Norma Jean Interview Transcript
Aaron Long: How has the tour been going thus far?
Matt Raines: It’s awesome except for the west part of Canada is the most brutal thing I’ve ever felt in my entire life. It was seriously, Edmonton was negative 29. We’re from the south, we’ve never felt anything like that before. All the show have been incredible, we need to come up here more, we just haven’t done it, and the crowds are awesome, so fun.
A: Do you notice any difference between a Canadian and American crowd.
M: They’re just more stoked. Maybe because they don’t get it as much, but every show just seems like such a big deal., which is so cool, small or big, it’s just been awesome.
A: What’s the writing process like for you guys?
M: It’s usually is just all of us getting together, like people write on their on, but lately I’ve been noticing that people have been writing on their own a lot more, like people have been writing while they’re traveling and stuff. Usually we just get I a small room and just write for three months, but this time I think we’re gonna spread it out a bit more and try to start writing a little bit, little bit, little bit. But that’s usually how it goes everybody puts in their two cents on everything and it just goes from there.
A: How did having guest writers on the last album affect that process?
M: It was cool. It gives you a break, cause you’re used to being in a small room with the same 5 people. Page, the guy from helmet came to Atlanta and spent 3 days with us writing, which was cool, cause it changes the vibe, not to mention we were all obsessed with him as kids. Chino came to the studio for three days, and that was awesome too. We were just setting up and he started playing a riff, and I started jamming with him on drums and before we knew it we started writing a song. We actually wrote two songs with him, but only one made it on the album. But that was awesome, they both were awesome, I think we’d like to do it again, maybe not with those two gua, but with somebody for sure.
A: Is there anybody specific that you’d like to do a song with?
M: Honestly those were the two that we wanted to go for. But now we want to set our sights even higher. I’m a huge Pearl Jam fanatic, and yesterday we were meeting with our management, and were like pearl jam, and they we’re like we’ll talk to them. Of course, there are a million people we’d love to work with, from small heavy bands that we like, to you know pearl jam. We knew page so that was kind of easy, to say come and hang, but with chino we didn’t really know those guys and he was really stoked to do it, so maybe something like that will happen again.
A: what band had the most influence on you personally and for the band as a whole?
M: Pearl Jam for me personally. The band? I think it’s different for everybody. There’s not like necessarily one band that everybody is totally obsessed with, or agrees on. I think it’s a little bit different for everybody, we’re all really different stuff. It’s probably all over the board.
A: The style on anti-mother feels very different form previous albums, was that a conscious decision or was it arrived at more organically?
M: It was kind of conscious but not really. It’s not like we sat around and ad talks wand were like we’re really gonna change, or do this and that, we really just wrote songs so you know there are some songs that are really heavy, heavier than past albums, and then there are some songs that are super melodic. We really just go with it and if we like it we keep going, and if we don’t like it we say it sucks and move on to something else. We don’t just say that’s not melodic enough, or heavy enough or crazy enough we just do it and if we like it we keep it. We try to stay away from the idea of we need to do this. Or we need to write this kind of song, we just go.
A: What do you think the main themes that get touched on this album are.
M: I thin it’s different. We all pitch in on lyrics. Cory’s lyrics are more personal than anybody else’s, Scottie writes a lot too. But I know that what Cory writes, is really personal stuff, maybe it’s the same for Scottie too.
A: how does it feel for you to play theses songs that are super personal for them?
M: I think it’s cool. I’ve always been that guy that was like, check out those drums, or listen to that guys voice, I just never been much of a “wow those lyrics.” I think some people are really into that and some people aren’t. I’ll be into a record and somebody might say, the lyrics are awful, and I’ll be like huh? I’m just not as into that as like Cory and Scottie are.
A: How do you feel being labeled as a Christian band has affected you guys?
