“We had to get a death certificate,” says Travis Mills—one-half of pop-punk duo girlfriends, along with Nick Gross—over a video call from Studio City, about getting the rights to the social media handle that would bear the band’s name.
Before we get into that, however, let’s back up a bit.
Before girlfriends, Mills, who currently hosts The Travis Mills Show on Apple Music 1, had his own successful music career as rapper T. Mills, and dabbled in acting, starring in such shows as Ghosted: Love Gone Missing and Help! I’m in a Secret Relationship!
Gross, formerly the drummer for pop-rock band Half the Animal, and a successful entrepreneur, had recently joined the Los Angeles-based punk band Goldfinger before Mills messaged him on Instagram in 2019, asking him if he would be interested in starting a band.
Gross, who had played a show with Mills in 2015, invited him to his Los Angeles studio, The Noise Nest, to listen to music, talk about what inspired them, and brainstorm ideas for their potential musical collaboration.
“I didn’t go into girlfriends thinking this would be a pop-punk project at all,” says Gross, calling from Laguna Beach, California, where he was born and raised. “But when we first got in the studio to create songs, that’s when we knew immediately this was going to be a project that was this perfect blend of bands that we grew up listening to and using our past influences to bring what girlfriends was to life.”
After a couple of weeks of hanging out, the duo knew they needed a band name. Mills brought a list of five potential candidates to Gross. The first one was girlfriends. The second was Boyfriends.
“We went with the first one because it was the best band name of all time,” says Gross.
“I thought about how funny it would be to be on stage in Arizona or wherever and just be like, ‘Hey, what’s up, Arizona? We’re girlfriends, and it’s just two dudes on stage,’” says Mills, laughing.
Not to be confused with the all-female band the Girlfriends, who scored their only No. 1 hit in 1964 with “My One and Only Jimmy Boy,” or the emo-math rock project by Jerry Joiner.
“There was a TV show named “Girlfriends” as well,” Mills offers.
Gross points out that there was also an Atlanta nail salon with the same name that they had to contend with to be able to use the name on social media, and that’s where the death certificate comes in.
The @girlfriends Instagram page has been dormant since 2013, Mills says. After calling the shop to get permission to use their social media handle, they found out that there was a new owner who didn’t have access to the social media account.
“We’re like, ‘Cool, can you connect us to the previous owner?’ And they were like, ‘No.’ It was because the owner of the nail salon died,” says Mills.
Mills and Gross were instructed by Meta to get a letter from the new nail salon owner and, yes, the previous owner’s death certificate, to prove they had indeed died.
“It was this whole thing, but we got it,” says Mills.
After releasing their first two albums, girlfriends in 2020 and (E)motion Sickness in 2022, along with two EPs, the two are now celebrating their third album, There Goes The Neighborhood, which came out October 24. “It’s like the great unveiling of the last three years, so we’re pumped,” says Gross, his 95-pound Bernedoodle quietly sitting in his lap, out of camera shot.
Mills and Gross teamed up with friend, collaborator, and longtime Goldfinger frontman John Feldmann to produce the album. Feldmann, who’s co-written and produced for Korn, 311, Good Charlotte, and many other artists, is also the head of A&R for Big Noise Music Group, a music label, distributor, and recording studio founded by Gross.
The duo spent two and a half years working on nearly 60 songs before settling on the 16 tracks that make up There Goes The Neighborhood.
Mills says having Feldmann—who produced some of their favorite records growing up, like the Used’s self-titled debut album—collaborate on their new record made the process a much more cohesive one because of their already-established relationship.
“To have that kind of resume and that pedigree…he’s more than a friend, he’s a confidant for our band,” says Mills. “It’s really cool to not have to sit down in a room with someone who doesn’t know the history and thinks they’re going to give you something that really isn’t you. It’s like, let’s just get in the studio, pick up instruments, and see what ideas we have for the day.”
Before they had written any songs, Mills and Gross already knew the album’s title.
Mills says knowing that helped inform a lot of the record.
“The whole theme of the record is the neighborhoods that Nick and I grew up in,” Mills says. “It’s how we grew up. It’s where we grew up. It’s why we grew up the way that we did. I think there’s a nostalgia kind of baked into that…the first time you fall in love, the first time you sneak out, the first time you get your heart broken, the first time you realize that you have a best friend, the first time you realize your parents aren’t superheroes, and the first time you realize that life is kind of fucked up at times, and it’s not everything that you see in the movies or on television.”
Songs such as the anthemic “Garbage,” the guitar-driving “Landslide,” and the yearning-for-the-past “1999” reflect a return to form for the duo, an authenticity and trust-your-gut approach that, according to Gross, was somewhat absent during the making of their second record.
“The intention we brought into this record was to get into the studio every day, and whatever comes out of the studio from that day is what we’re going to live with,” says Gross. “I think for our second album, there was a bit of that overthinking and pulling too much from other places to influence what girlfriends really was and wanted to be.”
Mills says he hopes that when people listen to this album, it brings back the same kind of memories from childhood that it did for them when they were making it. He wants it to be a time machine, a vessel to transport listeners back to their younger selves, to that time of self-discovery. But, he notes, this album isn’t meant to be a bum-you-out type of record meant to leave you yearning for those simpler times in your life because being an adult sucks.
“We can miss these things, but it’s also pretty cool to see how far we’ve come,” he says. “The things that I dreamed about in my bedroom growing up, I’ve gotten to check a lot of that off my list, and it’s pretty surreal. When I think back to lying in my bed with posters on my wall, listening to my favorite bands, to then being able to go on the road with some of them and call some of them friends…the shit I thought would never happen, it happened. And that’s pretty rad.”
