Fort Lauderdale Hardcore Band Gouge Away to Tour With Touché Amoré and Ceremony

Christina Michelle sat at her dining room table eating cheeseless pizza at around 9:45 p.m. on Tuesday night, waiting for practice with her hardcore band, Gouge Away, to start. The next day, she and her bandmates hopped on a plane headed to Seattle where they’ll be performing this weekend at...

By Emily Bloch

May 27, 2016

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Christina Michelle sat at her dining room table eating cheeseless pizza at around 9:45 p.m. on Tuesday night, waiting for practice with her hardcore band, Gouge Away, to start.

The next day, she and her bandmates hopped on a plane headed to Seattle where they’ll be performing this weekend at Rain Fest — a festival featuring bands such as Trapped Under Ice and Burn.

“It feels really surreal!” Michelle said. “I always reflect on the fact that we started the band with the goal to record an EP and play just one show. Once that happened, we could not stop there.”

The Fort Lauderdale-based five-piece formed in 2012, toured throughout 2015, and released its debut full-length, Dies, in February of this year.

Now, the band has reached another milestone: It will be supporting hardcore acts Touché Amoré and Ceremony on a month-long tour starting in New Mexico and ending in Arizona.

&amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://gougeawayfl.bandcamp.com/album/dies"&amp;amp;amp;gt;, Dies by Gouge Away&amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;gt;

And it’s all because Michelle, while in South Carolina, bashfully rambled about her band to Touché Amoré’s vocalist.

“I ran up to Jeremy Bolm and was speaking faster than I could think, talking about how I’m from Florida and I was on tour,” Michelle explained. “We talked a bit, and then I told him I have to give him our shitty demo. I was like, ‘I know you get these all the time. You can throw it away. I just have to give it to you. You understand.’”

Bolm understood. He also exchanged numbers with Michelle and kept in touch. “Then one day, I got a call asking if we were available in August.”

The surrealism is still hitting Michelle. “I put hours and hours of every day into Gouge Away just because I like doing it,” she said. “As much as I enjoy it and couldn’t imagine doing anything else with my time, it’s also really stressful and I’ve put a lot of things on hold for it. It’s an amazing feeling being able to see all the work produce something beyond our dreams.”

As for what’s next for the group, “I have no idea!” Michelle said. “If my next step was a casket, I would definitely be content with that.”

Keep up with Gouge Away on its Facebook page

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