The Beautiful Mistake

This interview was done with Josh Hagquist, vocals and guitar in The Beautiful Mistake. They had just performed at Kung Foo Corner in Westlake Village and were followed by Hopesfall, Avenged Sevenfold, and Atreyu. Mike and Jason are from Los Angeles Punk. Itay was a random kid we picked up who wasn't so familiar with the scene.

Mike: Okay why don’t we just do the real basic things, tell us about how the band formed and a little history behind it.

Josh: Well Shawn Grover, the guitarist, and I started the band in January 2001. We had a different bass player and a different drummer at the time. We had been in another band for like two years and that had fallen apart, so we just wanted to start something that we really believed in and write our own songs. In our old band the singer wrote all the songs and we didn’t have an outlet or anything. We couldn’t play stuff that we wanted to.

Mike: What was the old band?

Josh: They were called Ember.

Mike: So then how did you get hooked up with Militia Group?

Josh: I’ve known Chad [one of the owners of The Militia Group] for a long time and we had recorded a.. uh… we had recorded a… I’m a moron, dude. [Laughter] We had recorded our little EP on our own. Impressive, we just maxed out our credit cards and we were selling it at shows. A friend of ours was kind of sending them out to labels for us, he knew a bunch of people. We started talking to some other labels and Militia happened to be one of them. After about three or four months of weighing our options, we decided that they were the best fit for us. Some of them were bigger, some of them were smaller, but it’s been really cool because we kind of got in on the ground floor with Militia. We signed about a year ago and they didn’t have very good distribution. It was really tough at first. Militia was run out of my apartment. There were a lot of rooms, it was the third room in our apartment. I lived with Chad as well. It’s been interesting, it’s been a cool ride to see how much they’ve grown and to be a part of that, too. I find it really rewarding.

Mike: What was the deciding factor to go with them instead of someone bigger?

Josh: It just ended up being the people. They had a lot of integrity and they were very straight up about what they could offer us and what they could do. I think a lot of times labels like to schmooze and they feed you the line you want to hear, then you sign some contract and six months later you realize that you signed ten albums away and you’re miserable. I don’t know, we just wanted to be patient and we felt really good with the way they were as people, more importantly. More important than, uh.. it was more important to us.. [Pause] I’m retarded. [Laughter] You can edit this out.

Mike: No, that’s going in there!

Josh: I sound really articulate and stuff. I am educated! I’m not never gonna do interviews! Okay, sorry… More important than all the things they could offer us was that they were cool people and that they were very straight up and honest. I think that your character should weigh more than the stuff you have or the cool things you can buy. You know, I think character is the bottom line and I think with them they showed a lot of it when they were talking to us.

Mike: How was it working with Ed Rose [producer]?

Josh: It was awesome! I have been a fan of a lot of the stuff he’s done, everything from Coalesce to Appleseed Cast. We already appreciated and respected the work he’d done with other bands. When Militia gave us the option of choosing, we chose him. It was a really good experience, we learned a lot. I think we came out of it a better band in the sense of being more in control of what we’re playing. We have a better overall view of how we should be playing and how songs should be arranged and stuff. I think it has made us a better unit altogether, a lot tighter. And he kicked our butt, like seriously. I’d be doing my vocal and he’d come through the intercom and say, “On a scale of A to F, how do you think that was?” and I’d be like, “Uhm… C?” And he’d say, “No, D minus. Do it again. We have to get this one right.” He really pushed us and he was really hard on us as we were trying to get the best performance out, but I think once we did that it was really encouraging. I think that the dichotomy there was really cool – pushing us to work and patting us on the back when we did a great job. It really helped us out.

Mike: And you just got back from tour?

Josh: Ya, we just did a two month tour. Our bass player was doing all our booking until about two weeks ago. We’re booked now by Sam Garcia at Royal Flush Booking. He books Rufio and Tsunami Bomb, he’s awesome. He treats us really well. We went out with the All American Rejects and The Lyndsay Diaries for the majority of the tour. We got to play the CMJ Festival in New York and CBGB for a Hopeless Records/Militia Group showcase. The end of the tour was done with our friends from Michigan called Ettison Clio. They’re not signed but they’re just awesome people and a great band, too.

Mike: Do you have any tour stories yet?

Josh: We got to play CBGB’s, which was kind of cool because I grew up in California. All of us, except for Jon, grew up in California, so for us to be able to play the club where punk started was kind of a dream come true. I’m not trying to sound too cheesy, but it was really memorable. We fell in love with Go-Kart racing on tour, too. It’s our addiction. Every time we’d go to a town and had time to kill, we’d go find a Family Fun Center or Putt-Putt Golf and go Go-Kart racing. It was cool, it was a lot of fun. We go out January 10 with Glasseater for a national tour. I believe Code-7 is playing a bunch of those dates, and they’re awesome too.

Mike: And you’re hooked up with Further Seems Forever?

Josh: Ya, I believe it’s February 17 to March 9 in the US. It’s Further Seems Forever, Elliot, and us. And I believe Open Hand may be playing some of those dates, too. For us, even tonight, we feel really privileged to be able to play with bands that we really respect and be considered their peers. I love Further and I love Elliot. I was one of ten people to see Elliot at The Key Club in 2001. I was like, “Why isn’t anyone here? This band kicks so much…”

Mike: Our website is LosAngelesPunk so we try to focus on the LA scene. What do you notice about the LA scene now that you’ve toured? Are there any big differences?

