HOME TOWN HERO
Music that defies explanation
so just listen
By SANDY YANG

During the interview with Aaron Bruno and Drew Stewart of Home Town Hero, you get the feeling that these guys could moonlight as fine politicians. They swerve around the most basic inquiries, as if the question marks were assaulting them. It takes some mining to get a semblance of a straight answer.

For example:

What do you sound like? "The music speaks for itself."

What are your songs about? "Everything’s about something completely different."

What do you aspire for in your music career? "We want to take over."

While they qualify as a journalist’s worst nightmare, the guys don’t necessarily look like they’re at a loss for words, or they want to be purposely difficult. Decked out in vintage garbs——black and white polka dot dress shirt for Stewart, and tan sweater vest with a diamond pattern for Bruno——they relax in their dressing room above the Roxy stage hours before the show, willing to divulge their musical influences and experiences on the road. But they hesitate——no, they flat out refuse to describe what people should expect from them.

"It’s an uncomfortable question," Bruno elaborates on the standard describe-what-you-sound-like inquiry. "We get asked that in every interview, pretty much. It would be hard to compare us to one band on the radio — that wouldn’t be fair to the other songs on the record. We wanted to make a record that doesn’t sound anything like the radio, but we want to be on the radio."

Perhaps they know what they’re doing, even as they defy the conventions of publicity by asking people to check out their music and make up their own minds. While Home Town’s sound——rife with thrashing guitars, distinct melodies and moody, almost waltzy rhythms——would blend nicely with theKROQ song list, Bruno and Stewart won’t give up a laundry list of bands they could possibly draw comparisons to. From the sound of it, they’ve worked too long and hard simply to rip off the flavor of the month.

Long before Maverick and other interested major labels discovered this young band, composed of singer Bruno, guitarist Drew, bassist Todd Burnes and drummer Ray Blanco , Home Town was enduring the excruciating rock star boot camp. Though they choose to keep mum about the inspiration part, Stewart and Bruno could definitely recall the perspiration part of literally chasing their dreams across the country. Like the time they drove from the Whisky in Los Angeles straight to Hershey, Pennsylvania to play the Vans Warped Tour. "We had ten-hour shifts; at the end, we were dying. Then we drove in three-hour shifts. It was pretty bad," Bruno recalls.

They’ve slept on countless hard floors between gigs that have taken them to more than 30 states, all the while transporting themselves from city to city in a used airport van sans air conditioning. "We were just happy to be on tour, or feel like we’re fucking going on tour, even if we weren’t," said Bruno, who sits on the floor, leaning against a wall of a room with two plush couches. "That’s why I’m sitting on this floor so comfortably because this was my way of life for five years."

The unrelenting determination germinated back when Bruno met Stewart in a high school Spanish class in Westlake Village. One day, Bruno was wearing a Bad Religion T-shirt and Stewart a Ten Foot Pole shirt, and they soon learned that they were both passionate about the same kind of music. Yearning to follow in the footsteps of underground punk and metal bands like Rancid, Operation Ivy and Bad Religion, the fast friends armed themselves with cheap equipment and formed a band called the Ice Monkeys. "We thought backyard parties were the best places to play," Stewart says.

Later, the duo formed a hardcore metal/punk band called Insurgence, and along with the name change, graduated to playing at venues and clubs. While they started developing a rep in underground circles, they also grew tired of the hardcore scene and scrapped this effort in order to start from scratch again.

And so Home Town Hero was born, and it was time to pursue this dream for real. Stewart and Bruno dropped out of Moorpark Community College, quit their jobs, dedicated themselves 100 percent to touring and found the other two members of the band, who would stay with them for three years and counting. Together, they’ve shared the same claustrophobic spaces of their constantly moving van, motel rooms scattered across the country, hole-in-the-wall venues and encounters with unseemly people along the way.

But they’ve endured it all because the band has always been able to communicate with one another and let others’ negativity slide, according to Bruno. "Communication is huge, and we learned that from ex-members of bands. They were always getting into fights, having to do some shitty shows." Stewart adds, "We’ve had a lot of horrible relationships with other bands. People would hate us for no reason and talk shit about us. We learned to ignore it and not deal with it."

"We learned not to let words bring us down," Bruno continues. "I can say whatever I want right now and you can write whatever you want in this interview and it won’t affect me. Before, that would happen and I would go, ‘Fuck, she wrote this shit about me,’ but now it won’t matter because they’re just words. We know what we’re doing. As long as we can look at ourselves in the mirror, we’re happy."

Now, there’s even more reason for the group to look in the mirror. Home Town Hero toured with Remy Zero, and their single, "Eighteen," is getting regular airplay on KROQ. It’s undoubtedly a huge boon for their self-titled debut album, which was released on May 7. While the band evades the genre question, they’re more interested in what makes music resonate with people and the artists who craft it for a living. "We have so many different influences, but the one thing they have in common is they’re real bands," Bruno says. "A real band writes music from the heart and it shows in their vibes. There are a lot of bands that don’t do that. They take the safe way out and they sound like everything else when you turn on the radio. Three songs in a row and they could sound like they’re from the fucking same band."

Bruno is banking that you won’t even know that the Home Town songs are by the same band.