Held.: “Everything exists in shades of grey. We want colour and beauty, but it takes courage to seek those things out”

When Josh Eppard was 13 years old, he received a lesson from Bad Brains’ legendary guitarist Dr. Know that he didn’t fully comprehend: ‘Don’t believe shit until you hear those sticks clickin’!’

Thirty-something years down the road, the words make more sense. Between life as percussionist for New York prog legends Coheed And Cambria, his solo rap career under the name Weerd Science and a handful of other projects, Josh has learned the hard way that the life of a pro musician is all broken promises and half-baked plans. You only trust a project once you’re up there, plugged in.

“Back then, I was like, ‘Is this guy having a stroke?!’” he laughs. “But he explained to me that he just never believes a band are going to play until he literally hears the drummer counting them in. What he meant by that is there’s so much talking and not so much stuff working out. Every day Bad Brains were getting booked to play a big festival. Every day they were about to sign a record deal. And every day something fell through. I’m at an age now where I know exactly what he meant. You can never just snap your fingers and expect yourself to be a success story with some great band…”

Five years since vocalist Doug Robinson and bassist Sal Mignano of Long Island post-hardcore icons The Sleeping first toyed with the idea of starting something new, and three on from engineer Mike Birnbaum asking their old friend Josh if he’d come up to jam at Applehead Studios in Woodstock, New York, there is wonder and gratitude at a slow-burn project come to magnificent fruition: Held.

“This wasn’t planned,” Sal insists. “Doug and I just had some downtime from The Sleeping, and booked ourselves in a studio. It panned out into something special, much easier than we thought.”

“It takes a lot for me to say I’m interested in something,” Josh nods. “Here, it came from a curiosity of, ‘Who’s playing guitar?!’ I know Doug as a singer. We have a shared ancestry through Woodstock. But I didn’t know he played. It went quickly from, ‘Doug plays?’ to, ‘Holy shit, Doug fuckin’ rips!’”

“We had originally intended to have someone else play guitar, but as soon as I decided to pick it up, it became about the excitement of pressure,” Doug says. “I was creating something dope in a way I never had before. We’re all passionate about the music we make and what we do, but where Josh and Sal’s personalities flow through their instruments, that’s something I had to find.”

Seeing Doug’s low self-confidence, Josh had to strong-arm him into keeping a particularly affecting composition from that very first Applehead jam-session in 2023. Although it had a working title of Rat at the time, it would metamorphose into the title-track from Held.’s debut album, GREY.

“That moment made me so grateful to be in this band with these dudes,” Doug remembers. “That song was the catalyst that I would be the guitarist, but also how I needed to step it up as a player. I wasn’t sure I could do this. But to see how stoked they were made me stoked, too. After recording, at rehearsal, I was like, ‘Is this sick?!’ We are a three-piece, but it feels like a bigger band.”

“It’s so important to work with exactly the right people,” Josh adds, underlining the importance of a good balance of compatible personalities to any project’s lasting longevity. “Some of the best players I ever met drive a bus or work at UPS because they never found that right group to be a part of. Here, there were a lot of obstacles. We were totally self-funded. We’re not Aerosmith or Green Day where we can just snap our fingers and be in a $2,000-a-day studio. The original producers dropped out. We had to take it somewhere else. But it’s been so good to see listeners connect.”

Cheeky commentators might joke that there’s something fitting about a group of middle-aged musicians releasing a record called GREY. Rather than embracing the fading of the light, however, both music and lyrics feel like a celebration of life’s complexity and endless shades of emotion.

“It’s about that concept of how everything in these lives we live is made up of shades of grey,” says Josh. “Figuring out that everything is grey – and how so little is truly black or white – was the least alone I’ve ever felt. We want to find the colour and the beauty, but it takes courage to seek those things out. When I was in my 20s, my friend group would lampoon anyone who felt joy. It was a thing to be made fun of. I realise how cowardly that was now. Yes, Doug wrote these lyrics, but it’s an intimate experience to get behind them and feel those words as if you wrote them yourself.”

“There are grim subjects, but they’re masked in vibrancy, colour and hope,” Doug nods. “I try to be better at things where I’m lacking. I want to be hopeful even if 90 per cent of the time I’m not.”

There’s gratitude between the lines, too. The New York scene of a quarter-century ago was loaded with talent, of course, but to see the success that the members of Held. and their contemporaries have achieved is inspiring. Josh was emboldened to throw himself into a new project after seeing the fulfilment Coheed guitarist Travis Stever had with the heavy-touring L.S. Dunes. And it’s not quite coincidental that their guitarist Frank Iero is on killer Held. single NEW YOU ANTHEM.

