Tomorrows Bad Seeds - Good For Today

The phrase “bad seed” gives many people visions of reckless youths, but Tomorrows Bad Seeds is hoping to alter that point of view (if the phrase “bad seed” gives you visions of a lackluster garden, there’s a chance you might be on the wrong website). Tomorrows Bad Seeds is made up of Moises Juarez (lead vocals), Sean Chapman (vocals/guitar), Mathew McEwan (vocals/guitar), Pat Salmon (drums), and Andre Davis (bass), and the rock infused reggae group has high aims to bring some meaning back to music. When I caught up with the band they told us about flipping the idea of “bad seeds,” their ultimate goals for their music, and the disturbing reason you probably won’t see them on a train anytime soon.

Adam Bernard: Why Tomorrows Bad Seeds? Why not today’s?
Sean: We always head for the future. We are always trying to progress. The name comes from statistics that say our generation is filled with “bad seeds” because we all came from somewhat broken homes, so we’ve been, through our lives, statistically shown as like “oh hey, you’re not gonna make it,” and we kind of use it in a positive way. Instead of bad meaning bad, it’s bad meaning good. That’s how we turned it into a good thing.

AB: So where are all you “bad seeds” from?
Sean: We’re generally all from Southern California.
Moises: Except for our drummer, he’s from Jersey, but he lives in Southern California with us now.

AB: Southern California is beautiful. I saw some amazing graffiti riding the Amtrak from LA to San Juan.
Moises: I got robbed on that thing.

AB: Really?
Moises: I’m not lying, dude. I was working one day, I used to do company restoration, and I was coming home late on the Amtrak from the red line. The red line is like the under tunnel one, like the Union Station one, and some dude just sat next to me and squeezed me in and another dude had a long, what looked like an ice pick, and just kinda held it to me and went through my pockets and took my shit and got out at that stop and I kept going. It happened really quick.

AB: WOW! Does anybody else have any horror stories from riding the train?
Andre: I used to take the train from San Diego to LA all the time. I’d get on the thing at 11 o’clock at night, not a single person in the whole Amtrak service but shady looking people, and I had like a $3,000 bass on my back, just like aw damnit.

AB: Those are some crazy situations. Do you have any advice you could give based on what you went through?
Moises: If anybody’s trying to rob you just give it to them, don’t fight em back. My feeling is, you need it more than I do, obviously.

AB: Let’s move to your music now. Why don’t you tell me a little bit about your sound and what people can expect from you when you hit the stage?
Sean: We play reggae rock, but we also mix it up with a lot of other things. We’re highly influenced by a lot of other music. It’s really high energy, groovy, good rhythms, good beats. It’s chill, but it has its high points, for sure. We dynamically go up and down in our set.

AB: OK, so lay it out for everybody, who are some of your biggest influences?
Sean: The whole punk scene, Black Flag, Descendants. Incubus, Red Hot Chili Peppers, a little bit of hip-hop.
Moises: We grew up in a predominantly punk rock area, but hip-hop also started making a big impact. My mom listened to a lot of Motown and a lot of old school classic rock. Sade, Rolling Stones, The Beatles. I like a lot of Spanish music. I like The Gypsy Kings. I’m into old school hip-hop. I generally like everything, I even like country music, so my influences are anything and everything I’ve ever heard.

AB: What would you say Tomorrows Bad Seeds is all about?
Moises: A good message is the main thing that I think my band is portraying because a lot of music nowadays, Mat always says this and I always steal this from him, is watered down. There’s rarely any substance. A lot of people write about love. Love’s a great thing. All you need is love, like John Lennon said, but the truth is there are a lot more things that are happening in our time that people need to be aware of, so with our music we try to submit some sort of consciousness to what’s going on and have a kind of an awakening. Our first album came out in 2007 and it was called Early Prayers and the way I looked at the name of the album was that this is our prayer for humanity. We’re not necessarily religious people, but we are spiritual, we do believe in the kindness of humanity for each other, and that we are here for each other. So the first album was called Early Prayers, like prayer for humanity, a prayer for our brothers, our people, we’re all the same. Our second album came out May 25th, it’s called Sacred For Sale. We’ve already said the prayer for our people, now it’s like the ones that are still taking what’s sacred and selling it, they should realize that’s not right.

AB: You mentioned you feel a lot of music nowadays is watered down.
Moises: A lot of songs are watered down. A perfect example is, I like her music, I think she’s cool, but that girl Ke$ha, how many little girls in high school that are on cheer team are dancing in every competition to that song. And what’s that song really saying? I get up in the morning, I feel like this black dude that raps, I brush my teeth with a bottle of Jack cuz when I leave, mom, I ain’t coming back. Alright, well fuck, how many moms are at home crying to that shit.

AB: Whenever I go out to a show I’m like, God, don’t give me a daughter, because I know half of these girls here walked out of the house dressed totally differently than they are now.
Moises: Oh yeah. Exactly. And they’re so young now and they get so influenced so quickly. To have that kind of power on somebody, not power, but influence, use it in a good way.

AB: Staying in the vein of influence, what do you hope people to get out of your music?
Moises: We’d like for people to spread the seed and just be conscious of what’s going on in these times because you mean a lot more than you think you do in the big scheme of things.

Story originally ran on SubstreamMusicPress.com.