Youth Gone Wild: A Look Inside Revelry Gang
The Rainbow. One of the legendary places to visit on the sunset strip. This bar/restaurant has seen many famous acts roll through here to enjoy some crunchy onion rings or a cold one. I met with the metal rock band, Revelry Gang, at this place of rock history. I immediately could tell who they were as they walked up, all of them sporting long hair and stylish fits. We quickly re-introduced ourselves (I spoke to lead singer Austin Jayser a few months prior at a show) and sat inside the memorabilia filled spot. After ordering some booze, we began delving into the story of Revelry Gang.
The band is made up of four members. Austin Jayser (Lead Vocals) from Connecticut. Mitch Savage (bass) from Delaware. Mikey (drums) from San Diego. Tommy (guitar) from Delaware. Mikey is the newest member of the band who joined in 2020.
Interviewer: How did y’all get together?
Mitch: We (Tommy) went to high school together. We moved out here, straight outta high school. We’ve been playing in bands together since we we’re like-
Tommy: 15 or 14.
Mitch: Yeah.
Interviewer: Was there a scene when y’all were in high school?
Mitch: No!
Tommy: Fuck no. We could have not started a band in a worse place.
Mitch: That’s why we came here.
Tommy: There was a small, handful of bands but we were always excluded from that since we weren’t hardcore kids.
Mitch: There’s not even a lot of venues around.
Tommy: We played a lot of house parties.
Mitch: Or maybe a Denny’s.
Tommy: What the fuck is up, Denny’s?! (laughs).
Mitch: Yeah, so we just played a lot of parties and that’s why we came out here.
Mikey: That’s how I met him (Mitch). We had guitar class at MI together. We all three (Austin, Mitch) went to school together.
Austin: I went to school for maybe like, three months. And then I dropped out. I met Mitch through Tommy.
Mikey: Cause Austin was hanging out with us. I met him during the first week of school. He practically moved in immediately. He had a way nicer apartment than us. It had a hot tub and all these amenities, but Austin was like, “Nah, imma go stay in their little shitshack.” And I met him (Tommy) at school and we all just started hanging out and partying together.
Austin: We were always in the same circles, but the band wouldn’t come together for a few years.
Tommy: We all took a bunch of dramatic, little roads before we all circled back to each other.
Interviewer: Like other bands?
Mitch: Yeah, pretty much. Different combinations of us. Me and Tommy came here and started a band. Eventually we got Mikey in it. He was in our first band here but eventually moved back home to San Diego. We joined some other band and went on tour with them, came back, and that band broke up on tour.
Austin: And then Tommy and I started working together. We started to get this vision and band off the ground. (laughs) Had some lineup changes before these cats came in.
Tommy: Defiantly some trial and error before finding the right guys to be in this band. We just kept getting drummers without chops (laughs).
Mikey: Just a bunch of fucking hacks bro. (laughs)
Revelry Gang currently has six singles out.
Interviewer: Is everyone on all the songs y’all have out?
Mitch: It’s a mixture. The early stuff is just Tommy and Austin.
Tommy: We wrote and recorded pretty much everything in his living room.
Mitch: And “Transend” is really where I came in. Mikey is the most recent addition, but he should have been in it from the start.
Tommy: It’s actually funny because I can remember when Austin and I were living together, we would sit in the swimming pool out front to talk about the best band lineup we could think of would be if it was us four. That wouldn’t actually happen for another three years.
Mikey: It was interesting, I had moved back to San Diego six or seven months after we had started to jam together. COVID hit, that’s what it was. I was touring with Geoff Tate from Queensrÿche and had been doing that for a couple of years but that got halted. I was just looking for competent musicians to work with (laughs). I was like, “I know y’all have drummer problems.” But I had done some fill in stuff before. It was weird, we were all rotating in the same circle, but it took a minute for us to come together. It was organic though, very organic.
Tommy: I mean, that was common in the 70s and 80s out in LA too. You had Van Halen, the brothers were in a band, Michael Anthony was in a band, and so was David Lee Roth. And then they slowly started coming in and out what would eventually become Van Halen. Same with Ratt and Guns n Roses. They took half a band and another half and we’re like “Fuck it.” (claps) and made a band.
Mikey: Just make a baby.