Josh: It seems like Los Angeles and Orange County all seem really cliquey. Everyone is out to make it and there’s no real sense of community or “scene.” You go to shows and there are people who say, “I only like hardcore. I don’t even want to bother listening or opening my mind up to new things.” It’s kind of weird. In no way do we expect people to get into it, say, the way they would for a hardcore band. It’s different, everyone gets a different experience from it. But every other place we went to on tour, kids were moving around. There was interaction there. At our Chain Reaction show last week kids were moving around, but at our first show back in Corona at the Showcase kids were dead. Here tonight, I wasn’t sure if people wanted to kill us or if they really wanted us to stop. It’s really weird to me, why do people pay $8 to get into a show and then act like they’re miserable? When I was a kid, I was in front. I used to go to shows at Soma in San Diego every weekend, whether it was a big show or a small show. I got to see bands like Buck-O Nine and Rocket From the Crypt and Face to Face. At every show people were so into it, and here I think a lot of people just think they’re way too cool. I hate the whole band-crowd separation. Get into it, have fun. I’d rather play on the floor and at least have people kind of bob their heads. If you think we suck, that’s fine, I’m sure a lot of people do, but some like it, too. You know, it’s kind of discouraging.

Mike: So what’s next for you guys?

Josh: We’re going out on tour. We re-recorded our old EP that was put out on Sideshow. We really weren’t happy with the way it turned it. We kind of wanted closure because those were our five oldest songs. We re-recorded that before we went on our last tour and that should be out sometime in January or February with new packaging and with multimedia stuff. We wanted closure, we wanted to have a product out there that we feel is good enough for people to spend their hard earned money on. I don’t know if you’ve heard it, but it’s just horrible.

Mike and Jason: I don’t know, we kind of like it…

Josh: And then we just shot our first video too with Darren Doane. We actually shot it here in Westlake because he’s from here. That was really cool for us because he did that movie God Money and he’s done videos for so many hardcore and punk bands – MXPX, Atreyu – just tons of bands – Living Sacrifice – so it was cool. He had this whole concept and it was awesome. It’s kind of similar to the movie Unbreakable, which is really weird. It turned out… okay, it looked really cheesy, it looked like this superhero thing on paper, but once we started seeing it being shot with actors and stuff, I was like, “Oh my gosh! This looks really cool!” It was done on the 35mm camera so it looks really nice. He spent a lot of extra time on it and really made us feel comfortable. There’s going to be some live footage of us playing in this house. So, that was fun for us, and I believe it’s going to be out on this Victory DVD sometime in the middle of next year called XDOANEX. He’s putting out a DVD of all his videos like Strongarm, MXPX, Thursday, Poison the Well, Grade… and then the second one we’re going to be on.

Mike: Itay, do you want to ask anything?

Itay: When you guys said you were from Riverside, you meant that, right?

Josh: Yea…

Itay: I go to school out there, UC Riverside, you ever been there?

Josh: Ya… I grew up around there.

Itay: Well, if you guys ever come by my dorm, you can hang out with me. I’ll swipe you guys into the cafeteria…

Josh: All right, awesome! We all used to live in Riverside, and just last year the bass player and I moved to Huntington Beach. It’s because we got jobs out there…

Itay: Did you ever go to that strip club Club Temptations?

Josh: No, I never did. The one right off the 91?

Itay: Ya, that one! You can see it off all the freeways…

Josh: Isn’t that where Club 220 is? I don’t go to any strip clubs, so…

Itay: Before you mentioned that sometimes you think the crowd is going to start kicking your ass. Obviously you can’t take 200 people, but what about my friend Jason? Could you kick his ass?

Josh: No, probably not… I’m old and jaded.

Itay: Do you work out?

Josh: No… I just quit smoking though two and a half months ago – cold turkey. So I might be able to outrun him, but…

Jason: I don’t know, I’ve been working out.

Josh: My hardcore days are over.

Jason: Has your bass player ever hit anyone in the head with his guitar? [During the performance, the bass player stands over the audience and thrashes his guitar around. He almost hit a few kids in the front row at our show.]

Josh: Ya, he hits me in the head all the time. In Minneapolis this kid was flipping him off and he was joking around and kind of tapped him on the head, but he did it really hard. It was like BOOM! to his head. The kid tried to jump up but his friends grabbed him… it was great.

Mike: All right… so you guys do this full time and you work too?

Josh: We were doing it full time but I had a lot of health problems on this last tour. I had to go to the hospital twice and I don’t have insurance, so… all the money I made on tour went to pay bills and then I got home and I had tons of bills still waiting for me. Our bassist John and I work at New Century Mortgage. We push paper all day, it sucks. Have you ever seen Office Space? That’s our job! [Laughter] No, I’m serious, I have my own cubicle. We’re just doing that until January, and then hopefully we’re a full time band.

Itay: So, who is your inspiration? You know, how a lot of people like Michael Jackson and stuff?

Josh: No, he really sucks. He makes me want to vomit, actually.

Itay: Even old school MJ?

Josh: Well, pre-Thriller Michael Jackson… okay, Thriller and before. Like “Off the Wall.” I thought he was great then, but he fired Quincy Jones and look what happened.

Itay: He lost his nose!

Josh: He’s crazy! He touches little kids and should be locked up. I hope he tries to sue me, too, that bastard. He tries to sue everybody else because he’s broke.

Itay: Don’t worry, he won’t show up to court, though.

Josh: Ya, he’ll have a bug bite on his foot. Wasn’t that what it was? He’s such a freak! Why can’t he just show up for his damn court case like everyone else? It’s ridiculous.

Mike: Well, thank you for your time!

Josh: Sure, thank you!

Interview by Mike Kaminsky