It’s one thing to have a positive mental attitude when you’re young, but another thing to stick to your ideals through the troubles that come with adulthood. H2O frontman Toby Morse is an inspiration to adults and kids alike, living the dream of being in a successful punk rock band while staying true to his beliefs all these years. Earlier this week I sat down and talked with Morse about H2O’s ability to play with so many different types of bands, their upcoming covers album, finding vegan food in Vegas, talking to school kids through the One Life One Chance program, and more.
Emily: I was looking at your tour schedule and you guys have a lot of diverse shows coming up. You’re doing shows with Rancid and Blink 182 and you’ve playing the Within These Walls Festival. I always thought that was interesting about your band. You guys can fit in with so many different types of bands, pop-punk, hardcore, etc. And you seem to get a really great crowd reaction all the time. What do you think it is about your band that makes that possible?
Toby: It’s interesting because we have so many friends in all kinds of bands. Like you just said, poppier bands, harder bands, metaler bands. We grew up listening to Dag Nasty and 7 Seconds and so many different bands have melody and also the harder stuff too. I think a lot of bands can play with a lot of bands. It just depends on how you talk to the crowd and how you get people involved in your show. When you play the songs and say “this song is about this, this is who we are, this is what we’re about” and educate people when you’re opening up for different bands where most of the people don’t know who you are, I think it’s awesome. Obviously I love playing hardcore shows. You can preach to the converted as long as you want, but playing to a bunch of new kids who don’t know anything about your band, I think that’s the biggest challenge. I think it’s awesome when kids are just standing there staring at you like “who the heck are you” but by the end of the set people are clapping and getting into it. I think that’s what it is about and we love doing stuff like that.
We toured with New Found Glory back in the day. We’ve toured with Sum 41. We played with No Doubt in New York. We’ve done a bunch of different things. I never wanted to pigeonhole us to only play with hardcore bands, you know what I mean? And all of us in this band have always been inspired by pop, rock, hip hop, reggae, everything. We grew up listening to all kinds of music. We weren’t just listening to hardcore punk rock our whole entire life. That’s the music that inspired us. Skateboarding and punk rock music and hip hop. I don’t think we’d open up for a hip hop group though. I don’t know if that would go well. But, all the genres are so crossed now anyway. There are so many people playing different kinds of music with different sounds. Everything is all one now. It’s pretty cool, actually.
Do you see a lot more crossover there now then when you were first starting? With kids that are really into both hardcore and pop punk?
Yeah totally! I think hardcore kids love pop punk, for sure. I think more kids are open minded to different music these days. I think that’s important. It’s important for human beings to listen to all sorts of music, not just one kind.
So yeah, I’m excited to play with Rancid and My Chem. We play with Rancid next week, that’s going to be awesome. It’s crazy because this month we’re playing with Descendents and Rancid, and we cover both of them on our cover album, so it’s a total honor. We’re excited to play with them. For Within These Walls, we haven’t played in Arizona in a long time, so I’m looking forward to that. And our good friends Stretch Arm Strong, who we haven’t seen or played with in years, they’re playing. We’re doing a show in Boston also and then the New York show is Descendents and Suicide Machines. It’s a good month. Very diverse and I like that.
Speaking of the cover record (Don’t Forget Your Roots), how did you guys decide what songs you wanted to cover? How did you whittle it down to the track listing that you came up with?
I feel like there is going to be a Don’t Forget Your Roots Part 2 already, because there are so many bands that we missed and wanted to do but we just didn’t have time to do it. And we’re all over the place. After my drummer went back to the East Coast we were like “oh, we want to do this song.” I made him go into the studio in New Jersey and record drums on another song. It got to the point where it was like “enough is enough,” just pick 18 songs. It was drawn out. A lot of the songs we picked are songs that people didn’t expect us to pick. A lot of people didn’t like the big songs of the bands. All the records the kids are supposed to like, you know. I like all the records by Dag Nasty, I like all the records by 7 Seconds.
So you didn’t want to just go with the more popular songs. You wanted to go with the ones that meant more to you.
Yeah, they meant a lot. And you know, the Bosstones, Someday I Suppose, that was one of their big songs, but we love that song and we love them. We also do songs that we think we can pull off and add an H2O flavor to. That was important too. We were going to do some hip hop songs when we started recording, but we were like “I don’t know.” I’m not a rapper. I love hip hop, but I’m not a rapper. I’m not going to pull this off. I mean we did before, with the Ice Cube song, and I thought we did OK on that.
