The Bites are a buzzy explosion of rock-and-roll-soaked happiness with a splash of therapy just to keep things real. This LA band is what timeless rock meets 2026 sounds like, and they are excited to be bringing more music our way. I was lucky enough to snag some time with Jordan and Jono to talk about their Juicy debut album (Squeeze), life in LA, touring, and diving emotionally deeper with their new self-titled album out September 18th!
MSM: I listened to your first album, and it's super fun.
Jordan: “Thank you. Thank you.”
Lana: “It sounds like you did a lot of touring in the past few years, right?”
Jordan: “Yeah, most of ‘23 and all of ‘24, we were on the road. We were in England twice, we did a cruise, we toured the States, I think 4 or 5 separate times.”
Jono: “We lost count, for sure. But yeah, I mean, I think we were on tour for a piece of almost every month from January to October in '24.”
That's a lot. Did you take a little break before you started really working on the next album, or did you just go right in?
Jordan: “We thought we were gonna be more on the road in October/November, so we weren't really in the headspace of, ‘alright, let's take a break, let's start writing’. It just kind of fell into our laps. Then January rolled around, I was like, oh, shoot, we need to make a new album.”
In my day job, I'm a therapist, so I'm always interested in how you guys manage the stress of touring, the schedules, and how much life changes for you. How are you holding up?
Jono: “I mean, therapy's helpful for that.” (laughs)
Jordan: ” Yes, correct.”
Jono: “I don't know, I mean, one thing that's really good about this band is we're pretty open about talking about things that are problems. You know, things that come up on tour or issues we're having. We get together every week when we're in LA, and then obviously on tour we're always together. I think communication is really strong in this band, and we have a very strong bond. We're open to having the hard conversations sometimes. I think also just playing shows is very cathartic for us. I know there've been plenty of days when we've been really not having a good day. And then we go play a show, sell some merch, meet some fans, and then everybody just feels better, you know? A great night of merch can honestly fix a lot of things!” (laughs)
It's so true, right? Because you get that reward piece. You're like, oh, shit, this is working. We're doing good. This is fun!
Jordan: “[It’s] the thing that you realize that you're there to do, if that makes sense. Because when you're on the road, there's no stop. You go to sleep, sure, and you're lucky to sleep 6 hours, but when you're on stage, that's the reason why we're on the road. That's why we're doing the thing.”
Jono: “Definitely.”
Jordan: “To grab my microphone and sing and feel the energy back, that's what we're doing it for. [It’s] so rewarding when you actually get to that part of it, you know? [In] my day job, I'm a bartender. When I go there, I'm making drinks the whole time; that's what I do. There's not, like, a specific moment where it's ‘oh, this is the 12 minutes that I look forward to’ at work, you know?’
Like, 'this is why I became a bartender! It was all for this moment!' (laughing)
Jordan: “Exactly! (laughing) Literally. No, it's very rewarding finally getting to be on that stage. Being on the road can be stressful, but It's not the entire thing. It's just that there are roadblocks, like with every career and path. It's relieving getting to exert all that energy and remind yourself why you're doing the thing that you love to do.”
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I'm sure when you’re on the road, things can come, and you can write notes down, but it's a separate process, a separate headspace to be in when writing and recording an album, right?
Jono: “Oh, I think for sure. I don't know if we've ever done any writing really on the road.”
Jordan: “Yes, it is. Yeah, we've never sat down and been like, we're gonna, you know, jam something out while we're on the road. We had a little time in England; we had 12 days off between festivals and touring, and we were tired. Our team was really focused on putting out covers at that point, so we were kind of in that headspace. But, yeah, we're always kind of writing in our heads, like, coming up with ideas, but haven't really been, like, all four of us sitting down in Boise, Idaho on a day off, and write; we're always just like, yeah let's kind of reset, refresh. Eat a vegetable, you know?” (Laughing)
Jono: “Yeah, we need the days off. I think it's especially difficult for us on tour too, because we're the only four people on tour with us right now, especially in the US and England. We usually have a TM. But, you know, when you have four people doing the jobs of everybody on a tour, that takes up your entire mental energy, creative energy, social energy, everything. We really don't have the time. We can't really do it in the van, and from 1 or 2 p.m. until 1 or 2 a.m, we're literally working all day. So, it always sounds nice to be like, ‘oh, we're in a cool place, let's sit down and try to write something’, but usually when those days come, we end up sitting in the hotel room and playing Mario Kart or something, you know?”
