The Dreaded Diamond took some time out before their show at Luigi’s Fun Garden to speak with Preach Electric about, well, everything.

Interview conducted by Kristin Allen

Photo by Alina Edwards

]]> http://www.preachelectric.net/2010/08/30/the-dreaded-diamond-interview-not-finished/feed/ 0 http://www.preachelectric.net/2010/08/24/this-century-interview/ http://www.preachelectric.net/2010/08/24/this-century-interview/#comments Wed, 25 Aug 2010 00:46:32 +0000 Kaitlin Higgins http://www.preachelectric.net/?p=1462
Just before their show in Foxboro, Massachusetts in support of The Maine, Joel Kanitz and Ryan Gose of This Century sat down with PreachElectric to spill about the tour, zombie apocalypses, and band mate Sean’s strange fear of birds.

PreachElectric: Could you introduce yourselves, please?
Joel Kanitz: I am Jo-el, and I sing.
Ryan Gose: My name’s Ryan and I play drums, and we play in a band called This Century.

PE: How has the tour been going so far?
Joel: Amazing!
Ryan: Splendid!
Joel: Splenda! It’s been awesome, nothing but good times, the best tour that we’ve ever been on, for sure, because… I mean, we’ve known The Maine for quite a while now, and Austin Gibbs, who’s also on the tour. So it doesn’t really feel like your normal tour where you have to meet the bands and try and become friends and lie and say you like the same bands as them, or secretly steal their catering…
Ryan: Yeah, we actually do like the same bands. And the fans are incredible. The Maine’s crowd is amazing, and they actually seem to like us and are they’re very receptive to our music.

PE: So do you think you’ve acquired a lot of new fans while you’ve been on this tour?
Both: Definitely.
Joel: I think a lot of these kids have heard of the band because The Maine have talked about us before, but they’ve never really taken the time to check us out. Now us being here playing shows for them… I think it kind of gives them that extra, you know, little nudge.
Ryan: Yeah, totally.

PE: Speaking of The Maine, they’ve recently released a new album, [Black & White]. What do you think of it?
Joel: I love it.
Ryan: I think it’s awesome.
Joel: I love it. I don’t want to say I like it better than their first one – I liked their first one – but this one it has a more mature sound. It’s more up my alley.  A lot of it has a classic rock feel, which is really cool.

PE: What have you been doing to keep busy on your days off?
Joel: We had a day off in Boston yesterday. We went clubbin’, you know. We learned a little bit about the people in Boston.
Ryan: We saw a man do 40 pushups in 25 seconds.
Joel: I bet this guy that he couldn’t do 40 one-handed pushups in under 30 seconds, and he was like, “All right, give me five bucks if I do it.” He did it so I had to give him five bucks. I remember saying like, “Dude you should fight someone. I bet you could fight anyone.”

PE: If you were a character in the movie Inception, what would your totem be?
Joel: I know exactly what mine would be.
Ryan: Mine would be… Why don’t you go first?
Joel: My totem would be my stuffed animal that I’ve had since I was a baby. And you know how they get beat up and kind of worn down? It just has this specific feel to it… Yeah, mine would probably be the stuffed animal.
Ryan: I just remembered, probably my favorite item of all time that I keep in my safe deposit box is a 1992 Pogs slammer. It was given to me by my great grandfather.
Joel: Passed down from generation to generation?
Ryan: Yeah.
Joel: They were big on Pogs during the Great Depression.
Ryan: It’s made out of platinum and I can’t let it leave me. That would be it. Yep, Pogs slammer.

PE: What’s one of the places you’ve always wanted to travel, or tour, even?
Joel: Australia. Sydney, Australia.
Ryan: Japan.
PE: Do you think you’ll get a chance to go there?
Joel: Yeah!
Ryan: Without a doubt.
Joel: I think we’re pretty determined to get there.
PE: Do you know of any fans that you have there?
Joel: Yeah, we have a good grip of Japan fans, and Australian fans, too, and New Zealand, I know.
Ryan: You can’t even hold them all in your hand.
Joel: Yeah, we definitely have fans in both countries.

PE: Do you have any guilty pleasure music, or music that you might be a little bit ashamed to admit to having on your iPod?
Joel: The song playing right now. (Indicates “Shake It” by Metro Station, and begins singing off-rhyhtm). Shake it, shake it, shake it!
(Both begin singing.)
Joel: Oh wow. I don’t even know if I have any guilty pleasure bands anymore. I’m pretty open about what I’m listening to. I used to have guilty pleasure bands like Nsync, but I mean, I jam Nsync every once in a while, a little Backstreet Boys. I appreciate a good pop song.
Ryan: Yeah, I don’t have anything that I think would be guilty pleasure music. I mean, I like a lot of different music.
Joel: You name it, I probably like it.
Ryan: Or hate it, actually.
Joel: Ryan’s really big on Bowling For Soup; he really likes that band.
Ryan: Yeah, the first time I heard that band…
Joel: Yeah, they’ve just got it all. They’ve got the sound, the look, everything.
Ryan: They’ve got the girls.
Joel: Yeah!
Ryan: Yeah. Who’s Bowling For Soup?
(Both laugh.)

PE: If you woke up one morning to find the world in an apocalyptic, zombie-infested state, what would you do?
Joel: Oh wow. Uhm…
Ryan: Plane to a deserted island. I would have to… I wouldn’t know how to fly a plane, so actually I would have to take a boat. But I figure if I can like… Oh, I would go to an island with a small population, so they…
Joel: How fast are these zombies that we’re talkin’ about? Like normal, your standard zombie that kinda walks slow? Oh, uh, well I mean, I guess if it was like, if I was like, walking around the city, you know, and all of a sudden I saw zombies, I think it would be by foot, and then I’d probably head home and try and figure out a game plan, with maybe helicopter somewhere?
Ryan: I’d pull a Bill Murray and uh, paint my face like a zombie, go golfing, just pretend like I’m a zombie when I walk around with them.
Joel: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Nice!

