Interview with Jacob Scott from Piece of Mind

Piece of Mind is a heavy hardcore band from Oklahoma who channel hardcore's finest such as Turmoil, Buried Alive, and Axis among others. They first caught my attention when I saw Trip Machine releasing a collection of their first few e.p.'s. Knowing that Chris only pumps out top notch quality, I tracked down that LP as well as their brand new split with Miracle Drug.

The band recently announced they will be partnering with Safe Inside Records going forward, and should have a new batch of material out later this year. That, coupled with their pretty active tour schedule will mean they are a band you will hear a lot more about this year and into the future.

I recently connected with guitarist Jacob Scott about growing up in Oklahoma, working as a recording engineer, and of course tearing it up with Piece of Mind. Read on.

Alright so talk a little bit about growing up in Oklahoma. The only thing I know about your state is that Barry Sanders played at OSU, which on its own makes it legendary and worthy of praise (-:

Growing up in Oklahoma is different for a lot of people. I grew up in a pretty rural area on a cattle farm, whereas the rest of the band grew up in other small towns and cities, so my experience is probably pretty different. I didn't really have anyone around me that shared my interests at all, so I had to travel an hour or two just to skate and make friends. 

How were you introduced to punk and hardcore? What bands, venues, etc. made an early impression on you?

I got into punk through my older sister's boyfriend when I was 10. He gave her a burnt CD of like 30 MxPx songs, which she in turn gave to me. I was always obsessed with music as a kid (and now, really) so I would buy every CD I could and scour the liner notes for other bands to check out. Thanks to various magazines, I had heard about the first wave of hardcore bands, but I had no idea that it was still a thing. Finding bands like Bane and Carry On through the internet changed my life. I'll never forget hearing "Ante Up" and being completely hooked in. I can't imagine what I'd be doing now if I hadn't heard that. Probably dead. 

How did your family and friends react when you started falling into skating, punk and hardcore? 

For the most part my family didn’t know what I was getting into. I was a weird, private person growing up. I probably still am. They knew about the skating, but only peripherally knew about what kind of music I was into, and pretty much zero idea about the subculture aspect.

At what point were you able to start getting out to shows, and what things about the live music experience stuck out to you? 

I started going to shows probably around the age of 14. A lot of it was small local or regional bands for the first couple of years. I think the first proper hardcore show I went to was Bane and Comeback Kid. No clue how I convinced my parents to drop a 14 y/o off at the sketchiest venue in Tulsa by myself. The moshing, the stagedives...it was the first time I’d seen anything like it. That energy and passion has been something I’ve been chasing ever since. 

I think CBK/Bane must have been what, like 06'? What was the scene like in Tulsa at that time and how has it evolved and changed over the last decade plus? 

If my memory is correct, I think it was early 2005. 

I didn’t spend much time in Tulsa in the early/mid-00’s since I lived a couple hours away at the time, so my recollection might be different from someone who lived there. But from what I experienced as an outsider, hardcore had a really strong presence. You still had young people getting into guitar music. There were always a lot of mixed bills, lots of venues, lots of great local bands outside of hardcore as well. It’s a pretty stark contrast to 2019. These days there’s only a couple hardcore bands in Tulsa proper, and only a handful of notable bands in general. There’s really only a few places to play as well, and kids just aren’t getting into guitar music. It’s really been a struggle to get new kids into it. 

At what point did you start playing in bands, booking shows, etc.? 

I started playing in little garage bands around 13, but started playing out in real bands when I was about 16/17. I never really got into booking outside of one or two shows. My thing has always been recording bands. The first time I ever inquired about studio time, I was blown away by how much it cost, which in reality probably wasn’t an unreasonable amount, just a lot for a kid. From then on, I was obsessed with learning it myself. Since then I’ve made some really cool records with people I admire a lot. 

Give a little bit of background about how you got into the recording game. Were you talking to other engineers about techniques and gear, using online tutorials, or just learning by doing?

I got into recording pretty much out of necessity. I borrowed a friend’s 4-track TASCAM tape recorder and recorded all of my first bands stuff with one Radio Shack mic that I got at a garage sale. Around that time, I was running sound for a church, and got a lot of hands-on time with a large analog console. Since I had to record the services to cassette, I learned a lot about mixing in the analog world. An analog workflow is something I miss.

My older sister was in college at the time, and would give me her old college textbooks on acoustics and engineering, which I spent a lot of time reading and trying to apply those principles. While I had the Internet, it was a dial-up connection and I had no idea there was a community out there of people into recording, so I was pretty much learning on my own. 