I’m excited about the stuff coming out. Everybody that’s heard it, like the artists that we covered they’re backing it and that makes me happy. I’m very excited to play the songs live. We’ve only played the Gorilla Biscuits and Madball songs out live so far. We’re setting up shows for October and November for the rest of the U.S. and we’re going to do some stuff in the Midwest and East Coast. We’re going to do a bunch of cover songs and have a release party. It’s going to be fun, I’m excited about it.
I was curious about the Rancid song. You guys chose Journey to the End of the East Bay. I was wondering how you guys decided on that one, since it’s very specific to Rancid and the whole Operation Ivy experience. What about that song really spoke to you guys?
We just love the song. I know it’s a special song and like you just said, that’s what it is about. But the song itself, I don’t know, it always gave me goose bumps hearing it. …And Out Come the Wolves is in my list of top 5 hardcore punk rock albums ever. I was lucky enough to be in the Time Bomb video when I was a kid with my girlfriend who is now my wife of 16 years. We became friends with the Rancid dudes in New York, they’re like my brothers, I love them. As soon as that bass line kicks in, it just makes me happy and emotional. We’re just so happy to do that song. I know how personal it is for them. That’s the one we all wanted to do. I sent it to Lars and Tim and they gave me amazing positive feedback on it and it made me really happy.
Obviously, we’re recording the songs because we love these bands, but it’s awesome that we have an opportunity to send it to the artists and get their feedback also. On the Gorilla Biscuits song, I was torn between two different takes of it, so I sent it to Civ who is one of my best friends and got his opinion on it. Getting the opinion from the person who wrote it and sang it is awesome. It helped me make my OCD decision on which one to pick. It’s cool that hopefully everybody we covered gets to hear it. Unfortunately, not The Clash.
I change the lyrics up in some of the songs, to fit us a little more. I’m excited. I was thinking maybe we’d play the Rancid song when we open up for the Descendents, and then do the Descendents song when we open up for the Rancid, because we can’t play the cover songs when we’re opening for the band.
Yeah, that’s one of those tricky things, unless you can get them to come out and do it with you maybe.
Yeah, but I’d rather watch them do it.
Were there any songs that you personally really wanted to do, but the rest of the band vetoed?
No, it wasn’t like that at all. If anything, there were songs that we all wanted to do and didn’t get to do. I’m really psyched. We covered Not Just Boys Fun before from 7 Seconds but I wanted to do something off their later records, and I really like the more melodic ones, so we did Satyagraha. People are already saying “Why didn’t you do Minor Threat?” but we already did Minor Threat, we had Salad Days on a 7” before. We did Suicidal [Tendencies] before. I would have loved to have collected all the covers. Like Not Just Boys Fun and Nazi Punks Fuck Off that we did on the ARA comp and put all of those together as like a bonus, but it was hard to track all that down, and which label they were on back then. We did a lot of covers, man.
You guys have been on so many different labels now, I can imagine it would be hard to track all that stuff down for one release.
Yeah, especially because they’re not originals too, you have to track it all down and get cleared again. And we have that Madonna song.
Do you have any plans to do some more original material any time soon?
I don’t know, we need to figure it out. I’m really proud of Nothing to Prove and that record has been out for 3 years and the response and support for the record worldwide has been amazing and we’re very blessed. We disappeared for 7 years, not making music, and then we made that. I just want to make sure that the next time we do something, it’s going to be even better than that. I don’t want to put something out just to put it out because it’s been so long. This cover record is something that we’ve been wanting to do for a long time and it is a good little buffer between this and making a new record. It gives us a little more time to figure out something. I don’t know when it’s going to happen, but we’ll see. It’s going to happen organically. I don’t want to rush anything, especially at this point.
I think I saw you guys post, you did something for Lars’ [from Rancid] birthday right?
Yeah, we’re giving away a pair of tickets to the 9/6 Rancid/H2O show at the House of Blues Las Vegas and we launched the contest on his birthday. It was a nice little coincidence.
That’s great man. I’m looking forward to seeing Rancid play Saturday, and Blink and then next week will be that show in Vegas. You know, my friend re-did all the menus at the Wynn Hotel and they have vegan menus in all the restaurants. I’m going to go as soon as I get there, I can’t wait. I heard it’s amazing. We’re really looking forward to it. I don’t even know the last time we played Vegas.
