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[/wpcol_1third] [wpcol_2third_end id=”” class=”” style=””]Happy Campers have spent almost 18 years playing fast and fun punk rock in the Vegas Valley. Their 6th release, “Dancing With Demons,” will be available February 8th, 2014 at a free release show at the Hard Rock Café on Paradise. In an effort to get everyone properly stoked for the release, we have Happy Campers’ frontman Isaac “Campa” Irvine here to give us a run down on his band’s history as well as provide us with free downloads of long-hidden demo tracks.
Here’s “Episode II,” complete with the ‘Sumpin’ New’ and ‘Big City Campers demos.
After Irk left the band we decided to move Ernie to bass and bring in Vic Moya on drums. Vic was an aspiring comic book artist with a lot of energy and Ernie was a monster on the bass. He could play every Primus song ever written. We started to become a more serious band. The music was a lot darker, a lot faster, and a lot better. On stage we were still about joking around though. Ernie would play Super Mario songs while I jumped around like Mario. We would take time between each song to make fun of each other and Vic. I think we may have wanted to be stand up comics more than a punk band.
It was a great time in the Vegas scene with lots of good punk bands. We had great shows at places like the Huntridge, the BatCave, and the Castle but we were also concentrating on getting out of town and doing our own thing. I bought a piece of shit van and we traveled all over the western United States doing mini tours with bands like Boy Kicks Girl (San Jose), Evenground (Reno), and File 4 (Colorado Springs). That goddamn van must have broke down at least 15 times. Luckily Ernie knew enough about cars to keep fixing it. I became obsessed with every aspect of the band. I would spend all night booking shows and writing songs. I also started my own label, Monkey Ass Records. I became really focused on songwriting and wanted to make sure each song had a point or story to tell. One day while watching the press coverage of Columbine, I wrote one of our most popular songs “PuppetShow” about how disgusted I was with the reporters and the way they treated people who had just lost their friends and family.
We soon recorded the Big City Campers Demo with Adam “Bomb” Segal (Faction, 2 Cents Worth) that had “Sixteen,” “Puppetshow” and “Voices” on it. These would end up being some of our most popular songs even to this day. A few of the songs found their way onto MTV as background music as well as Tony Hawk and Bam Margera’s “Cribs” episodes. When the time came to record our 2nd full length S’moreCore, we enlisted Adam “Bomb” to produce us. When I showed Adam the original solo for “All Alone” he said he didn’t think a single note of it was in key. It became apparent that it was time for me to learn how to play my guitar better. He also wanted us to wait for Vic to learn to play to a click. I was very stubborn and didn’t want to wait. One of my biggest regrets about the band was that I never wanted to learn more about music and theory early on. I guess I thought it was more punk rock to do things my way and not have outside influences.
So, I got a crash course on playing in key, rewrote all my solos and we went into the studio to record S’moreCore. Everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong. My SG had a crack in the neck and never stayed in tune so we had to rerecord all my guitars. Some of Vic’s drums sped up. I was sick a lot due to my bad asthma and allergies so we were constantly redoing the vocals. The engineers at the studio lost some of the tracks. We over paid quite a bit for studio time and probably should have just done the thing at Adam’s house to begin with, but such is the way of Happy Campers. Nothing is ever easy. Live and Learn. I ended up putting almost 10 grand on my credit cards to record the damn thing.
When it was finished, Vic decided that he wasn’t going to be able to keep leaving his family to tour and left the band before the CD came out. Ernie left a few shows after that. I had lost another line up, had 10 thousand dollars of debt, was sleeping on people’s couches, and had a 30-day tour I’d booked with no band mates to play. It was depressing but I was determined that the show must go on. Most of 2000 and 2001 were spent touring with whoever could fill in. Larry Freire, a metal drummer was the only member that lasted more than a few months. I wasn’t happy with the situation and for the first time, it felt like the band was taking a step back. I wasn’t sure if I could keep it up anymore but help was on the way….
-Isaac Campa
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