A Brilliant Lie – In Their Own Words

A Brilliant Lie gets down to basics

Interview conducted Sept. 20, 2018

by Barry Nadler

• Tara Lightfoot – Vocals/Guitar
• Matthew Movens – Guitar
• Jason Lemrod – Guitar
• Nick Scout – Bass
• Chris Lane – Drums

BARRY: How long have you been A Brilliant Lie?

TARA: A Brilliant Lie has been a brainchild since about 2010ish. But, there was a lot of sitting in a room and playing the same three songs we had written over and over again. We finally found the proper members that could get us off the ground and playing out live. That lineup then dissolved. But, I think the actual representation of what we are doing now is only a few years old.

MATTHEW: Yeah. So, it was around that time when all the people here right now [in the room] kind of collectively committed and figured out what the band’s style and sound was, and where we wanted it to go. That’s really where we consider us starting.

CHRIS: I always like to think the band really started like five years ago. We were getting our feet wet with the original lineup. And, it kind of blew up because of…life. When that happened, and we regrouped, I think there was like an, “All right, what are we really doing? If we are going to do this thing, let’s do the thing!”

BARRY: Obviously you are all not original members. Who are the original members?

TARA: I remember sitting at a bar with you (Chris) and Zack and you all were like “Let’s start a band!” So, Chris and I were founders.

CHRIS: I remember I met Tara somewhere in the blur of alcohol that was the local scene. The first time we really talked, it was me and Zack. We were playing in that other band. We were like “We have to do something bigger. This isn’t working.” We wanted to start a band fresh. That’s when we actually started to talk to Tara. I called her on the phone. We talked for, like, hours.

TARA: We also had a huge conversation at the bar. They had those drinks for like $2.00. We were like “Let’s…start…a…band…” (LAUGHS)

CHRIS: Fun story about this. When we left my other friends were like “Man, you were like totally jiving on that that girl!” and I was like “No, we’re going to start a band together.” They were like bummed out like “Aw man!” (LAUGHS)

TARA: Later, we found Jason on Craigslist. He came with a free couch.

JASON: Yup. I came with the couch.

MATTHEW: And then, later, I came to the band. So, the band expanded to a five-piece. Tara needing to play guitar all the time became unnecessary. Nick joined us about a year after I came in. We put a bottle of whiskey and a bunch of beer under a box with a stick holding it up (LAUGHS).

NICK: I went under to drink the shot and they just pulled the string. I was done!

MATTHEW: I met Tara about 12 or 13 years ago. I would see her in different bands. Chris, I met but didn’t know him well enough. I met Nick when I was working on a show. Nick was playing bass in a band called Cover Story. His bass string broke on stage, and I was helping him fix it while they were playing a song. And, we have been friends since then.

CHRIS: I met Nick at Matt’s birthday party, I think.

NICK: I didn’t know anyone, except for Matt. I was standing there awkwardly, with my drink. These two together (Chris and Jason) came up and were like “Hey!” and they introduced themselves.

CHRIS: I remember Zack was drunk and in the living room. We were trying to get Nick to do bass tricks. “Show them that thing I have been telling them about!” Zack just pulls out his bass and we were standing in the living room, which was our rehearsal space. Nick was like “Are you sure?” He was so NOT cool with it. It was Zack’s Fender 5-string.

NICK: Not a scratch on it! He hands it to me. “Throw this around!” I was like “I just met you, man. You’re pretty big. I don’t think this is a good idea.” A few more drinks later, I was all “Give me that fucking thing!”

BARRY: What do you think makes A Brilliant Lie unique in the music scene?

CHRIS: I think the people, more than anything. I think musically, we are one of the few real rock bands rolling around town. There are a few bands that you might call “rock,” but it’s only really us and a handful of people.

BARRY: When you say “rock band,” what does that mean to you?

CHRIS: Straight up rock and roll. Loud. Straight-forward. Fun.

MATTHEW: Not metal. Not indie. Not prog.

CHRIS: When I think of straight-up rock bands, I think of bands like Foo Fighters or Eagles of Death Metal. It’s just rock…fucking rock! It’s not tons of

A Brilliant Lies (credit: Barry Nadler)

frills. They have really neat moments, but at the end of the day, it’s loud guitars and dudes hitting cymbals.

