It’s not everyday that you find parents caring enough to surrender their garage to their son and his friends/bandmates. Fortunately for The Young Rapscallions, the parents of drummer Chris Mintz-Plasse gave him the green light to turn their carport into his band’s personal rehearsal space. The San Fernando Valley-based band formed when four childhood best friends – Taylor Messersmith, Jonathan Sanders, Chris Mintz-Plasse, and Nick Chamian – picked up instruments and began jamming to songs by their favorite bands. After discovering a mutual love for rock and roll, the desire to form an original project spurred and alas The Young Rapscallions was formed.

While the band has been gaining attention due to their A-list drummer, it’s their innovative rock ‘n’ roll sound that has been attracting genuine music listeners and earning them a growing fanbase. The Young Rapscallions have been performing across the US, proving their worth as serious musicians and earning rave reviews for their debut album, “Everything Vibrates.” The band has a new EP in the works, which according to guitarist Nick Chamian demonstrates their recently matured sound, and is planning an upcoming 2012 tour.

The Young Rapscallions invited ChinaShop to the notorious garage to sit in on a rehearsal and to chat about their musical endeavors. On our conversational agenda was the upcoming EP, titles to their songs having nothing to do with the lyrics, and being named after a nickname for Nick’s dog.

Chris and Jon, you’ve known each other since elementary school. When did you start jamming together?

Chris: I’ve known Jon since elementary school but we never jammed. We just kind of existed with each other. Nick and I started jamming like 5 years ago.

Nick: We knew each other in middle school so that was kind of the evolution of all of it. And then we started playing when we were in 10th grade/11th grade, kind of just messing around. So yeah about 5 or 6 years ago.

And then how did you guys all hook up together to form the band?

Taylor: We were all school friends and just kind of started hanging out.

Chris: I fell like you [Taylor] always wanted to learn an instrument and then you became the bass player.

So Taylor, you recently learned the bass then?

Taylor: I started playing bass when he Chris started playing drums.

Jon: All 3 of us actually started our instruments around the same time. I sort of picked it up right when the band started. I’ve always sung in my life but never for a band. Nick’s been doing music for a long time, since he was like 2.

So you formed in 2007 and were busy learning instruments, getting the sound established and all that. Has it been really just in the last year that you’ve been getting more serious about playing shows?

Nick: Yeah. I think within the last year, we’ve just started to scratch at the surface of defining our own kind of sound. The songs that we first wrote, we don’t really play any of those anymore because it was like when we were first learning. They’re very very basic but now we’re starting to really hit it hard. I was also in another band before that was very serious but that broke up so I told these guys that “we’re gonna do it now!” This is the new thing.

Is this the garage where all the rehearsals take place?

Chris: Yeah.

Chris, is this your garage or your parents?

Chris: No it’s mine. I took it over from my parents. They don’t come in here anymore.

Tell me a little bit about the debut album, Everything Vibrates.

Nick: We recorded it like 2 years ago, so it’s kind of old but it’s a good representation of where we were at that time. And that album is a lot of the old songs. I’d say we don’t play more than half of that album.

Taylor: At least half.

Nick: It was a good experience to kind of get everything down and get a full length going. We’re working on a 5 song EP right now that is almost done and is yet to be titled. We’re very excited about that because it’s more of a clearer representation of where we’re at right now.

Do you have an ETA on when you’ll have that done?

Nick: Probably end of the year.

So it’s a very different sound than your previous stuff?

Nick: Yeah. I think so. It’s only 5 songs but we’re trying to do the whole kind of Pink Floyd thing where every song goes into one another so it all just flows – 15 minutes of just continuous sound.

Is there a song on the debut album that you’d say best represents your sound or has it evolved completely past that?

Taylor: No. There’s a couple.

Chris: “Walking Phoenix” and “Crumbum.”

Taylor: And “Tread This Water.”

Chris: Those are some songs that we definitely still play.

How would you describe your music to someone that’s never heard you before?

Nick: We usually just say garage rock.

Chris: Because we play in a garage.

Nick: Rock is a good blanket for everything because every musician who you ask is influenced by different things. It’s hard to pick just one thing because I know that Taylor is influenced by heavy music like The Melvins and I really like a lot of more mellow like Motown and funk music. We all kind of meet in between on all that so rock is just a good blanket to cover everything.

