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You may know Camp Trash as that emo band with the wacky merch. Or maybe you know Camp Trash member, Keegan, from his outrageous tweets and his writing on our site. Or maybe you don’t know Camp Trash at all yet. But you should! Camp Trash are one of the most interesting and fun emo bands doing it.
Starting with their EPs in 2021 Camp Trash have been honing their sound and building off inspirational bands of past waves. Their new album Two Hundred Thousand Dollars is their best work yet. We had Bryan and Keegan from the band write a track by track breakdown of the record for Bandcamp Friday. This way, you can even learn a few things while you give the record a listen. Hope you enjoy!
“Year of the Plan”
BRYAN: We like intro tracks. For The Long Way, The Slow Way, “Mind Yr Own” was our big feedback intro, and this one was our Elvis Costello “Welcome to the Working Week” intro. We wanted something bouncy, sharp, and quick to kick things off. It gets in and out, which I like too.
KEEGAN: We do a lot of sequencing as we’re writing; the final track order is usually the result of many attempts at sequencing and listening through how things flow together. However, the opening and closing tracks always seem to sort themselves out very quickly. A lot of the album’s journey (in terms of physical locations) is mapped out in this song. The story starts in Denver and makes it to both coasts before ending Wisconsin. The narrative of Two Hundred Thousand Dollars is very loose: it’s not really a concept album; it’s a collection of loosely connected stories. However, there are characters that recur, and I personally believe the two characters talking to each other in “Year of the Plan” are the same two characters we find in “Heaven or Wisconsin” (although Bryan and I have never sat down and formally compared notes on how our lyrics/stories fit together). For me, it felt very natural for the arc of their story (from a duffle bag full of money down to their last $100 bill) to bookend the album.
“Signal Them In”
BRYAN: Nothing wrong with a big feedback track-two intro either, right? This was the first song we wrote for the new record and the last one we finished. Not a song we thought would be our leading single for the record, but it grew into that for us over time. Really fun song.
KEEGAN: “Signal” came first. Bryan and I had been talking a lot following TLW,TSW about writing choruses, and how we felt that our songs often feel like a collection of kinda wordy verses and bridges and we wanted more big hooky memorable choruses. In this case, I tried a few times to write a chorus but I kept coming back to that big riff instead–it felt like the obvious hook and the most fun part of the song, so we just had Bryan yell over top of the riff like it was a Superchunk song and made that the chorus. We tried to follow the songs wherever they wanted to go, and wrote to the energy instead of getting fixated on traditional song structure. I had been reading a ton about cult families and teamsters/unions/mobs and how they intersected with the music industry (way more frequently than you’d think). A lot of those ideas bubbled up in the first draft of “Signal,” and although I later took out most of my lyrics because I really loved what Bryan was writing, the DNA of those themes came to shape a lot of the stories we tell on this album.
“Between the X’s”
BRYAN: This was my favorite song going into the studio, and it’s still my favorite now that it’s done. The chorus came so effortlessly that I knew we couldn’t really mess it up with anything else we were gonna do. And I finally forced my Juliana Theory “Sha La’s” into a song…against the will of our label.
KEEGAN: “Between the X’s” is my favorite Camp Trash song. It’s a perfect, classic Bryan chorus: wordy, narrative, travels through a lot of very specific locations, and hints at a bigger story while zooming in on a personal relationship. A few of Bryan’s cousins used to live together in Lansing, Michigan, where we would often stay on tour. The house had been in the family for awhile and had this basement bar with bumper stickers all over the walls, including one that said “JIMMY HOFFA IS STILL ALIVE.” This song came pretty directly from that.
“No Vision”
BRYAN: Keegan completely cleaned up the structure for this one, but the demo was just me playing an acoustic guitar harder than God and thinking I was playing it fast. Most of the melodies were one-time improvisations, and I filled in the gaps later with lyrics that fit. This one’s a fever dream that somehow worked out.
KEEGAN: One of my favorite things Bryan does is send me two demos of the same song, one labeled “FAST VERSION,” but the fast version is the exact same speed, just played louder. I have no idea why he thinks louder is faster, but he has done it for years and it makes me laugh every time. “No Vision” ultimately didn’t get faster–we just kept making it louder and louder, and I love how it turned out. I like to write songs from the perspective of a character in the midst of a panic attack, because one of the defining aspects of having a panic attack is the delusion that you have momentary perfect clarity: that somehow the chaos has sharpened your senses and your judgement and you are capable of anything. The reality, of course, is that you are bug-eyed and spewing gibberish and making everything worse. The narrator of “No Vision” believes they have complete control over the chaos around them but they are, of course, completely out of control and about to be swept away by the fallout of their actions. “Everything’s collapsing in the right direction.” Sure, man. Whatever you say.