NICK: If you like indie, you’ll like what we do. If you like punk, you’ll like what we do. There are so many things we take from them and just make what our version of rock is. You can listen to us and go “Oh, there is so much about this that I like!” and not feel like “Oh, its too much this or too much of that.” There are so many sub-categories. “This has apart from every single piece of these sub-genres” and that is what makes it what it is. It’s tangible. It’s easy to digest.

TARA: And, it’s relatable to a lot of people. At the end of the day, there are a multitude of moments in our songs, whether its musical or lyrical. When we have the ability to play in front of new audiences, its kind of neat when people come up and they love the energy, or they love that meticulous guitar part, or they go back and listen to your CDs and read the lyrics. They say “This was really thoughtful.” They appreciate the moments created. It doesn’t have to appease a certain genre or audience.

NICK: Whether the melody is catchy or the guitar is heavy or the drums beat intricately…or a combination of all three.

TARA: So, what we are saying is that everyone should love us!

JASON: If you like music, you should maybe go to Spotify and type in “A Brilliant Lie.”

BARRY: Who would you say, as a band, are the influences of the band?

CHRIS: I think Thrice is pretty heavy in the mix.

NICK: Yeah, I think Thrice and Foo Fighters are the two main things that everyone in this band listens to. Everyone in this band can draw influence from them.

MATTHEW: I think we all listen to very different stuff. I listen to bands from 311, Death Cab for Cutie, and Anberlin.

TARA: Thrice and Foo Fighters are a good start. I think Anberlin, too. It’s funny, because between the five of us, if we made a Venn diagram of all of our individual influences, there would only be a couple of similarities.

NICK: On tour, we have to consider “what would someone put on the van radio and no one would heckle?” What would someone put on, and everyone would be like “Alright!” and we would start singing.

TARA: Yeah, we do this thing in the van, where, if we have a seven-hour drive or something like that, we pass around a phone and make a playlist. Everyone picks, like, ten songs. We play a game and we have to figure out whose song [choice] it was. (LAUGHS)

JASON: The three bands I always go with are Thrice, Foo Fighters, and Paramore…old Paramore, because new Paramore is very different.

TARA: Yeah someone at Rocklahoma said: “If Thrice and Foo Fighters had a baby with a female singer…”

BARRY: So, individually, what are your influences?

CHRIS: Super easy, man! Thrice is a big one. Foo Fighters. Closure to Moscow – They are a crazy awesome band. I am really into them. I am super into Manchester Orchestra. I love that freaking band! The Ocean, which is a killer band.

NICK: I like a bunch of stuff. I listen to a lot of accordion music. Like from the 1930’s. I hear stuff in there that I would never think to do. When I come to the bass, or guitar, when I’m writing, I ask “What’s going to make this completely different? Can I throw in a curveball that no one will guess would happen?” They did it in the 30’s and either it didn’t work out for them there or it wasn’t good enough to continue to work. But, you know…I can throw this cord in there…and we will look at each other and go “that DEFINITELY does not work.” Or, you throw it in there and because it’s so odd it works. You’re like “FUCK! Where did that come from?” and you’re like “Oh…not from a punk band or a metalcore band. But, it’s from some 1930’s French accordion-playing woman.” I think there’s a lot of stuff I listen to, be it accordion music or fast, dumb punk music that I really like. All those things influence me. Pretty much, everything that doesn’t sound like what we sound like influences me to help us sound like what we sound like. I think its more like cherry-picking from Jazz or classic gypsy jazz or metal or hard-core punk, and even hip-hop. I like saying “We might be able to get away with this” or “what if I use what I like about punk music and what Jason likes about jazz music,” and we put those together and all of a sudden, we have something that’s very ABL (A Brilliant Lie). So, I don’t think there is a single answer on what influences me the most. I feel like its just this amalgamation of a 600-song playlist on shuffle.
Musicals rule my life! Whether it be Disney or anything on Broadway right now. 90’s Disney! A lot of that is “Well if they can get away with it, why can’t we?”

JASON: The major influences for me, when I was first learning to play guitar were Taking Back Sunday, Coheed and Cambria, and John Mayer. Now, I kind of reference a lot of bands like Manchester Orchestra, My Chemical Romance, along with my original influences.

