We caught up with Travis Mills & Nick Gross of Girlfriends who are a two-piece pop-punk band which formed in 2020. Both musicians had previously been part of Goldfinger.
RAMzine: This is Lamestream Lydia here for RAMzine, we’re here with Girlfriends. How’s it going?
Travis: We are exceptional, Leeds showed up today and we feel electric.
RAMzine: This is a lot of people’s first experiences with you, how are you guys feeling after your set?
Travis: It’s a dream come true. I feel sweaty, I’m ready for a shower, I’m ready for about three weeks of sleep after this tour but the UK’s been amazing to us for our first week ever being here as a band on tour. We can’t believe it, our first two shows have been incredible. We had shows in London and Southampton and capped it off with these two festivals. It’s a dream come true for us.
RAMzine: It’s a thing you quickly realise about the UK… it’s always better up North.
Travis: (laughs) That’s how we feel too.
RAMzine: There’s a lot of people who weren’t here today and you can only get so much description of what a band sounds like through print. How do you guys describe you?
Girlfriends: We hope people find the set injected with a lot of energy. I feel like the hooks are catchy and we hope people walk around with our songs stuck in their heads all day and we’re heavy on crowd participation and pulling people into the world of Travis. I think we did a good job.
RAMzine: Yeah, from someone who’s just found you, you did a great job. It’s wild hearing songs that I didn’t actually know were yours like ‘Life’s a Britney’.
Travis: Yeah, that’s one of our favourites off the new EP Over my Dead Body and I feel that hook is so simple that it almost didn’t make it and then we stopped over thinking and now it’s one of my favourite songs on the EP.
RAMzine: That’s how some of the best stuff gets made. The hook is always really important, especially nowadays because there’s so much going around. You need an instant kick.
Travis: I think that’s one thing I try to really push in the songwriting. It has to be memorable in writing about things from personal experience in a way that everyone can relate to.
RAMzine: You mentioned COVID in your set and I found myself getting really emotional in a way that I hadn’t before when listening to artists talking about it.
It’s weird describing it but it felt like a catchup moment. It was like hearing “this is what you missed” so thank you for that.
Travis: I feel like it’s something we all collectively experienced, it’s kind of the elephant in the room. I know that live shows were something I definitely took for granted and that I don’t want to do that ever again. We’re kind of acknowledging where we have been and where we are now and how beautiful it is is something we have to do every night that we’re on stage.
RAMzine: [Focusing our attention on Nick] What about you? How do you feel?
Nick: About that?
RAMzine: About anything! How are you feeling?
Nick: I feel fucking great. I feel awesome.
RAMzine: Great! You seemed quiet and I wanted a check in.
Travis: (Laughs) he forgot how to talk when he started hearing the accents.
Nick: Yeah, I forgot how to speak English. I no longer talk English.
RAMzine: We speak the language, we don’t speak it well but we still speak it.
(Everybody laughs)
Nick: This was the best interview we’ve done all day by the way so thank you.
RAMzine: That’s awesome!
Travis: and you’re the first one to acknowledge the actual songs in the set so thank you for listening.
RAMzine: You guys are great musicians and songwriters and you’re gonna go far.
This is Lamestream Lydia here for RAMzine with Girlfriends. Thank you so much guys.
Girlfriends: Thank you so much man, appreciate you.
