Interview — Left Alone

By Marcia Taylor

Left Alone is an old-school DIY punk band from Wilmington, CA. Founded by vocalist/guitarist Elvis Cortez in 1996, the group is still going strong on Hellcat Records. They have toured nationally and internationally and released several records, including 2005's LONELY STARTS AND BROKEN HEARTS; as well as playing the Warped Tour as the BBQ band. They have a brand-new disc due out in August, DEAD AMERICAN RADIO, and they're looking forward to another stint on this year's Warped Tour (minus the BBQ responsibilities). Cortez is also in charge of the tour's DIY stage. His current bandmates are Ramrod on drums, Noe on saxophone, and newcomer Little Rudy on bass.

Cortez and I bonded over a mutual love of Elvis Costello.

SKRATCH: Tell me about the DIY stage you're running on this year's Warped Tour.
CORTEZ: The DIY stage is for smaller, hard-working bands that do the DIY thing and need a chance to play their music—bands like Los Creepers.

SKRATCH: How long have the other current members been with you?
CORTEZ: Ramrod joined in 1999 or 2000, and we've been together all these years. Our horn player, Noe, he's a fan I met at one of our shows. He was 15 or 16 when he started. I'm very dedicated, and these guys are, too. Now that we're getting more successful, it's better. Living in a van six months a year is NOT easy. And a lot of people who want to join the band think we're millionaires because we're on Hellcat, but we're not—so they get disappointed and leave.

SKRATCH: Would you like to talk about any of the songs on the new record?
CORTEZ: One of the standout tracks is "Every Night". It's kind of catchy and has a sing-along chorus. I wrote it while we were in Europe. We were gone so long that I wrote the whole album on the road. The song is about touring, the things you lose when you're gone so long. You come home and everything is different.

SKRATCH: Tell me about "La Pregunta", the song where you sing the duet with Patricia from Horrorpops. How did that come about?
CORTEZ: I wrote that song a while ago and had previously recorded it, but I wasn't satisfied. It's about a girl I was seeing who flew off and left on vacation before we could get serious. I showed it to Patricia while we were touring with them and asked if she'd sing it with me. We'd gotten back from the tour and were in the studio, and she showed up at the studio and said she was ready to do the song with us. She didn't even know Spanish, but she'd [...] learned it [phonetically]. So we played it, and she just started singing, and we got it down. I thought it would be a lot harder; I was surprised [at how easy it was].

SKRATCH: Since you like the way it came out, do you think you'll write more duets?
CORTEZ: Well, Tim [Armstrong] sings with me on "City to City", another song on the record. I like the duets. I'm getting more into expanding my songwriting.

SKRATCH: Moving forward and stretching and growing in your music is a good thing! So many people get down on bands when they do that, when their sound changes, and accuse them of selling out. But, you know, bands are made up of people, and people NEED to be able to grow and change.
CORTEZ: If I feel like writing a song, I'll do it, regardless of what people think. This record has a lot of variety. That's just how it came out, and I'm kind of glad for it. I love Elvis Costello, I think MY AIM IS TRUE is one of the greatest punk records ever. And there's all different kinds of songs on it. It takes balls to do that. This record feels like we achieved something really cool—and as long as we're cool with it, that's all that matters.

SKRATCH: I have to ask you about your anti-emo song on the record, "I Hate Emo". How did you come to write that song? And do you really hate ALL emo music?
CORTEZ: When I used to have [my club,] PCH, I would book and support all different kinds of bands. Emo was different and groundbreaking at that time. And I loved their [the musicians'] vinyl fetish. But then you get the trickle-down effect: there's the original, good stuff, then it eventually becomes so watered-down that the newer bands have no roots or history. I just wrote the song because when we were on the Warped Tour, we were so outnumbered! And they all looked the same. We didn't know anyone or who was in which band. Anyway, we were on tour with Horrorpops, and one day I was drunk and messing around and doing my emo rant. I was singing "Fuck emo," but the lyrics were meant to be funny and ridiculous. And that's how all the [non-emo] bands felt. One of the guys from Groovie Ghoulies said, "It's like STARS WARS: ATTACK OF THE CLONES." The bigger bands couldn't really say anything about the situation, but we were small, and no one minded.

SKRATCH: I wrote a lot of band profiles for the last two years' Warped Tour guides, and I have to say that it did seem like A LOT of the bands on the tour sounded very much alike with that particular sound. It seems to me that what is now called emo is about played-out.
CORTEZ: Yeah. It blew up kind of quick, and it didn't have that long of an underground scene.

SKRATCH: But I can remember when it was good, with bands like Dashboard Confessional and Weezer's BLUE ALBUM.
CORTEZ: When the BLUE ALBUM came out, it was so good! No one could deny a good song from that album. If a song is good, it will stand through all genres and trends by itself.

SKRATCH: Like Elvis Costello's songs! Tell me about the first song on the new disc, "The Sinner".
CORTEZ: It's pretty much about living on tour, pondering how fast things have gone, drinking and sobering up and thinking about where you are and what's happening. It flowed naturally when I started thinking about the past—losing jobs, relationships, everything I've gone through—as well as the long path ahead. People can relate to it because we all go through that stuff.

SKRATCH: How about some words about the title track, "Dead American Radio"?
CORTEZ: That song kind of overtook the whole album. I'm very disillusioned with radio. It's run by people who don't care about music. A band has to pay to get played. And it shouldn't matter. If a song is good, it should be played. It's discouraging as a songwriter. The other day I had a song in my head by a band that I don't even like, yet I knew the chorus by heart because I'd heard it played so much in the car, in the bar.... We'll never be played on the radio, no matter how catchy our songs are.

SKRATCH: Anything else you'd like to add to the interview before we finish?
CORTEZ: We'll be doing 10 days on the Warped Tour, July 6th-July 17th. Then we'll tour the U.S. with The Phenomenauts.

Visit Left Alone at www.leftalone.net or www.epitaph.com. If you would like to comment on this interview or anything else in SKRATCH, please e-mail us at www.speakup@skratchmagazine.com.

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