The Band Camino Always Held Onto Their Past. Their New Album Helped Them Let Go
The Band Camino aren’t masochists, per se. They’ve just found that sometimes, taking the self-sacrificial route is easier than facing the truth: that some relationships simply can’t be saved. On their first album, 2021’s The Band Camino, they rationalized being collateral damage for the sake of keeping a relationship from falling apart. And on their 2019 EP tryhard, they wished they could make their partner hate them, all so that they could be free of the emotional turmoil. It took the Nashville-based pop rock trio a while — three EPs and a debut studio album, all released over the course of the past eight years, to be exact — to realize that the ghosts of their past can’t hurt them, if they can manage to leave them behind.
The band steps into the light on their second album, The Dark, out Aug. 11. “We’ve had a lot of self-deprecating, ‘I’m sad, I’m the problem, I messed up’ songs in the past,” singer and guitarist Jeffery Jordan tells Rolling Stone over Zoom, settled comfortably next to bandmates Spencer Stewart (vocals, guitar) and Garrison Burgess (drums). “We have some songs on this album that are more like, obviously, I have my flaws and I’m a very imperfect human. But maybe in this scenario of this certain world that this song is living in, maybe I wasn’t the one that was the problem — maybe it was them, maybe they were toxic — which is something we haven’t really tapped into before.”
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Stewart cracks a joke about songwriting being a much cheaper alternative to therapy. “I definitely am a person that will take blame just because I think it’s easier and I feel like I can handle it,” he admits. “[This album] is talking about letting go of all of that. All of these songs, it’s just about letting go of an emotion so you can understand it a little bit better.” Both himself and Jordan, who also went through a breakup over the course of creating The Dark, describe the experience of sitting in those feelings as cathartic. And the healing process was far from instantaneous: In fact, it took months for The Band Camino to arrive at some of the album’s most interrogative moments.
The somber cut “Same Page” documents a fatal fracture in a years-long relationship — a moment of realization that is only fully processed once the finality settles in on the pop punk-influenced “Three Month Hangover.” Meanwhile, on “Let It Happen,” the band pushes back against tendencies to self-sabotage, particularly when it’s rooted in how someone else might react to their emotions. “I’ll shut myself off and not say anything about it because I’m too afraid to admit that people are gonna judge me for feeling a certain way, but then having that out, I’m like, it’s fine,” Stewart explains. “Everybody goes through stuff that they’re not super excited to tell other people about, but that’s just a part of life.”
The Band Camino recorded The Dark with long-time producer Jordan Schmidt, who they met when Jordan and Stewart first relocated to Nashville from Memphis in 2018. Burgess joined the lineup that same year, having moved to the music hub from Northwest Arkansas two years prior. Over the past five years, the band has fallen into a rhythm that was instrumental in fostering a safe space for the self-interrogation on this album. “You have a checks and balances system within your own artistry,” Stewart says of sharing a creative space with his bandmates. “You can’t just put out whatever you want or say anything at any time. You represent other people. It’s restrictive in a good way. I definitely don’t think I’d be able to make it as a singular artist these days. I need my friends.”
That notion also recentered The Band Camino musically. With a better grasp on the process of creating an album the second time around, they wanted to expand their sonic palette. The only true overlap in their musical backgrounds is that they were each separately in a worship band at some point or another while growing up. “I was like,’Damn, I like being in front of people way too much,’” Jordan jokes. “I can’t lie and say this is for God. This is for me.” And there’s a bit of each of them across all 11 tracks — their references on this record span from Drake and Katy Perry to Tom Petty and their own early-career releases.
Even as they teeter on the line between pop and rock, at a time when they feel as though listeners gravitate more towards solo artists, The Band Camino are prioritizing their collective power. “We want to sound like a band. On our last album, there’s some songs that sound like they could be more pop songs, or a singer-songwriter song,” Jordan explains. “When you listen to certain bands, you can hear the individuals. Sometimes you lose that. In the past, I think we’ve gone more into like, ‘Oh, this just sounds like a track that could have been made on the computer or whatever.’ But it’s trying to at least lean back into, ‘Okay, I can hear four people in a room playing this song.’”
Below, The Band Camino break down five key songs from The Dark.