I had a solo written for the end of the song but when we went to record it, it didn’t feel manic or insane enough; it was too careful. So I gave our producer James Palko the guitar and told him to improvise. I think the version on the album is the first full take he did of the solo. The song cuts off abruptly because I love the song “Leave the Biker” and the insane way it just sort of slams to a halt, so I wanted to do an even more extreme version of that. Still makes me laugh.
“Alibi”
BRYAN: I was on a power pop kick, listening to artists like Fountains of Wayne, Big Star, Tony Molina, Apples in Stereo, and Mo Troper. I just wanted to write floating melodies that followed weird chord variations. This was my best attempt at that. I don’t care if I didn’t totally nail it, I had fun reaching. Cool song, I think.
KEEGAN: It’s a cool song! The song is narratively an interlude: two characters find themselves needing to kill time and be seen somewhere as part of developing an alibi, but their relationship is falling apart even as they’re trying to salvage their plans. The title “Alibi” is also a reference to one of Portland, OR’s most classic karaoke joints, the Alibi, which is also mentioned in the best Joyce Manor song “Last You Heard of Me.”
Our friend Addy Harris of Rat Tally contributes vocals to this song and “Believer Now/Rosebow ‘98.” We had the privilege of touring with Rat Tally while supporting Future Teens and I was completely blown away every night. I can’t believe Rat Tally isn’t the biggest band on earth. We had an incredible time with that crew and I really believe Addy is a unique and remarkable talent. I love that we got to have her on a few songs.
The acoustic song that closes “Alibi” wasn’t planned. James was testing a cassette recorder in the room as a way to sample drums, and his test accidentally recorded Levi doing what he usually does during downtime: playing around with a song idea, singing to himself. I still don’t know if that’s a new song Levi is working on or if it was just something he improvised but none of us intended to use it, but when James played back the tape he had captured that recording of Levi singing and it felt so special to include something unplanned, something that was just happening in the room while we worked on the album. I love Levi’s music: there’s only one or two Camp Trash songs that he wrote all of, but his contributions are really essential to everything the band does. He sings harmonies on several songs but I’m glad there’s a moment you get to hear Levi doing his thing on the album.
“Bigger Better Drug”
BRYAN: This was the last song I wrote for the record. I hardly remember working on it because the original version came together so quickly. Keegan rebuilt the chorus and added that riff, which is really the hook of the whole thing. Another fun one that we really love playing live.
KEEGAN: This is the most fun song to play live. The verse chord progression is very similar to “Web In Front” which, for my money, is one of the 5 or 10 best rock songs ever written. The middle section is classic Keegan Bullshit: two different riffs back to back that are really simple but very fun to play. The second verse where Bryan is quieter and off the mic is actually just a scratch vocal track picked up by the overhead drum mics while tracking rhythm. We tried a ton of times to recreate it but could never get anything we liked half as much as that first, accidentally recorded take, so we just kept it. My favorite lyric on the album is “It’s a big dumb love / A bigger, better drug.” In classic Camp Trash fashion, I believe this line is exactly 50% me and 50% Bryan.
“Believer Now / Rosebowl ‘98”
BRYAN: This one’s Keegan and my Frankenstein. I had written two small ideas that I figured I’d finish separately, but never did. We always loved the “Believer Now” guitar and vocal melody combination. Keegan had a great lead for that riff, and we just let it be what it was. “Rosebowl” was a more complete thing, but still just a linear song with no chorus or anything. They felt thematically connected, which is something we realized in sequencing the record prior to recording it.
KEEGAN: Bryan had sent me several versions of both of these, and I don’t think he ever envisioned them as one song, but it immediately felt to me like they belonged together, like “Gardenhead/Leave Me Alone” or something. I stole the idea for this drumbeat from “3fast,” an incredible song by the band Sioux Falls (who went on to become Strange Ranger). Something about that stomping, shuffling drumbeat really helped create the movement I wanted in this song. The only thing I added besides combining the two songs is the part of “Rosebowl ‘98” that quotes lines from “Year of the Plan.” Bryan called me to sing this alternate melody for the opening lines of the album he had just come up with, which I loved, but I knew wasn’t right for the album’s opening. As it turns out, it fits perfectly into “Rosebowl,” which is where it now lives, and I love how it starts bringing a few of the album’s threads together.
