Sammy Kless Bares All For The DIYgest

By: Ashton Morris

Sammy Kless is the bassist of Mom Jeans, lead vocalist of Just Friends, the founder and self-proclaimed “project manager” of Honey TV, and an all-around bay area legend. I was lucky enough to get the chance to interview him and get his thoughts on the current state of DIY, bands to look out for, writing music, and much more.

Ashton: I wanna start off with asking how are you doing and how has this tour been?

Sammy: Yeah, it’s been pretty incredible. It’s our fourth tour on Sweet Tooth, our album that came out in 2022. We’ve played some of the biggest shows we’ve ever headlined. It’s been really overstimulating to start touring your hometown at one of the biggest venues in the entire area and then go play Palladium the next day. I’m living my dream and I’m just so thankful and very honored to get to do what I do in any capacity. We got a really good team around us and we’re trying to send off Sweet Tooth right because we’re kind of looking towards the future. We got some new songs…we actually played a new song the other day. It’s the fourth tour on this record and it’s the biggest rooms we’ve ever done. It’s cool to see that the music is resonating and people are still excited and happy and willing to patron our band.

Ashton: I saw an interview with Eric where he talked about how the creative process was a lot different with everybody really getting involved. I wanted to get your input on how it has been becoming more creatively involved with Mom Jeans and how that might juxtapose with your experience with Just Friends.

Sammy: Mom Jeans started as a band between Eric and Austin and Best Buds was them sitting in their dorm room writing records and music for fun and using it as an outlet to understand the world. Puppy Love was mostly Eric responding to the fans telling them that they needed to put a record out, and a lot of people weren’t the biggest fans of it. I remember being on that tour with Just Friends and seeing all of the people be really upset and say really mean and hurtful things. It’s one of those things where you see your art and self expression and how vulnerable it is. People still loved it and it’s really cool to see Puppy Love getting a lot of love now.

Ashton: When I first got into Mom Jeans, I got into Best Buds like most people first getting into Mom Jeans, but looking back Puppy Love might be my favorite Mom Jeans record.

Sammy: That’s cool. It was a cool experience because I was not in the band yet but I was working for the band and me and Eric grew up together. I actually did vocals on the record and so did Brandon and Brond from Just Friends and it was a cool moment for all of us as a friend group. It was an interesting thing too because that’s when you see like, oh wow people care about the band. It’s cool to see that you struck a chord and there’s people that care and you’re not just screaming to some void. Sweet Tooth came about and that’s when I joined the band, during the Puppy Love tours I joined the band. We started working on new songs and What’s Up was one of the first songs we worked on and then we toured into the ground (Sad Summer, Hobo Johnson, Motion City Soundtrack). Right before COVID, Eric put the breaks on it and told everybody “hey, I need to take a break” and at that time Graduating Life and Just Friends both had records and we were coming up. COVID happened and then we were just like stuck. Sweet Tooth was really cool because Bart and I worked really hard to write a lot of the songs on that record. It was cool to see how easy it was for the four of us all to work together and we kind of developed a new process. People get stuck and try and reinvent the wheel but I think trying to keep the spirit alive, of the fun and the reason you’re doing it, there’s nothing better than the four of us trying to write songs together. All four of us are extremely passionate about writing music and we’ve been doing it for so long and it was cool to see Eric and Austin trust me and Bart with a band that is incredibly tied to their identity, I mean they’re on the freaking cover of Best Buds. The first thing on the record, Something Sweet, is just a little demo that I wrote that I sent to Eric, Bart, and Austin and they were like “this is it, I can work with this”. We started building this world and it was a very beautiful time in my life and I am very thankful for it. It’s very different than Just Friends because Just Friends is a band that jams. It’s interesting because Just Friends started with just me and an acoustic guitar and then throughout the career of the band we changed the writing style in different ways. Mom Jeans isn’t the type of band that can just get in the room and just jam and just play music, we want a little bit of a game plan, or more of an idea of let’s write this part and get to it. Just Friends can show up and write a song out of a song that I was singing in line at a Dairy Queen. The song Cream & Sugar was a song that Brond, Brandon, and I were just singing when one of us wanted coffee. Just Friends is all over the place and it shows in the music and I think that’s the beautiful thing about that band. I love writing music and I feel it is something that I’m okay at and I’m stubborn in trying to learn everything I can and get better when it comes to why and what I am doing and how I can communicate with the world around me.

