Interview:
Rick DeJesus
Frontman of
Adelitas Way

After finally gaining feeling back in my fingers from standing in the cold for so long, I was taken into the venue’s very tiny green room. Adelitas Way’s frontman, Rick DeJesus, and I were trying to figure out where to sit down to conduct the interview. Finally, he sat behind a desk in the corner of the room and I sat on the pleather couch across from the desk, next to a member from one of the bands on the Snocore tour. To say the least, it was a very cozy interview.

Be sure to check out our photos and review from the show!

NEMB: You are releasing a new EP “Deserve This.” Tell me about it.

RD: You know, I feel like I talked about the last record a lot and the whole fucking cycle was a nightmare so in this one, I’m just going to let the music talk itself. I’m just going to put songs out and let people hear it and you guys can decide if it’s some of the best work we put out or not. I think every record you put out, you’re obviously the most excited for because it’s something new…you made it. I’m very proud of this record, I think it’s going to be a great album for us, you know, its really up to the fans and to everyone involved in helping us take back what we think is ours…I think that rock n roll is, we have a place in it, ya know what I mean? And we’re coming back to take our place, which I feel like we lost a little bit on, on our third record.

NEMB: Y’all are on the road a lot. How do you guys keep up your energy?

RD: We like to play, that simple. I still get excited every night…honestly, you play with great bands, there are great bands on this tour and you want to go out there and put on a spectacular performance just for the show itself and for the fans every night.

NEMB: You guys did a Pledge Music drive, how did that idea come about?

RD: We were tired of on the whole record of Stuck, we had this major label behind us and it was a miserable process for me, I almost quit music. Just being honest with you, I was almost like “I’m done” it was awful, it was a nightmare experience and Pledge has given us the opportunity to be happy again and to do things that we’ve always done and our first records were done with happiness and joy and loved what we were doing. Then the Stuck record just felt like one big nightmare. I actually couldn’t wait…people were always like “oh the record just came out!” I couldn’t wait to put it past me. That’s how tough of a record it was for me, I couldn’t wait to move on from it and get away from it. Even though I love some of the songs, honestly some of the songs that are powerful, they remind me of some of the pain I was in from that record so every time we play the song “Stuck,” we play some of the songs off that record, it reminds me of everything I went through on the record, but in my musical career, it was one of the worst years of my life.

NEMB: What’s the story behind “Stuck”?

RD: Lyrically, it was always me. I write all the lyrics and I always try to tell my story or what I’m going through but that was the first album that we were coming off our most successful release so it was the first record that the record company, you could tell that they didn’t give a shit in promoting the record but they gave a shit why we were making it. They had their hands all in the album, every song we turned in, there was five people listening to it and giving opinions on what direction we should go. I don’t work like that man, I make records, I deliver them, and you’re supposed to put them out. That’s how I’ve always made records, I don’t write thirty songs, I write fifteen and that’s all you get. I delivered my first record to the label and they thought it was too rock, they thought it was too heavy, thought there were no pop hits on it, we did that on purpose. When are you going to see us on the Top fucking 40 Chart? Never. It’s never going to happen, so we know that. We’re realistic but they still have some delusional dream that a band like us is gonna cross over to the Top 40, I never saw that for us. We belong in the underground, man, we belong where we are.