Teen Mortgage is a heavy-punk/psych-garage duo that has taken the music world by storm.
Their punk-club gems have caused them to quickly outgrow the backyard and DIY scene; the band is now on a record label, touring regionally and internationally, and has even opened up for Weezer and The Smashing Pumpkins. The band’s successful rise makes sense when you listen to songs like “Doctor,” “Sick Day” and “Shangri-La,” which are packed tight with brutal riffs, lightning-fast punk-rock speeds, effects-heavy guitar tones and thunderous drumming.
Teen Mortgage is set to perform at Pappy and Harriet’s on Tuesday, Oct. 21. Although the duo has never performed in the desert, their musical stylings are inspired by some of the Coachella Valley’s musical greats.
“We’re super-influenced by a lot of the bands from that area, like Kyuss and Queens of Stone Age, and that desert rock vibe,” said vocalist/frontman James Guile during a recent Zoom interview, which also included drummer Edward Barakauskas. “I’m always trying to emulate a lot of those guitar tones in what we’re doing. We tune to C sharp standard, and that’s definitely influenced by Fu Manchu and Josh Homme.”
The art for almost every Teen Mortgage single, EP and album features black-and-white, detailed art pieces.
“I wanted it to have that certain style, sort of a comic book-meets-neo-traditional American tattoo kind of vibe,” Guile said. “Kevin Suttick, who does all the art, is the best one to do that. It sort of naturally happened that we kept working with him, because it was like, ‘Well, he’s going to do the best version of this idea.’ It has definitely kept a solid vision as far as the aesthetic goes, and black-and-white is cheap. Raymond Pettibon is definitely an influence on our art—Black Flag and OFF! and all the other stuff Raymond Pettibon did. It’s always so striking. It just looks punk.”
Teen Mortgage’s sound is undeniably heavy, pushing the limits of speakers and headphones everywhere—and many listeners are surprised to know the band is only a duo. Guile’s guitar rig is used to emulate both a guitar and bass while Barakauskas pounds away on the drumkit. Guile said not having a bass player is a “double-edged sword.”
“It makes it easier to tour and do what we’re doing as a two-person band,” he said. “It makes everything more feasible, and it takes a lot of the musicianship out. I don’t need to have a musical relationship with a bass player; it’s all just the one guitar. It takes that bass out of the equation, which makes it sound a lot tighter … but, yeah, there are definitely times I’m like, ‘Man, it’d be so cool if I could just take a solo.’ It’s something that makes us stand out when we’re playing with bands who have more members.”
Although there are challenges, Barakauskas said drumming alongside Guile’s guitar/bass behemoth is “no harder than playing with a bass player and a guitarist.”
“In fact, for me, it’s probably a little easier, because I just need to know where he’s at,” Barakauskas said. “I just played a show with my other band, and at one point, I heard the bassist go off in a different direction than the synth player was. That doesn’t happen with this group. The other side of it is, if we have a mechanical issue or something like that, a large chunk of the sound will drop out. If there’s a pedal problem, or if something on my set breaks, or if a stick breaks mid-song, I’ve got to switch it out real quick. You hear a more substantial dip than if you’re in a four- or five-person band.”
Instead of the traditional rock band setup where the singer is center-front, and the drummer is in the back, both Guile and Barakauskas are at the front of the stage. While cool for visuals and sounds, Barakauskas explained that moving the drumkit up to the front every night is “a pain in the dick.”
“If it’s a small stage, sometimes I’ll kind of hang toward the back a little bit, and it’ll be nicer for pictures, because you might actually get us both in the same shot,” he said. “Most of the time, we’re moving stuff up to the front of the stage. It’s also for line of sight, too, so that we can see what’s happening with the other person if there’s an issue, or for a few of the cues.”
Teen Mortgage can get quite heavy on their live tracks, with extremely beefy tones and hard-hitting kick and snare parts. As the years have progressed, the band members have become more comfortable with experimentation, and have been branching out into more subdued and low-tempo jams.
“You’ve got to be able to write some different songs and appeal to some different vibes,” Guile said. “As much as I love the Ramones, it only got them so far. I think all the best bands have songs that sound different, and they all are able to write fast songs, groovy songs, ballads, vibey songs, aggro songs—and be able to do it all.”
Guile has also experimented vocally, going from punk aggression and screams to more melodic singing.
“I do enjoy it because it forces a progression out of me musically,” Guile said. “I’ll go in the studio and be like, ‘All right, what’s the hardest vocal I can do, and what’s the hardest guitar part I could do?’ Then you go out on tour and do that every night. It forces me to get better, and we’ve been dialing in a lot more now that we’ve played with a lot of different bands, and notable bands. You go, ‘Oh shit; that’s what a good band sounds like.’ I never practiced until we became a touring band. I had to actually lock in.”
The members of Teen Mortgage were able to make music their full-time job, leading to a much more focused and refined sound, which catapulted them onto bigger stages and into bigger shows.
“All these different kinds of tours are unveiling new things that you learn you have to work on,” Barakauskas said. “We’ll do tours, and I’ll be like, ‘Why does this part of my body hurt?’ I have to be like, ‘What am I doing in this particular setting that I’m not doing in clubs or something like that?’”
Added Guile: “We’ve definitely been getting our heads around the different sizes of rooms, because we’re a punk band, and we play small rock clubs for the most part, but now we’ve played some bigger ones—festival tents and theaters, and we did an arena a couple of times. That is such a different ballgame. You’ve got to account for all that reverb.”
Guile is ready to get sweaty at the intimate Pappy and Harriet’s indoor stage on Oct. 21.
“Come let some energy out,” said Guile. “It’s like Fight Club—but you can tell your friends!”
Teen Mortgage will perform at 8 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 21, at Pappy and Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace, at 53688 Pioneertown Road, in Pioneertown. NIIS is set to open the show. Tickets are $31.86. For tickets and more information, visit pappyandharriets.com.