PE: You recently released a new single called “Hopeful Romantic.” Could you tell us a little bit about it?
Joel: Yes! We are hopeful romantics. We’re all just a bunch of hopeful romantics. But the story behind it is, uhm, it was a guitar riff that Sean had and like a little falsetto-y kind of melody, and then we kind of put it on the back burner for a little while. We went in to record – which, by the way, we probably wrote about 80 songs and threw ‘em all away – and we finally got to the studio and Hopeful Romantic, that riff, came back and we dug it, and our producer dug it and we decided to kind of work on that song and develop it and it became a really fun, quirky, flirty little song, and we’re really happy with the way it came out.

PE: You could say that the “scene,” for lack of a better term – whatever “scene” you would put yourself in –
Joel: (laughing) I would say, grindcore, metal, hip-hop, country…
PE: So, this music scene has blown up quite a bit in the past couple of years. How do you set yourselves apart and stay grounded?
Joel: We started out kind of a grassroots band. I mean it was more about musicianship over, you know, just what we look like and neon pants and stuff like that just wasn’t our thing. And we started out as a sort of jazzy band, so we still have a little bit of that element.
Ryan: We’re always trying to find new, interesting ways to present a song and Sean’s really big on trying new sounds and riffs, guitar riffs, and stuff, and it just kind of opens up…
Joel: Yeah, we’re constantly trying new, crazy ideas, even if they’re not good. We still try, and I think that kind of shines into the music. Hopefully that sets us apart. I’m not sure if it’s enough, but I hope it does.

PE: What social networking sites do you like/use the most to keep in touch with your fans?
Joel: I love Twitter. I LOVE Twitter. I am tweet crazy, honestly. I thought it was stupid at first, but…
Ryan: I recently started telling fans to come to a website I like to use called eHarmony. It’s a great way to meet people.
Joel: Ryan just goes on dates with all our fans.
Ryan: I’m big on Facebook, Formspring, and Twitter.
Joel: (laughing) Those are the three Fs! We do MySpace, too, just because you’ve got your music player on there, and it’s just something you can’t get anywhere else. Tumblr is another huge one. Reblogging and all that stuff is great. Our fans love to do that.
Ryan: We’re REALLY big on Yahoo.com.
Joel: We’re really big on MSN, the front page of MSN. We’re on there a lot. CNN, the news… (Laughing) We’re trying to figure out Facebook. We’re still new to the Facebook band thing.
Ryan: Oh, wait! Also, on tour, one thing we’re doing is, since we’re not home to look in our P.O. boxes for letters, we have a mailbox that we keep on our merch table where fans can give us letters.
Joel: Yeah, we have pieces of paper on our merch table and a pen, and they can just write up a letter right there, or they can write it ahead of time and drop it in the box and then we literally scan it and respond on Tumblr. And then people can actually read the hand-written letter and then read our response.

PE: If you were in charge for the lineup of your dream tour, which bands would it consist of?
Ryan: The Killers, Third Eye Blind, and us would be my dream tour.
Joel: I would love that. If it was John Mayer, The Killers, Third Eye Blind, and us… Oh my gosh, I could die happy.
Ryan: After the tour I’d probably kill myself because my life would just go downhill from there.
Joel: No, it would be awesome to just be on that tour. I’m surprised we didn’t say The Beatles. The Beatles would be awesome just to see the insanity that went on at their concerts.

PE: If you could pick any decade, aside from the current one, to live in, which would it be?
Joel: The 70s. Actually, no, I would say the 40s.
Ryan: Do I maintain my current knowledge? ‘Cause I’m gonna go back like, hundreds of years. I’m gonna be a king.
Joel: I wanna be a pharaoh. A pharaoh would be cool.
Ryan: I’m gonna say nineteen… nineteen… Actually, I like this decade.
Joel: I think that the 40s were cool, and then the 70s. 1944 era would be good, I think.
Ryan: Real smart, Joel.
Joel: What?
Ryan: World War II, man!
Joel: That’s why I wanna live there.
(Both laugh.)

PE: What are your plans for after this tour?
Joel: We’re probably gonna take a band hiatus and kind of just search for our inner peace.
Ryan: We’re gonna go to India and do some soul searching, but after that we’re gonna be going on a fall tour, which we’re gonna announce probably around the end of this tour. We’re gonna release another new song from our album, and the album.
Joel: Yeah, tour, record. Tour at the end of this year. We haven’t picked an official release date yet but it will be coming, I would say, in a couple months. Possible music video, maybe?
Ryan: There’s gonna be a ton of new stuff.
Joel: A lot of new stuff. And the India thing isn’t happening.
Ryan: Oh, really? It got cancelled? I’m bummed out.

PE: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Ryan: Oh yeah, interesting fact about the band: our guitar player Sean is petrified of birds. He is so scared of birds.
Joel: Yeah. He has this insane fear, he has an insane phobia of birds, which I don’t even know what that’s called.
Ryan: Birdaphobia.
Joel: I know there’s a different word, like…
Ryan: Birdphelia.
Joel: I don’t know, I can’t remember, a phobia of birds. So if fans could bring bird Beanie Babies, or bird sculptures, or stuffed animals or pictures to Sean -
Ryan: We’re trying to get him out of his fear.
Joel: Other than that, new record, new stuff. Check out our MySpace. Keep up with us, ‘cause we’re pumping out a lot of new stuff.