The band was on a strong trajectory in late 2019 before COVID halted the music industry. For most, COVID was a period of adjusting and hardship. But Revelry Gang looked at ways to still produce content during the shutdown.
Interviewer: What was the deal with COVID?
Mike: Shit sucked balls!
Tommy: We were on a high point too.
Mike: I won’t lie, we did good over COVID. While COVID was fucking everyone, “Transcend” came out. We shot the music video. We put it out and that ended up being the biggest thing we’ve ever done. It wasn’t totally harsh.
Interviewer: That was the video with the old ladies, right?
All: Yeah!
Mitch: The two rockin’ grannies.
Tommy: I was chillin’ one day, and Austin texted me a link for that and was like “Check this out.” What the fuck is this?
Austin: I didn’t even know it was out. I don’t know how my mom found it, of all people.
Mikey: (laughs) Your mom fucking found it?!
Austin: She texted me the link and was like-
Tommy: Look at these grandmas. I was cracking up watching that. These two people, looking like my grandma, rockin’ out.
Mitch: Before COVID, we had played the Whiskey and it was a really good show.
Tommy: That was one of my favorite shows we’ve done. We had opened for Escape the Fate for that and as kids, that was one of our favorite bands.
Mitch: We would drive hours to watch them play in Jersey. And COVID hit a couple of days later. So, whatever plans we had after that got crushed.
Mikey: I can attest to that. I saw some of the videos from that show and was like “These boys are doing it, man.”
The band released a music video for their single “Transcend” in early 2021, which was shot during COVID. The video has done well, reaching over 100,000 views on YouTube.
Mitch: We sat down and was like, “We have to get this video done.” Because we were planning on doing the video for some time.
Tommy: It was kinda good that we didn’t do it then. Because we were about to do a video that wouldn’t have worked in the current scenario.
Austin: It was good that we postponed it. Marinated the ideas a little more.
Tommy: Yeah, let em cook. And they came out spicey.
Mitch: It came out how we saw it in our heads. We sat around the little studio in Austin’s apartment, and we thought out what we wanted the cover art to look like, exactly to a T.
Mikey: They literally wrote a fucking novel of what they wanted.
Tommy: It was very strategic. One of our finer moments, I’d say (laughs).
Mitch: We crafted every piece of that so perfectly. Sat around together in chairs and talked about what we wanted the cover art to look like. Something that best represented the song. And almost shot for shot what the music video would look like. And it couldn’t have come out any better.
Mikey: That’s the first time I’ve seen a professional, not a Kodak or Cannon, camera. Like it was some Hollywood movie shit.
Interviewer: Like, if you drop it, you’re screwed.
Mikey: He had this whole gyroscope thing when we were doing this walking scene and I walked up to him in between and I was like “Bro, level with me. How much is that camera?” And he was like “Oh, used they’re like $15,000.” And I was like “What?! That’s like four of my cars.”
Mitch: We were happy with the equipment we got to use. It really brought the video together. The quality, the lighting, everything. The chemistry that day was good too.
Tommy: Yo, y’all remember the fool that drove us there? When we were going to scope out the location for that video, we got this Uber driver, and his name was Ozzy. And he was some music manager/Uber driver, and we actually had a meeting with him at the Rainbow. And the people here were trying to kick him out. Crazy fucking guy.
Revelry Gang is currently self-managed, doing most of the logistical work themselves.
Interviewer: do you have any interest in getting a manager?
Tommy: Maybe.
Mikey: It has to be the right fit, bro. You have to trust them.
Mitch: It’s definitely something we have our eyes opened for. It just has to be the right guy.
Tommy: Or lady, we don’t discriminate!
Mitch: A mother figure would probably be better (laughs).
Interviewer: What about a label? Would you go that route?
Austin: Definitely, with the right deal.
Mikey: It’s all about timing. If they could get us on tours and help promote us, yeah. But we live in a time where labels aren’t necessary. You don’t necessarily need them. But they do make your life easier.
Tommy: I would love Epitaph.
Revelry Gang has played numerous shows at The Whiskey A Go-Go. Just a few hours after the interview, the band was doing their first headliner show at the venue.
Interviewer: What is the band’s vision?
Mikey: World Domination (laughs)
Interviewer: Yeah?
Austin: Yeah, pretty much.
Mitch: World tours, album releases, massive amounts of merch, faces on every billboard. That sort of stuff.
