David Wood of DOWN TO NOTHING

(Richmond, VA USA)

Feb 2014/Believe Fanzine issue #3

How and When did Down To Nothing started? If you can remember it, How was the first show? Any song that you covered before?

   We started from an older band we had. We were very young, I think I was 17 when we played our first show.  Our first shows we would cover Dead Serious by Side by Side, All Out War by Earth Crisis, and Take Me Away by Judge. 

Honestly, listening to your songs makes me wanna go to Richmond, VA. Especially "Home Sweet Home" tell us something about Richmond,VA! What are the best things there?

  There's lots of good restaurants here. Lots of cool bars if you want to drink. In the summer bike rides with your friends to parks, or swimming in the river all day.  There's lots of historic sites, and it's a small city so there's always a lot of people just hanging out. 

 You sing for Down To Nothing and you play bass for Terror. Just released Life On The James and Live By The Code. From VA to LA, Man how'd you manage your time for all of this?

  Ha, it's not easy.  It took us a long time before we found the time to record Life on the James. Terror is very busy. 

Tell us about the albums that you released and what each album meant for you.

  Live by the Code was fun because we all wrote the album together. Everybody helped with everything from things like guitar leads, lyrics, breakdowns, chorus. It was cool, and out drummer Nick recorded it, so we got to do everything that we wanted to do.  That was a fun album. 

  Life on the James was about a 2-3 year writing process haha. I'm always on tour with Terror, our drummer Daniel is a doctor, and Jared was always on tour with Trapped Under Ice. So we never had time to sit down and practice and jam the songs out. We would just change around the demos over and over again. But we finally got to do it, Nick from terror recorded that too and hooked us up. It's my favorite down to nothing album. 

What makes Life On The James different from other records that you made?

  Not much honestly. I'd say it's a little catchier maybe, but it's just Down to Nothing.  Better Down to Nothing songs. 

  You sing about straight edge a lot, "Undefeated" "Save It For The Birds" and "Smash It" are on the top of my list. So, how'd you get into straight edge? Were you a straight edge kid ever since you got into hardcore/punk? Has anything changed since you knew it then and now?

   My friends in school were listening to less punk and more hippie stuff and getting into bad drugs.  I was listening to less punk and more hardcore. They were all getting kicked out of school and getting in trouble and straight edge just seemed like a good idea. I grew to love it because it was SO different.  Not drinking is such an extreme way of life, it's very out of step. Very black sheep.  

 I haven't seen anything change besides trends. Some years it's cool to be straight edge. Some years it isn't and all the trendy kids sell out. Whatever.  

   In relation to my previous question, What makes you hungry for more in this scene?

   Seeing young, new bands stoked to be playing live. Seeing people stage dive. Watching people drop out of the scene and realizing who stuck around. New zines. 

 Sexism has always been a problem in a male dominated scene. In what ways can we share our ideas about it in the hardcore/punk scene to those who are not aware of it? How would you tackle this issue?

   Take a stand against it if you see it going down in your scene.  That shits not cool and is not what hardcore is about. 

You have an Australia Tour on March this year which was really awesome! So, do you guys have any plans of touring Southeast Asia?

   No plans yet. Between my schedule and Daniel's, it's gonna be really hard. But hopefully we get there one day. 

 Thanks for your time man. Feel free to plug anything.