’s not really joking. The situation is such that they did seem to bear the brunt of some sort of curse.
“Whenever we get our shit together, 2040” Boutell said when the question of the album’s release is posed. “Basically, we recorded an album about three years ago and the files got stolen. It was my cousin. My cousin stole the files. He’s a bastard. He just refuses to give it to us. So, the nardcurse. It’s also the debate still about whether we’re going to go into a studio or do a home recording. Personally, I think we should go in a studio. We want to put something out that’s definitive, not overpolished but something we’d be proud of release wise. That’s why it’s taking so long because we’re nitpicking. Now, it’s just introspection.”
His last comment references an exacting quality of theirs that’s juxtaposition to all the joking.
“Yeah, I listen to my shit sometimes and I’m like ‘I suck,’” said Cruz, who first got into music in the 8th grade, picking up the guitar first. The drums followed toward the end of his freshman year in high school.
The Herr brothers’ exposure to music spans a broad spectrum, with their mom into Metallica and their dad into Jethro Tull, Trebor pointed out.
“It’s nice being in a band with [Eliel],” Trebor said. “I don’t really hang out with him too often, so it’s a good way to do that. Oddly enough, we don’t really jam together; we just practice the Bootleg stuff.”
Boutell was sent to bootcamp in the 8th grade. “I got back and I was fucking strange and I was like ‘I’m going to start a punk band.’” He met Eliel and Trebor at a birthday party, ended up buying his first record player and played a bunch of hardcore albums as everyone slam danced in the backyard.
“Sounds unorthodox,” he said of the backyard antics, “but sometimes you’ve got to do that shit when you’re a grom.”
That proved the impetus of everything that’s since followed musically speaking.
The first few Bootleg Brigade shows Boutell was on drums and singing. The band originally started off with a different drummer and bassist. Trebor later stepped in on bass, always seen as an unofficial member, and Cruz, previously of the band Declining Youth, came in three years ago.
“We have a lot of history. So much history to the point where I can’t remember a lot of it,” Boutell said. “I look at my timeline – life timeline – as a train that’s about to crash. It just hasn’t. I feel like a passenger most of the time, where I don’t know how to describe what I’m saying. It’s called mental illness.”
Bootleg Brigade has played everything from the Majestic Ventura Theater to what Boutell could only describe as “the inside of a tin can in the middle of the road on the 101.” They’ve shared the bill with bands such as Ill Repute, Aggression, MDC and Leftover Crack, while also playing underground shows with peers Civil Conflict and Malice Thoughts.
Eight years in, Bootleg doesn’t play as many shows as they once did. That’s just the reality that sets in with work and other responsibilities, but they’ve managed to leapfrog what typically happens when the playing gets less consistent: they’ve maintained their relevance within the scene.
Hailey Hinojosa, who recently began putting together local shows under the banner Punky Dorie, noted that while Bootleg was slightly ahead of her time getting into the scene, they remain at the forefront in the minds of the current crop of showgoers.
“I haven’t met the members of Bootleg Brigade that many times, but from the times I have, they’ve been really down to Earth people,” she said. “Every time, I’m putting a show together I get at least two or three requests to book Bootleg. I think them and Civil Conflict are two of our staple bands here in Ventura County, so they always bring a good crowd. I hope they play more local shows in the near future.”
“What’s crazy is we’ve been an intensely local band all these years, never gone on tour, and yet there’s people from other countries that know us,” Boutell said. “It’s cool watching your music proliferate when you haven’t gone out of your way to promote it.”
It’s likely due to the fact that they keep themselves open to any show. Certainly, there was a point, Boutell said, when they toyed with the idea of graduating to fewer “dumbass shows. But here we are still playing dumbass shows,” he said. “It’s kind of like an acquired taste.”
“I like the underground shows,” Cruz said.
“I’ve been in bands where we started getting a lot of shows and it was come pay to see us and a lot of people ended up not being able to go,” Trebor said. “We were going to play the Whisky and they asked for $500 upfront and to sell tickets, which is really difficult when you don’t make any money.”
“You go to an underground show or a house show and everyone’s having a good time,” Cruz said. “You see familiar faces and unfamiliar faces and everyone gives off a cool energy. Don’t get me wrong. I like playing a professional show, but sometimes people can’t get in if it’s 21-plus so there’s more freedom when you have an underground show.”
“Here’s the deal, pay-to-play promoters are parasitic,” Boutell said. “What they do is prey on new bands and inexperienced musicians that just want to get out there and they take advantage. They’re pretty much the lowest form of reincarnation other than dog shit. They obviously did something in their past life.”
“They always put the idea in the newer bands’ heads of, ‘Oh, we’re doing you a favor, so you’ve got to pay up or kick rocks,’” Cruz added.
In the vein and spirit of every other DIY band, they’re not waiting for someone to dictate whether they should start kicking. Self-sustaining would be how the four define what would make the band successful.
“If you really want to make it in music, then maybe you’re going to have to jump through hoops and be formulaic: this is what works and this is what doesn’t,” Boutell said. “That’s not music and that’s not art. That’s a product. There’s even that whole in-the-box thinking in the punk scene where it’s like ‘I’m a punk rocker. I identify as a punk rocker.’ And that’s still a box, so we try not to be stuck in that box.”
“I don’t really identify myself as anything. I’m Dalton Cruz. I listen to a lot of music and I like to be in the creative environment that I’m in,” Cruz said.
The conversation at this point begins to diverge down different paths: memes for starters and then entering a vortex via mushrooms in a jacuzzi, perhaps signaling it’s time to stop and head back to Bootleg Manor (read: the Herr’s home) for band practice in the garage. It’s where the band got its start, and it’s where they’ll end the night.
“It’s just a trip how enduring things are,” Boutell said, “and how you think you’re just going to do something and it’s eight years later and it’s like ‘Holy fuck.’ People cared and impacts were made.”