CHRIS: And to be fair…all three of us have sat in a room and had a discussion like “What would Manchester do right now?” That’s a real thing that happens.

NICK: The bridge to “This Means War.” That’s what we did!

MATTHEW: The first rock CD I had was Aerosmith’s “Pump.” So, I got influenced by guys like Joe Perry and Brad Whitford. Right after that was 311’s Blue album. Old 311, like the tone. It would go from rock to ska to punk. But, also Carlos Santana-like solos. “How does this all work?” I don’t care, but I like it. Later on, Joseph Milligan, who is with Anberlin. He would write guitar parts for two people and it would be this other guitar player going in and out for a little bit. Until the guy from Acceptance joined the band. I always loved the fact that he would write left-brain/right-brain and write two different parts and track them. You would be like “Oh! I would never do that.” That comes back to another influence, Taking Back Sunday when Fred was in the band. Just the way he would write the counter melodies. One more would be Collective Soul. They are a three-guitar band. Somehow they would weave three guitars together and you would be like “How!?!” And bands that are really guitar-driven. Not just the musical part, but the way the guitar tone sounds.

JASON: What Matt’s trying to say is that “drums don’t matter”

CHRIS: It’s true. With each show, it becomes more and truer. (LAUGHS) “You guys are really good! I love your bass player!” DAMNIT!

NICK: One time we played this show and someone was like “Can we get a picture with the band?” They gave Chris the camera and were all “Can you take a photo for us?”

CHRIS: I just took it, too! I didn’t even think about it. “Yeah, alright! This band’s great!” We were in the van later and Jason was like “Dude? Why weren’t you in the photo?” “Oh…yeah…MAN! You’re right! I wasn’t in that photo!”

TARA: I am embarrassed by one of my initial influences because it was Metallica. The other one is Michael Jackson. Other bands that inspire me lyrically/vocally are At the Drive-In and Mewithoutyou. That’s some of the most poetic stuff I have ever heard. It’s AMAZING! But, I think, moving forward with A Brilliant Lie, when it comes to writing melodies and stuff, it would have to be AFI. Like older AFI. If I could do a duet with anybody, it would be Davey Havoc. It’s thoughtful. It’s dark. It’s anthemic. Everything sounds big. He makes all his feelings sound big. That’s something I try to do, too.

BARRY: How many albums do you have out now?

CHRIS: Oh, man…there are four. Technically there is a fifth that exists out there in the world. We have a three-song EP that is under a rock.

JASON: I have not heard this, by the way! There are a couple of songs that me, as a band member, have actually not heard…because I am not allowed to. (LAUGHS) If there are any aspiring artists out there, and you want to be like ABL, and you suck…it gets better! (LAUGHS) So, just keep sucking! And eventually, you will be like, “This is almost listenable.”

MATTHEW: The EP “Waking Vessels” is kind of when things started making a little more sense.

TARA: That’s when we started to work with James Paul Wisner, who was the producer of Paramore, Hands Like Houses, Underoath, and Dashboard Confessional.

JASON: He is a better musician than the five of us combined.

MATTHEW: “Waking Vessels” was kind of like where the band was starting to find it’s “point.” That’s also when the big lineup shift happened. Then, we put out two EPs after that, with the new lineup shift. Those two EPs are part of a three-part series, consisting of Threads: Cutter, Threads: Spinner, and then there is a third one that we can’t put out yet because of “reasons.” But, it’s really good! Trust me!

BARRY: Who were the writers on the albums? Is there a primary writing team or is it everybody?

TARA: It’s everybody. We are a democracy…to a fault.

JASON: For better or for worse, all five people in this band can be the primary writer in any other band. And, we are all trying to be the primary writer for this band.

MATTHEW: With the writing process, it’s different for like every song. Sometimes some stuff will happen in the room. Sometimes someone will do a demo – verse/chorus – and we are like “Oh, we just need to figure out a bridge.” It really just depends on the song. But, everyone contributes to it. It’s just battling over what we think needs to be in there. And sometimes, we are like “No, that really doesn’t need to be in there.” Sometimes, you have your sixth member, James (Wisner), say “Nope! Write it again.”