Keep up with This Century:
www.myspace.com/ThisCentury
www.twitter.com/ThisCentury
www.thiscenturyband.tumblr.com
www.thiscenturymailbox.tumblr.com

Interview and photos by Kaitlin Higgins

]]> http://www.preachelectric.net/2010/08/24/this-century-interview/feed/ 0 http://www.preachelectric.net/2010/08/03/the-speed-of-sound-in-seawater-interview-finished/ http://www.preachelectric.net/2010/08/03/the-speed-of-sound-in-seawater-interview-finished/#comments Tue, 03 Aug 2010 19:56:43 +0000 Kristin Allen http://www.preachelectric.net/?p=1288

Damien Verrett of The Speed of Sound in Seawater gave Preach Electric the inside look on the band’s roots, name, and his hopes of sounding more like…Joanna Newsom.

The Speed of Sound in Seawater is quite an eccentric name. What made you decide that it was the perfect name for your band?

Back in high school physics was my favorite subject, so the name sort of plays to that fact. That’s not where it originated though. I actually did a random article search on wikipedia once and “The Speed of Sound in Seawater” popped up and I loved it as a band name. I feel like the band will have officially made it when oceanographers have to sift through page after page of websites about us on google in order to find information about the actual speed of sound in seawater.

How did the band get started?

We’ve all been playing music together for about 5 years, just not as The Speed of Sound in Seawater. We used to be in a band called Forestry Fighters (www.myspace.com/forestryfighters). Jordan and I both had recording equipment so we’d all get together with no real direction in mind and record whatever we felt like. Some of that stuff is pretty funny. In 2006 Jordan left on a mission for 2 years and Luke moved out to Folsom, so things sort of died down. Fernando and I still wanted to play music though, so we started playing a lot with my loop pedal and made due with two people for a while. Once Jordan came back he and Luke hopped on board and really fleshed out the band.

Who writes the lyrics?

What is your favorite song to play?

How was the recording process for you?

Josh Moore of We Came As Romans took a break on the Scream It Like You Mean it Tour in Orangevale, California to discuss lyrics, fans, and how he feels about constantly being compared to the Devil Wears Prada.

How’s the Tour so far?
Its been really good. There has been some super long drives, like the venues on the West Coast are pretty far apart and we expected it, but we drove overnight last night… and the night before, and the night before, and i think the night before that. A lot of driving, but I mean its been fun. There are  a lot of bands on the bill so there’s always someone to hang out with.

How do you pass time during the long drives to each venue?
Sleep. I sleep. Or we watch movies. That’s about it.

Who from other bands have become your friends since Scream It Like You Mean It started?
Close To Home. That band as a whole we’ve been friends with for three years. They’re really great dudes, so I hang out with them a lot. I started making some friends in Sky Eats Airplane and thats cool because we’re label mates with them.

Do you watch the other bands sets?
I watch Close to Home a lot since they’re opening the tour and I know theor whole set. It’s always fun to watch them. I watch Ivoryline and Sky Eats Airplane a little bit. After we play, I’m already so hot from being on stage, so I don’t really want to go back in the venue and get hotter. I’ve watched Silverstein and Emery a few times on this tour.

What song do you get most excited to play?
My favorite song is the first song we always play, To Plant A Seed. Its the first song on our CD and I love playing it, its just a lot of fun.

When you guys play To Plant A Seed, I’ve noticed Dave always does a little jump and everyone seems really synchronized. Is that choreographed?
[laughs] Some of it. We talked about what we could do on stage that would look cool and kids would like, but a lot of the times we end up doing the same stuff because it feels right. Yeah, I guess, ‘it feels right,’ would be an accurate description.

Who writes the lyrics in We Came As Romans?
I do.

What do you try to express through your lyrics? A lot of people compare your writing to The Devil Wears Prada.
I think thats cool. Mike is a really good lyricist and if kids want to make that comparison, that’s awesome. The Devil Wears Prada is a Christian band, and we’re not. A lot of the time kids get confused because we are associated with them by genre and kind of our overall message. I don’t know, I like writing lyrics about things that have happened in my life that I know people can relate to. It’s always about the constant struggle to be a better person and I think that people are always feeling that way. I don’t think anyone will ever reach a point where they feel their life cannot get any better than right now. There’s always something more that could happen or something better you could be doing.

How does it make you feel when you hear fans express to you how much your writing has helped them?
Its amazing. I talked to a girl in Salt Lake City that said that she was actually struggling with depression and bad thoughts, and listening to our songs and reading our lyrics helped pull her out of that. It was really awesome to know that something I’m doing can help other people.. that our music and our lyrics have that power and that effect.  It’s great to hear that people are taking elements of our message and our lyrics because, I mean, thats the whole reason that we’re a band. We all try to live out the message that we bring to the stage, and its really really cool when we see other people trying to live that out with us.

Do you feel any pressure because you’ve all portrayed yourselves this way? Do you worry if you change what you write about or how you show yourself that kids will lose respect for the band?
Um, I don’t know. I don’t really see us changing the way that we portray ourselves or the message of our band. You know, everything changes, and we change as people as we grow up. I might grow as a writer or whatnot but at the same time, I’ll still – all of us – will still have that same foundation of what we believe in and what we try to do in life. Although little details about it might change, and beliefs about it might change, the whole foundation of it isn’t something that is just going to wash away for me.

To Plant A Seed didn’t come out too long ago, but is the band working on anything new yet?
Maybe, I don’t know, I’m not really allowed to talk about it. BUT, maybe. I’m just going to leave it at maybe.

