Deadbeat Nightlife

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          Ever heard of pre-hardcore? This is the styling of a San Diego favorite called Deadbeat Nightlife. They were out on the SD music scene for quite a while in over the past few years and brought hundreds of fans to watch them play at a local music venue called Soma. Unfortunately, after countless great shows and their popularity rising, the band split suddenly. It had been over a year that they weren’t together… until now.

          Deadbeat Nightlife is back. They kicked off a show at Soma with Oh, Guardian and Killing the Messenger on April 28th and played a killer show. People around the venue were heard saying that this band isn’t the like the others and they had something new to bring to the table. That’s exactly the vibe everyone got when they noticed their singer’s powerful vocals and lyrics as well as the drummer pounding occasional blastbeats and even other complex drum patterns.



          The band consists of Micah Minor doing vocals, Johnny Awford on guitar, Matt Cesena on guitar, Deyvid Hosburg on bass, and Kai Taylor on drums. Although unsigned, Deadbeat Nightlife is a group that can manage to play hardcore music without giving people a headache. They’re recording a brand new EP as of now that will be released in just a few weeks.

          When Tunage asked the band about their breakup and how they picked up the pieces again, Johnny Awford gave us the whole backstory on the breakup and their seemingly random event that happened to get Deadbeat Nightlife to make music again.

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Tunage: What was the reason for the band breaking up?

Johnny: I think it pretty much all started when Kevin was out of the band. It's a really long story, but the long and short of it, our manager talked us into taking out Kevin. He was like the glue. Everything after that wasn't the same vibe. It just wasn't really the same band. Then we had a show at Soma with Darkest Hour and Conner sat down and asked us, "What are your plans for Deadbeat Nightlife after the show?" I said we were going to continue, keep doing what we were going to do, and then that's when they were like, "Well, we're going to quit and start this other band." That's pretty much the originals besides me gone. I just hung up my guitar for a couple of years.

Tunage: How did you guys go about forming again?

Johnny: Well, right at the time that we had split, I had just finished writing a full album and I still had all the songs written and still wanted to do something with it, but at the point that I got picked up to tour with a band, I needed somebody to live in my apartment and that was Matt [Cesena]. I left the tabs there while gone and when I came back from touring he showed me that he could play them so we started learning all of them just for fun and then randomly one day Adam, our manager, hit me up and said he wanted to get another band going in San Diego and he needed someone to write music. I told him I still had a full album of Deadbeat stuff. I was wondering what he thought about putting the band back together and he was down for it and that's when he found Kai [Taylor].


Tunage: That's cool. Did you guys come into this thinking to do things differently?

All: Oh yeah.

Johnny: 100% different. This time everyone is recording their own instruments instead of me doing everything and hopefully people will be able to start writing their own parts. We actually practice before shows now on a legitimate schedule. Now it's more of a hands-on, do it yourself kind of approach when before we were just sending signals out everywhere hoping that someone would just take us under their wing.

Tunage: How would you guys describe your music in your own words?

Johnny: I guess I would call it pre-hardcore, because all these bands nowadays are post-hardcore. We’re going for that 2007 sound before it was all about the breakdown, chorus, rinse, repeat.

Micah: Holy shit, that's really good, actually. Pre-hardcore.

Tunage: Well, that's interesting! How does it feel for Deadbeat Nightlife to be back again?

Micah: Whoooo!

Johnny: It feels right. It's something that never should have ended but we've got it back together. I learned a lot of shit when I went on that tour so I have an idea of what we need to do now.

The band is back and totally ready to release new music to everyone. If you were a fan of Deadbeat Nightlife in the past few years and bought an old shirt from them that was hand-painted and it washed off, come see them at their merch table at any of their shows and swap your old shirt for a brand new one! They’re also willing to give free EP’s in exchange as well.

Make sure you like them on their Facebook page before you log off your computer!

- Tunage

Written by Jordan Mafi