CHRIS: Around the meeting of James Wisner, he changed our perspective on how you write a song. What’s the purpose of the whole thing? He kind of opened up this whole bag where I was like “Oh man! I never really thought of any of that stuff.” When we regrouped from there and started this three-EP set, we took everything we had learned from him and that’s kind of where this whole thing started. That’s really where the band begins – on the EPs. That was actually the point of the three EPs. We wanted to put out multiple CDs in a row, over a short period of time. The idea was to show how we grow as a band. There’s a meaning behind that. The first record, which is Cutter, is us cutting away the old and starting fresh. That’s ABL, like “Here it is! Here’s the band!” This lineup was mostly there.

TARA: It’s a rebirth.

MATTHEW: It shows our growth and how we write together. The third album we have that’s done, that’s not yet out there, it’s the culmination of the first two EPs. When you listen to it, it’s like “Oh! OK. I see how we got here. I’m glad we’re here. I can’t wait to see where we’re going next.” For me, the album that we have finished, just kind of rocks and kicks butt. I am proud of what we did on it.

TARA: One of the initial intentions of doing the trilogy was so the audience could grow with us. I remember it being me and Chris and Zack sitting in the room and being like “Well, do we just stop?” We knew we had something that we felt was bigger than ourselves. It meant something to other people, besides the three of us. If we change our sound slightly, if we change members…it’s OK, because the whole point is that we are supposed to grow. And [with the collection of EPs], the audience can be part of the process. It just…took a little longer than we thought it would (LAUGHS).

CHRIS: We were so ambitious. We were so full of it! We didn’t really do the math very well. “We’re going to release this record! We’re going to tour on it. Go right back to the studio. Record. Tour again!” On paper, it made total sense. When we started recording the first record, I and Jason had a time when we were like “This is never going to fucking work!” It takes a long time to write and record a CD.

JASON: In total fairness, the original idea was to do four songs per EP. At some point, we changed it to five, which is an even worse idea. Then, the idea was that we would write over the course of a year. We would continue to write the songs that we sort of wrote for the first EP and put that on the second EP. That didn’t work out. As soon as we finished the first record, we trashed all the extra songs we had been working on.

CHRIS: Nothing ever works out as you planned it would be. EVER. We released three CDs, but we wrote like 50 songs altogether. For every five songs you hear, there are at least 20 dead ones rolling around somewhere.

NICK: That’s pretty accurate. For every one song, there were five ideas that did not make it. We will each put something out and one of those will get worked on and one will get pushed because those were the best.

JASON: Eventually, we all end up here…arguing about which song we should put on the record. It’s a lot of fun.

BARRY: What’s your favorite tour story? Or, we can go the other way and tell your worst tour story.

NICK: So, I have a lot of stories about touring that I remember. For me, one of my most interesting stories. We had played this show and I was very drunk (pick a show!). I am peeing in this bathroom and these two people barge in. They come in and are like “Whoa! Hey!” I am standing there, “dick in hand,” and these people come. They are all like “You aren’t using the bathroom, are you?” They close the door. I am all like “Nah!” They pull out this bag and they make these lines of blow on the sink. “You cool, dude?” Weiner still in hand, I am like drip…drip…drip “Yeah, man…I’m cool with it.” They were like “You want one?” and they proceeded to snort it up. “Nah, man. I’m just gonna pee.” While this is happening, I take my phone out and take a selfie. It’s just me (no dick…well, I’m a dick) and I am like…“What’s HAPPENING right now!?” I’m like “OK, I pissed on my hands, so I am just going to slide in here and wash them over here…away from your noses.”
Another time, me and Matt got really drunk in Murfreesboro, TN. It’s raining. The show is not going well. There’s a lot of assholes there. This guy is standing in the doorway. We are loading in and out in this pouring rain. Each time we pass by, we are like “Excuse me. Pardon me.” We are going in and out, and this guy is still standing in the fucking doorway. We come out with one or two loads of gear. We had finished playing. This guy was just sitting there, wearing these high tops (I really remember this guy) and a leather jacket. He’s smoking a cigarette. He says “I’m probably in the way, huh?” “No fucking shit! Dude! You’re in the FUCKING WAY!” He says that and moves out of the way. We go to go back in when we are done. Guess who’s in the fucking way again. The same fucking dude! He just didn’t get that he was in the way! He knew he was in the way!