Is there anything you want to add?
If you haven’t checked us out, check us out. Maybe you’ll like it, maybe you won’t. Give it a chance! If you’re already a fan, I encourage you to read deeper into what our band is about and hopefully come out to a show and talk to us about it. We love hearing how we can help out in anyone’s lives.

Interview conducted by Kristin Allen

Photo by Ali Carcache

Despite the fact that he was “wearing many hats” that evening, acting not only as a performer but also as his own tour manager and merch slinger, Kevin Devine took the time to meet up with Preach Electric the evening of the New Haven, Connecticut date of Thrice’s headlining tour.

How has the Thrice tour been so far?

So far it’s been really, really good.  We’re about a week in, or two weeks in now, I guess.  It’s moved really quickly, the shows have been great, all the people in the bands are easy to get along with.  Yeah, I can’t complain.  Everything’s been nice so far.

You’re playing with the Goddamn Band on this tour.  What factors determine whether you play with them or solo?

Sometimes it’s just math, it’s money.  It’s like, how much can you afford to pay people.  And you know, I play with a lot of people that are adults and have lives, or jobs or whatever.  So you have to be able to give them…it’s fun to come do this but they also have to be able to make a little bit of a living.  And sometimes it’s also built into whatever the offer is, sometimes, the tour.  I’m asked to do it alone, or I’m asked to bring the band.   Sometimes it’s up to me, so it sort of changes every time.

Do the selection of songs you play live change when you’re playing solo versus when you’re playing full-band?

They do, not as dramatically as you’d think.  I mean, I tend to, I really like playing both ways, and I really like playing both…There are some songs like “Brother’s Blood” I really love playing acoustic and electric, and there are songs that just kind of lend themselves much better to the band, and some things that lend themselves much better not to the band.  But yeah, there’s definitely some stuff that…I think what changes a lot is I don’t really use a set list when I play by myself because I can just go as it feels,  whereas when you have the band you have to have sort of more of a plan, so it changes more in that way.

Circle Gets the Square, your first full-length, came out in 2002, so around eight years ago.  Are there any songs off of that or even your other older stuff that you’re reluctant to play or can’t necessarily connect to now?

Yeah, sure.  There are a lot of songs, especially from that first record, that I can’t…there are a lot of songs that I don’t…well, I used to feel like that about almost that whole record, because it was something…it came out in 2002, but it was written and recorded in like…I wrote some of those songs in like 1998 when I was eighteen, or something, and some of them I like now, again.  Like I went through and I came back to liking them, but some of them feel like they were written by a seventeen or eighteen year-old kid and they’re about…I feel a little disingenuous singing break-up songs about girls that I haven’t seen in twelve years, or even more so women who are now married, happily, whose weddings I’ve been at.  It just feels a little…funny.  But I also have to remember that some people really…just ‘cause you don’t, doesn’t mean that other people don’t have this connection to it.  Once you put something out in public it’s other people’s music as much as it is yours, so.

Some of your songs are very personal, are there any that are almost too personal to play live?

There are probably some that I feel, not that I mean if I wrote it I feel like, ahh [laughs]…There’s like a little bit of…If I wrote the song I feel like it made it past whatever self-editing, whatever happened to say “you shouldn’t sing this in front of people.”  But there are some that are more like…It’s more that I feel like I would rather not…there’s some you write that are like this is…In the moment I feel really quite strongly about it and then later I feel a little bit more like I could have kept it to myself, but that’s more of a quality thing sometimes than a personal thing.  It’s more like, is this song good enough to play alongside the other songs?  And sometimes I don’t know.

You’ve started to play some new songs, you played the song “You Wouldn’t Have to Ask” for a German website a few months ago, and in January when you played The Space you played another new song.  Are there any plans for those songs?

Yeah, there’s a record that’s going to come out in the fall with Manchester Orchestra, the band’s called Bad Books.  It’s us, me and them, and I wrote five songs and Andy [Hull] wrote five songs and we all play on it.  So, I think that the record…Those songs are all on that, those both songs that you just mentioned are on that record.

You played a few festivals this year, Coachella, Bamboozle, and, most recently, Bonnaroo.  How to you feel about playing festivals versus club shows?

I feel grateful that we get asked to do those things, because they’re pretty ama–, the company you’re in is really incredible, you get to really play with some great bands and see some stuff you would want to see but might not get to otherwise.  So, and there are experiences that are so different from being in a room like this, or whatever you’re in, some field with fifty thousand people for three days, and that’s, or in Bamboozle’s case, an asphalt parking lot, but I really, you know, I like doing them and I never expected that we would be a band that got offered to do them, so now that we have I would definitely be okay with getting to do more of them, but we’ll see.

You tour the UK and mainland Europe fairly often.  What are the main differences between your audiences there and your audiences in the US?

I think that some of the people, in the UK it’s a pretty similar demographic and I think the response is a little similar, people are a bit chatty over there, even if they like you they’ll come pay money to see your show and kind of talk a lot, which I don’t think happens as often here.  But it does happen sometimes though, but.  I think in Europe it seems like the fans are a little older.  I think the music I make appeals to people that aren’t just into bands like Thrice, or Brand New or something, but I think the majority of the people, at least in America, that come to my shows are people who like, whether it’s that kind of music, or indie rock music or whatever.  But I’ve always had some fans in their forties and fifties and stuff who like Bob Dylan or Neil Young, and I like that, because I like that music too.  There’s a bit more of that there, I feel like.  Like, I’m always kind of…I get a kick out of it when you see some like fifty five year-old man at your show in some punk rock club.  But, so yeah, that would be the main difference, I think.

Going back to Bad Books, are there any plans to play shows?

Yeah!  We’re going to do a short tour of the East Coast and then a short tour of the West Coast.  Both maybe not right next to each other, but one in the fall when the record comes out, and maybe one in January, we’re not sure yet.

