The Tomblands came on hard at the end of last year with new EP GNAW. Released on Halloween, these six tracks of killer psych rock decimation are set off by the two drummers and the three rotating guitarists, who shuffle from bass to guitar, track to track. It’s an impressive feat and if you’ve never seen them live, you’re in for a treat. We’re getting this interview out (which was conducted in December) in time for their FREE headlining Valentines day show at Cole’s this Friday! So screw the plans you had for V day, and get on over to Milwaukee Ave. for cheap drinks and free music with one of Chicago’s most exciting up and coming live acts!   

-Kyle Land

NG: Nick Georgelos (Guitar/Bass/Vocals)
DS: Danny Stankus (Guitar/Bass/Vocals)
LB: Liam Burns (Guitar/Bass/Vocals)
JK: Jimmy Kowalczyk (Drums)
JB: Joey Buttlar (Drums)

The Tomblands haven’t been around very long in Chicago, so let’s walk through how the band was formed. Nick, Danny, and Liam have been together since college in Urbana-Champaign?

NG: Danny and I go back to third grade but we met Liam in college. We were all living in a house, just jamming in the basement, throwing house shows and stuff. When we all moved up here Jimmy joined, and nine months after that Joey joined the band. We got inspired by the two drummer idea. We jammed once and there was no other option. It was just, “we have to do this.” This is clearly better now. 

DS: We knew Joey, he’s from Champaign.

JB: I don’t think we ever had a chance to play together when we were all in school. You moved up to Chicago before I did. I moved up a year or two after. I knew Nick, and we were playing in other projects together and he invited me to jam with what I thought was his solo project. I walked into a room with these four dudes. I didn’t know any of the songs, and I’d never talked to Liam or Jimmy. But it immediately felt awesome. A very powerful jam and connection.   

JK: Joey is the absolute unit. He snapped into the songs right away, we didn’t really fight over each other. We definitely paid attention and listened to each other a lot; and now we have it dialed in, where we can sync up really well. It’s dope. I met Nick through jamming with his roommates, and then we became a band for a minute and when that didn’t work out he asked me to jam with The Tomblands. 

DS: He replaced the original drummer from school, who got too busy with his day job to keep playing.  

You’ve already answered the question, but let’s ask anyway, why dual drums?

JK: We’ve all got different answers to that, but some of our influences have a dual drummer setup, like King Giz and Thee Oh Sees. It’s kind of funny, in our group thread we were going through a March Madness bracket of all the King Giz albums and ranking them. That was fun. I just always liked it because I’m in love with drums in general and the idea of having a split drum role of a lead drums and rhythm drums, and have that interplay, seemed like a really dope idea to me. It feels cool to have that as a possibility, and when we’re synched up it’s just a fatter sound. 

LB: A month before we started the dual drummers I went to see Kamasi Washington and he had two drummers. And I thought that seemed like cheating. It should be illegal.

JK: It’s convenient when a stick goes flying, you’ve got a bro that can cover for you. That’s a nice luxury.

As far as influences, you mentioned King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard and Thee Oh Sees, what are some other inspirations?

JK: Surprisingly I don’t really listen to them that much, these guys are bigger fans than me; but I listen to it all. I’m a big contemporary jazz fan, but I can thrash out to some Giz when I want to. 

NG: We all have pretty diverse interests and backgrounds as far as music goes. 

JB: I think a common thread among us is that we seek out new music all the time. Whether it’s in the scene or in general. If we hear something cool that we like we’ll send it to each other: “what do you think about this?” We discover bands on our own and together and bring those influences to the table as well. 

JK: It’s like we’re our own Spotify algorithm (all laugh) “You like that? Then you should check this out…” I’ve got four other people to throw music at. 

DS: The three of us come from very different guitar styles. I come from more of the punk rock side. Garage rock and more in your face simple songs than Nick or Liam would listen to. We got started as more of a surf punk band, which was more influenced by my listening habits. Bands like The Libertines, or more recently Cloud Nothings, Ty Segall, White Fence, Fuzz. Bands from that general California scene, Mikal Cronin’s in that group. 

NG: I think Liam is more a riff for riffs sake…

LB: I fucking love riffs. Riffs baby…

NG: I love fat riffs, but I’m really into delayed spacy psychey shit too. All those meld together. We write music together, but often one of us will bring a song to the table that’s kind of formed. But it’s always a question of what is our band supposed to sound like? How do we make this sound like a cohesive thing. 

LB: It’s an existential crisis every time someone brings in a song. It’s “What are we?!”

Does that matter anymore? Does genre even make sense now?