Ashton: I think that’s something that’s always been apparent with all of Mom Jeans. All of you guys are always involved with something else apart from Mom Jeans (Just Friends, Graduating Life). I wanted to ask you about how Just Friends formed, you talked about how it started with you and an acoustic guitar, but there were very quickly a lot of people involved with that band and there still are. Did you just find your buds and just say let’s jam and make good music or what’s the story there?

Sammy: The story there is that I was in a band with Yanko (Matt Yankovich) and Kent who is one of my oldest friends and he plays in Save Face now and he was an original member of Just Friends. He was the second voice on Rock 2 The Rhythm and has appeared on a bunch of different stuff throughout our career so we always say he’s still in the band in a way. We had a band that had a little bit of promise in 2011 or so when we were all graduating high school. We had a pop-punk band and we were getting looked at by a label or two and then it just kind of imploded because I wanted to go to school and Kent was in school. Matt and the other guys wanted to do it and it just kind of fell apart. Kent was the singer in that band but I wrote a lot of the lyrics and I wrote a lot of music with him. So this (Just Friends) was me being like “oh shit, well my band’s over, maybe I can do this by myself” and then my old high school wanted to throw a show to fundraise for the band department and asked me to play and I was like sure. I had like two covers, four original songs, and I practiced with some of my friends like Avi. Then all of the sudden we started playing local DIY shows anywhere we could. Laser tag places, baseball fields, basements, garages, parks, literally anywhere. We had a generator that my friend had gave me and we were just doing anything we could to get heard. Back then, we weren’t cool enough to play in San Francisco and Oakland. Like we tried and I would get emails that would tell us that we were just a joke band and that really sucked. We just started meeting like-minded people and people started taking chances on us like Smoking Data Guns, a band from Long Beach, they used to book a suburb of LA and then Bart in Fresno and that’s how we met. My friend Jake from Sweet Gloom took us on our first ever van and trailer tour in 2014 or 15 and that was the same time that we started to piece together records (Rock 2 The Rhythm). Bart’s old band Meet me in Montauk put out vinyl by themselves and I was like alright cool, let’s fucking do it. Around that time, vinyl wasn’t as accessible for DIY bands but we did it and we spent a lot money and I’m still financially recovering (JK). We just started touring and playing everywhere we could. That’s when we linked up with Prince Daddy & the Hyena and Oso Oso (I’ve known Jade for way longer than that but we met on a Facebook message board about music when we were in high school). We all just started making this little scene, this little community and trying to play with anyone we could. It was so cool like a lot of our friends would move around and host us everywhere they moved. We had a lot of amazing shows with amazing people. It’s kind of a cast of people that band (Just Friends). Bart’s played in it, Eric’s played in it, Kory from Prince Daddy has played in it. The core of the band is me, Yanko, Brandon, Ben, Avi, and Brond of course. The six of us have been dedicating our lives to this for a long time and no matter what happens we have each other. That just started with a little bit of stubbornness to not give up.

Ashton: You talked a lot about DIY. Obviously when I think of DIY and emo revival I do think of Mom Jeans a lot. I want to ask you what you think of the current state of DIY/emo?