-

Later that night Kevin and the Goddamn Band opened with the near-eight minute epic “Brother’s Blood.”  The emotion-driven set consisted mostly of songs from his most recent full-length of the same name.  From 2005’s Split the Country, Split the Streets the band performed “Buried By the Buzz” as well as Kevin Devine staple and fan favorite “Cotton Crush.”  They closed with a cover they’ve played throughout the tour of LCD Soundsystem’s “New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down,” but not before playing a “new” song of sorts, “She Stayed As Steam.”  The song was considered for Brother’s Blood, but was determined to not fit with the rest of the album.  Instead, it is now being featured on a 12” EP, along with another outtake from the Brother’s Blood sessions, two remixes, and two lives tracks, all previously unreleased.  The “She Stayed As Steam” EP was first sold that night, and will soon be available for preorder from These Are Not Records, in collaboration with the label Favorite Gentlemen.  Keep a look out for that EP as well as the Bad Books release this fall.

Photograph and interview conducted by Jenna Korus

Before the second show of their tour supporting Polar Bear Club, Greg Dunn, vocalist and guitarist of Purchase, New York-based band Moving Mountains, took time to talk to Preach Electric.

This is the second night of the Polar Bear Club tour. How has it been so far?

It’s been fun. It’s been our first tour since November, so it’s a little daunting but it’s been cool. It’s exciting for us to be on tour with Polar Bear Club ‘cause we’ve been trying to set that up for months now. It’s cool, all the bands are cool, it’s kind of like a diverse group of bands that should be fun.

You’ve said that you’re pulling out more songs from Pneuma for this tour, so how do you go about deciding which songs to play?

Uhm, well we tried, we kind of did it. We just kind of asked everyone. This is probably the last tour that we’ll do where we’ll play songs off that record just because we’ll have a new record and we’ll play that. But we sort of just asked people and then figured out which songs we could really play. We’re not really a good band.

You’ve had the opportunity to tour more of the US recently. Is there anywhere that you haven’t hit that you’d most like to play?

Yeah, I want to play in Nashville, which we wanted to play on this tour but it didn’t work out. That’s a tough question, but I think Nashville’s the first place that comes to mind. Florida would be cool, just because it’s Florida and it would be nice to hang out there. But it terms of like, music history, I think I’d want to play in Nashville.

Being a student, how have you balanced school and touring?

Uh, I don’t, really. I’m enrolled in college. I go for music, for recording. I don’t really go to class much. It depends. For me it’s not that hard because the school isn’t that demanding. But it’s sometimes stressful. Once in a while I have to take a gen. ed., like this year I had to take a class about personal and social relationships and how to be a good boyfriend, so that kind of sucks. But no, it’s easy. If I was going to school for history or literature, it would be tough. Like our guitar player goes for literature and I don’t know how he does it. But yeah, it’s easy; it’s not that hard. It’s been weird living a double life, but… If I had my way, I wouldn’t be going to school, but you sort of have to.

What are your plans for after this tour when it ends at the end of this month?

We come home, we have a week off, then we start recording a new record immediately. We really want to get that finished, so that’s our immediate plan.

How far along is the album?

It’s like ninety percent written, like a skeleton of the songs is about ninety percent written but for us the songs really flesh out when we record them. It’s pretty much there. It’s done, almost completely; we just have to record it.

I read in another interview that the new songs are less post-rock and a little more post-hardcore than your previous releases so where do the two influences come from?

We listen to a lot of that. Well when we first started the band we listened to a lot of that post-rock stuff, like we were really into Appleseed Cast, Explosions in the Sky, Mogwai, Hammock. That’s sort of where our initial following came from, those instrumental rock bands. We also listen to, I don’t know, Poison the Well and, you know, Thrice, and bands that are much heavier. The new record still sounds very much like something we would do. It’s not crazy different. It still sounds like a Moving Mountains record.

Like on Pneuma and Foreword, are there going to be trombone parts, and more alternate instrumentation like that?

Definitely. That was like one of the things that we always try to do in our music is sort of incorporate instrumentation that isn’t always heard in mainstream hardcore bands or music, whatever you want to say. We’re actually having, which I’m really excited about, actual players on this record. On the older stuff it was sort of me programming fake instruments and stuff but this time around we have like, a real cellist.

As a band, you’re fairly active in communicating with listeners through social networking and at shows. Which social networking site do you think is most useful in staying in touch?

Most effective? Probably Facebook, just because I don’t know, maybe there isn’t another site to take over it, like when Facebook destroyed MySpace. Facebook is definitely the most powerful. It’s like real people as opposed to comedians and porn stars on MySpace, or you get spam all the time and you’re like, “I don’t know who this person is.” Facebook is cool because I’m not friends with fans through the Moving Mountains Facebook.   Like Gregory Dunn, my personal Facebook is friends with our actual fans and I can actually talk to people, which I think is so cool.

What would you say has been the most gratifying experience you’ve had with a listener?

With a listener? Wow, that’s hard. I mean, we get e-mails all the time from people saying how music has sort of changed their lives and it’s sort of a thing that you can’t completely take in. You hear it, you understand that your music has affected someone, but it doesn’t really sink in. It’s hard to really grasp. I find the craziest feeling’s when a lot of people in the Armed Forces, I feel like I’ve met a lot of those dudes, who are like, “your music is so impactful.” That always affects me the most, for some reason.

When you’re not recording and finishing up the album, do you have any touring plans for the rest of the year?