Yeah, and that makes sense.
Jono: “But I think, that being said, we do a lot of talking about where we want the band to go, how we want to evolve, what we want the next album to be, so I think we do a lot of really good thinking and ideating about what the next project should be, what we want to have coming up. When we're on tour, that's the only time when all four of us are always together, and I think we do a lot of looking forward and planning. At least that’s me speaking personally. I did the majority of the writing that I contributed to the new album between May and July of ‘24.
That was after 2 or 3 tours that year and a bunch of tours in 2023. And I think we had a little bit of time off. You know, all the talking about what we wanted to do and talking about where we wanted to go and stuff like that- when you had that moment to sit down and actually work on it, it just started like pouring out of me. I think I wrote like 50 demos or something in 70 days or something crazy. I think that tends to be more the rhythm that we've gotten into. It is just sort of like, we tour, we get all this experience, we talk about a lot of things, and then it sort of just pours out of us very quickly.”
"Sometimes when you hear it back, for the first time through, that magic just goes through your whole body, and it's really exciting." - Jordan Tyler
Jordan: “Yeah, I would say there were three separate phases of songwriting for this second record. It was all the stuff post-album one that maybe didn't make the cut or I just couldn’t finish, and then there was what Jono said. Maybe a 6–12-week period in the summer, in between tours, where we were like, ‘alright’. And then when we got back from England, um, at the end of September, we had all this time on our hands. We really shifted to our writing headspaces, and we had that particular batch of songs. So it just became a melting pot of the times in our lives. We got very different songs from it, which is cool. That’s why this next album, the Bites 2, is so… I don't want to say vast, but there are a lot of different sounds and styles in only 11 songs, you know?”
Yeah, I've heard three of them so far. Really awesome.
Jono: “Thank you.”
Jordan: “Cool. Thank you. Thank you. Awesome.”
Yeah, it's great! So, in the process of recording, when you guys get to a place where you're going to record an album, what's that like for you? How does that feel?
Jono: “Well, if I may, Jordan, I feel like we've had two vastly different experiences with both albums. The first one was done in the pandemic. Was it in that bedroom, Jordan, or your last apartment?”
Jordan: “Uh, part of it.”
Jono: “Part of it was recorded right there, where Jordan's sitting.”
Jordan: “Yeah, we have this ongoing joke that Mark, our drummer who predominantly produced our first album, has a home studio, but all of it was recorded in my room.” (laughing) And it was actually in every single apartment that I've lived in in LA. This is my sixth place. Every single apartment was utilized. So, technically, there are, like, 6 different home studios.”
Yeah, I was going to say, you just make your home your home studio. (laughing)
Jordan: “Perfect. Exactly.” (laughing)
Jono: “We always joke, because our label always talks about Mark’s studio in LA, but Mark's studio in LA is Jordan's bedroom.” (laughing)
Jordan: “Yeah.” (laughing)
Jono: “Um, so the first album was very different, I mean, it was, like, full lockdown for the most part. The second album was a lot more ideal. We had this batch of something like 25 songs that we were like, ‘okay, any of these could make the album’. We started rehearsing in February of 2025, I believe. We would do two blocks of rehearsals a week, like, get together, play all the songs, and, I think that was really sort of the glue where a lot of this stuff came together. We're predominantly a live band; we just love to go out and play. I think that's where a lot of our chemistry comes from. And so, in rehearsal, that's where we whittled it from 25 down to 16 songs that we ended up recording the arrangements of, and a lot of the parts changed. We had a really awesome opportunity in between rehearsals to go and play the Monsters of Rock Cruise in 2025. We got a chance to go and play some of these songs live, see how they connected with people, see how they felt for us.”
Jono: “And that was honestly such a fortunate experience to be able to rehearse that much. We did something like 100-plus hours of rehearsal with a little bit of playing in between. Um, and that's where the songs really came together. Then after that is when our producer Keith came in and really masterminded the rest of the record. We went to his studio, sat down for two days, and got all the tones for the record ahead of time, so that when we were recording, we could just go. Then in May of last year, we recorded every day, 12-hour days for the whole month until we had an album, you know? And it kind of felt like it was magic in that one month, because everything sort of came together so quickly. We recorded all 16 songs in about 16 days. It was because we had done a year and a half of writing and 100-plus hours of rehearsal, got to play some of the songs, so we were so well-rehearsed and we knew the songs so well, and what they meant, how we wanted them to come across.”