Sammy: I’ve lived long enough in this thing to become now like an olderhead in a way. I’m still getting used to that, like when we were coming up we were all the youngest people around and whenever Mom Jeans or Just Friends gets on to a tour we’re usually a lot younger than everybody. But now it’s just I don’t know, I read this ethnomusicology study that said that the peak age to find music is twenty-four years old and so that’s when it becomes incredibly harder for people to find music after. I’m definitely guilty of that in a way. Making music and doing music as much as I do and having the privilege to do it as a career, music is such a small part of it. People always say this, you’re a small business owner, you’re a clothing designer, you’re a content creator, you’re a music director, video director, you’re everything. It’s incredibly overwhelming so my bandwidth definitely got caught up. I was the kid that used to book shows too. Joel and I, Bart and Eric, we all booked shows everywhere in our hometowns and traded shows. It was a great community and we started to see people grow up, get real jobs, bands break up, friend groups get separated, life happens and falling outs happen and people grow up and stop doing it. So, there has definitely been a handful of years as I have gotten older where I haven’t gotten to take in as much music which is very sad because at the heart of it I have been a fan of music my whole life. Like there’s videos of me jumping up and down at Green Day at Woodstock on a TV when I was two years old. Through TikTok and through Instagram and through forcing myself to get back to what makes me happy, which is just the music and forgetting about all of the other stuff for awhile and just letting the world and the universe guide me in a way. But, it’s cool to meet and see bands where our music has influenced them in a way and it’s just cool to see a community that we’re building, because that’s the same thing with my favorite bands like The Story so Far took us on tour and Joyce Manor, for god’s sakes. Now, it’s like we did a tour together and I used to be the kid in the front row. I saw Joyce Manor to fifty people on the floor at Gilman once with Shinobu. Bands that excite me now are like obviously Harrison Gordon and seeing him be all about the music and the love of music fun. This band hey, nothing I truly adore so much, they are so good at songwriting. Then, this Worry Club band, Chase is one of my favorite songwriters I’ve ever met. It’s awesome. Emo/emo revival is such an interesting term and topic because everything is kind of connected in some way but it’s cool to see bands singing about stuff that matters to them. You can really tell when someone is phoning it in especially on TikTok and Instagram. You can tell who’s actually doing it for the love of music and who’s trying to be the popular kid in high school and those bands are just super true and incredible people.

Ashton: I’ve seen Mom Jeans a lot of times as we both know, we usually stop and have a little conversation every time. I wanted to ask you what your favorite tour has been point blank?

Sammy: I mean, I can tell you my least favorite tour.

Ashton: That would work.

Sammy: There’s something I like about all of them. But I really did not appreciate Bearings dropping the tour a week before it started. That was a very hurtful and upsetting experience to go through and we rallied and made the best of it. The rooms that we were going to be in were designed for a co-headliner thing and you’re not just messing with friendships, you’re messing with people’s livelihoods and their lives. I got pushed to the brink. That was not a very fun tour I would say. I mean they’re all great, Mom Jeans and Just Friends have got to do it multiple times and it’s always incredibly fun and I’m incredibly privileged to do a double duty. Just Friends and Graduating Life in the summer of 2018, that was an incredible experience. This is an incredible experience. Mom Jeans opening for Joyce Manor and The Story So Far like that was crazy. All of the tours have something beautiful about them, so I will say that I can’t pick a favorite one but I can tell you that one of my least favorite ones was the Just Friends tour in the fall. I mean everyone who came out to that tour saved our lives. They made us feel so loved in our time of need. It showed me that there was such a beautiful community and there is love left in the world because we live in a really fucked up and horrible universe controlled by evil people and corporations and shit. To have people come and bring us gifts and give us love and their attention and money and time, it leaves me speechless. There was moments on that tour where I would be crying right before we went on stage being like this is the hardest thing I have ever had to do is put on a face for these people. They allowed me to go out there and I didn’t have to hide. I could be point blank and honest. I think that is the thing that people really resonate with in our music and our friend group. Like you said earlier (I had mentioned before starting the interview that I reached out to Sammy because he has always responded to me and communicated with me), I’m just a person you can get ahold of whenever, I’m just a normal person. Sorry for the long winded answer, that shit pissed me off and it was really sad and I’m still kind of processing it to this day and I think I always will. I’m glad that we rallied around each other and young culture stepped up. I made lifelong friends with all of those dudes. I got engaged recently and all those dudes called me and asked me how I was and how my family was. That’s the type of business that we like to do and that’s the type of friendships I want to have and the people I want to spend my time and energy on. I’m just so thankful that everybody is a part of that. That’s the reason why we call it the JF Crew because everyone is a part of it.

Ashton: What are your favorite songs to perform live both with Just Friends and Mom Jeans?

Sammy: So for Mom Jeans, Poor Boxer Shorts has been really hard to play but I’ve kind of conquered that now. That ending with the time signature change was kind of like hard to grasp sometimes I guess. That verse is just so fun. What’s Up? is always incredibly fun. White Trash (Millionaire). Teeth is a really fun song to play which we don’t play too often. Season 9 (ep 2-3) was really fun on that ’21 tour. I was doing a lot of fun dances during that one. (Circus) Clown is fun too. They’re all so fun to play. With Just Friends, Fever is always a fun song to play. I’ve rediscovered my fun for Welcome Mats because it’s a hard song to do sometimes, took some time off from playing to understand the band without it and now it’s a staple in our set forever. Zaza (In The Sun :-)) has been kind of fun now that it’s getting kind of popular online with the TikTok stuff here and there. Stupid is always so fun. I don’t know, every song for Just Friends is fun. If it wasn’t fun I wouldn’t be playing it.