Uhm, no… It’s hard, like, we’ve gotten the offers to do tours, and there’s certainly the idea of tours, but our main priority is just to go home, write a record, and if it takes us four months to record then we would need four months. Obviously we hope that doesn’t happen. Once we’re done with the record then we’re gonna start figuring out touring stuff. Ideally, in a perfect world, we would do the record in July and August and just be on the road the rest of the year.

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Although Dunn had remarked earlier, looking at the line winding around the venue, that it didn’t appear as if there were any “post-rock kids” in attendance, there were at least a few Moving Mountains fans scattered throughout the audience.  As promised, Moving Mountains’ set was fairly heavy on material off of their first release, including “Cover the Roots/Lower the Stems,” “Aphelion,” and “8105.”  The latter song in particular incited excitement amongst the Moving Mountains fans in the crowd, it being what one could consider to be a signature MovMou song, yet one that the band has rarely performed.  Off of their 2008-released EP Foreword “With One’s Heart in One’s Mouth” and “Light & Shapes” were played.  The band also played a yet to be titled new song that they debuted during their Bamboozle set last month.  Its more fast-paced and “harder” qualities have led to it being compared to the previously mentioned “Lights & Shapes.”  The song certainly causes one to anticipate the release of Moving Mountains’ upcoming album, for which no official details have been released.

Interview conducted by Jenna Korus
Photograph by Kaitlin Higgins

After a show on the ‘Bout Damn Time Tour, Anarbor guitarist Mike Kitlas spoke with PreachElectric.net about the band’s upcoming release, future tour plans, and how they scored a sweet deal with Scooby Doo.

“This is our first tour where we feel like we’re on a rock tour,” admits Anarbor guitarist Mike Kitlas, leaning against a wall outside of the Ottobar, a somewhat small, yet well-patronized, venue on the outskirts of Baltimore.   “There’s some awesome bands and we’re lucky to be sharing the stage with them,” he continues, referring to the fellow bands on the ‘Bout Damn Time Tour: The Bigger Lights, The Audition, and This Providence.

It’s not difficult to see why the Phoenix, Arizona-based band is excited to finally be a part of a real “rock tour,” especially once they divulge a few details about their history and music.

Anarbor, comprised of Kitlas, vocalist/bassist Slade Echeverria, guitarist Adam Juwig, and drummer Greg Garrity, formed in 2003, when all of the members were about thirteen years old.  In its seven years of existence, the band has never seen a single lineup change (a great feat for most bands these days, it seems), which “helps with the chemistry of the band,” Kitlas explains. “We build off of each other, which is great for the writing experience, and we all know each other so well that it’s easier for all of us to get along. When you’re stuck with somebody on thirteen hour car rides and you’re not friends, it kind of sucks.”

When the band members aren’t stuck on such long, grueling trips, they’re busy making music – real music.  “We do not use any sort of tracks with our music, or any sort of sampling,” the guitarist states proudly of the band’s sound, one that he describes as being rock ‘n roll or alternative rock.  Drawing from some older, as well as recent, musical influences that range from Steve Miller to the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Taking Back Sunday, Anarbor takes on quite a rock ‘n roll attitude when it comes to their own music and the way they perform it.

“Everything you see or hear on stage is us playing it, and there’s no auto tune on our vocals. We like to come through exactly how our record sounds. We’re gonna sound like shit or play it right; there’s no in between,” Kitlas promises, adding with a laugh that they play instruments, not iPods (although he admittedly has “that Ke$ha song about brushing Jack Daniels on your teeth” on his own iPod).

Lyrically, the band backs its music with words of family, friends, and several aspects of growing up and getting out of high school. “You experience so much growing up and we’re all taking that in.  We’re traveling and spending the prime time of our lives in a different state every day,” Kitlas says. Something about the way in which he describes his current life expresses that he wouldn’t trade it for anything, and who’s to blame him?

Anarbor have quite a few impressive accomplishments under the belts, and a few more up their sleeves.  They’ve already released two EPs, including The Natural Way, for which one fan had a road sign, emblazoned with the title, created. “I thought that was really awesome,” reminisces Kitlas with an appreciative grin.   The second EP, Free Your Mind, is an “aggressive, full force, in your face” release featuring the song “Always Dirty, Never Clean,” which is Kitlas’ favorite song to play live because it exemplifies “what we really stand for as a band.” Also on Free Your Mind is “You and I,” a track that has its own exciting story.

“Warner Brothers approached us and said, ‘We really like your material and we’d really like you to do a song and a video for our Scooby Doo movie,’” tells Kitlas. The band went on to record a song that is representative of pals Shaggy and Scooby, though not necessarily from the perspective of a man and his dog. “[They didn’t] want it to be about a dog and a guy, so we were like, ‘How about a guy and a girl?’ and they said, ‘Great, we love the idea,’ so we all sat down and wrote the song together.”

As far as future plans go, the band is currently awaiting the fast-approaching release of their debut full-length album, The Words You Don’t Swallow. When asked about the record, Kitlas spoke at length about his excitement and the importance of diversity amongst the songs:

“We named it [The Words You Don’t Swallow] because we didn’t hold anything back. We really said everything we wanted and we really tried to make a first album where you don’t have to skip songs because one sounds like another. We have slow songs, we have fast songs; it’s everything we’ve always wanted to put out. It’s similar to our album Free Your Mind because it’s sort of an extension, like we had more room to grow, and more time for everything.”

Shortly after the April 20^th release of their new album, Anarbor will head to the UK and Japan on the Give It a Name and Beyond the Blue tours, respectively, which makes Mike Kitlas as nervous as it excites him. “I never thought we’d be going to either of those places,” he revealed. “We’re going there in less than a month and I’m kind of scared.”

With barely enough time in between tours for this self-proclaimed “avid dog park goer” to spend time at home with his dog Diesel, Anarbor will then head out to spend their summer on this year’s entire Warped Tour.  And what’s a guy to do for two months without his best pal?

