Never Only Once: Hardcore Roots Grow in Rocky Soil

by Steve Lemcke

When talking about Vermont hardcore (VTHC), like Vermont music and almost everything in modern America, one has to talk about paradox. Vermont's hardcore is as anachronistic as the next thing, I suppose. Music that has traditionally been found in urban areas in modern industrial states has laid roots in the rocky agricultural progressive/backwards environment of vermont, oddly enough.

Strong roots, to be sure, due to the committed fans that support shows and the local bands that support each other. But the number of fans is still not huge in a state where birkenstocks and not steel-toed army boots are the preferred footwear. Underground popularity and mild support from town in general have maintained its presence but not much more. Club 242 Main has been a pillar in the fight to keep hardcore alive in Vermont, but has been chronically underfunded and the subject of rumors and controversy that have served to keep away potential audiences.

To its credit, 242 Main has been bringing famous underground names to Burlington for some amazing shows through the years. Club Toast has maintained its hardcore credibility with some killer shows as well, but the numbers haven't been there. For the most part, local hardcore has had to learn all by itself, which is hardcore all the way.

Homegrown hardcore has deep roots and as fought its way towards its own expression of the hardcore ethic. It has produced a number of bands that have earned a lot of respect. Bands like Slush, Twelve Time Over, Rocketsled, and Never Only Once are now no names in a town where music reputation has been Phishified by years of hippie-dominated music. "Hardcore's back, but it was here all along", sings Twelve Times Over. The times they are a changing, and hardcore, punk, and heavy music are what's big, nationally.

As MTV gets harder and harder with each new buzz clip, the new crop of Burlington hardcore bands may be the recipients of new respect coming with the mainstream's acceptance of hardcore as a commercially viable 'product.' This may scare some punk core traditionalists who want to maintain the scene's underground status.

Vermont hardcore has proven durable in a town where the hippie Vibes have an easier time laying roots in a traditionally agricultural/senic state. Never Only Once tries to keep hardcore in Vermont strong as they continue to learn about the philosophy behind the music they play. It has been a 2-year iourney to see how they fit into a genre of music that continues to grow and in that growth become subject to the categorization that the new multitudes necessitates.

They have been dubbed emo-core. Which I believe is just code for a band that may not have the urban experiences to draw from but still expresses deceiving emotion that hardcore music has always been affiliated with. They are more interested in the larger issues of life; issues that seem more important to their own lives in a state where the most hardcore thing is the weather in February. These guys prove that hardcore, in its many forms, is alive and well and ripe for an explosion of new popularity in this town.

GC: Somebody give me the background.

Matt Nolan: Nick and Pat met at St. Mike's playing in some bands there. I moved up here from Boston two years ago and I started jamming with Nick and Pat. I've been in bands with Pat for a few years down in Boston and we were in a band called Seven (7?) With a different singer. We didn't like the singer so we kinda kicked him out and Nick wanted to sing. Nick knew Birdy from Colchester, so he joined up as the second guitarist and that's pretty much the lineup and how it stayed.

GC: You guys released that first and only tape. People were psyched but you guys aren't.

Nick: Our sound has changed a lot since then.

Birdy:  We were psyched about it at the time. It was good for us at the time but…

GC: Why's that?

Birdy: We were in the early stages of figuring out what we really wanted to play. And that's just what happened to come out at that particular point. That's what we were playing, but we were changing pretty rapidly.

GC: What was or has been the direction of that change?

Birdy: I don't know, I guess we're just playing a lot harder stuff now. It's gotten away from the Smashing Pumpkins phase. More of a hardcore phase.

GC: Some people call you emo-core. Does that bother you?

Matt: We always get classified as that. I mean, people are going to hear a band that sounds like we sound and it's just... hardcore always gets classified.

GC: Where do they fit in? Why do they call it emo?

Matt: They call it emo cuz it's intelligent. It's emotional. Pat tells us like it is. 

Pat: It's not run of the mill. There's only so much you can do with the basic punk rock structures so you have to take it to a higher level.

Birdy: There's only so many times you can play the songs that have been played a thousand times before. 

GC: How do you manage to creatively change them?

Nick: I think at first, on the tape, we used mellow parts. Our idea was to blend hardcore with parts like that and mix the two together, but now we just sort of go for a groove.

Birdy: We still have the mellow parts. But the mellow parts we put in our old songs, we kind of just threw them in.

Nick: Too drastic of a change.

Birdy: Now we try and keep a groove. Still drop it down, though.

Nick: Try and build the music up and down.

Pat: Our sound is changed for us because we have more time to take and prepare the songs that we're writing, while before we had no place to play so we'd rush in writing songs. So now we can deliberately take our time, play what we want to play, and make sure it's what we all want.

Birdy: I think back then we were still trying to figure out how everybody played. We were trying to get in tune with each other.

Pat: We were bad…

Matt: We're a young band. It's been a learning process for all of us. I mean Birdy was... when we made that tape, he was the only one that had been in a studio. None of us had been near a studio before our first time. We were nervous, and not really experienced musicians.

Nick: All self-taught. Birdie had some lessons.

Birdy: I had one lesson.

Pat: But the new shit will blow minds. 

GC: What about the new shit?

Matt: We're not limiting ourselves to any style. We just want to write.

Birdy: We're just playing what we want to play.

Matt: We'll write a heavy song.. let's throw some good dance parts so the kids can go crazy, but at the same time we're gonna write some kind of groovin… I don't know how to describe it... non-generic songs.

(Sterling Dew, lead singer for Twelve Times Over, enter the room.)

GC: What draws you to hardcore music? Can it survive here in Vermont?

Pat: It's all we know…

Nick: Probably skateboarding was how I got into it. Back when I skated I was introduced to Minor Threat. Up here I never got exposed to it. I just listen to bands I knew through skating like The Misfits, ya know.

Matt: I listen to a lot of Hardcore just by listening to a lot of skate bands that were hardcore and then I got more into NY hardcore because it was no-bullshit music. It's intensity. It's emotion. They sang about real stuff. They sang about reality, the reality of the city. I didn't want to listen to any Top 40 fucker singing about love and shit. (Laughs)  I heard something in it that said, "Yeah, that's what you should sing about if you're gonna be in a band. Real stuff."

Birdy: I don't know. I got into it the same way Nick did. I started to listen to Minor Threat and all those old skate bands. After playing with the Champions for the short period I did, I knew it was the kind of music I wanted to play. I was in a band before, when I was still learning to play guitar, so it wasn't exactly what I wanted to do. This band is exactly the kind of music I want to be playing. It comes very naturally for some reason.

Pat: I do it for the kids. (More laughs). 

Birdy: As far as Burlington goes, a lot of kids up here. I don't know. They didn't get into it at the same time as we did. They got into it more recently. The kind of music we play is rooted in the old, old hardcore.

Matt: The problem with Burlington, is that a lot of kids don't go see shows in the city- in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, whatever. They only see the bands that come up here and that's only one aspect of hardcore. A lot of bands don't make it up here, so they only see certain bands and think, "That's hardcore," you know, and that's not... Yeah, they're hardcore and all, but they're not all there is to it.

Sterling Dew: They don't get the full education.

Matt: I think that may be some of the reason why it's taking a while for us to catch on. A lot of people just don't know it exists.

Birdy: Burlington's getting better. Hardcore is getting more respect. 

Never Only Once can be heard on the Good Citizen Soundtrack to the Zine Volume One and, hopefully, a forthcoming single on Split Records. They also have a four song tape out that can be very hard to find, so if you see it...buy it without delay.