What are some of your favorite projects you've been able to do? 

As far as favorite projects, I’d have to say every record I did for Free At Last was something special to me, especially their final album. Dream Ritual is another that holds a special place for me. We made that record with the intent of it being a demo of sorts, and ended up becoming a 12” on 6131. Youth Pool’s “Dive In” and Muscle Before Paradise’s “Die In Combat” are two records that still get heavy rotation for me.

Obviously, the recording process can be tedious and stressful, especially if performances are not coming out as desired, if there is tension building between members, etc. As an engineer, how do you navigate those times and what tactics if any have you found to be effective in sort of moderating the experience for bands? 

I try to take a pretty relaxed attitude in the studio. My philosophy is that the artist knows how they want the song to be played, and I can usually tell the difference between playing poorly and playing with a certain attitude or affect. However, it doesn’t stop band members from being hard on themselves or whoever happens to be sitting in the hot seat at the time. If it gets to that point, I’ll have them take a break, eat something, watch some dumb videos on YouTube or listen to E-40 at an unreasonable level. Sometimes you just have to break the tension.

With Free At Last, when Chandler would have a problem with a guitar part, the pants came off and you didn’t get to put your pants back on until the part was right. That was usually the magic cure. 

A lot of the time a nice studio is daunting to people, so I want it to feel like a comfortable, welcome space that bands feel like they can be creative and try things or mess up sometimes and it’s not the end of the world. 

Alright so let's get to Piece of Mind. How long had you guys known each other and how did you come together as a band? What were some of the key influences you wanted to integrate, be they musically or otherwise? 

Aside from Duston and Drew being in a band together previously, we were all had been friends for at least a couple years. Our scene is small and tight knit, so even if we didn’t hang out, we still knew each other. 

At the time the band started, Drew was playing drums in a band and wanted to front a band instead, so he hit up Tyson and I. We had been practicing for probably a couple weeks and had our demo written before Duston was brought in. We played as a 4-piece for the first year or so that we were a band. Tyson moved back to Massachusetts and plays in Maniac now. We cycled through a couple different drummers for a minute before we landed with Luis, and I couldn’t imagine the band without him now. We added Skyler on second guitar around that same time. 

Originally, the thought was that we would do a Blacklisted-worship band. That was scrapped probably the first day once we actually started writing the demo. While I don’t think we had any conscious influences that we wanted to pull from, we definitely had a mission: play the exact opposite of what we should do. It was mostly a reaction to the slow and heavy stuff around us at the time. As we grew into our own thing, the influences definitely started coming out more. One King Down, Integrity, Buried Alive, Turmoil, even bands like Stone Temple Pilots and Alice In Chains are big influences that I hear in our songs. 

I assume you have a pretty large hand in the riff writing department...what would you say inspires you to sit down and write? Do you tend to wait until you are inspired by a particular experience, or are you just sort of constantly working on things here and there until you find something that feels right?

Most of these songs are born out of a few riffs that I’ll come to the band with. Sometimes I’ll have a complete song, but I think having other people contribute and bounce ideas off of is the way to go usually. 

Between managing a restaurant, making records and design work, I stay pretty busy and don’t get much (if any) free time. So I try to have a guitar in my hands if I’m sitting down watching tv for an hour or so and flesh out all the ideas that have popped in my head throughout the week. 

The "Trilogy" release obviously compiles your first 3 recordings and bundles them all together. What sort of growth do you feel like the band achieved throughout those writing sessions, and how'd you guys hook up with Chris and Geoff at Trip Machine? 

I think “Trilogy” captured a great snapshot of our progression. From us figuring ourselves out on “Kiss of Peace”, exploring new areas on “Harsh Reality”, and refining that sound on “Despise b/w Nation of Fear”, you see us maturing as a band, refining the things we do well and cutting out the things we don’t. 

We linked up with TML through our friends in Miracle Drug. They wanted to do a split with us, and we happened to be coming through the Hudson Valley on tour, so Chris came and saw us. He wanted to do the split, but also kicked the idea to do a vinyl release of our discography. We’ve since become fast friends and I really enjoy Chris a lot. Very thankful to have a team like TML in our corner. 

Yeah, talk about your relationship with Miracle Drug. How'd you get to know those gents, and how did you arrive at the idea of working together for the split? 