“I like to read, it helps the lyrics a lot when writing,” Mike says of his hobbies.  “I recently read Scarred, which is about the singer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I really got into that; it was a really good book. I’m a big movie guy, too.  I really like Silence of the Lambs, it’s one of my favorites movies ever.”

Beyond books, movies, and spending time with his dog, Kitlas was able to turn his favorite hobby into a career.

“Music is how we all met and got together. It’s something that has been our hobby our entire lives.”

Interview and photo by Kaitlin Higgins

]]> http://www.preachelectric.net/2010/04/14/anarbor-interview/feed/ 0 http://www.preachelectric.net/2010/02/15/gentlemen-and-scholars-interview/ http://www.preachelectric.net/2010/02/15/gentlemen-and-scholars-interview/#comments Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:45:59 +0000 Ali Carcache http://www.preachelectric.net/?p=979

Could you please state your name and what you do in Gentlemen and Scholars?

I am Wes Beach, I sing and dance for the band. Adam handles the lead guitar, and Pat backs him up on rhythm. Kyle plays drums hard. And Jeremiah rounds us out with his bass grooves and backup, sometimes co-vocals.

What’s a story from tour that you find yourself telling often?

Breaking into and climbing to the top of a clock tower on a Christian college campus was fun. But, more memorable would be our story from Kansas. After playing a great show we were given beer tickets and had much more after they were gone. On the way back to the van, Adam drunkenly stumbles and somehow gets lost in this small city. His phone was dead so we had to split up into search parties and eventually found him lying asleep under a tree. He had ended up talking to girls there and passed out with his head on one of their shoulders. After we left, we pulled over and he took that as a sign to get out. He fell long and hard down a steep hill off the side of the road. Laughs were had by all.

What’s an album or artist you can’t stop listening to?

It would have to be Saves the Day, hands down. The melodies are just so catchy it’s impossible to ignore. And the way they experiement with style changes so flawlessly is incredible. They are always looking to improve and refine their sound.

What/who are your main musical influences?

Our music can at times be all over the place, so we really draw from a wide spectrum. We have influences of Glassjaw, and Every Time I Die in some songs. And when we slow it down we pull from artists like My Morning Jacket, As Tall As Lions and Forgive Durden. An overall goal with future albums is to weave these our different styles together to form a free flowing Gentlemen and Scholars genre.

What do you aim to accomplish with your music?

Artistically, we’d like to create an relatable musical experience for the fan. Meaning, to make a song speak for those listening to it. It doesn’t just have to be the lyrics, it can be the mood and the performance that speaks.

Why did you all start playing music?

Well most of us are from a small town where meth and ignorance are the norm. Music became a outlet for escape from the sometimes vile nature of the back country. As far as myself, music and shows were a release for me. Punk and hardcore kids screaming and punching their messages out actually connected with me and opened up to a whole world of music that was previously unknown.

If you could compose a tour lineup for you to be a part of, who else would be on it?

Saves the Day, Glassjaw, As Tall As Lions, Gentlemen and Scholars, annnnnd Eddie Money.

What are the band’s plans for the near future?

We are currently in talks to get started on another album for Torque Records and this time with 100X more touring. The band is all losing our minds sitting at home waiting for things to be worked out. But expect new music and the same ol’ smiling and sometimes bleeding faces you are used to on the road.

Is there anything you’d like to add?

Anyone can message me personally on Myspace or Facebook (www.myspace.com/gentlemenandscholars www.facebook.com/wesleybeach) if you want a free download of some tracks from the new album. The money doesn’t matter, the music does!

Maika Maile, lead vocalist of There For Tomorrow took some time to talk off from the New Jersey date of their Hit The Lights tour to talk about what he was like in high school, what their future touring plans are and how high strung he thinks people can be.

Introduce yourself and your role in the band.

I’m Maika Maille and I do my best at playing guitar and singing in There For Tomorrow.

What would you say are some of the differences between the EP that your first released and your full length?

Obviously, we’re firm believers that being a person is the best way of being a musician in general so with the first EP, half the songs we wrote, we were sixteen and we were playing them until we were nineteen. With Faster we were 18-19 and we’re twenty now. It’s a couple years ahead; we’re a little more mature. It’s like a soul searching process because it is new to us. We’re talking about relevant things, not talking about like high school break ups and we’re not talking about getting drunk etc. It’s real stuff, I’m not putting down any of that but yeah I think it’s just more growth.

What do you think has been the most memorable part of this tour so far?

Every day is a memory. With Hit the Lights everything is up in the air, funny, light hearted. I’d say Orlando was a great experience.  I mean we’ve been playing Orlando since I was like thirteen so it seemed like they were getting a little bit tired of us but this time around they caught us off guard. There were so many people there, so many people passionately singing lyrics. It was a good time.

What’s something about you that people wouldn’t expect by looking at you?

I think people have definite presumptions that they’ve made. A lot of the bands that we associate with, that we tour with, they think of us kind of as just another come and go band and just another… trying to write hit songs and appeal to little girls. But we don’t try to appeal to little girls or anyone really. We just do our own thing, write what we like, we naturally graduate toward whatever… especially females.  These next few years are really just proving grounds for us.

If you could pick a five band lineup of any bands, dead or alive, which would they be?

I would say [Jimi Hendrix] but he’s not alive. Okay it would be us in the parking lot, Third Eye Blind, Jimmy Eat World, Foo Fighters and then Rascal Flatts would headline.

Is there anything that you think sets you apart from other bands?