JK: That’s one of the worst questions you can ask a band or musician: “What genre of music is it?” It’s the universal answer of, we are all a hodgepodge of what we’re listening to and what we’re into. I’m tired of the cis-you of the music scene. 

LB: We’re non-binary, man!  

JK: Yeah, it’s non-binary genre! 

LB: We used to give a kind of sarcastic answer, when people would ask we would say: “rock and roll baby, it’s just rock n roll.” 

JK: Psychedelic Garage Rock covers it, if we had to define it. 

DS: Once we played a show that was really loud and the amps weren’t miked right and someone said “Oh you’re just really sweet noise rock,” and that just dug into my heart…

LB: That was the most devastated he’s ever been, he was all “we work really hard on melody!” 

NG: That hit Danny deep. 

DS: It hit all of us deep, there are definitely parts we’re all doing our own thing. It’s not supposed to sound like that. It was outside. 

NG: We really started thinking about things after that, like maybe I shouldn’t have a boost into a distortion into a fuzz pedal for half a set (laughs). 

DS: We try to create space, even though there are five of us, we don’t all need to be playing intensely all the time. 

So Nick, Danny, and Liam all play guitar and bass, do you switch up throughout the set?

All: Yeah that’s how it works …Yep....yeah…

Ever have two bass’s going at once.

NG: We’ve thought about it. 

DS: It’s inevitable. 

NS: It definitely will happen at some point. 

LB: I’m fucking pissed that you just brought that up and that’s new to me. I wish to god... 

DS: Well the four of us have thought about it before. One day. 

So your new EP Gnaw was recorded at Jamdek?

JB: It was with my friend Sean Daily. We work together. Nick had some input as well with mixing. We had the idea of recording us together (gestures to Jimmy); but there wasn’t a way to get everything isolated, and get the pop that we wanted so we ended up using the same kit, tracking my drums first and Jimmy on top of that. We knocked out most of the tracking, I’d say 95% of it, in a three day session for six songs. We had some long days. 

NS: We had some long days for sure. Ten to twelve hour days

JB: In a beer, Malort, and Hennesey fueled…

NS: Just kept Sean slightly drunk the whole time so he was into it and stuff. 

JB: It was topped off by, well we had figured out all of our parts before we went in, but we had a lot of fun adding piano to one song, auxiliary percussion, and vocals. Which is something I’ve never had a part in recording before but it was fun to scream. 

LB: Don’t need pitch to scream man…

How has the reception been to the album?

LB: Really fucking good man. A lot of people are talking about how they play it loud in their car. And I’m like: “That’s what it’s made for!” 

DS: If people are just blasting it in their car, I’ll take it, that’s awesome. 

LB: It’s as it was meant to be played. 

JK: I had a lot of friends personally reach out saying, “This is a sick album. I can’t believe there were two drummers on it.” I don’t know if I’ve ever said this to you guys, but I love your vocals. I hope you always know I’m listening. 

It was listed as released through Inflatable Garden Records. Is that your own label?

NG: It’s mine. It’s what I call my studio. Any music that I mix or produce in any capacity is Inflatable Garden. It’s in it’s infantile stages right now but I have a logo. That’s all you need right? (laughs) But I’ve mixed various records so far, and have more I’m working on right now.

Out of the six tunes, which was the one that evolved the most?

LB: Probably “Marrow”…

DS: I would say “Temporal” and “Broken” are the oldest songs. We had single versions of those songs out before, that were far less quality. Joey was only on one of those tracks. Over time “Broken” got a bit longer, we added an intro section; and we did some more additional instrumentation by adding piano. Just because we had it in our rotation for so long, we changed things quite a bit from where it had started. “Temporal” is pretty well defined, and I think it’s the best sounding song. It’s actually the oldest and we play it so well. “Constrictor” and “Marrow” we finished writing in the studio so those have evolved the least, because those are so new. 

NG: They haven’t really had time to change. 

LG: But we had been working on the “Marrow” riff for like two years. 

NG: Yeah that one was a throwback for sure. But Liam was writing the lyrics in the lobby fifteen minutes before we recorded the verses.

LG: Top of the dome, baby. 

NG: And “Constrictor,” the vocals on that, was the last thing we recorded.

What’s your favorite song to play live from Gnaw?

DS: We’ve been closing our sets with “Marrow,” I play bass on that one, and the chorus hits and then the outro hits and I get goosebumps every time. I feel like such an arrogant asshole, but there’s a power to that song. When you close a set with that, people have been drinking, and it’s usually the end of the night. There’s just something special to that. 

JK: The likelihood for you to thrash to that is very high.

