A Tale of Two Bands: Kevin Conway from East of the Wall

How long have you all been working on The Apologist?

That’s actually a realy complicated question to answer.  It takes a little background about the band itself.  Pretty much, we were two different bands, there was East of the Wall and there was Biclops and basically, Ressentiment was supposed to be the first Biclops record.  Biclops was every one in the band except Matt.  East of the Wall was me, Brett, Matt and this other drummer named Mike.  We had two different bands and we just wanted to focus all our efforts in one spot, so we actually just combined the two bands.  We got rid of the drummer Mike, who was on Farmer’s Almanac and just kind of put everything together, so Ressentiment was supposed to be the first Biclops record before we ditched that band altogether.  That being said, getting back to the original question, about four or five of the songs were written with the old East of the Wall lineup, before Biclops wrote Ressentiment, the other half, we wrote after we combined the two bands.

So technically, you’ve been working on this album for like 3 years?

Since right after we finished recording Farmer’s Almanac, actually.  There are songs on this record that are actually older than the songs on Ressentiment.

How does that come together? Does it merge well?

Well, we’re getting there.  It’s a challenge, you know? Because just listening to Farmer’s Almanac, then listening to Ressentiment, you can tell that the two bands are very different, so really what we’ve been working on is bridging the gap between the two different sounds and incorporating all of the elements of both that we like and I think we’re there now.  It was a little difficult at first, just getting used to the new writing process and everything and being in that mindset, but I think at this point we’re comfortable with the lineup of the band and what we’re good at; we know what we’re not so good at and I think we’re really kind of honing in on the sweet spot at this point.

That kind of makes it sound like Ressentiment was a work in progress, like the band still has places to go, is that the case?

I mean it was weird in the sense that when we decided to combine the two bands, Ressentiment was already totally finished and we were shopping the record around as Biclops, and while that was happening, Translation Loss signed East of the Wall and they were interested in signing East of the Wall as well, and we were like “this is crazy, we’re going to have two bands on the same record label and we’re going to tour half as much with each, why not put them together and just tour as one band and get more accomplished, so Ressentiment was a totally finished project in that regard, but it was kind of written by a different lineup.

Going back to the new album, you were talking about some extensive touring in support of The Apologist, can you tell me a little more about that?

That’s always the game plan, but it’s hard being a touring band, you know, you’re broke constantly and you‘ve got to save up to be away from work for a month, and We’re all lucky in the sense that we’ve got day jobs that we’re able to leave and come back to, but right now, the game plan is for the record to be out either September or October, and we’re going to hit the road for about a month after that and go out again next March and then reassess from there, but I think we’ll probably do four, or maybe five months of touring after the record comes out, so I mean we try and hit it hard.

East of the Wall will be playing tonight at Public Assembly, in Brooklyn with The Ocean and Flourishing.  This will be their last show before they go into the studio to record their next Full-length album, The Apologist. It's just $10 and looks to be one hell of a show.