The Navy Gangs is a Brooklyn based band, consisting of Matt Tillwick, Noah Kohll, Eric Carney, and Wilson Ford Keithline. Their album Poach, was released August 3rd and their rhythmic and catchy beats will leave you wanting more.
A day after their album dropped, on August 4th, they performed at the Coney Island Music Festival. This interview took place right after their performance.
Estefania Barron: You guys just got back from touring on June right? How was it?
Noah Kohll: “It was a 30- day tour. I booked the whole thing myself. There’s ups and downs to that. You get shows where you don’t know people are at all. It’s like the friend of a friend of a friend, and you show up and it’s like playing cards, you don’t know what you
Wilson Ford Keithline: We played with a bunch of great bands and we met a bunch of weirdos and there was plenty of nights where we didn’t have a place to stay, so we ended up going to some crazy person’s house, and it was either very nice or super bad.
EB: You guys just got your new album Poach out. How do you guys feel about that?
Matt Tillwick: It feels good to have the new album out. It’s been a long, slow billed to this point, and it’s very exciting.
NK: We’ve been playing these songs for a while, so it’s nice to have them officially out, and for people to be able to hear them, but as a group we are thinking of things beyond the record for the future. The record came out now, but we’ve been playing these songs for like 3 years now, and some for longer than that. So for us, the record out is a great accomplishment but we want to do more. We want to play more, write more, tour more, and all that stuff. That’s more what’s on our minds right now.
EBL: How would you guys describe the journey and the development of your music?
MT: It’s cool to see the band grow into whatever we want it to be. If we want it to be a certain way, it just slowly turns into that.
EB: What do you want it to be?
MT: Right now a pretty sick pop-band.
WFK: What I was thinking about was how when we first started playing we wouldn’t hang out that much, and we all listened to very different types of music, and had different backgrounds and we focused on different things. That’s always gonna create a very interesting band. And now, because of this tour, we’ve been locking in similar types of music. It’s been interesting to see how we can come together as one in terms of understanding each other’s sound and building to that, instead of just bring your own thing to it and letting it happen. We are creating our own thing together.
EB: What sounds do you guys want to experiment with?
MT: I’d like to get more into pop song writing. Actually writing songs and not jamming instrumentals and then throwing words on top. I want to write some songs myself.
WFK: I was thinking about that today, because we were listening to Prince’s greatest hits, and it’s weird that those were the greatest hits because at the time it was a thing to have really simplified songs, but they are such pop songs that just start and end and that’s it. And it’s so formulaic and we don’t really do that. So that would be interesting to get into that.
EB: How would you guys describe your music, and what do you think has influenced it?
NK: The music basically comes from all out own personal tastes and then that gets developed into its own thing because we’re all playing with each other. So that’s our sound. Our sound is us. I never felt like this band has fit into a certain genre. We’ve always been on the cusp of something. It’s always like we’re too indie for the punk bands and too punk for the indie bands. We’re too soft for the garage rock bands. It’s interesting not having an exact place.
But within that, it’s cool because it doesn’t really matter. Because it’s not all about just playing with people that just sound the same. It’s about meeting people that have the same philosophy and ideas as you. And sharing that. And having a community more than a competition. Instead of being head to head with bands, people, and us and everyone else should be together.
EB: So what’s next? Do you guys have another album or tour planned?
NK: What’s next is that we are probably gonna do some touring. In the meantime while we are getting that all sorted out we’re gonna be writing more songs. We have a tour with this Chinese band, Sunset Rollercoaster in September, and some stuff in the works that we can’t talk about because there’s nothing confirmed.
By Estefania Barron