Ashton: I think it’s harder to choose for Just Friends because every song Just Friends puts out has so much energy. It’s hard to listen to those songs, and I guarantee to play them, without smiling.

Sammy: Yeah, exactly.

Ashton: What would you say the future of Mom Jeans looks like? You mentioned this being the fourth tour of this album cycle, so what can be said regarding the realm of new music?

Sammy: So, we have When We Were Young Festival in the fall where we’re doing a Best Buds full play which is cool, and then we have a bunch of demos and we’re going to continue to write and try to put together the best record we’ve ever made. I can tell you specifics like Eric’s gonna go fishing, I’m gonna get married, Bart’s gonna graduate, and Austin’s got solo music. As far as the band Mom Jeans, we have a lot of demos and we’re starting to work. We don’t have any fall plans right now besides that. It changes every day though. There’s nothing I’m hiding. We’re gonna work on this new record and just enjoy each other’s company and have a good time and make music and that’s kind of where we’re at. We’re in a really cool place. We’re gonna make a lot of people happy which is cool and we’re gonna be happy which is really cool.

Ashton: That’s the best thing we can hear. A big thing in this genre is hoping that stalwart bands like Mom Jeans don’t just disappear one day because that’s kind of something that we’re a little used to in the DIY landscape. It’s always good to hear that everyone is happy and vibing.

Sammy: Yeah, and it takes a lot of work.

Ashton: For sure, it’s just good to know that you guys are all on the same page and taking it one step at a time. Just a good thing to hear.

Sammy: Yeah, like I said it takes a little hard work to kind of get on that page. It doesn’t come without taking space and listening and learning and taking everything in. Even with the fans, I know that people were not as hyped on Bear Market as we initially thought. I hope people open their hearts to it one day, it’s just an acoustic record that we had fun with, but we really took that into consideration. Like, something didn’t resonate and what is that. Not in an upset or angry way. This band means so much to so many people that aren’t just the four of us and that’s not something to take lightly. I think I saw this Rick Rubin thing that said “the listener comes last…blah blah fucking blah rich guy this rich guy that”. That man has good records under his belt and is incredible, but I think that there’s a caveat to everything and we would not be the band or the community we are or be where we are today with just completely ignoring and disregarding the people who take their time, love it or hate it, to listen to what we’re doing.

Ashton: It’s good to know that a band that a lot of us are rooting for cares so much. Mom Jeans was the band that got me into DIY. Seeing you guys on the tour with Joyce Manor, Microwave, and The Story So Far got me into a ton of music and I’m forever thankful for Mom Jeans. You work pretty closely with Honey TV, what is your exact status with them?

Sammy: I started Honey TV in my mom’s garage in 2017 or ’18. Back then, I was the one who ended up with all the merch after every tour. I didn’t want to have three big cartels for Grad Life, Just Friends, and Mom Jeans so I just picked a funny name and hosted all the leftover stuff. We’d tie dye it, bleach it, make crop tops, we dabbled in live sessions. It was just an art collective thing that we sold shirts at. COVID happens, can’t sell band merch, everyone has a band t-shirt already. Joel started popping off on Instagram and we put some designs on t-shirts because we had the infrastructure to do it. Some of them were donation based which was super cool because we got to raise a bunch of money for organizations and we still do. Then we did some cool fun shirts that are stuff that we want to wear and our friends want to wear and it just turned into that. So it’s kind of just this art collective, t-shirt/clothing company that we get to work together on. We have an art space in Berkeley where we have our headquarters. My role is pretty abstract. I kind of like almost project manage things here and there and we’re all involved in the creative process. It’s cool and it’s something that’s really fun and something that I’d never thought I would be doing which is owning a clothing company.

Ashton: I wanted to ask what your dream collab was for Honey TV? I know you guys have made merch for Origami Angel, Mom Jeans, Grad Life, but are there any bands or companies that would be a dream collaboration?

Sammy: We did The Story So Far, we’ve done Howdy!, we’ve done Angel Dust, we’ve done a lot of my favorite bands. We’ve done the entire Counter-Intuitive roster one year. Live 100.5 maybe, the radio station where I grew up. Green Day would be cool, I’m a really big Green Day fan.

