Pumpkin Guts: A Conversation With Olive and The Werewolf – Interview

Pumpkin Guts is a band from Pikeville, Kentucky, storming in as a future powerhouse horror punk band. Heavily inspired by the Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark books, they have come a long way as a unit, from playing with their favorite bands to getting included in compilations. With a poppy pep feel, they are a different band coming out of the horror punk scene. We had the opportunity to sit down with Olive and The Werewolf and ask some questions.

PopHorror: How did Pumpkin Guts form?

Olive: Well, it started with just me and The Werewolf, and we just did like acoustic stuff at first,  and then after, like, I’m gonna say, about six months of doing that, we started looking for other people to join Pumpkin Guts, so that we could get a full band together, and our original lead guitarist. He was somebody that I went to high school with, and so he became part of it. And then, like our bass player, we found him. He was previously involved in a project with The Werewolf. So, and then he was like, Well, my cousin plays drums if you all need a drummer. So we just got his cousin to come and be our drummer, and that’s pretty much what happened.

PopHorror: Where did you first find your love for horror?

Olive: Oh, my God! For me, I mean, it feels like I was just born into it when I was a little kid. You know my mama would, what? Or my grandma, whatever she would watch, like Dark Shadows, and I remember watching horror movie marathons on AMC. When I would be there and stuff at her house, and I don’t know, I always liked it, and it scared me as a child.

I think that’s why I liked it like this, you know, so yeah, like, I remember watching stuff like Halloween and Friday the 13th and things as a really young child, and watched Nightmare Before Christmas when I was like two years old and got super hyped and just watched it every day of my life for like years. So yeah, just kind of stuff like that. Growing up, I was like, my mother used to watch a lot of horror movies. I have that memory from it, like a Halloween, at a very early age. Stuff like that. I mean.

The Werewolf: I probably don’t have the crazy in-depth core background that many people do. But yeah, just at a very early age, introduced to Halloween, Friday, the 13th Hellraiser. Stuff like that. So, just your typical classic horror movies.

PopHorror: Pumpkin Guts are strongly influenced by Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark. Are all your songs based on those stories?

Olive: For the most part. Yeah, like they’re either. Honestly, they’re either like direct. You know, this song is just the story in song form. A few of them are just more inspired, like our song Ghosts. I just took a bunch of different ones, like the vibe of the ghost stories, and wrote them.

Slime is more about me, like, because it’s kind of like I don’t necessarily feel like I belong in a lot of places, or like feel connected and like a like I’m a human like kind of such a sort I was like, well,  I don’t know like I’m like a storyteller, you know. So I think maybe this is what it would be like if I was not human. Maybe this is the explanation. So that’s kind of. But yeah, otherwise, though they’re all, they’re all pretty much based on those stories.

PopHorror: Alright! What’s your favorite story?

Olive: That is a difficult one. I mean, so many of those stories that I don’t know. I would say it’s somewhere between, like, The Haunt or maybe Harold. Those two are the ones that actually like scared me because a lot of it. I think it’s creepy, or it’s monsters, or whatever. So that’s, you know, it’s just fun. But those two stories, in particular, actually scared me. I remember not being able to sleep after I read them.

PopHorror: How did Pumpkin Guts come into contact with We Are Horror Records?

Olive: Dan found us online and put one of our songs in the… What’s that the radio show he used to do? He just did a radio show.

The Werewolf: I think it was called Horror Punks Not Dead, and he randomly tagged us in something one day. And I looked at it, and it was like, We Are Horror. And it’s like being featured on a radio station today. So I went and listened to it. And basically. I think we messaged him afterward or something and said thanks. I don’t know something along those lines. We had to reach out to him and thank them for the feature and stuff like that. From then on, it was like constant contact with him like he asked Pumpkin Guts to be a part of the We Are Horror Records Volume One compilation.

So we did that, and it was just constant, like contact between us, you know? So then he had tried to, you know. He’d asked us a few times to join the label, and we had turned it down a few times because we were still trying to get our bearings as a brand, as a first-year band. And so we didn’t fully even know what we were doing a lot, and at the beginning, I think of this year. Yeah, something like that when he had come back out from hiatus. We talked as a group and finally decided that it might be beneficial to us to join him and get in contact with other bands and stuff like that. So that’s pretty much how it started, though.

