Chris Piquette, guitar and vocalist for Trophy Wives, helped form the Rhode Island band in 2012. Their debut EP “Letting Go” released August of that year, with their highly-anticipated, follow-up EP “One Way Trip To Mars” dropping 11-months later in July 2013. After a summer on Vans Warped Tour, the band is back in the studio with their sights set on a 2016 release of their first full-length album.

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Read the interview highlights below, or listen to SCP Radio’s full-length podcast:

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Sean Ritchie: Coming from Rhode Island, talk about your hometown a little bit — the atmosphere.

Chris Piquette: We’re actually really fortunate being from RI, being a band anyways. We have an awesome music scene. We actually have something that on tour is not as common as in RI anyway — clubs that allow all-ages shows. They don’t have a problem going until 11-12 at night. They’re actually pretty affordable. We’ve been able to book really good hometown shows — good tours come through. We’ve been blessed.

Photo courtesy | Timothy Burling

SR: What would you suggest a first-time visitor to see in the area?

CP: I would hit the beach, because there is really nothing inside the city of Providence that is not encompassed by another city in a better or larger way. Definitely hit the beach.

SR: How does music and travel fit together for you?

CP: It’s extremely cool for all of us to experience cultures from all these different areas. On our April [United States] tour, all of us had our first time in Texas, and all the areas of California. We’ve experienced all these different areas and it’s usually something that people spend thousands of dollars to do. To have the opportunity to do it, not go broke doing it and even have the opportunity to make money doing it is just unreal. It’s extremely rewarding.

Photo courtesy | Eric

SR: Yeah, breaking down the cross-cultural barriers and getting in with the locals, I think, is definitely the way to do it.

CP: Oh yeah, exactly. You need to learn how to interact with different types of people too. Not every crowd is the same. Especially when you’re playing somewhere that’s totally different. It makes you wonder what it’s like to play for another country. Like when a band goes on a world tour, how it is to command a crowd that doesn’t understand your own culture.

SR: Out of all the cities that you performed in, are there any that stand out in terms of crowd atmosphere? Was that inline with the city’s nightlife?

CP: I’m curious about that, because on Warped Tour we didn’t get an experience of nightlife at all. Our nightlife was driving to the next place. Detroit, Chicago and the general Midwest were definitely the most receptive and enthusiastic crowds. It was a good 95 degrees every day. You can tell sometimes that that ways down on people, but in Detroit and Chicago people were ready to go.

Photo courtesy | Mike Boening

SR: Describe Warped Tour’s overall experience. A lot of bands say it’s kind of the boot camp for rock and roll.

CP: Oh yeah, that’s a great description. When you do a normal tour the driving is tiring, but you have time to sleep during the day. The difference between a normal tour and Warped Tour, is Warped is a 24-hour schedule. Some of the nights you literally don’t have an hour off. When you’re a band of five people, only bringing seven with you, you all have to drive and take turns. You’ll find yourself sleeping two hours and getting woken up again to drive.

SR: Outside of Warped Tour, when you get to a new destination, what is the first thing you try to do?

CP: We try to just get settled. We load in as soon as possible. We like to just sit down. When we play a venue that has good food, we can just sit down and dig into it for a while.

SR: When in search for a personal getaway are you more of a beach dude or are you looking for that city nightlife?

CP: We’re all pretty much beach dudes by day I think. We all like to go out and everything, but being musicians we’d all pretty much like to play shows at night. Anytime we have a day off, no matter what we do, we’re all like, “Man it’s too bad we’re not playing tonight.” We’d rather play a show every day and just hit the beach during the day. On our US tour, we found a lot of time to do a lot of sightseeing and all that good stuff. I hope that enthusiasm lasts the more we tour.

SR: Everyone has a bucket list. Are there three destinations that stand out that you’re dying to see?

CP: For one, we were talking the whole time we were in California about doing a tour that goes right up the Pacific Coast Highway, playing all the major cities there. We only played a couple of shows in California. Another major one is Japan. We’ve had a few of our friends bands, A Loss For Words and State Champs, go over there. We’re dying to follow in their footsteps over there. That would be cool. Going down under to Australia is another one.

Photo courtesy | Jason James

SR: A lot of artists have said they pull some of their inspiration from being on the road. Being in transit gives you time to think and regroup. Can you say the same for you guys?

CP: Absolutely! We all wish we had more time in our regular lives to be focusing on the band. We wish we had more time to sit around and song write together. For Sam, our lead vocalist and I, we live a good 45-minutes apart at home, which isn’t enough to keep us from working together, but it’s not like every night we can meet up, talk about our thoughts and get some lyrical stuff together. In the van we can actually talk about things like that. It gives us time to develop.

SR: Do you have a personal getaway planned?

CP: Personal getaways would be beautiful, but we’re all pretty focused on the band right now. We’re excited to be pretty busy. We have Take It Easycore Fest, which is in North Carolina, a pop-punk festival at the end of August. We’re going up to Canada to play KOI Fest in September. Besides that we’re starting to record our full-length [album], which will probably be next year sometime before it’s completed.

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For more on Trophy Wives visit their Facebook page:

Additional thanks to Warped Tour: