The Tender Box

A conversation with Chuck Gil

(April 2007)

Interview by Amber Henson

After hearing The Tender Box on the local radio station, I have to say I was quite intrigued.  Their album The Score was released a little over a year ago, but it’s still on the upswing, and the single “Mister Sister” is addictive and makes you want to shake for joy.  I wanted to see this band for myself, so I caught up with them at Spaceland on Club NME night, where they play Britpop after the live peformances.

Normally, when one doesn’t know the band that they’re going to see very well, the enjoyment factor is somewhat diminished because you can’t sing along or get excited about anything beyond the single.  But that did not happen this night.  The Tender Box put on such an exciting show that I couldn’t help but jump and dance only a couple of songs in—then kept dancing until the late hour started to make me feel irresponsible about my job (unfortunately, Club NME is on Wednesday nights).  I later got ahold of drummer Chuck Gil, who found the time to respond even in the midst of a fast-paced tour of Canada.  Four questions in and I found out why my night at Spaceland had been so very rockin’.

Various reviews and comments on your album have touched on thepolitical tone some of the songs take.  Why is music today, like it was in the 1960s, highly focused on politics and news?  What, in your opinion, do our times have in common with them?

Well, history tends to repeat itself, and unfortunately sometimes for the worse. Not everyone agrees with our politicians, law makers, the president, the media, etc. So, we have the chance to use our artistic freedom of speech through music to get a message across, the message that we don’t all agree with the system previously mentioned.  Some people march and protest, we do it through music. Again, some people may not even agree with us.

How did “Mister Sister” become a single? 

“Mister Sister” became the song that was the “catchy” tune on the album. We knew from the time that it was recorded that it would be our first single. It’s been used in several commercials now since the album came out. It’s been released as a single in the UK through So Sweet Records.

I saw a Jeep commercial with what sounded like “Mister Sister” playing in the background.  Was that, in fact, you guys?  How did that come about?  Did you have any say?

If it was a Jeep commercial, then Jeep owes us some money. Fact, the song was used on a Chevy commercial in Canada, which is still on TV to this day. That’s probably the one you saw. The advertisement company got ahold of our CD and asked to use the song, we agreed after they threw a number at us. We should have asked for a van instead.

Where is your favorite club to play so far, in LA?  Where have you enjoyed playing outside of LA?  Where can you not wait to get a chance to play?

There are several clubs in L.A. that we like in terms of sound and quality of venue, but we seem to have the most fun at the smaller venues, the ones where your fans are right in your face. There’s some sort of intense reciprocal vibe that makes us “rock out” more when they’re right in front of us.

We’ve had several tours outside of the country, not just outside of L.A. Touring the UK for six weeks was one of the best times we’ve ever had on the road. We were all over the place, from London to Dublin and back. The crowd there received us with a positive response. We didn’t know what to expect from them, but they seemed to have liked us brown kids, and our music too. We gained a fan base that is constantly asking us to go back. We can’t wait to tour the UK again.

We just got back from Canada a few weeks ago and it was freezing up there. There was snow everywhere. We had a great time, we just hope that the next time we’re in Canada is during summer. We hear it’s a non-stop party when it’s hot up there.

We would love to tour Europe, Japan, and Latin America, actually the whole globe…why not?

Are you all really from LA?

Yes, we were all born in L.A. We come from immigrant parents, and some of us are first generation Americans.

What have your former jobs been? 

Chinese food cook, high school graphic arts assistant, LensCrafters tech, drums instructor, press junket whores, loan officer, clothing retail, and slanging rocks.

What is your background in music?

Some of us played in band during elementary school and junior high, but we pretty much all picked up our instruments at the same time during our high school years. That’s how we all met.

I’ve read you’ve been around for a while now.  Eleven years, is it?  When did you form and how, and what was the journey from there to The Score?

We would get together after school and play covers with our friends or try to write our own music. So as the years went by, we kind of went our separate ways and played with other bands, but we always kept writing together. It wasn’t until we got together to record our first full length that we began to form what it is now The Tender Box. We recorded our first album three years ago under a different band name. When we went back into the studio to record the next album we noticed that our style of music had changed, we were writing songs that were totally different from the previous album, we had developed our signature sound, something that was just ours. At that point our producer Warren Huart, and our now manager Phil Jaurigui, decided to work with us outside the studio, on a more professional level. So we all decided to start fresh and change our band name, now The Tender Box. So you can say that we’ve been together two years.

What would you do if you weren’t making music?

Making tacos.

A lot of your press (well, almost any new band’s press, but especially yours) seems to be comparing your band to other bands.  Are you always happy with whom they say?  Do you disagree with some of the choices?  (The Killers, The Cure, Franz Ferdinand, The Bravery, Hard Fi, Bloc Party, Blur to name a few)  What bands inspired you?

Sometimes we get some bands that are totally left field, bands that we would never think of being compared to, but that’s other people’s interpretation and if that’s what they like, then it’s cool with us. We don’t mind it.

We grew up listening to Britpop for the most part throughout our high school years. That whole scene really had an effect on us. Of course we also listened to all the classic rock, and the ‘80s bands too.  Nowadays we each have our own preference when it comes to music, which is good because it allows us to incorporate that into our songwriting. Nevertheless, we always keep that common musical ground which brought us together in the first place.

What’s next for The Tender Box?  What’s the process for songs getting done?  Will another album be staying in the vein of the first one or going in a new direction?

We are constantly writing, coming up with new ideas for songs. We’ve written several new songs since The Score, and recorded some of them already. We’re trying to move forward with our new material, experimenting with ideas, trying to impress ourselves.

Our songwriting is a collective effort. We all bring something to the table, sometimes we have it in one day, and sometimes it just never happens. That has always been our process.

Who knows what the next album will sound like, but we definitely don’twant it to be a copy of the first. Not that we need to go a different direction, but we want to do something that’s new to us.