Being friends for a while, have you ever gotten into trouble together? Any good stories from back in the day?

Chris: We’re not badass. We get in a lot of arguments with each other… A lot of tiffs.

Over band stuff or in general?

Chris: Over band stuff. And then we’re away from each other for an hour and then we go see a movie and it’s fine.

Is it true that you were named after a nickname for someone’s dog?

Nick: Yeah that was my dog. I just called him that and then it was a thing for a while that we said and it happened to be a thing that we said around the time that the band was forming and it just kind of worked.

Do people have their own ideas about what the band name means?

Jon: Oh yeah.

Chris: Do they? What do they say?

Jon: They think that we are crazy kids. I mean just taking what a rapscallion is literally.

Taylor: I find that most people don’t even know what a rapscallion means. And I’m like “a ruffian.”

What is “Walking in Phoenix” about?

Chris: Lyrically or the name? Because we have a lot of songs where the title of the song does not matter what the lyrics are.

Jon: We pick our titles in a very random way.

Chris: Whatever sounds cool.

Jon: Whoever has the idea and if we all like it, we’re cool with it.

Nick: We had a song called “Running” and we wrote this song kind of around the time so we called this one “Walking.” We called it “Walking Phoenix” like Joaquin Phoenix, the actor. I think it was around the time where he was doing his whole crazy rapper thing.

Jon: Lyrically, I can go into details but I like to let people think what they want. It’s just about a girl screwing over a guy.

So you make songs and then just kind of roundtable whoever has the most creative title?

Nick: Yeah. I mean it always depends. The songwriting process is very organic in the way that it comes to be. It’s always different.

Chris: I mean there are a lot of times where he comes in with an idea that he recorded on his cell phone and when he records it on his cell phone, he just types in something random to save it in his phone and we take that name.

Jon: A lot of time that sticks. Yeah!

That’s cool! I hate when you listen to songs and the name is continuously repeated over and over again in the chorus.

Jon: Oh yeah. I don’t think we have any songs where we say any of our titles in the songs.

Chris: The lyrics of the song “One Hard Push” are about Nick’s old band, The Harm, that broke up but the title itself is about the last thrust into your lover.

Do you guys have a pretty loyal fan base? Any crazy fans yet?

Nick: We’re still developing that. Within the past year, I’d say we’ve definitely got some more fans for ourselves. We did have these 2 girls at our last show who flew in from London and they were like, “We came to see you.”

Taylor: This is the second time they’ve done that actually.

Jon: And I was like, “You guys must have had like a wedding or something going on.”

Chris: Or they live in Burbank and are just making it up.

What’s the strangest place you’ve played so far?

Chris: I think Seattle was the weirdest venue.

Nick: In Seattle, we played in what turned out to be a nightclub and nobody wanted rock music.

Jon: The DJ stopped and was like “The Young Rapscallions.” We played literally 2 songs and the DJs came back.

Taylor: It was like a smoke break for people.

Nick: But the Stork Club in Oakland was weird. It was just a weird bizarre show.

Why was that bizarre?

Nick: I don’t want to insult anyone in Oakland but Oakland was just kind of a sketchy show for us. And we played probably the worst show of our lives.

What’s your biggest on stage blooper so far?

Chris: I’ve dropped multiple sticks, which is always horrible.

Nick: I had one moment I remember at the Viper Room where I end a solo with hitting all the strings to kind of just make noise and the moment that I hit all the strings, my guitar just fell off the strap and kind of smashed to the floor.

Chris: But everybody after the show was like “That was so badass.”

Nick: It was a good moment but then the guitar was totally fucked up the rest of the set and wouldn’t stay in tune.

Chris: There was one moment when he [Nick] was like, “Taylor, I think you’re out of tune.” And Taylor was like, “No I think you’re out of tune.”

What’s on the agenda for 2012 for the band?

Nick: We’re gonna do a 2-3 week west coast thing. We’re gonna go up to Arizona and Nevada and NorCal where we’ve kind of made a little home for ourselves and continue just writing and playing and releasing music.

Words by Nicole Pajer (@NicolePajer). Photos by Catie Laffoon (@CatieLaffoon).