I had the opportunity to see Only on Weekends play at the 2300 Arena Bar earlier this year when they shared a bill with DelCobras. Their set was great — fun, tight, and full of energy — and the guys in the band were incredibly friendly and fun to hang out with. I bought their album, Another Wasted Night, at the show, and (as I note in the interview) it’s been on my turntable ever since. I knew the band had been around for a while, so I was very excited when they took me up on my offer to do an interview…

I was checking out your Bandcamp page, and it looks like your earliest release is from 2011. What brought Only on Weekends together, and what keeps you going after all this time?

That 2011 album was definitely instrumental in bringing us together.  It was recorded with Harry’s brother Danny on drums, but he moved shortly after the recording was done.  So after we released it, we posted an ad on Craigslist looking for a new drummer, and that’s how we met Anthony.  We’ve been pretty active ever since, mostly because we love playing music & it’s still fun. It’s that simple.  If it wasn’t fun for us, we wouldn’t be doing it.

Has your sound — or your approach to writing and recording — changed over the past fifteen years?

We can unequivocally say that the latest songs we’ve released are leaps and bounds better than the songs we released 15 years ago.  The music has also naturally evolved as our tastes and inspirations have evolved.  The four of us have a lot of overlap in the music that we enjoy, but we also have unique individual tastes that we bring to the songs.  Jim loves ’80s rock and roll, and you can hear that in the guitar leads.  Harry loves The Beach Boys, and you can hear that in the vocal melodies and harmonies.  We recorded our last four singles at Diver Down Studios with Fred Mascherino and Stephen Angello and couldn’t happier with both the experience and the final products.

Has the lineup remained the same?

The lineup has been the same since 2016: Harry (vocals / guitar), Anthony (drums), John (bass), and Jim (guitar and vocals).

Your band bio describes Only on Weekends as “punk flavored rock and roll.” How’s that different from straight-up punk? Or rock and roll, for that matter?

The genre question is a funny one that we’ve never had a confident answer for.  The closest fit has been “pop punk,” but that never felt 100% right to us . At the end of the day, we landed on describing ourselves as a rock and roll band with punk influences.  We’re also big on meals and drinks so morphing that into “punk flavored rock and roll” felt like it captured some of our personality outside of the music.

And you’re from the Philadelphia suburbs. Are you all from the same town, or is it an all-over-the-place kind of situation?

Anthony actually lives in South Philly.  The rest of us live in different towns in South Jersey, so all very close to each other.

You also do a decent amount of touring. How does that influence your music?

Yeah, a couple of songs from Another Wasted Night come to mind.  “Always Greener” is about leaving someone you love behind to go pursue something else, so that was probably, at least subconsciously, influenced by touring.  There’s also a line in “The Rex Motel” about “drinking room temp Natty Boh” that is a reference to the first show that the four of us played together back in 2016.

When DelCobras played with you guys at the 2300 Arena Bar a little while back, our drummer Nick was especially looking forward to hearing “Seventh Rock from the Sun,” but he only knew it as “this awesome song that goes everybody knows that you’re an asshole, everybody knows that you’re a piece of shit.” Did you have anyone in mind when you wrote it?

Yes, but if we say who it is, it’ll ruin the fun of the song!  But the beauty of those lyrics is that even though that song was written about a specific person for us, anyone listening and singing along can have those exact same emotions about someone entirely different.

The video for that one is hilarious. Who plays the couple?

Our friends Joe and Ansley are the stars of that video.  They were also in our video for “Always Greener,” and our director, Jason Tagmire of @massbroadcast on IG had the idea to bring them back for “Seventh Rock from the Sun.”  Joe was is in an amazing band called Nobody Yet.  We’ve known him for almost 15 years and have played a lot of shows together.  He’ll also be filling in for Jim and playing lead guitar for us for the shows that we have coming up at the end of October.

I really love “The Clock King,” too, and noticed that the phrase doesn’t appear in the song. The same is true of “Seventh Rock from the Sun.” What’s behind that decision?

Yeah, we have a few song titles that are phrases that never appear in the lyrics.  Sometimes it’s just more fun to have a song title that’s an inside joke or reference, rather than lyrics.  The working title for “The Clock King” was “Time,” which is a word that’s sung a lot in the choruses.  But then Anthony came up with “The Clock King,” and since we are all pretty big Batman fans that was perfect.  “Seventh Rock from the Sun” is probably one of our favorite song titles that we’ve ever come up with.  If you know what the seventh planet in our solar system is and the lyrical hook in the chorus, then you can put it together.

Your 2018 album Another Wasted Night has been on my turntable since I saw you guys. Do you have any plans to release any of your new songs on vinyl?

In an ideal world, we’d love to release more physical media, but to be honest, not a lot of people buy it.  That’s why our last four singles have been digital only.  It’s just how most people consume music these days.  We love vinyl though so maybe one day we’ll compile them into a physical vinyl release or maybe do a split with another band but there aren’t any immediate plans to do that.

What’s on the horizon for you?

We have four shows coming up at the end of October that we’re really excited about.  October 23rd – 26th, we are playing Providence, RI; Bethpage, NY; Berlin, NJ; and Pittsburgh, PA.  We’re playing all of these shows with our good friends from Canada … Among Legends.  We’ve played up there with them a couple of times, and this is their first time touring the U.S. so we’re really excited to spend four days hanging out and playing music together.  After that, nothing is set just yet but you know where to find us if you wanna book us.