How did you spend your summers, those precious days of freedom, as a kid? You probably spent a lot of time with friends, looking for ways to get into trouble. A pool or beach might have been involved, maybe a few family cookouts. Perhaps there was a concert or two that you had been looking forward to for months. If you’re one of the four girls of Cherri Bomb—Julia Pierce (vocals, guitar, 15), Miranda Miller (guitar, keyboards, vocals, 16), Nia Lovelis (drums, vocals, 15) and Rena Lovelis (bass, vocals, 14)—you hit the road with several dozen other bands as part of the annual Vans Warped Tour. With its debut album, “This is the End of Control,” released earlier this year and a strong buzz continuing to build, Cherri Bomb is well on its way to securing a spot as one of the breakout bands of 2012. In June, Julia filled in Live Metal on Cherri Bomb’s origins and much more. At the Camden, New Jersey, stop of the Warped Tour, Live Metal’s Greg Maki caught up with Julia and Miranda to discuss their crazy summer and more.
LIVE METAL: You’re on the Warped Tour. You haven’t been out too long on this, but how’s it been so far?
MIRANDA MILLER: It’s been so crazy. We’ve only played like five shows, and two of them were rained out, there was a horrible for windstorm for one of them, we had a tornado warning. But it’s been so much fun. We’ve gotten great crowds.
JULIA PIERCE: I think the cool thing about it is that we’ve only been here like five dates, but we’ve met so many fans. I can’t even imagine how many more fans we’ll be able to meet by the end of the tour.
I was gonna ask what’s a typical day like here on the Warped Tour, but it seems like you haven’t really had one.
JULIA: Every day is different.
MIRANDA: Usually, it’s really hot and humid, so this is the complete opposite of usual. It’s cold and rainy out there.
JULIA: But we love it. It’s crazy.
Who are some of the bands that you’ve gotten to check out?
JULIA: We saw Dead Sara. They are amazing live. It sucks that they just left.
MIRANDA: Tonight Alive, they’re great. Skinny Lister. We saw Sleeping with Sirens, Vampires Everywhere.
JULIA: They’re so good. And tonight, we’re gonna check out Of Mice & Men. So I’m really excited.
So this is your summer vacation, your break from school.
JULIA: Oh my god, we’ve been doing school all year. We do school online, and it’s so much work, and sometimes we go on the road while we have school to do, so it’s like two full-time jobs. But now that school’s over and it’s summertime, we can just enjoy being on the road totally, and it’s fun.
MIRANDA: Then again, Warped Tour is kind of like five full-time jobs.
Yeah, are you getting tired of talking about yourselves all the time?
(laughter)
JULIA: That’s what you’ve gotta do.
You mentioned meeting the fans. It seems like in a pretty short period of time you’ve developed a very loyal fan base. You seem to really connect with them. How important is that to you and what does it mean to you?
MIRANDA: It’s so important to us. We’re constantly in contact with our fans because they’re what’s keeping us here.
JULIA: That’s why we’re here. That’s how we got here, so we owe them the world.
For people who might be coming out to another show on this tour and future tours, what can they expect to see from Cherri Bomb onstage?
JULIA: A good time. They should expect a really good time, I’d have to say. We rotate our songs a lot. We have so many songs that we want to play, but we don’t have long enough of a set time. We’re just doing the songs that we feel like doing that day.
You recorded a cover song for the EP, “The Pretender” by the Foo Fighters. I know that’s one of your favorite bands and influences. Was it hard to pick out that song?
MIRANDA: No, I think it was an idea that came about that we should do “Pretender” because it really struck a note with us or struck a chord with us—what’s the saying? (laughs) I don’t know, I’m making up sayings.
JULIA: I don’t know. Struck a strum? (laughs)
MIRANDA: It struck a strum with us. (laughs) The whole meaning behind the song is something that really means a lot to us, and we thought it would be good to do a tribute to Foo Fighters because they’re so awesome.
What’s another band that you would really like to cover?
MIRANDA: Actually, we do another cover. We haven’t recorded it, but we do “In One Ear” by Cage the Elephant live a lot.
JULIA: Yeah, just one of our favorite songs to play live. It’s so fun. We’ve been playing it for a while, like a year or two.
What has it been like with your friends? How have they reacted to you guys kind of taking off like this?
JULIA: It depends. Some people that we know, they’re like, “Oh my god, you’re in a band and you’re doing all this. I’m so jealous.”
MIRANDA: Our really close friends are really supportive.
JULIA: Our close friends, they’re like, “I miss you. When are you coming home?” It just depends. We don’t really get to hang out with friends, though, a lot. We have each other, but we’re on the road and we’re always practicing, so we just have each other.
Have you had other people showing up who you knew but weren’t friends trying to—
MIRANDA: Oh, trying to be friends?
JULIA: Oh my god!
MIRANDA: It’s always on Facebook, too. Someone will message one of us and be like, “Hey, what’s up? Let’s hang out.” And we’re like—
JULIA: “Where’d you come from?”
MIRANDA: “So when was the last time I talked to you?”
JULIA: And it’s funny because it’s people we used to be friends with and then just lost contact, and now all of a sudden, they’re back.
MIRANDA: All of a sudden, they’re our best friends.
I’m sure all four of you in the band are really close and like sisters, but you do have two actual sisters in the band. What is that like? Do they get along all the time? Do they fight?
MIRANDA: We all do that, but they’re even more extreme.
JULIA: They wrestle, they tackle each other, they hit each other. When we were younger, we all used to get in wrestling fights. But all of us, we fight about food and boys. The usual stuff.
MIRANDA: Especially on Warped Tour. Come on, there are a lot of hot guys here.
JULIA: There are so many hot guys. We all called dibs on a lot of guys, and we split them one-fourth each. (laughs)
Alright … Yeah, I don’t know where to go after that.
(laughter)
JULIA: That’s it, interview’s over!
(laughter)
Well, the album just came out a couple months ago. Do you keep writing all the time?
MIRANDA: We all write our own stuff, but we are soon gonna be writing stuff for the second album, which will eventually come out not anytime soon soon, obviously.
Do you plan to do a lot more touring? You haven’t really done a whole lot around the U.S. yet.
MIRANDA: We’ve been to like nine countries already, and we haven’t toured much in the U.S.
JULIA: It’s fun, though. We love being on the road. All of us, when we come home, we get toursick. It’s just the place that we always want to be, on the road, going places. It’s fun.
What’s next after Warped Tour?
MIRANDA: We’re going with Lostprophets, we’re touring, and then in November, we’re doing the U.K. Warped Tour.
Is there anything else you’d like to say?
MIRANDA: Come to Warped Tour!
LINKS:
www.cherribombband.com
www.facebook.com/cherribombband
www.twitter.com/cherribombband
www.youtube.com/cherribombband