M: I don’t know if it has necessarily affected us. I think there are sadly still some people whoa re just gonna be like, “they’re a Christian band, and they don’t want to bother listening to it. Sadly it goes both ways and people who are like, they’re not even Christian when they listen to it. So it’s just kind of weird. Some people know that you’re a Christian band and they expect the world. Ï heard they smoke cigarettes,” or some bullshit like that. That’s the only thing that’s been a bum out about that. We are who we are and really don’t care anyway.
A: what’s one album that everyone should listen too?
M: For current, What am I really into right now? Surprisingly, the new oasis is amazing, I’m pretty obsessed with that band. For heavy stuff, there’s a band called dead guy from the early nineties that a big influence on me, a huge influence. But records of all time for me, would be any Pearl Jam album a certain Pearl Jam record.
A: as a pearl jam, super fan what is your favorite Pearl jam song?
M: Do the Evolution. It’s a middle period song. but pretty much any Pearl Jam song, I can get stoked on.
A: How would you say the scene has changed?
M: I don’t know if it’s really changed, not since years and years ago, when we were young and doing this. Obviously back then, none o this was big. I would never have thought that 10 years ago playing front of 20 people for 50 bucks and staying on peoples floors that we’d ever still be doing this, but this style of music just appealed to a lot of people and we’re able to still do it, so hopefully we’ll be able to still do it for a long time.
A: What’s your favorite city or venue to play?
M: New Orleans, for sure, cause it’s the one city that really different. It’s like, a lot of cities all look the same, in Canada and America. You could tell me I was in any city in America right now and I’d believe you. With New Orleans, it’s just one city you go to that is like a different country it’s just really different. The House of Blues club is really awesome. The norvo is probably my favorite club though, it’s in Virginia and it’s super nice. Hot tub, flat screen tv’s, just super awesome place, but new Orleans is my favorite city for sure.
A: Where do you think your most rabid fan base is?
M: I’d say anywhere in the south, nit then there are those random ones where you hit some place in the Midwest that’s just crazy. Dude, Canada has been crazy, it really has, it’s been just as good as all of our south show. We played Saskatoon, and we’d never played there, and I don’t think that they know who we were, but the y were just pumped, but some places in Canada they were singing every word. It just seems like everyone here is so excited to see theses shows. We all agree that we need to come back here more.
A: Do you prefer this kind of tour over a Warped Tour.
M: Pro’s and Cons to each. It’s nice to play a club like this, and be inside and chill, but then Warped tour is awesome. There’s so many people to hang out with and warped tour is really easy, you play 30 minutes a day, and there’s no production, you just play your 30 minutes and then you’re done or the day, and you just do whatever you want, but ten the heat is awful. So pros and cons to each there’s really cool things about each kind of tour.
A: Was there anybody on warped that you were really stoked to see?
M: we like watching Everytime I die and the Bronx and some other bands, but for the most part there wasn’t a lot of bands that we’re into, it’s a lot of poppy stuff that we’re not really into.
A: Are there any plans for the follow up to anti-mother yet?
M: Not really, we’re just now stating to write. We wrote a bit together before this tour, and everyone has been writing on their own. No plans yet. I think we’ll write more this summer. We plan to take the summer off we’re doing some festival’s fly out for a couple of days, play, but for the most part we’re gonna stay at home, relax and write some, and get together and write some, our goal would be to start recording way late in this year or early next year, something like that, but you never know , that stuff changes all the time, but that would be the goal.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
Funeral For a Friend – Transcript
Funeral For a Friend – Transcript
Funeral For A Friend is Currently touring
Aaron: How do you have so much energy on stage every night?
Matt: Drugs.
Darren: A
M: It’s one of those things I’m gonna feel in ten years time.
D: WE always wanted to be a band that was going to perform and put on a show, rather than just stand thee and play our instruments. You might just as well listen to the cd at home if that’s the case. It’s just about putting on a bit of an image kinda wise. A vision of something that’s exciting to watch as well as the music.
M: I think you can simplify it even further and say that the music even does something to you when you’re playing. It affects your attitude, your emotion and you just play you just rock out. I don’t think about what I’m doing on stage. Sometimes I think I’m just standing still. But then some one will say “You were
It depends show to show it’s all different, the mood of the audience everything plays apart in how much energy we put across.
