Written by Sandeep Sehbi

We catch Columbus Ohio folk punks Discount Tents on the heels of their latest release ‘Clementine.’ What follows is the interview.

TUNED UP: You guys change instruments alot during sets. Is that something you’re consciously doing while songwriting?

Discount Tents: In the beginning of the band Matt could not play guitar well enough to play a lot of Danny’s songs so we started changing instruments, sort of following the “whoever wrote the song plays guitar” rule. We also used to use a wider variety of instruments, ukelele, mandolin, banjo, glockenspiel, etc.. but in the interest of making our sets easier for sound techs to mix we transposed almost everything to guitar bass and drums and then added on extra instrumentalists as friends came into and out of the band.

Discount Tents: Nowadays we write set lists in an order to minimize the amount of times we need to switch, accept for Christina who switches almost every song… she’s a trooper.

TUNED UP: Some of you have had involvement with MCo at OSU ( a musician student org). What role do you feel like that club plays in the music scene here in Columbus.

Discount Tents: When we were still in school Mco and the DIY scene were really closely linked, partially because many of the founding members of Mco were active in and influenced DIY scene. Danny was on the board in the first year and Zac was the president for a bit. We are both really proud that the club is still kicking and helping students connect with the existing scene and more importantly build their own scene. I think that’s the real work of Mco, networking… and of course funneling University resources into local music.

TUNED UP: You just recorded a disc. How did that recording process go? Where did you record? Where can we listen to the album?

Discount Tents: The process was long. Really really long. Our good friend Joey Hribar (of a lot of local bands, my favorites are Lights go out, Thoughtless, and Us, Dinosaurs? Also one of the board members in the first year of Mco) recorded and mixed and mastered it. It took a long time because there were a lot of schedules to coordinate and we tried not to track too many things. All of the drums and bass and guitar are done live, vocals and trombone were added along with some of the other things you hear. Christina is not on the album because she joined the band shortly after recording, but before releasing. Also Joey who plays trombone, moved to NYC post recording pre-releasing… that’s how long this thing took. It was recorded at Dinotopia, the basement and Matt’s old room. Only one song was recorded with a metronome, I won’t say which one… it’s a fun challenge! You can listen to it at discounttents.bandcamp.com.

TUNED UP: You guys have played alot of DIY shows. What are your thoughts on the role and importance of DIY shows?

Discount Tents: DIY shows rule. Capitalism doesn’t work for a lot of things, take health care for one example, we believe collaborative creative projects also don’t work well with capitalism. Participating in a music community, both as performer and as audience is really important to us, and the DIY community is making that accessible to many more people than any for profit club is/ could. We don’t play DIY spaces exclusively but we try to take the feeling of DIY shows to every show we play, treat touring artists as warmly as we can and make Columbus the kind of place creative people want to visit/ encourage local people to participate as much as they can.

Tuned Up: When / where is your next show?

Discount Tents: We are playing a Halloween show at Kafe Kerouac, its an event put together by our friend Cameron who is the current president of Mco, we will not be performing our songs, all the bands performing are coming in costume as other bands and playing their sets that way as well. We might be somewhere before then but that’s the next scheduled thing right now. We post all our shows on facebook, and if anyone interested is not into facebook they can email us through bandcamp and I can call them and let them know when we are playing.

Tuned Up: Who does Discount Tents listen to?

Danny: Taylor Swift, How to do everything (Podcast), Thoughtless, Delay.
Matt: Delay, Bussman’s Holiday, Museum Mouth, Chumped
Zac: Lvl Up, Museum Mouth, Van Dale, Porches, and children’s music at the wrong RPM
Christina: Journey, Pat Benatar, Queen, Heart. And Lady Gaga

Relevant Links:
https://discounttents.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/Discount-Tents-176940533700/