Yeah. That's interesting. You did so much of the groundwork beforehand that then, the flow part could be easier and more fun and smoother.
Jordan: “It was a lot. There were long days, and it was labor-intensive, but it was enjoyable. It wasn't a chore. We were tired by the end of the days, but we all had each other's backs, and we knew the product was turning out awesome. So, it was just…Sometimes when you hear it back, for the first time through, that magic just goes through your whole body, and it's really exciting.”
Yeah, that's awesome.
Jono: “Yeah, it's funny, I feel like some of my favorite times listening to the album was the day we finished recording it. Listening to it that night, it wasn't even mixed, it wasn't edited, but we were like, ‘shit, this sounds really good’, you know? That was always really gratifying every day to be like, ‘oh my god I can't believe we just did this today’, you know? But in reality, we didn't just do it that day, but kind of felt like it, you know?”
Yeah, yeah, it's when it all came together, kind of like what you're saying about once you're on stage, you're like, this is why I'm doing it. It all came together.
Jordan: “There we go. Yes.”
Jono: “Absolutely.”
So, yeah, I mean, you guys have a bluesy touch, but also absolutely rock. Kind of a 70s, 80s rock sound. But you’re not just a throwback or like a revisit of a different time. So, I want to hear more from you guys about your sound.
Jordan: “Yeah, I mean in the 7 years that we've been a band, we've lived approximately a thousand different lives each, you know, which is really cool, because we're all growing, and we're all maturing, and living through natural crises, or pandemics and whatnot, you know? But, with album one, we were really chasing that kind of old-school rock and roll sound. Not necessarily to sound just like it, but to relive that magic that we unfortunately didn't get to experience, but that we grew up with, that our folks showed us, and we discovered ourselves. As we started writing the second record, we were definitely not letting go of our rock-and-roll roots, but we were trying to make things sound more present. We were well aware that it was 2025, and we wanted to write an album for 2026, you know?”
Jordan: “The cool thing about rock is that you're going to get inspiration, or others will get inspiration and influences from listening to you. So, in our heads, it's just rock music, but somebody might hear it and go, ‘oh, that reminds me of Van Halen. This might remind me of Foo Fighters.’ This might remind me of maybe a band that we don't even know, and we go, ‘oh, interesting, I never would have thought about that’. That's the really cool part about rock music. It's really up to the listener to be like, ‘oh, this is how this makes me feel, this is what I find familiar.’”
Yeah, so some of the nostalgia comes into it, but also, they're discovering you, which is a new thing.
Jordan: “Exactly. We're trying to be a part of the future.”
Jono: “Yeah, definitely. Exactly. You know we definitely don't shy away from the fact that we take a lot of influence from a lot of those bands. I mean, I'm sitting behind a Jimi Hendrix poster right now.”
Jordan: “Yeah.”
Jono: “But, I think for us, it's like, we all kind of moved here [LA] relatively around the same time. We all lived around Sunset Strip, and Jordan and I met at the Viper Room, you know, where people would go to dress up and pretend it's the 1980s. I think we really enjoyed that when we first got here. That definitely made a very strong imprint on our first album. And then I think for us, when we actually got out on tour and really started playing around the world, we really, I don't know, just opened our mind up to so many other things. When we listen to music in the van, very rarely would we listen to something that I think people would expect us to listen to.
We have such a vast amount of influences that when it came time to make the second album, we really wanted to do something that didn't feel like we were doing it just for the nostalgia, but something that we could feel like we were building on the shoulders of the people that we took influence from. We really made a strong point to decide that we don't want to be a nostalgia act. We don't want to dress in things that feel like costumes. Not that there's anything wrong with bands that do that. But for us, we're four guys that really like to live in the present moment. I think we enjoy the time that we live in, and we wanted to make an album that felt like it was current, you know?