A: You were planning on releasing an EP, but it turned into an album, how did that happen?
D: the writing session went from initially planning four songs, to wrote, quite quickly and ended up with something like seven songs and then we realized that it isn’t much further really to a full album.
M: And then we didn’t want to wait that long, if we did put the EP out then we’d be putting out the album this year instead of last year cause we broke away from Atlantic, then we thought that if we had this seven or eight songs we thought that it made more sense to work on the album.
D: We can tour more places on an album than we can on an EP.
A: What led to the decision to leave
M: It was basically our option was up with
D: They wanted to renegotiate. Because the music industry changed so much, that they wanted to include things in the contract that we weren’t prepared to give up and it meant we sort of came to a stale mate really and we just felt that sort of because of that reason it made much more sense for us to take more control and attempt to put our own label together.
M: I think that one of the deciding factors was the way we felt the label handled our last record. WE were so excited about that record and they seemed really excited about that record, and then after we did the first single everything was like shut down. We were touring the world, and it’s like, no one doing anything to support the record.
D: They weren’t promoting it.
M: and it sucked. It was very disheartening to see something you worked so hard to create and to produce be treated in such away and we really didn’t understand it, and when the option came, with all those factors coming into play, we decided to separate from them and start up our own label and it gave us the time to focus and promote ourselves in the way that we feet we should be promoted and marketed and developed without having to have someone over your shoulder telling you that this is how it should be done. We know how it should be done; we’ve been in the business for a long time.
D: we’ve learned a lot and that was another factor towards not being too afraid to go the own label route. We learned a hell of a lot and learned a lot of things not to do as well. It could just be a waste of money cause I think that major labels are very prone to spending a lot of money on things that are just not going to work and if they actually asked the artist if they think it would work, a good percentage of them would say that that’s just a waste of money, that that’s just not going to work. That was another thing
D: I think, you know, in the
the album before this one, we had a healthy kind of relationship with Atlantic records, it was only in
M: It was like we were just left on their door step
D: especially
They weren’t really pushing hard or trying to make us more successful through marketing streams and stuff.
A: Are you going to use Join Us mostly to release your own stuff or are you planning on signing and releasing other bands as well?
D: At the moment, I think that it’s just aimed at just our own and as long as we can make that work, I think then, further down the line we can sort of add other bands and stuff, and
It becomes more complex when you’re working with other bands and artists. You need to get things right for them you need what they want in a contract and stuff like that.
A: How has the music industry changed in
M: there’s a lot of bands that given the success of the first wave, I guess we can consider ourselves part of the first wave, it has definitely given a light for loads of other bands to realize that they can go somewhere and get somewhere with their music. There are loads of bands that we are friends with and even bands that we’ve had on tour with us up until recently even are really gaining recognition. We’re all about shining a light on the hot bed of talent there still lying in wait to be exploited by whatever bloody record label chooses to get their grubby mitts on them.
D: A part of Indie bands were ignored for years.
M: It’s a thriving muti-sonic scene really ,so many different kinds of bands I think it’s the healthiest it’s been in a long long time. And I think it’s continuing to develop and grow
D: Not just in
A: What kind of music do you guys listen too?
D: I think we all got varied tastes from one extreme to the other really. From poppy stuff or mellow acoustic stuff to quite brutal death metal. A lot of prog rock kind of stuff and um a lot of thrash movement, like, metal bands.
M: You just like everything. Darren’s music collection is really something to behold.
He has a lot of records
D: like 5000 cd’s. I always have found music fascinating and interesting as far as how it’s created and the way people do it so differently, and I continue to be excited by it. And some people sometime, especially within the music industry so to speak, it can kind of disillusion you or turn you kind of against music a little bit.