Addy shows up again on “Rosebowl ‘98” and her harmonies really make the whole song. The other highlight here is the keys/organs that James added, which he somehow found time to do while we were in the studio together. The whole album was recorded in 5 days, morning until well after midnight most nights, and we decided that the only things that would be on the album (besides Addy’s vocals) had to be recorded while we were all together. If I remember correctly, every instrument you hear was recorded during those 5 days. I was literally still recording leads as the band packed up the rest of our instruments and loaded the van. The album is a record of what we as a band sounded like at that point in time, in that room, and I really love that.
“Cousin Zach (Born Lucky)”
BRYAN: Another song that came together quickly but was really elevated by being in a room with the guys. I hope this one becomes a fan favorite because it’s fun as hell to play.
KEEGAN: The second cousin song on the album! Cousins play a huge part in the Camp Trash Extended Universe, and it was inevitable that they started appearing in our songs. Cousin Zach is my oldest friend, and a massive figure in my life, as well as in the history of dive bars in North Buffalo. I can’t begin to list off my favorite Cousin Zach moments and quotes, but some of our wildest nights as a band have been with Zach, and although he’s quite grown and mature now, I have enough Cousin Zach stories to fill a Hold Steady album. This song is about a character a lot like Cousin Zach, who was born lucky. No matter what bullshit they get into, it will eventually work out for them because of their magnetic energy, endless enthusiasm, and their absolute refusal to ever give up. The song itself was written in like 20 minutes. More than anything, we wanted to capture the energy we felt while writing it.
“Biker Bar”
BRYAN: We went into the studio expecting to record this full-band, but our producer James Palko was enamored with my acoustic demo and convinced the rest of us to follow his vision of what it eventually became. This was our “Hey Julie” Fountains of Wayne song for the record. My only regret is that we lost a pretty cool guitar lead and drum intro we’d planned for it. Maybe we’ll bring that back live if enough people are excited about this song.
KEEGAN: We were listening to different versions of Beatles songs and B-sides and a few of the acoustic versions of otherwise full band songs really captivated me and James. This acoustic guitar + handclap thing really captured the powerpop spirit that I aspired to, and we completely reworked the song in the studio to accommodate this vision. The idea really took shape after a dinner out at a bar that turned into many beers, so we had to do so many takes of drunken handclaps before we all got on the same page. James played several different keys on this, Fender Rhodes and a few other things, which all sound fucking incredible. The original full band version included a straight rip of the “Up the Junction” drum fill, which always made me laugh. “Up the Junction”: perfect song.
“Heaven or Wisconsin”
BRYAN: This song just rocks. The chorus is massive, I’m singing about getting away with crimes while having nothing to show for it and riding off into the sunset. It soars, and the rest of the band really landed their parts on this one. Our drummer, Kyle Meggison, had less than a month with all these songs before we went into the studio, and his instincts for the chorus drums on this one weren’t at all what I expected, but they were exactly what this song needed. You can find an example of that in every song on this record, really.
KEEGAN: There’s always one song on the album that Bryan and I spend way too much time on, and it’s usually figuring out how to fit together all the parts we like in a natural and exciting way. “Heaven or Wisconsin” was 100% that song for this album: Bryan wrote all the parts but I must have done 50 versions of the structure, trying to find the one that felt alive. The noisy freakout in the middle is something I do a lot in rehearsal, just scratching out a placeholder where a cool idea will go eventually, but we ultimately decided that the noisy freakout WAS the cool idea this time. That opening guitar part is another example of something accidentally picked up by the drum mics that we tried to recreate but never got the exact feel we wanted, so we went back to the scratch tracks and found a sound we really loved. That reverb you hear is just the ambient reverb of mics across the room picking up the amp. The lead guitar does a lot of ascending riffs while the rhythm guitar descends, and there’s this weird weightless floating feeling that I get from the combination. I always knew this was the last chapter of the album’s story, and I was really stressed about doing it justice. We were all huddled in the recording booth the entire time for this song, bouncing ideas and trying things as a team. It was a really fun one to write, and as a result I think it’s a fun one to listen to.
And that outro? Was not the outro we wrote initially. We kept playing it wrong, so the last time we recorded it, we just all tried to follow each other, and the result was so funny that of course we had to keep it.
You can stream Camp Trash’s new album Two Hundred Thousand Dollars now
Or purchase it on Bandcamp at this link: Camptrash.bandcamp.com/album/two-hundred-thousand-dollars
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