I think there's music all over the industry that either sounds rock or doesn't, that's influenced by a lot of these artists. I've talked to a lot of rappers that say their fashion is influenced by these old school rock and roll guys or their attitude, or you know, so many rappers call themselves rock stars. The culture of it is so pervasive in a good way as well. I think we realize we can make rock music that's current and that talks about things that are relevant today and not something that was relevant to a time before we were alive. I mean, we're all guys from the 90s, so I can't really speak to what was happening in the 80s or the 70s or the 60s without reciting history. We want to tell our own experiences and not just recite the histories of it, so that was a really big point for us on this new album. Using modern production techniques and a wider influence of sound. And, you know, I think we're really proud of the album that we came up with.”
Yeah, it's a different feel. I get it. There are bands that are much more obviously and intentionally a nostalgic sort of sound. It's a different vibe, and there's something maybe more authentic about speaking from what your experience actually is, in the time that you're living.
Jono: “Definitely, and I think also, like, that's what our influences were doing. I mean, one of my favorite bands is Guns N' Roses. I don't think when they were writing their music that they were thinking, ‘ let's sound like the Beatles’. I think they probably took a lot of influence from the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Queen, but you listen to them, and they don't sound like they're trying to be Queen. They sounded very much like themselves and relevant in 1985 when Appetite for Destruction came out, for example. I think we want to have the same impact where we're pushing the genre forward. You know, we're all young guys that are really passionate about rock music and the culture of rock music and the history of rock music.”
Jono: “But the best way to keep that alive is to continue pushing it forward and not just live in the past. There are genres that are very much stuck in the past, where the top 10 albums are still albums that came out 50 years ago. And, in a way, maybe we feel a responsibility to keep pushing that genre forward because it's the music that we love. We also love other music, but, you know, I think that's the core thing that unites all of us: we love that music and that culture.”
Yeah, absolutely. In the 90s, a lot of bands were really about, ‘it doesn't matter what other people think, it doesn't matter what other people want us to do, we're gonna do this, because this is how we feel’, like, out of the Seattle scene, too.
Jono: “For sure.”
Yeah, I love it. I love that you guys are pushing it forward because then we get to listen to new rock music, which is great. So yeah, sort of along the same lines, it sounds like you guys- I don't know if matured is the right word, but started to get through the party-all-the-time lifestyle into something that might have a little more depth.
Jordan: “Yeah, depth is a great word. A lot of us moved here around the same time, and it was new to us, you know? I'm from Chicago originally; John is from New York; the other guy is from Boston. This was a new city for us, and we wanted to see the fruits of the new city and just try the local flavors and everything. It was fun and exciting at first, and then we're doing all this stuff, we're working, and it turns into, like, ‘alright, now we're on the road,’ and we're doing this in other places, and, I don't know if it got old, but kind of like what Jono was saying, it felt like almost it was too costumey. We just had to go back to being ourselves. We're four guys. We're people with feelings and emotions. So, I think we just got a little bit more vulnerable on this record, while still maintaining the power and the energy and the fun that caused the first album to even be a thing.”
Yeah, I heard that. I was thinking that when I was listening to a few songs on the most recent album. About how the themes sound like they might have a little bit more to them, complicated relationship dynamics and longing and things like that. But also it was still fun to listen to, and I didn't feel like it was all that heaviness. There was a nice balance of the two.
Jordan: “For sure, yeah.”
Jono: “Yeah, I think for us, one of the core tenets of this band is fun and escapism and, you know, we are very much trying to spread a positive message and excitement all over the world. We're not brooding or trying to be necessarily dark, you know? I love a lot of dark music, but, I think for us in this band, it's an expression of ourselves and we are very positive and like to have fun. At least that’s my impression. I think some of the party attitude stuff is sometimes taken a little bit out of context. It makes us sound like we were doing drugs and all these other things, which I don't think was ever true. But because of where rock music was when a lot of our influences were making music, that's what people assume. But I think for us, it was more that we like to go out, have novel experiences, enjoy making friends, being social, have a few drinks and enjoy just being around people and socializing in a beautiful city like Los Angeles.”