LB: You remember at the Barn show they were throwing each other?

JK: Mine is “Temporal.” When we do that live, it’s just a little bit cracked out faster. It’s a jam. 

JB: It really depends on our setlist. The ones we play last usually end up the best because we have time to get the sauces reduced and it’s just pure rock energy. Every song on the EP is really fun to play live. We have a song released as a single called “Loose In The Void.” 

JK: That one is my favorite. 

JB: That’s a favorite among the drummers. Jimmy had a hand in writing that one. That was one of the first songs I learned when I joined the band, and it has the most moments where the drums sync up and do polyrhythmic stuff. There’s a lot of crescendos, it’s a bit of a journey. It has a concrete structure, but has moments where we can loosen up and has some moments where we can play off the room and each other, and it comes back to an ending that is just indulgent and over the top and feels so good to play. 

LB: I’m playing two notes for the vast majority of that song. It’s so fucking awesome. But I also get to do my Godzilla stomp.That’s a big thing we do. We chase after the ideas we get the most like a caffeine high off of. It lends itself more to live performances. I would say “Glutton” just because I love when we drop in off the intro.

The Chicago scene is massive, did it take some time to be accepted?

DS: It took some time for sure. Most of the bands we cross paths with had members that went to Columbia or DePaul or have been in the scene since they were way younger than us. Liam and I were the first ones to get up to Chicago, but it wasn’t until Jimmy joined and around January 2018 we started getting better shows and playing better venues. Then we started making those connections that people that were here already had before when they were students. We had to really hit the ground running and go to a lot of shows and meet whoever we could. We were taking whatever shows we could, whereas now we’re fussy about where we play. But that’s been a long time in the making. 

LB: Uh… not super fussy though! Anyone who reads this, offer us shows please! I like to play music! 

DS: We play about once a month is what we shoot for. The scene feels very localised. The North Side has ten or so venues you would consider rock venues. We got offered a show at a DIY venue in Pilsen and we were like: “south side, a twenty minute drive...we’re never going to get enough people down there.” Not that a scene doesn’t exist down there but…

LB: No, they’ve got a good thing going down there. 

NG: There’s so many sub-scenes within the whole, we’re beginning to break into this one but there’s still fifteen other ones where there’s no progress. 

What one are you beginning to break into?

NG: There’s a cohesive Logan Square / Humboldt scene going on, it’s kind of amorphous but it's there.

JK: I got lucky in the scene, because I stayed in the city and at 18 I was playing in a pop punk band with a bunch of guys in their mid-twenties. So I had to sneak into bars just to play shows. Luckily that helped me out a bit, but it really doesn’t kick off till you turn 21 anyway.

There is a large DIY scene in the city. Have you played many of those gigs?

JK: Our fair share. 

DS: We’ve played some. 

NG: We played a few DIY shows, but mainly just bars and clubs. 

DS: There is definitely a DIY scene where people hate venues and only do basement shows. While I feel we are a “DIY” band because we do everything ourselves, we still like playing at The Empty Bottle or Schubas. 

JK: It’s difficult with this current set up because we would absolutely destroy a basement. 

DS: It’s really loud. 

JK: We’re really proud of our melodies but if you can’t hear them because it’s just pounding your ears down … ,it’s just nicer to play a venue where we can have a more decent sound set up.

What’s your favorite venue to play?

All: Schubas...probably Schubas…

DS: We’ve had the best experiences at Schubas.

JB: I like Schubas, but personally I love playing the Bottle.

What are some of the Chicago acts you’re influenced by or just think are killing it right now?

JK: Pixel Grip is currently crushing it right now with their cyber gothy punk stuff. 

LB: We’ve played with Sugarpulp a lot. 

JK: We’re practice space neighbors with Sugarpulp. 

JB: We’ve played multiple shows with them and they’re so much fun to play and hang with. 

LB: Flora is great. 

DS: We’re good friends with them. Town Criers as well, we’ve played probably ten shows with them.

A year from now, where would you like to see The Tomblands?

NB: On the roooooad!

JK: Bigger venues, preferably a few cross country ones.

NB: Touring with an LP under our belt. 

DS: LP 2020. Start the decade off right! 

JK: I love recording albums with this band but live is truly a spectacle. 

LB: It’s the most fucking fun thing in the world! 

JB: I think for me, making music is the most fun when you’re meeting new bands and connecting with people on the road. People you had no other reason to connect with in places you never expected to be. That’s why I’m a big fan of touring and that’s something this band hasn’t done much of, and we really want to make that happen.

this interview was edited and condensed for publication