Ashton: We’re gonna put that out into the universe, we’re gonna get Green Day to see this article, they’re going to lock in.

Sammy: We’re from where they’re from. People always ask us where we’re from and what we’re doing and it kind of clicked with me that we’re from the east bay of California. Not San Francisco (Brond is from south San Francisco and she’s proud of it), but like Contra Costa County, Alameda County, like we’re from where Green Day is from. I hear it in my bass playing too, like that’s what I learned how to play on. Still have never met any of them, Yanko’s met Billie once when he walked into his old guitar store. Me and Yanko saw Green Day at Gilman in 2015 or ’16 at one of their last secret shows like that. Yeah, send it, Honey TV Green Day.

Ashton: Honey TV Green Day, we’re putting it into the universe now. It’s got to happen. We’re to our last question and it’s a pretty simple one. I told a few of my close buddies about this, I told my buddy Harrison (Gordon) and I told some of my buddies who are in a band called TRSH and they said this was the one question I had to ask because they want me to push an agenda and I just want you to answer this and then maybe I will push my agenda afterwards.

Sammy: Dream tour to go to or to play on?

Ashton: Let’s do both.

Sammy: Playing, I would love to do, at this moment of time, I feel like everyone just says Turnstile, right. It’s funny, Avi and I saw Turnstile in 2013 and we were the only people there for them when they opened up for Bane, it was so awesome. But, I think Just Friends, Joyce Manor, and Jeff Rosenstock would be pretty fucking fire, that would be pretty fun. And then, to go to, I would like to see Title Fight play again, that would be a fun tour, doesn’t matter who they bring. I would like to see Summer Vacation and Joyce Manor tour together one day but that will never happen because Summer Vacation’s not a band anymore. Harrison Gordon and hey, nothing would be really cool, that would be really dope.

Ashton: I don’t know if you’re familiar with Fauxchella but it’s a music festival put out by Summit Shack in Ohio…

Sammy: Yeah, in Bowling Green, that kid from Equipment got his amp stolen from it.

Ashton: That’s a big important thing to know about Fauxchella.

Sammy: Yeah, and then this band that I follow on TikTok, Thank You, I’m Sorry posted a vlog about it.

Ashton: I just mentioned it because it’ll have some of the best new DIY bands, doing a little Fauxchella shoutout because everybody’s gonna love this. The agenda I want to push is a Mom Jeans, Just Friends, Harrison Gordon, and TRSH tour agenda.

Sammy: Yeah, we’ll have hey, nothing too.

Ashton: We’ll just do everybody, like twenty bands.

Sammy: We’ll do a Honey TV fest and then it’s like a travelling circus with Prince Daddy and Oso Oso on select dates.

Ashton: Just Warped Tour with all of the best DIY/emo bands.

Sammy: Could you imagine that though? Imagine a music festival that was like Heart Attack Man, Hot Mulligan, Mom Jeans, Just Friends, Oso Oso, Prince Daddy, Skatune, I don’t even know, everybody.

Ashton: I would pay an amount of money that I am unwilling to admit, I would catch a flight.

Sammy: You wouldn’t HAVE TO IT’S A TOUR.

Ashton: A nation-wide VFW tour.

Sammy: We’re gonna do it in parking lots. Set up the stage.

Ashton: Alright Sammy, thank you so much. It was really cool to talk to you, you’re one of the people I look up to in the scene. Always been really cool to have conversations with you and it’s cool to get to deep dive on stuff like this. Congratulations on your engagement, and I think you should tell MOBO to come back.

Sammy: I don’t know any of them personally.

Ashton: Well, you know, you’ve got connections.

Sammy: I got a couple degrees…

Ashton: You’re like 2-3 people away from Modern Baseball, easily. Me, I’m about five so you’re closer than I am. It was nice talking to you, always a pleasure. I hope the tour goes swell and I hope to see y’all in Chicago.

It was tremendously special for me to have the opportunity to speak with Sammy, and being able to write this article is a dream fulfilled for me. There seems to be a bright future ahead for not only Mom Jeans, but also its members, Just Friends, and everything that these people are involved with. To see a friend group get to live their dreams like this and build their way up from DIY is amazing. A huge thank you to Sammy and everybody that read this far :).