“Novocaine”
Spencer Stewart: To be completely honest with you, we, at the time, had been trying to write another song that was just like “See Through,” so I was basically just trying to rip off us. I hope I didn’t get myself into trouble with everybody involved with that, but we just wanted something that was really wordy in the chorus — and that’s just speaking completely musically. As far as the concept of the song, it was a weird transitional time for me in relationship world. I had a bad experience and broke up with a girl at the end of 2021. It’s definitely one of the situations where I felt very closed off and I isolated myself.
I was afraid to start a new relationship — and I’m not that type of person. I like being in relationships and I like having intimacy and stuff, so that was definitely new for me and a weird feeling. Then I met a girl that I’m now dating, and I just wanted to write a song about that feeling of letting myself back open and the fear of getting back into something that you know can hurt you, in a way, just opening up a lot of those old doors. We called it “Novocaine” because of that feeling, like you need something to cover that feeling up because it’s so intense and it comes on so fast.
“Same Page”
Jeffery Jordan: “Same Page” is one of my favorites on the album. It kind of has a “Teenage Dream” inspiration that I was going for the chords — it’s poppy, but it’s still rock. It gives me Tom Petty vibes for some reason, I don’t really know why. It just feels like Band Camino to me. That’s another one I wrote that was pretty literal and I wrote that one right before my break up. The hook is, “We’re perfect on paper, we’re just not on the same page.” You’re with someone that you know, in theory, you’re perfect. All of your friends and your family, everyone likes you guys together.
And on paper, it should work, but we’re not on the same page. Which I think is kind of the hardest feeling — when things are almost right. Because you want it to work so badly and it’s still a good thing. Seeing friends go through breakups, too, where it’s like, there was no real resentment or there was no real reason other than it just wasn’t the right fit. I think that’s such a hard thing to walk away from. That one and “Three Month Hangover” are the two on the record for me that definitely helped me process, like, “Okay, I’m leaving this chapter of my life.”
“Let It Happen”
Spencer Stewart: I was feeling very careless and feeling like I just was in a place where if I saw my ex-girlfriend out at a bar, I was like, I’m just gonna let it happen. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but whatever happens happens … I feel like the song does a pretty good job of explaining it, because I have a terrible time trying to explain it. I can be apathetic towards a lot of things in my life a lot of the time. So I think it’s kind of about just putting it out there and recognizing that that’s something that I do. I’ve definitely done it since then, as well, but it’s an authentic feeling song and that’s why I think it feels so good.
I’m not saying it’s a good or a bad thing. It is just something that I do, so I think it’s good and healthy to have it out there. I’m not condoning feeling that way or anything, but I think it’s important to recognize and say that you’re feeling a certain way. I’ll shut myself off and not say anything about it because I’m too afraid to admit that people are gonna judge me for feeling a certain way, but then having that out, I’m like, it’s fine. Everybody goes through stuff that they’re not super excited to tell other people about, but that’s just a part of life. So I think that’s what fills that space for me.
“Three Month Hangover”
Jeffery Jordan: This was the first one that I wrote about my breakup. I dated a girl for a pretty long time, like four years off and on. But we broke up and I was just like, obviously going through it, but I didn’t really feel like I could get the words out. I finally was journaling one day and it was just like, I just feel like I’m hungover. I feel like I’ve had this hangover for three months. I feel like it’s just still hanging over me.
We had a session that week and I kind of came in with this idea of comparing a breakup to a hangover and how it’s like, I keep not drinking or I’m doing all the right things that I’m supposed to be doing — why do I have a hangover? Why am I waking up hungover, still? It feels like the most emo song on the record. It has the pop punk vibes. But yeah, that song was definitely very literal for me. It was three months after my break up.
“Afraid of the Dark”
Spencer Stewart: We were writing with a guy named Dan Smyers and he had this title. He brought this title and was like, “Afraid of the Dark, I can just see it on a gold plaque, man.” So we ended up writing it and I’d been listening to a lot of Drake at the time. I was trying to do something like the “One Dance” thing in the verse. I don’t know if that translates well at all, but that’s what I was thinking of when we were writing verses for that. I was trying to do a wordy thing. I don’t know. I just love that song, so I was trying so hard to do a Drake thing. I thought it was just a really cool concept too, like you’re the reason that, at night when I turn off the lights, I just can’t shake you. It’s kind of like a “Haunted” vibe, it’s that same energy of [saying], when I turn the lights off, I have trouble being alone because there’s just something about you. I can’t stop thinking about whatever we had, good or bad.
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