MONICA CHAIREZ INTERVIEWS Band "WITH LIBERTY"

Jerry’s Pizza sounds like a name for a common pizza place, right? However, this establishment, which is located in downtown Bakersfield, happens to be a popular venue for fun social events and local music shows. With Bakersfield being a small city, Jerry’s Pizza provides some form of entertainment for the younger generations and people belonging to different scenes, whether you’re heavily involved or you’re just there to see what these shows have to offer. 

When I first started attending these shows, I was fairly new to everything and to this day I still feel like I am. I never would have expected to have spent the past two years going to shows during my free time and supporting local bands. I never imagined that someday, I’d be interviewing some of these bands and writing about it. 

This past January, I had the pleasure to interview With Liberty, one of the opening bands performing with Aggravated Friction, Defected Drones, Hybrid Saints, and The Afraid for their West Coast Winter Warriors Tour. Both official members and brothers, Marco and Joey, were kind enough to provide me with insight on what it's like to be on tour and their history as a band (and also gave me a free gift of some of their merch)! 

Q&A With the Band

So tell me your band name and where you’re from.
Joey: We’re With Liberty. I’m Joey and I play bass and do vocals for the band.
Marco: I’m Marco, or M6, and I play guitar and also do vocals for the band. We’re from Panorama City, or from the LA area.  

What genre would you consider yourselves to be?
Joey: Our genre would be somewhere along the lines of melodic hardcore, with some elements of thrash, punk rock, and heavy metal. 

Can you tell me a bit more about With Liberty ?
Marco: With Liberty is a band which tends to have heavy punk influences which can often lead to political themes, but our music isn’t overly political. We also see ourselves as huge Metallica fans.   

Who are your biggest influences?
Marco: We’re influenced by bands like NOFX, Bad Religion..
Joey: And also by Rebel Spell and Metallica. 

Are you currently signed to a record label?
Joey: We’re not currently signed to any record label, but we are looking and hoping to be signed soon.

What are some of the craziest events that have happened to you while on tour/performing?
Marco: So, during one of our tours, we almost hit a cow.
Joey: The cow was standing in the middle of the road and wouldn’t move either. It was as if it was really comfortable being on the road. 

Are you two a member of other bands or organizations?
Joey: We used to be in a metal band, but now we’re just involved in With Liberty. 

Can you tell me more about your instruments? Do they have any form of personalized modifications?
Joey: Marco actually customized his guitar so that it has color changing LED lights.
Marco: Not only does my guitar change colors, but my amp also does too. 

How has the tour gone for you guys so far?
Joey: Well, so far, it’s been pretty good. It’s our first time to ever perform in Bakersfield so that’s a new experience we’ve got. 

What other venues have you guys performed in and where else do you hope to be able to perform?
Joey: We’ve mainly performed out in LA in venues such as the Lexington, Watts Cave, and Pop Studios. Our main goal is to perform in one of the many House of Blues. 

Can you briefly explain the songwriting process?
Joey: When it comes to us writing songs, we both work on one song. I’ll come up with one part, he’ll come up with another, we’ll look into both parts and make them into one song. It’s almost like putting together a puzzle.

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After my brief interview with the band, I decided to stick around with some of my good friends and watched them perform their set. Seeing a band perform has always been fun for me, but watching them perform with a lot of enthusiasm like I saw that night was honestly the best experience for me. 
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Even though I was somewhat unprepared for this interview, I genuinely had a lot of fun being a part of it and I hope to be able to interview and watch them perform again soon. 

Check out the band...
SoundCloud - https://soundcloud.com/withlibertyband
BandCamp - https://withlibertyband.bandcamp.com/
Instagram - @withlibertyband
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/WithLibertyBand/


About The Author: Monica Chairez
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Monica Chairez is a twenty-year-old college student currently attending CSUB as a psychology major. Her preferred pronouns are she/her/hers and she currently works on interviewing bands and spreading the word on the local music scene.