A couple hours before Hit The Lights went onstage to preform for the San Francisco tour date of the 2009 AP Tour, we got a chance to sit down with guitarist, Omar Zehery for an interview. Throughout the interview, other tour and band mates came and joined in on our meeting.

PreachElectric.Net: Has there been a significant difference in your band since you’ve changed vocalists?

Omar Zehery: The kids have been really cool with it. One of the main reasons we decided to go with Nick as the singer was because we put up a cover song with Nick singing and people messaged in with “This is perfect. Why don’t you be a band again?” So that was a big reason. I thought it was really cool, kids responding to it. The last year has been incredible because everyone is super stoked on the new record and the live show. I feel like it presented a lot of opportunities, it’s almost like it’s meant to be.

PE: What do you guys eat on tour?

Nick Thompson: I dunno. Salsa! Chips! And salsa!

OZ: We like Taco Bell. The fresco menu there is delicious. Peanut butter and jelly…

NT: Applebees!

OZ: Chips and salsa.

PE: What tour has been the best for you?

OZ: Every tour has their moments. This tour is awesome. I’d say that this is one of my favorite tours we’ve done in a while. We knew A Rocket to the Moon, who are opening. We knew the Maine kind of through friends, we kind of met a few dudes here and there. We knew 3oh!3 and Family Force 5 kind of through passing. This, we’re like ten days into it, and it’s so rad because everybody is getting along and hanging out.

PE: What is your writing process like?

OZ: It’s pretty easy, somebody comes up with the initial idea, then we all just add onto it until it sounds good.

PE: What are your future plans as a band? 

OZ: After we get done with this tour, we’re going to Australia, maybe, but Japan for sure. After that we come back and do Warped tour. After that we do a headlining tour, a full U.S. headlining tour, it’s going to be the first one we do on this record. We’re going to be writing all this year, and hopefully record at the end of this year. There’s just so much to do.

NT: We have an EP coming out this summer, for Warped tour.

OZ: See, that’s why I shouldn’t do interviews by myself.

NT: We don’t want any people to know about it, we want to keep it to ourselves. 

OZ: It’s going to have two cover songs, two acoustic versions of old songs, and two new songs that we recorded in L.A.

Interview conducted by Ali Carcache.