Interview With Middy From Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz is a well-known name in geography, but what is the origin of Santa Cruz as your band name?

I wasn’t present, but as the legend goes Archie played around with a globe and got his eyes fixed on the name Santa Cruz and it just stuck.

You’ve been a band now for 10 years, what encouraged you all to start playing music together?

All of us come from a bit different musical backgrounds. To me first seeing the ‘Welcome To The Jungle’ music video was somehow the turning point that made me wanna play in a band. Then I got into bands like Misfits and Sex Pistols and formed my very first own band called ‘Fuck the Shit’ – isn’t it cute? But anyhow our common interest in band like Guns, Mötley, Skid Row and Van Halen was the thing that got us four together as a band. Even though we never played that many cover songs, that kind of music inspired us and you can really hear that on our first album.

Your new album ‘Bad Blood Rising’ came out recently, how was the song writing and recording process for the album?

It was pretty much DIY. Johnny (our guitar player) recorded and mixed the whole album. And what comes to song writing, we all got down to our rehearshal place and started going through demos one by one and a month later went to the studio with 11 tracks. So the whole process was pretty straight forward.

In relation to this, Santa Cruz has come a long way since ‘Another Rush Of Adrenaline’ in 2009, how would you describe the evolution of your music?

I think that we’ve come closer to our own unique on each of our releases. We hate to be the band that repeats itself. We don’t necessarily plan to do something totally different every time we go to studio but it’s more of a result of being open minded.

Now you have the new album out, which song from ‘Bad Blood Rising’ are you most excited to play live?

For some reason I’m really into ‘Young Blood Rising’ and ‘Bad Habits Die Hard’ at the moment, but it changes. One song I’m really looking forward to play in the future is ‘Get Me Out of California’.

You’re on tour at the moment in Europe and have a UK tour lined up for December too, what are you most looking forward to while you’re on tour?

The feeling of touring itself, it’s a totally different state of mind wich I love. On tour you have only one focus, to play a hell of a show every single night and you don’t have to worry about anything else. On top of it all it feels like forever since we last time had a proper tour, I know some might say that having a half a year break from touring is nothing but I gotta tell you, it’s addictive as fuck.

You’ve also been playing a lot of shows recently, do you have any favourite venues to play?

Oh there are lots of places I like to play, but for example in UK one of my favorite venues is Rock City in Nottingham.

Have you got any favourite stories from being on the road?

Let’s save that stuff for the book shall we. But let’s put it this way, what you’d call a ‘normal day on tour’ is hard to come by when traveling with us…

As a band with a reasonably sized discography, do you have any top tips for any aspiring musicians reading this?

When asked this I remember and advise that I got when I was like 14 or something. “Set your goals so high that even if you make it to the half way you’ve gone far”.

And finally, where do you want Santa Cruz to be in 5 years?

If I’m doing my math right we’re probably playing the last shows of our 4th album’s tour. And that’s where I wanna be, playing the stuff that I love to people around the world.