Jono: “And I think when it came time to make the new record, we felt like we wanted to express that more, you know, tell our own story a little bit better. Um, I think it's easy for people to sort of commandeer an artist or a person or whatever, and the story gets told for them. I think we felt like some of the things, maybe, were a little overblown on the first record, and we wanted to give a bit of clarity about who we are and what we're actually about. And with that came a little bit more depth and being a little bit more vulnerable about talking about things that we're actually going through. Mostly every one of our songs is about a real experience that we had, or at least related to an experience we or somebody else we know had. I think authenticity is something that's really important to us, so telling our story in a true way is sort of the goal on this album. I hope people start to see the bigger picture of who we are as individuals and also as a band through the story that we're telling now.”
Yeah. And that's why I love doing stuff like this, because it is important to hear from you guys about where the songs come from and what you want people to know about you. Actually, my next question was going to be, and of course only to the level that you're comfortable sharing, were there things that happened in life that you guys were like,’ Hey, it's time. Let's start getting more real about what we're writing and put some of this out there?’
Jordan: “I mean, obviously, we've all gone through life as people with ups and downs, but a song like Hold On, for example, it’s not the next single, but the next, next single, is probably one of the more vulnerable songs on there. And while it might not have had to do with one specific moment, the song is all about, ‘hey, hold on. Even if you're at your lowest, keep pushing, don't let go, you got this.’ It's very uplifting. It didn't necessarily have to do with one thing, but, you know, sometimes you just have one of those days where you're just like, ‘oh man, my toes are off the ledge right now, I'm just falling or crumbling, you know, but it's just like hold on, keep going. You know, you got this.”
Absolutely.
Jono: “Yeah.”
Jordan: “And that could be anybody's experience with relationships or your job, your financial situation, abuse problems with substances or something, just keep holding on; it's going to get better. It's going to work itself out. “
Jono: “Yeah, and it's a core human feeling and emotion, you know, and I think we talked a lot about how can we imbue more, real, base emotion into our music. Things that anybody with the human experience can relate to. We're obviously making rock music, and in general, rock music is for rock fans, but we like to think that we can be a band that anybody could come and enjoy. We're not so steeped in one specific niche of the culture that only a certain sect of the population can relate to it. We really want to talk about topics that are core to the human experience, and just package them in the music we like to hear. When it came time to make the second album, that was, a huge topic of conversation for us. How do we talk about things that are real to us and real to people, and, how can we really connect with people on things that are greater than just music itself?”
Yeah. I mean, I can say that the bands and artists that I love the most are the ones that put it all on the page, so to speak, or the album. And it's just so emotional and so relatable, and really powerful.
Jono: “Definitely.”
Does it feel different, harder, or maybe not, to have music out there that's more personal and that other people are going to interpret and critique?
Jordan: “Oh, no, I want that! I want people to hear something that I feel, or that we feel, and go, ‘Oh, shit! Me too!’ That's a huge goal. If I witness that happen or somebody tells us that that happened, it’s a good feeling. That’s an achievement for us.”
Jono: “Yeah, I would agree. I think, if anything, it's our preference. Sort of like what I was saying earlier, I feel like we're doing a better job telling our actual, authentic story, which is something we want to do, and made a very concerted effort to achieve. In general, I feel like there's power to sort of putting it out there and letting people make what they want of it. We're not hiding behind some kind of mask or pretending in any kind of way. We're just being very genuine and honest and authentic. Not only do we feel like that's something that other people could connect with, but maybe, is almost like a catharsis for us to get it out there. So I think we all agree that we're much more excited to be talking about these topics and being even more authentic. I think as we move forward and we get better at writing together, and we have more experiences, we want to keep doing that more and more so we can relate to people and tell our true story. It's exciting.”
Yeah, I love that. And I hear the excitement in you guys. It's really great. So many people that I talk to are like, ‘Oh my god, this song saved my life’. Or ‘I was going through this really hard time, and I listened to this band on repeat’, it's really powerful. Do you guys have plans after this? What's next?
Jordan: “The album comes out September 18th!”
Jono: “Yeah, I mean, we have a lot of exciting things coming up. We have another single coming out in a couple of weeks, and then the album, um, shortly after that. We're gonna do an album release show, so anybody that's in Los Angeles, check us out on Instagram, our website, Facebook, whatever, and come to the show. We will definitely follow up the album with a bunch of touring, playing everywhere we can, meeting everybody we can. We can't talk about all of it, so follow us on social media, and you'll see.”
