Shannon Wilk – What drove you to start music?
Remco Geerens – “You know, music is something that has always been around for me personally. I grew up in a very musical family, my dad is a huge rock n’ roll fan. I used to listen to my dad’s records when I was younger. Music came very naturally to me. I always wanted to play guitar and I actually started playing at the age of 8. It’s all I can do.”
Shannon – Were you guys all friends before starting Dirty Toy Company?
Remco Geerens – “Oh we didn’t even know each other before we started the band. I always played rock n’ roll but I got to a certain age where I wanted to play with other people in a band. It was quite hard to find people. But then I got in contact with our drummer and we started jamming some covers. Then we started looking for other people to form the band. I had no idea who they were before we started the band.”
Shannon – What is the story behind your latest single, “I Won’t Let You Go”?
Remco Geerens – “laughs, You’re the first person to ask this question, I’m gonna be completely honest… it’s a song I wrote for my girlfriend at that time. It was about 2 years ago and the song was supposed to come out during our relationship but we broke up. The band and I decided to continue recording the song and we liked the song so we might as well release it. It’s a song I wrote for my girlfriend back in the day.”
Shannon – I can tell that Dirty Toy Company has a lot of different influences. How would you say having a variety of influences has benefited you?
Remco Geerens – “I think it’s a huge benefit, especially for me as the songwriter. It’s great to have many influences. I see songwriting as making a pizza, you have the dough and put on ingredients from different genres of music. But then again, I sometimes feel like people don’t know what genre to call us. Our songs vary – we’ve got ‘80s ballads but we’ve also got songs that lean very close to modern metal. People have a hard time figuring us out but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”
Shannon – What do you think makes Dirty Toy Company different from other bands?
Remco Geerens – “As you mentioned, we do have a lot of influences which already makes us unique. In Belgium, if we get labeled, we get labeled as an ‘80s glam band but I feel like we go beyond the glam label. Looking at other bands in Europe, I feel like there aren’t a lot of bands that deliver the energy we deliver onstage. I’m really proud of that. That’s one of our main goals – to just deliver the fucking energy everytime we get onstage.”
Shannon – What has been your biggest struggle in the music industry?
Remco Geerens – “Oh damn. It’s all one big struggle. We don’t get a lot of support from labels or media. The big dogs in the game don’t support us.All of our support just comes from regular people which is amazing and we really appreciate that. We’re self-made. Some bands put out one good song and get picked up by a label. I just feel like that’s something that is never going to happen to us. We’ve just gotta continue the grind.”
Shannon – If you had the ability to fix one problem in the world, what would it be?
Remco Geerens – “That’s a great question. I feel like I’d put an end to poverty. The wealth in thsi world is so unfairly distributed – we’ve got fucking billionaires and people living on the street. I would steal some money from the billionaires and give it to the poor people. I hate to see people suffer on the streets.”
Shannon – What is your favorite and least favorite part of being a musician?
Remco Geerens – “My favorite part is definitely playing live shows. To me, that’s the best thing ever. It’s a perfect way to get rid of energy and frustrations. It’s one and a half hours of pure fucking adrenaline. It feels great. It’s like therapy to me. Hanging out with fans is always great. That’s definitely my favorite part. My least favorite part is changing strings on my guitar, I fucking hate it. It’s a pain in the ass.”
Shannon – What can we expect to see from Dirty Toy Company coming up?
Remco Geerens – “That depends on the current situation with coronavirus. If that shit goes away, we plan on doing some music videos, which is something we haven’t done yet for some reason. We’ve wanted to do a music video since like 2016 or something. I was thinking about maybe releasing a second EP because I feel like albums are kind of dangerous for a small band because it’s a lot of money going into it and it doesn’t always pay off. I prefer to play it safe and record a second Ep with 4 new songs because we’ve got a lot of new material written. It sounds a lot different than what we’ve done in the past. We want to get back into the studio again. We were supposed to go on tour in November but that got postponed to 2021 so fingers-crossed. I hope we can go and tour again.”
Shannon – Is there anything else you’d like to include?
Remco Geerens – “Sure, you can find us on Instagram – our main social media – @dirtytoycompanyofficial and on Facebook at Dirty Toy Company.”