I thought you played a smaller show, but I can’t remember.
What year? 2001? I don’t even know what year it was.
I think it was right about the time Go came out.
Yeah, that was 2001. Wow. It’s been 10 years or something, that’s crazy.
Yeah, it’s been too long. What do you guys like to do when you come out to Vegas?
I don’t know, I haven’t been there in a while! I’m not a partier or gambler. I know Rusty’s looking forward to doing some gambling, he likes doing that. I’m looking forward to actually eating. Every time I went to Vegas back in the day, it was so hard to eat vegan food. I’m actually looking forward to going to a sit down restaurant and have a healthy vegan meal in Las Vegas. That’s never happened there before for me. Also, I love the House of Blues. They treat bands great at the House of Blues.
I’m looking forward to Vegas. You guys have a good scene out there?
Yeah, I think it’s great right now. We’ve got a lot of good bands out here and a lot of kids are going to shows.
Are kids psyched about the show?
Yeah! Everyone I’ve talked to is really excited for it, I think it’s going to be really awesome.
Rancid is always a good show. I find myself, every time we play with them, singing every single song. They write great songs and they’re just a great band. They’re very inspiring. I’m excited.
I wanted to talk about One Life One Chance. I was curious about what inspired you to start doing that.
A friend of mine, she was an H2O Fan and would come to all the shows, she was a teacher in Queens, New York. She did this memoir project for her students and she gave them this mix tape that she called The PMA Mix Tape and she put a whole bunch of her favorite groups on there. And she put our song Sunday on there and when it was time for the kids to pick their song for their project, they picked H2O.
These kids knew nothing about punk rock, hardcore. Nothing. She hit me up and was like “these kids really love your song, they want to write you letters, do you mind?” They sent me like 50 letters in the mail. Heart wrenching, amazing letters about how they could relate to the song and losing family members. Some kid was like “this music is loud, it’s too fast…but I like your lyrics.” It was some really amazing stuff. And she said “when you come down in February, you should stop by and talk to the kids.” And I was like “about what?” And she was like “well, you’ve been straight edge your whole life and you’re in this band and it’s positive” She was kind of telling me how she saw me and what I could talk to kids about. I don’t see myself as that. I don’t see myself as anything. Whatever.
So I said to my friends, “I need to be prepared for this.” They told me I should do a PowerPoint presentation, and I was like “what’s that?” So yeah, I was talking to my friends, even Chris from Stretch Arm Strong, who is a teacher, and one of my friends was like “my son and daughter are straight edge because of you, you should come to their school when you’re in New York and talk to them.” I was like “wait a second, I was supposed to go to a school that had like 90 kids” and I ended up going to a school with 900 kids, that was my first school.
I put this PowerPoint presentation together about my life and what inspired me to become this way and the music and growing up with no dad, just my whole story. I just put it together and it worked and clicked with the kids. They come right up to you after. Between speaking to one group of kids and then the next group of kids, by the time I left, kids started handing me these crazy letters like “what you said touched me in a certain way.” It really connected. I think because I’m not some guy in a suit going in there saying, “I’m 60 years old, I lost my wife and my kids to alcohol or drugs and now I’m sober.” I’m a guy, this is me, I’m tatted up, I’m in a band, I look like a weirdo, I’ve been a vegetarian for 24 years, I never tried drugs or alcohol or anything. I grew up with no dad, this is how I turned out. These are my friends who live the same lifestyle and are successful, respectful and cool. It’s working, man. It feels really awesome. I didn’t expect it to happen like that, but I’ve been to 18 schools since then.
A lot of people still attach negative or violent connotations to straight edge. It seems like a lot of things in the media never really talk about the positive aspects of it, like the clean lifestyle. Do you think that’s something that you can get to these kids that they might not be hearing…the positive aspects?
100%. Straight edge isn’t Toby Morse. Straight edge is the name of a song that inspired me to not party. I didn’t wake up and say “I’m straight edge today.” I’m a 41 year old man that never tried anything because I got inspired as a kid through hardcore music. And you know, all the negative stuff from straight edge is the same kind of thing with hip hop music. They weren’t talking about De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest and the positive hip hop, they were talking about all this negative stuff. You only hear negative things and when that was going on, it was a bummer. Straight edge to me was a personal choice and I never judged anybody. I’ve been in a band for 16 years with people who aren’t. I’ve been married for 16 years, my wife isn’t straight edge. I don’t just hang out with people who are straight edge, and that was never what inspired me to be this way.