Geez, those crazy girls out there. Jersey people are so high strung. SO HIGH STRUNG. SO HIGH STRUNG.  Anyways, what were you saying? Oh, I don’t know. I guess I could sit here and say we do this, they do that, but I think it’s just that we’ve become comfortable with letting our music speak for us.

Is there an album or artist you can’t stop listening to?

Drake! His mixtape is amazing. I’m really into dub-step music. It’s from the UK and it’s just very bass-heavy club music.

Do you have any future plans for after this tour?

Yeah Mayday Parade is right after this. We’re doing that and then, that’s B-market tour that hits places we don’t usually go to. Sorry, NJ. We’ll be back in February, I would jump the gun and tell you but you’ll know soon enough.

Headliner?

Why would we headline? We’re terrible. Ha. No. Pft.

What do you think is one of the biggest issues in the music industry right now?

Well, I mean, we’ve become very hands on with what happens but I think as of late we’ve gotten to the point where we think we know it all almost and it’s like, alright, where’s the road because I think we should start walking down that one. We’re learning a lot. The music industry changes every day and it’s all about thinking forward and that’s the risky part because you can’t see the future. It’s just kind of seeing down the path and how things are going. There’s a lot to understand but… you don’t really need all the understanding. Like, you don’t have to go to college and read, actually, go to college, but yeah just do your own thing and there’s a lot you could find along the way. Expect to make mistakes.

What were you like in high school?

I was that kid that hung out with everybody. At lunch time I was bouncing everywhere just goofing off. I took school serious in the most not serious manner. Like I just had no drive. Okay one over two equal five over I DON’T CARE. It’s not gonna matter to me because I want to be on stage. I did well in school, trust me. I got accepted to a couple of colleges, I could have done that whole thing but I knew from a very young age what I wanted to do. But I did graduate with an unweighted 3.9. I just didn’t care enough to do well.

What would you classify each of your band members as if they were to all fit into a high school stereotype?

Seriously what the fuck are those girls out there doing? They’re going crazy! Anyways, Chris was like a little skater kid that didn’t really skate. He played drums; he liked music and loved to vandalize things, just a little Blink-182 kid. Then in 12^th grade he started getting into other music.  He went to a private school and he graduated early. Christian… he was the nice, young, innocent, rabbit. Back then he was really exuberant. Jay in high school, I don’t think he took education really seriously. He’s just always, always, always loved music. We would get together at least four times a week and just play shit. I think our main education came at band practice.

How did you all meet?

I knew Chris because we played football together in fourth grade. We starting jamming with Jay and this other kid and they called me because they wanted another guitarist and I stumbled into singing.

What’s your favorite thing about performing?

Just getting… That’s like our one time to show what we can’t show. It’s our one time to be the biggest, most retarded assholes and just get away with it. Not pretentious, rock star, cock sucking assholes. We’re just having a good time and having fun. I just look forward to escaping being a normal person while I’m up there.

Do you have a favorite song to perform live?

No. Not really. It always changes. I like Deathbed. It’s one of the newer songs but other than that there are songs that I look forward to because of crowd reaction but all of our songs come from the heart so it’s hard to favorite one of them. It’s different for the rest of the band but for me, I look at the set as one whole song.

Interview by Clarisse Hansard

Jimmy Stadt: My name is Jimmy and I sing for Polar Bear Club. Can I just say, for the record, that I’ve never raped anyone on the road?

What has been your best tour experience?

On the giglife tour(with Set Your Goals and Four Year Stong), we played Austin, Texas and Dallas the next day. Austin was insane, and we were like, “nothing is going to top this,” and then Dallas completely destroyed it. After Austin, we went out after the show and all of the sudden some very trailer-parkish girls started fighting us, then they started fighting each other. We just watched and some boobies popped out, but not necessarily boobies we wanted to see. Our van was pulled up to the sidewalk and the fight was right outside the door, and we were like, “That’s crazy, nothing is going to be cooler than that!” Dallas was the next night and the show was absolutely insane. Four Year Strong headlined that one, and I think by the end of their set, almost the whole crowd was on the stage. Matt Wilson from Set Your Goals jumped on an amplifier and dove to people on the stage, and then fell off of them into the crowd. It was awesome! Those two nights were probably the highlight of that tour…and the day we went to the water park.

What’s the biggest challenge Polar Bear Club has had as a band?

There’s a lot of ups and downs. I think getting used to losing money fast was pretty hard. I think we’re better with it now, but when we first started touring we lost a lot of money. It’s really scary, but that’s the way it is. People come up to me and ask, “What advice do you have for me? I’m starting a band,” and I just tell them to be prepared to lose money. Honestly, what I’ve learned has all been learned by making mistakes so I can’t really tell them what to expect.

What influences your sound the most?

I think the band is influenced by solid, consistent, interesting bands. We want to be a good, solid band that puts out records that are just different enough to not alienate the original fanbase, but not so much the same that it becomes boring.

How did Polar Bear Club transition from sort of a local band to a nationally-touring act?

I went to school and I got a degree in acting. I was really into theater and that’s where my life was heading. We were doing Polar Bear Club at the same time as a part-time thing. I would go to class during the week, play shows on the weekend and repeat. My girlfriend and I were planning on moving and have me pursue acting and she’d do law. When the band decided to really do this, I was a preschool teacher… We had really done everything a part-time band would be able to do, and we were getting messages from people in Japan and England and California asking when we would tour there, and we would just be like, “Never.” That’s when we decided to either do this full-time or just quit. We were all just like, “Fuck it,” and decided to go for it. We all quit our jobs and I was laid off recently so it kind of worked. It’s paid off so far.

Do you have anything to add?

I don’t. I always want to though, but I guess I’m too lazy to think of anything, haha.

Interview and photo by Ali Carcache