Papadosio Gets Candid About What Makes Electric Forest Special For The

You could say that Papadosio is my favorite band, but they are so much more than just a band to me. Papadosio has been beyond influential in my life. I fell in love with their music one day after listening to them over and over again in my car. This drove me to see every Papadosio show I could manage, from following them on tour and festivals, to traveling all the way to Colorado to see them headline their first Red Rocks show.

Not only am I grateful for their music but this band has brought a community of loving souls in to my life (Papadosio Family), who I cherish dearly. Papadosio embodies a movement that empowers all of us as human beings. This movement motivates us to care about the planet and to express ourselves in unique ways. They encourage all artists to participate in their scene including painters, writers, videographers, photographers, and dancers.

Without Papadosio in my life, I would not be the person I am today. So yeah, you could say that I was a little excited to sit down and interview the whole band, Mike Healy (Drums), Anthony Thogmartin (Guitar), Rob McConnell (Bass), Billy Brouse (Keyboard), and Sam Brouse (Keyboard) at Electric Forest Music Festival.

iEDM: How does it feel being back at Electric Forest two weekends in a row?

Billy: It feels great. Electric Forest is one of my favorite festivals to come to and play. It’s also one of my favorites to just wander around and hang out. We get to see old friends.

Right as Billy mentions old friends, a former roommate of Sam's walks out of a production trailer and the band says hi as Sam embraces a couple friends he hasn’t seen in a long time.

iEDM: Are you guys staying the whole weekend at Electric Forest?

Rob: We’re staying 15 minutes away.

Billy: Our friend has a house on a lake, it’s pretty spectacular.

Anthony: It’s pretty epic honesty.

Kristen (Asst. Manager): Camp Dosio.

Anthony: Roomies!

iEDM: What makes Electric Forest special for you?

Sam: I always love the really wacky stuff that String Cheese does every once in a while. It comes out of no where and there’s just giant legos everywhere and fireworks. It’s crazy. I always like seeing that. It’s so over the top and it’s fucking awesome.

Rob: I went to the original Rothbury, that was like one of my first big festival experiences so it takes me back. We’re playing the main stage here this year which is really crazy because I’ve seen major bands like Primus play that stage along with other major artists like Snoop Dogg.

Mike: This is our first year playing Ranch Arena. We did Sherwood Court a couple times and Tripolee.

iEDM: What are you looking forward to on your Shape Shift tour?

Anthony: I think the best part about doing a tour like that is being able to get far and wide enough to see cool things. Whenever we go out west we’ll go on pretty awesome hikes and things of that nature. We get to explore a little bit more.

Rob: I really like being on tour for that long too because as a band I feel like we break down some walls personally as well as musically. We come out on the other side after 4 or 5 weeks as a better band.

Anthony: Yeah its like band boot camp.

iEDM: Any plans for new music?

Rob: Totally

Anthony: We have a lot of music. We might be releasing a lot of new music or going in and filing it down, we just don’t know yet.

Rob: Everybody has random songs and ideas and what not so it’s kind of hard to find the time right now to actually make it a thing.

Mike: This winter we’ll be putting our heads together and getting started on some new things and seeing where it takes us. That’s definitely the plan right now.

iEDM: How does it feel experiencing the growth and evolution of Papadosio and watching your fan base grow?

Billy: It’s fucking wild. It’s really surreal.

Sam: It’s definitely surreal. It takes a lot of effort through out the day to try and conceptualize it when you start thinking about it. Honestly you just have to be really grateful to the fans. It kind of makes you feel more comfortable being yourself. We’ve done nothing but be ourselves this whole time so it just gives you more confidence to play the music you want to play and write the music you want write. At this point if nobody has said anything, they're not going to say anything to stop us and that's really empowering. We just have great fans.

Rob: It’s really hard to notice the evolution or pay attention to how it’s actually evolved over the years but there’s always those moment’s of woah that’s crazy. I never would’ve thought we would be playing the Ranch Arena stage, stuff like that kind of hits you.

Anthony: It’s a slow burn for a band that plays the kind of shows we play. We’ve met musicians who have blown up in such a short period of time. But I don’t think we’ve ever had that kind of exponential growth that’s been crazy. It feels safe and good. We’re kind of like the blue collar of the music scene. Just working hard and making weird music that sometimes works and it feels safe. It feels better to be experimental and weird like we are and we have a fan base that supports that and it’s been amazing.

iEDM: What made you guys want to do a Nine Inch Nails cover set at Resonance Music & Arts Festival?

Rob: It was something we could all agree on.

Billy: We all really dig Nails so it was pretty easy to choose that. It’s really fun to play too because it’s a little bit harder, like more industrial and hard than what we play so we get to be different. I’m totally going to wear mascara and shit. I’ve always wanted to do that on stage. Wear make and shit, let’s go

Rob: I think that’s another thing, getting out of our comfort zone as a band. It’s good for us to do something not so different, but definitely different than what we normally do.

Anthony: The most different thing we’ve probably ever done for sure. Our fans are going to be like woah this is crazy because we’re going dark places and we don’t explore that too much and I think everyone is going to enjoy that experience.

Sam: And we get to pretend to be as cool as Nine Inch Nails.

iEDM: In what ways do you think Papadosio bridges the gap between Jam and Electronic Music?

Mike: I don’t think any of us really grew up super hard on jam band music. We play music that has electronic elements and rock n’ roll elements and also improv elements so it just comes out that way with the songs that we’re playing. From the start we’ve just always went off from ideas and improved on them and I guess that’s a jam band in a lot of people’s eyes but to us its like we’re just rockin’ out and seeing what happens.