We first met Miracle Drug on our very first tour in 2016 when we played together in Louisville. We were instantly big fans and became friends pretty quickly. We play Louisville a fair amount, so they’re kind of our brother band. Matt Weider came to us about doing a split around the same time he mentioned it to TML. Our mutual friend and artist Codak Smith did the art for that record, in a sort of homage to the Uniform Choice demo artwork.

We’re super happy with how that record came out. Our half are my two favorite songs we’ve written, and the Miracle Drug half are my two favorite Miracle Drug songs. Couldn’t ask for any better. 

Speaking of touring, you guys seem to have been hitting it hard since day one. Do you book all your own tours or do you have somebody you're working with in terms of putting stuff together?

We will occasionally work with someone to help fill dates, but we generally book our tours ourselves unless another band is taking care of it.

We try to be on the road as much as we can, but with full-time careers at home it can be difficult sometimes. Every now and then we have to use a fill-in, but of course we would rather have the five of us there. 

What are some of your favorite tour/show memories with Piece of Mind either in terms of actual shows or just pranks/general tomfoolery?

Oh man, there’s so much dicking around that is burned in my brain from touring...we play the odds quite a bit in the van, and Skyler usually gets the raw end of the deal. Once, he had to call a “proof god is real” hotline from a billboard in Ohio and tell the operator that he had a man piss on him in “a state of sober experimentation”. Poor operator probably still talks about it to his friends. 

Probably my favorite show moment was in Oxnard, CA in 2018. There was some guy who was absolutely shit-housed who kept “moshing” and spilling beer everywhere. In between songs he would go sit a beer for Drew next to the kick drum. At one point, he starts trying to tackle Drew and the next thing you see is Drew dropkicking this guy in the chest. Pretty sure there’s a photo of that somewhere. The look of joy on my face is priceless. Some folks throw him out, and he throws a bottle at a car next to our van. A gun gets pulled, drunk guy tries to hide in a taco truck in the parking lot...we high tail it out before the cops show up. Easily my favorite show ever. 

You guys recently announced you've joined the crew at Safe Inside Records. How did you hook up with Burt and when will we hear new stuff?

Burt first hit us up in late 2017 about doing something together. At the time he hadn’t done much outside the Despair re-releases, but that was enough for us. Since then he’s been grinding super hard and picking up a lot of cool bands that grind just as hard as he does. Safe Inside are a smaller label for sure, but I can’t see it being that way for very long. Burt does a lot for his bands and I think it shows. 

We’re just putting the finishing touches on a 7” right now and the art and layout are being put together. Hopefully we’ll have some new music out in the next month or so. 

What sort of new influences (if any) have you guys tried to bring to the table for this new material? Is it self-recorded again or did you decide to go elsewhere this time around?

When we started writing this record a year and a half ago, it was intended to be 2 songs for a split. The split fell apart, so we decided to put those toward an LP. After writing an LP, we realized we had padded it with songs we didn’t feel were strong enough, so we cut it down to an EP. To fit onto a 7” however, we still had to trim a couple songs. The weirder ones got cut, and we left nothing but bangers. 

The weirder stuff that we had written was influenced by everything from Catherine Wheel and Alice In Chains to Refused and early Converge. I had been listening to Kickback’s “Forever War” a lot at the time, and I think that sort of dark and heavy stuff definitely found a place in these songs. Of course, we’re still drawing from Buried Alive, Turmoil, Integrity and One King Down for a lot of stuff.

We recorded this ourselves again, just to help with the budget. We have two engineers in the band, myself and Luis, so doing things ourselves has never been a problem. We would like to go to outside the band for our next record, but having two picky engineers in the band keeps that list short and expensive, so we’ll see when the time comes. 

Assuming the record hits late Summer/early Fall, what kind of touring plans do you guys have once it's out? 

Right now the plan is to do the East Coast with Stepping Stone and No Option in the fall. We would love to get back out to the west coast at some point this year as well, just have to pull some strings to see what we can work out. 

Hit the people with 3 underrated bands they should be listening to at the moment. 

You should definitely be listening to Absence of Mine, Maniac and Prowl. 

Absence of Mine are from Southern California and have a new record coming out soon. Insane band. 

Maniac are from Western Massachusetts and just signed to New Age Records. “War and Insanity” was the best record of 2018.

Prowl are from Montreal. They have a record coming out this summer. If you like crossover thrash and No Warning, you will love this band. 

Bedroom Mosh: https://pieceofmindhc.com/

LDB 2018: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcWioL5G_c0