“Could we have imagined being here 25 years ago?” Josh asks as he considers how far they’ve come. “No. I feel so blessed and lucky that we all get to play music at this level. Frank has gone on to breathe that rarefied air with My Chemical Romance. As I understand it, when we asked Frank, he was just like, ‘Doug is dope, I’ll do it!’ It wasn’t a thing of, ‘Our label talks to their label.’ It was very human. And he drove into Brooklyn to shoot a video with us. I’m so lucky to know people like these.”

“I’ve known Frank since we were growing up,” Doug continues, flashing back to the guitarist’s days in Pencey Prep. “Knowing what he’s given to the whole world of music means having him on there is cool. But it’s more about the excitement of having people I admire being here in this moment with us when I feel like this is the best thing I’ve ever done. I haven’t had any regrets or things I’d change. That feels like the universe showing us this is meant to be, that this is the time for it.”

Comparatively, GREY’s other big guest comes from far outside their old circle. High Vis’ Graham Sayle wasn’t friends with any of Held. before recording, but Doug and Sal had been fans from afar, and Josh quickly jumped on the bandwagon. When they established UK punk vibes on KNIFEPOINT they hit him up through Coheed’s “straight gangster” manager, and got a zealous response.

“His enthusiasm lifted us,” Josh laughs. “What did he said about the song? That he’d ‘washed it’?”

“He’d ‘rinsed it’,”Doug grins. “Artists come and go with their commitment. I’ve been guilty of it myself. When Graham came back to say that he liked the song we were so pumped. But then we didn’t hear from him for three days. That’s not long, really but it feels like an eternity when you want a guest. On the third day, our manager called us to say that he’d just sent over all the takes!”

Expansion outside their corner of the United States is a priority for Held. Repeatedly over the course of our chat, they underline that this project is here to stay, and that getting to play in the UK is one of their main priorities. They’re older and wiser now, ready to embrace every opportunity.

“Something about Held. feels undeniable,” Josh enthuses. “It would be easy to point to the other bands we’ve been in [Doug was also in Night Verses] but as much as that might get people through the door it won’t get them to buy a T-shirt or really invest in this music. Yet the music does seem to be connecting with people. One of the greatest thrills of my life was the ascension of Coheed. That band hasn’t gotten bad news in 10 years, which is great, but nothing can really match the feeling of the initial spark with fans. It’s deep. It’s nothing to do with commerce or money. It’s an energy exchange that validates all the years of struggle or hardship or being picked on because you’re in a band. Even if it’s just for a second, the world makes sense when people connect to your music in the way that you do. It’s unique. It’s something that doesn’t come around a lot. And I’m so happy that I’m wise enough to see that. I wanted to have another bite at the cherry. But I’d stopped looking. And what a fuckin’ thrill it’s been! It’s made me like I was 16 again, 24 again – or 34!”

“We’ve all got that experience,” agrees Sal. “After all these years we know what to get out of it!”

“That excitement is only making us work harder,” Doug gestures, fizzing with energy the more he thinks how far they’ve already come. “Some people might see that response and start relishing in it. We’re more like, ‘What is the next thing to keep this excitement going?!’ We’ve all already run the thread of this band through the structure of our lives. We want Held. to be a machine that we built from the ground up making music that changes people’s lives. We want to get the three of us to the pinnacle of ‘We did it!’ Because this isn’t the finish line. This is just where it starts.”

So expect greatness. It’s there in flashes already throughout the 10 songs of GREY, from the rampant emotions of DEFENDING THE EARTH across short, sharp centre-point WAVES OF FIRE and plaintive closer EMPTINESS – A SIDE EFFECT. But these excellent players are bought in enough to only build and build from there, stoking the beauty and devastation. Never setting it aside.

“Years ago, I was talking to Chicken from Parliament-Funkadelic,” Josh concludes, bookending our conversation with a pearl of wisdom from another legendary player. “I had referred to something as a ‘side-project’ and he told me never to refer to any project as that. As it happens, that one really was a side-project. But Held. is not. Yes, this is a band with interesting and unique challenges, but we knew exactly what we’ve signed up for. We knew it was gonna ask a lot of us. But having spent so long making this piece of art, what an injustice it would be to not see it through. I see it that we’re all just in two full-time bands, now. And we’re going to take this ride, wherever it goes...”

GREY is released on May 15 via MNRK Heavy.

Read this next:

• Coheed And Cambria: “The end of The Amory Wars is around the corner… I see a conclusion that feels perfect”
• 15 things you probably didn’t know about Frank Iero
• L.S. Dunes: “Making music together is an intimate relationship. We’re not fucking, but we are giving each other all of our selves”