Olive: Yeah, plus Dan is just incredible.

PopHorror: Yes, he is!

PopHorror: How did you adjust to playing an instrument in costume?

The Werewolf: It was so; the mask before, you know, before the one I have now, was a full face, fur, and everything. The peripheral vision was terrible. So, like, I wear glasses, you know, as is, so it’s difficult to see. It’s not easy when I take them off in a dark setting because I bump into many things, and setting stuff up is difficult.

So, like, if I have to look down at my fretboard and see if I’m hitting the right, you know, like, if I can’t hear, and I’m trying to see if I’m playing the correct thing, it gets in the way, and I have to like to tilt my head down. But with the new one, it is easier to see outside. It’s closer to my face, and the snout smaller, and it’s a little bit more, you know, angled down, so it’s not as hard anymore. But at first, it was. It was a little challenging. It was a little tricky.

Olive: We’ve tried to adjust, like everybody’s costumes, to make them a little bit. You know, it’s better because I don’t play an instrument. I just sing, and I also I paint my face so like it’s not the same as having a mask on. Our bass player, The Void. He had some issues where the old costume was something that we had just made, and we used it like that.

We used cheesecloth, and like the creepy cloth stuff you get for Halloween decorations, he had a horrible time. So, you know, when we practice, he’s active and moves around a lot. But then on stage, because he couldn’t see, that would kind of, you know. Go away a little bit like he’d have to stand there and try to focus on what he’s doing. So we’ve got new stuff, like new costumes, that make it much easier for everybody to see, move around, and do their thing.

PopHorror: Who are your favorite bands Pumpkin Guts has played with so far?

Olive: Definitely, The Jasons because they are my favorite, and The Renfields because they are also my favorite, but we also enjoy playing with them. There’s a band called Plague 9, and every time we’ve played with them has been amazing. Won’t Stay Dead and Pretty With the Lights Out. I love playing with them. We actually have a show with Pretty With The Lights Out coming up soon.

PopHorror: Do the characters you portray have a back story?

Olive: Yes, so actually, it’s something I’ve wanted to do. I’ve tried to create a website where people can go there and read the character’s story in Pumpkin Guts, Olive. Which is mine; they are supposed to be like a creature that a witch created out of pumpkin, and you know, gain consciousness and whatever. And then they found The Werewolf while walking through the woods on a midnight stroll. Olive and The Werewolf fell in love with each other.

Then they collected the rest of the Pumpkin Guts members, so like you know, we just resurrected the skeleton Skelly boy or drummer resurrected him from the cemetery. The void is a void. He’s, you know, a ghost, and we’re like, we like those sounds that you’re making. And the Scarecrow. She is, you know, an enchanted scarecrow that we collected from a cornfield.

PopHorror: What would you say to motivate someone to chase their dreams? You know, go for anything artistic or creative and throw it out?

Olive: I mean, I would say, like, you know, it’s it’s worth the time and effort to do it, even if nobody gets it. Like, even if you only have a handful of like fans, it’s worth doing, just because of the feeling of having something you created that you created. I mean, like, we’ve played, we’ve played shows to nobody, and we’ve played shows to like, you know, a hundred people, but doing this is so much fun. It gives me such a feeling of just like, you know, it’s my, it’s my thing, like it’s something I’ll like, put my heart and my soul into it, and it feels nice, so like I would say, regardless of what it is like, it’s worth doing.

The Werewolf: I don’t know. Always live like you never know if you don’t try mentality. Like, if you have something that you want to do that you’re passionate about, no matter if it’s going to be anything or not like, there’s no reason not to try it because if it’s going to make you happen the same way, like, you know, yeah, we played to nobody. We’ve also played to hundreds of people. So it’s like, even though those shows sucked. It makes you question, am I? Why am I doing this? But it’s like it’s because I mean you. You enjoy it. You love it; you care about it so much if you care. Why not do it? I don’t know. That’s that’s the way I live.

 

We want to thank Olive and The Werewolf for their time, and we can’t wait to watch them grow! You can check out the band and their music over at Band Camp.