Austin: Take it as far as we can and blow it up as big as we can. And in our hearts, we will always do rock/metal. But we won’t be afraid to branch off into other things.
Mitch: That’s one thing, is this whole idea of “real metal”. That shit sets me off. Like what the fuck is “real metal”? You brought up Aerosmith. They did whatever they wanted. They did the thing with Run DMC that was rap. And they got ballads like “Dream On” and then rockin’ stuff like “Love in an Elevator.” You gotta do what you want to do. Like with actors, they always get stuck with that one-character type they have to play and can’t get cast for anything else. That’s something we don’t want to fall into.
Mikey: I’m just trying to make an impact. I want to push the bill, test the boundaries.
Revelry Gang is one of the many new bands trying to impact the current music scene, dominated by older rock bands and saturated pop groups.
Mikey: Yes, their time is up. We need to step the fuck up.
Tommy: Bands like Asking Alexandria are 15 years old. Escape the Fate is like 20 something years old. The new bands aren’t even that new anymore so it’s time for someone to take this shit and run with it.
Nostalgia has become such a strong force in today’s culture. Everywhere you look, people are dressing old-school, watching reboots of past films, and obsessing over art from 30 plus years ago.
Mikey: That’s across the board, man. I mean, even this festival that’s going on in Vegas. All these 2000s emo bands just made the gnarliest emo lineup ever. It’s like this whole nostalgia wave that’s taking over the world.
Mitch: That’s why everyone still wears Nirvana shirts.
Mikey: Nah, it’s because they are sold at like Macy’s or JC Penny.
Interviewer: What are your influences that reflect in the music you create?
Tommy: I don’t know if you could find a more hodgepodge of influences. Like we have a lot of common threads, but we also have very different tastes.
Mitch: Like Austin is super into Arch Enemy.
Tommy: I never listen to the Swedish hard shit, but Austin put me on to it. And obviously the GOATS like Mötley Crüe and Guns n Roses. I don’t think we could run away from those influences no matter how hard we tried. So, the classic bands like that. Mitch likes his early 2000s rock.
Mitch: I like Nu-metal and dad rock shit.
Tommy: Like Nickelback.
Mikey: You like Nickelback? We haven’t had THAT conversation.
Tommy: Nickelback does not deserve the hate they get!
Mikey: (groans)
Interviewer: Creed?
Mitch: I like Creed.
Mikey: You like Creed?! Oh my God.
Tommy: Mike is a hardcore kid.
Mikey: I just wanna listen to deathcore, I’m good.
Mitch: I like Frank Sinatra. It’s just a lot of different shit that comes into our music.
Mikey There is a little bit of a growth period. Our sound is evolving and now that we’re all together, writing as one unit, we are beginning to hone on each other’s strengths.
Mitch: And like I said earlier, we don’t want to be stuck in one corner. So, as time goes on our music is going to change.
Interviewer: How has the sound changed?
Mitch: A lot of triplets.
Mikey: As the drummer, let me point this out. These guys love their little wrist motions. But when it includes both of your legs, ankles, and feet its-
Tommy: We kinda took the rap adlibs and made them into guitar and drum parts. Our chorus is getting bigger.
Austin: Trying to do more synths too.
Mitch: Incorporate some electric stuff. We love strings too. Try to throw some violins in there.
Tommy: Just trying to write better songs and not just be about how hard we go, cause we go pretty fucking hard (laughs). And we know we go hard. But we wanna show we have range. I wanna throw people a synth-filled banger. And then with the nastiest breakdown you’ve ever heard. And then make your girl cry with this ballad we wrote.
Interviewer: So y’all are open to ballads?
Mikey: For sure.
Tommy: We got one in the bank right now. It’s gonna make jawns cry.
Interviewer: What are your favorite ballads?
Mitch: Sevenfold has some good ballads.
Mikey: The Wiggles does it for me
All: (Laughs)
Austin: Maybe “Wasted Time” by Skid Row.
Tommy: I feel like it would be cliché for me to say “Home Sweet Home” so I’m trying to find another one. Does Limp Bizkut’s cover of “Behind Blue Eyes” count?
Mikey: Absolutely!
Tommy: I’m going with that.
Revelry Gang has six singles out and a music video for “Transcend”, available on all streaming platforms and YouTube. Follow the band on Instagram @revelrygang. Stay tuned for new music coming soon.