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[/wpcol_1third] [wpcol_2third_end id=”” class=”” style=””]Happy Campers have spent almost 18 years playing fast and fun punk rock in the Vegas Valley. Their 6th release, “Dancing With Demons,” will be available February 8th, 2014 at a free release show at the Hard Rock Café on Paradise. In an effort to get everyone properly stoked for the release, we have Happy Campers’ frontman Isaac “Campa” Irvine here to give us a run down on his band’s history as well as provide us with free downloads of long-hidden demo tracks.
Here’s “Episode III.”
Gene “Bean” Boothe was our roadie for a couple tours and was quickly becoming one of my best friends. One day he said, “I’m going to learn bass and be in your band.” I wasn’t sure if I believed him but he bought a bass and a month later he had mastered all the songs. Let’s face it, Happy Campers isn’t Rocket Science. Larry couldn’t do a big tour we had booked because of work so Jay Losey from 7 Foot Midget introduced us to his friend Logan Kolb. He was young, about 17 but was very talented and funny. He pulled off learning all the songs four days before tour. Halfway through the tour he became our permanent drummer.
We had some great tours and were starting to get on a lot of great festivals back home in Vegas. We Played the Tony Hawk Big Skate Park event, which showcased a bunch of great skateboarders like Tony Hawk, Bob Burnquist and a young unknown named Shaun White. It was amazing. We did part of the Slim Jim tour in Texas and hung out with wrestling midgets and circus act people. Logan drank a bottle of ketchup on a bet and in exchange one of the wrestlers had to let a midget hit him in the head with a beer bottle. We also got to meet Macho Man Randy Savage who was the spokesman. This all led up to one of our biggest show, Extreme Thing 2002. We opened the show and played to almost 10,000 people. It was nuts. We sold merch and signed autographs for 6 hours. The big signed bands that played were asking who the hell we were. Logan was young and life on the road and partying was proving to be too much for him. It was hard but we knew it was best for him and for us to part ways.
Gene and Jay (7 Foot Midget) were living together at the time and decided that Jay was going to join the Campers. I was reluctant to the idea. The Midgets were our close friends and my favorite local band. But Jay was also one of the best drummers Vegas had seen and it was ultimately his decision to make. We finally had the solid line up I’d always wanted. We took off from there! We recorded our Self Titled CD that became known as Black Bear Album with Frank Klepacki. We had Brian Saliba (Extreme Thing, Smash Mag) managing us. We were touring a lot and playing big shows like Rebelpalooza with NOFX, Extreme Thing, Red White and Boom and Warped Tour. Our Christmas benefit show at the Huntridge brought over 800 people and was the largest local show ever for unsigned bands.
One night a couple guys showed up at one of our shows and asked if they could use some songs in a video they were making. We figured it was a skate video or something and said sure, whatever. A few months later their video BUMFIGHTS VOL 1 sold a million copies. It got everyone arrested and sued, and got us an international fan base that we could have never imagined. I didn’t really liked being tied to Bumfights because I was more about a positive message but there was no denying it got a lot of people to hear us and lets face it, they were pretty funny. My brother Travis directed a video for “Wave the Flags” which got over 100,000 hits on youtube and gave us a cameo in his horror movie “Coons.” In 2004 we recorded Old School EP and did our biggest tour. A two-month stint all the way to the east coast and back as well as a few weeks on Warped Tour side stages. It was amazing but I think it burnt us all out too. We were having a lot of fun but we never quite got over the hump to be a band that could do it for a living. We didn’t have a label and punk was starting to wane in popularity.
It was then that that life got real. I had a near fatal asthma attack at the Excalibur jousting show, was rushed to the hospital and put on life support for a day. In early 2005, my first son Azure was born in an emergency C-section at 2 pounds. He suffered severe brain damage. My fiancé Jenn and I had no idea what we had just signed up for. Our little guy was blind, had Cerebral Palsy and later we would add Autism and Epilepsy to his long list of diagnoses. We were told that he might never be able to talk or walk as well. It was a very hard time for me. I was almost 30 and eager to start a family but I wasn’t expecting it to be like this. The band had to take the back burner. We never stopped playing but we definitely slowed down.
Gene left to tour with Unwritten Law as a roadie so we added Ernie back to the mix and decided we would stop touring for a while. In 2007 we started to record Death and Mourning in Las Vegas with Adam “Bomb.” Gene eventually came back into the fold halfway through doing the album. The CD ended up having some of the songs with Ernie on bass and some of the songs with Gene on bass. It was a very personal album and I thought a really good album but we never did much to push it. It wasn’t easy but we transitioned to just playing bar shows for fun. Giving us a night out to hang out with friends and catch the other local bands in the scene. In a way it felt like the early years. Hanging out playing shows with great Vegas bands only we were older, fatter, and had bills, jobs and families. But soon the itch would come back and it would need to be scratched…
To be Continued…
-Isaac Campa
The Happy Camper’s legacy lives on, with their long-awaited 6th release ‘Dancing With Demons.’ The album, produced by Ryan Greene of Fat Wreck Chords fame, will be available Saturday, February 8th at the release show at the Hard Rock Cafe on Paradise. For more information on this show and to hear the album’s first single, click here.
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