So yeah, when it was turning negative and violent and stuff like that, that was a bum out. And I’m sure it was way more of a bum out to other people who are straight edge for positive reasons. So yeah, you got that a lot in the 90s. Just a couple people always make that happen for everybody else. It was never like that. It’s such a personal choice. It was never like “I don’t like you because you drink.” That’s like people saying “I don’t like you for the color of your skin.” It’s the same thing. It’s judging people for their choices or what they’re into. It’s not what hardcore punk rock was about in the first place.
People also started thinking that if you’re straight edge, you’re going to be judging them or preaching to them, and I never thought it was like that.
I have so many friends that party like crazy and I have friends that died from abuse. My mom has been smoking and drinking since she was a teenager. It’s a personal choice. That’s what I tell kids. Skateboarding and this music saved me from peer pressure. So in high school people were making fun of me and calling me names, saying I was going to marry my skateboard and take my skateboard to the prom, but in actuality that skateboard saved my life because I didn’t end up doing any kind of drugs. It helped me so much.
There are so many things out there now, and way more opportunities for kids besides giving into peer pressure. And if people are peer pressuring you into doing something, they’re not your friends. That’s what I tell them. They’re not your friends if they try to get you to do something you don’t want to do. It’s simple. And I can’t even imagine the peer pressure that kids deal with these days. It was bad in the late 80s but it was nowhere near how it is now and what kids get exposed to at such a young age. It’s scary having an 8 year old son. I want him to know what’s going on in the world and not keep him in a box. I mean he’s only 8, but he’s asking questions about stuff. Kids just start way early and are exposed to way more dangerous things these days.
My thing is prevention, not intervention. I don’t have any experience with how drugs affected me because I never did them. Some of the kids in these high schools have way more experience with partying that I did. I’m not judging or preaching to anyone. I just say “this is the path I chose, this is how I turned out, these are my friends, you can do the same thing, you don’t need to do that stuff,” and when they first see me covered in tattoos and being myself, they don’t believe me. Kids will say straight to my face, “I don’t believe you.” I say “whatever. Google me, man. Why would I come here and make up a story?”
The reaction has been so positive. I keep in touch with kids through Twitter, Facebook, email. The teachers keep in touch with me. I went back last September and surprised this school in Manhattan and gave them a drum set from Travis Barker. I went back a couple months ago with my friend Matt Pike and we surprised the kids in the lunchroom and checked in with them. It’s awesome man. The kids are wanting to come to our shows but they’re too young to come. It’s crazy. It’s cool. It’s really something positive. I don’t know what’s going to happen with it. I’ve got a bunch of schools coming up in November, I’ve got a school here in September, up North. People are having fun. It’s been a great experience. Even if one or two kids get inspired, that’s awesome.
You know, I can sing on stage the rest of my life and talk about things, but these kids never met anybody like me. They’ll never meet a 41 year old tattooed looking freak who didn’t try anything, you know what I mean? They think they know what musicians are supposed to be like from television and videos and what they hear in the tabloids. They think it’s supposed to be a certain way and it’s not like that. So many people are living healthy, clean lifestyles. Not all the people in bands are drug addicts who are cheating on their wives.
They get exposed to that sensationalism side of it. That is what people report on and that’s what gets spread around.
Exactly. I’m showing the positive light. I talk about having a positive mental attitude. I talk about growing up without a dad. I talk about experiencing racism. Music. Everything. It’s not just about being drug-free. It’s everything. It’s a whole positive, healthy way to live. It’s cool man, I’m very happy with how it’s going.
Thanks so much for doing this interview. Do you have anything you’d like to add before we wrap it up?
I’m looking forward to coming back to Las Vegas with Rancid, one of my favorite bands. It’s been a very long time, we apologize for that. Hopefully we’ll come back again when the covers album comes out. I appreciate the interview and the support and we’ll see everybody next week.
Thank you Toby! H2O’s Don’t Forgot Your Roots will be available on November 1st via Bridge 9 Records. Prior to its release, the band will be releasing three State-themed 7″, the first of which, California, is currently available for pre-order and will be released on September 6th. Also on September 6th, the band will be playing the House of Blues in Las Vegas with Rancid and DJ J & Nicki Bonner (Jandisco Sound System). Tickets are still available for that show and you still have time to enter our ticket giveaway.
Interview by Emily Matview
Transcribed by Ashleigh Thompson
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