M: Yeah I don’t listen to it a lot as I used to. As I get older I find myself listening to it less and less. I’ve grown quite picky about what I choose to listen to. I used to be whatever I could get my hands on and devour, but now there’s so much other things that inspire me to create, that influence my writing particularly not necessarily music, so for me, the last thing I listened to was the new Bruce Springsteen record, which came out quite recently. Which is awesome. It’s a really really good record.
D: As far as that, influencing our music goes, I think pretty much anything can influence our music cause we listen to anything. I pretty much give anything a go and give it a listen.
M: he’s quite open minded Darrin IS. He bases his opinion on what he should not what the perception is before hand.
D: I’ll give anybody a chance to have a listen to what they got going on.
A: What was the best live show you’ve seen recently?
M: I don’t go to many shows at all any more so it’s quite hard for me to say. The last one I did see that I thought was pretty wicked was Springsteen again. My wife took e to see him, cause she was quite adamant that I see him, and it was awesome for three and a half hours to behold a man of his age running around that stage, knocking out tune after tune it was just amazing to watch
D:Mine would either have to be Journey, I saw journey back in
A: How has the internet and modern technology affected your music, or all music in general?
M: It hasn’t changed the way we make music, it think it’s changed and shaped the way we look at the interactivity between the band and the fans and we do a lot of blogs, and we run our own myspace, and we update that and we make little video blogs. I think it’s important to us and to the fans to feel like there’s something more. I think that it sounds quite sad really but the emphasis is less on the music in a way, but more on what else you can give them to keep their attention span. Music has become so instant. For me when I bought a record I used to invest so much time in it, I would listen to it non stop for weeks on end, and devour the booklet and now kids will have two songs from an album, not even named or credited, and they’ll think that’s fair enough. And that’s fine, that’s the way it’s going but for us we like to try and keep a balance between the two and keep visually and interactive with all the kind of things on the internet and try to get them to come to the show, and put a focus on the show, on the actual cd on the actual product, because we put a lot of time into the product cause we’re such big fans of the product as well. We grew up with vinyl and with the first generation of cd’s.
D: There’s nothing quite like holding the disc in your hand and seeing the artwork.
M: And it’s a part of it, it’s not just packaging, it’s an extension of it, it’s our artistic input in the whole bundle, so we want our audience to appreciate that more these days. We try to do a lot of things like those interviews and updates, where we are in the world. They can just come and see what we’re up to.
D: the way that things are now, you have to do that to be in people’s minds and to keep some sort of interest in you as a band, you have to go online and kind of get those things across
M: This morning we did a live web chat. All five of us sat around in the front and we were there for an hour talking to fans.
D: For want of a better word, it was kind of a Clusterfuck.
M: it was. It was supposed to be question answer, but there was so many question.
D: there was no shape to it. There was just people throwing comments in there. But it was quite fun.
A: What does the set-list look like on this tour?
M: I think it’s a bit of everything. Always we’re playing stuff of the new record cause that’s why we’re here, so we’re playing a bunch of songs of that. But we’re also trying to incorporate a wide selection of music from out older records for the benefit of those people who may not be that familiar with us and even those people who have been with us since first record but have never had the chance to hear us play so we want to play a wide variety of songs, as well as showcase where we are right now as a band, cause you can’t keep living in the past. No matter how many people may want you to do that, you’ve got to progress and move forward. I think with each record you pick up a new fan base and you do convert older fans to the direction you’re going in anyways, and it’s nice to have a set that fits together so nicely the new songs really go hand in hand with the older stuff quite neatly.
D: We’re proud of everything we’ve done. We’re not one of those bands like some are that might have a hit song that they detest playing it. I know some bands that omit songs from their set just out of spite, because they don’t like it whether their fans want to hear it or not. It’s just stupid I think, as well as kind of conceited. Even though with every record we’ve changed and developed and progressed with our sound, we don’t ignore what we’ve done before. We just want to try different things and make it as interesting as possible for ourselves as well as the listener.
Check out FFAF’s Memory and Humanity, and if you get the chance, for God sake, see them live.
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