MATTHEW: I felt like every time he looked at me, he was giving me this look like I was inconveniencing him being able to stand in the doorway. I just wanted to put the stuff in the van.

NICK: I just think of [the movie] Scott Pilgrim – “This club sucks! You’re pretentious! I got beef!” That night, I stepped in a puddle, and I cried like there was no tomorrow. It got weird.

CHRIS: Basically, no one gave a crap that we were playing. We were the most “pop” band there. We finished playing and there was, like, one guy clapping. We were supposed to stay at that house. We were like “We do not want to stay here! There is no way.” We drove to some hotel room. It was a weird show.

JASON: I got no stories.

CHRIS: The one we always tell is in South Carolina, and we had a blast there. But, there were cords all over the place. It was kind of like a big event. There was a great crowd there. There were more photographers than I think I have ever seen in a small club. I mean that! There were like four or five photographers and two guys doing videography. Nick, at some point, gets twisted up in the lines and goes backward onto me. He lands on my kit and looks over at me. He could see the rage in my eyes. I reached down and grabbed him and threw him off my kit. I try to assemble the kit in mid-song. The song doesn’t stop. This all happens in an instant. Not a single photographer got a photo of it. No one got video of it. Nothing!

NICK: It was like it never happened. But, they got all the photos of Matt making stupid faces. And, Tara being dumb. And, Jason being like “I hit the wrong note.” Every fucking photo! If your face was looking wrong…nailed it! But, any photo of me dive-bombing on Chris’ expensive, new drum set…just happened to miss it.

JASON: I just remember that I was standing at the front of the stage and suddenly the entire rhythm section just drops out. Chris stopped playing drums, obviously, because he had a bass player laying on his kit. The three of us are playing guitar and I turn to look at these two (Tara and Matthew) and we just shrugged at each other and kept playing. “Alright! We got this!”

TARA: Jason, you have a vest story!

JASON: Oh, I do have a vest story! So, this is my very first adventure with ABL. My first shows were out of state. We were in Atlanta and we had some time to kill before the show. So, we went shopping. Tara brings this vest up to me. “I think this is going to fit you! And, it’s really cool!” She knew all about the brand and everything. I was like “Um…Cool! I’ll get the vest…apparently, it’s cool…”
So, I buy the vest. We throw it in the van. Then, the next day, we were in Birmingham. Our other bass player at the time, Zack, gets on the mic “Everyone, I would like to introduce our new guitarist, Jason Lemrond. Everybody buy him a shot!” During the set, shots just start showing up on stage. I’m like “OK. Here we go!” After the show, shots just keep coming my way. At this point, I’m done. We get in the van and the vehicle starts moving. I’m like “Nope! This is not staying down.” I need to throw up and the van is going. Zack just grabs a bag, hands it to me, and I throw up in the bag.

CHRIS: (LAUGHS) He [Zack] just opens the door to the van, while we’re moving, and sails it out onto the street.

JASON: Then, the next day, we’re driving back to Orlando. I’m starting to pack things up. I’m getting my stuff organized because we are going home. “Where’s my vest? Hmmm. Where’s my vest?” And it hit me…
My vest is in Birmingham…covered in vomit…on the side of the road!”

CHRIS: I always wondered if some homeless guy was like “Worth it!” (LAUGHS) “This is nice!”

BARRY: Is there anything where you look at it and go “That was really cool! I can’t believe we did that!”?

MATTHEW: We were direct support for Our Lady Peace. For a few of us, they are an influence. They were a band we really looked up to and they were outside the box of regular rock, at the time.

TARA: They were badass dudes, too!

CHRIS: Yeah, we got to hang out and eat pizza with them. When we finished the show, they were like, “Hey, come back and have some pizzas with us.” We sat there, while they told us way cooler stories than we will EVER have. “On our first tour, with Van Halen…blah blah blah.”

MATTHEW: Um…Rocklahoma was rad!

CHRIS: Yeah! You go there, and you’re seeing these huge bands, like Underoath, play…or A Perfect Circle…Ghost…and you’re like, “Holy crap! I’m playing this festival.” And a shocking amount of people paid attention to us.

MATTHEW: Everyone there was super cool! Every person we met was super genuine. We played our set, and did a meet and greet afterwards – taking photos, signing posters, signing CDs, and just having conversations with people we had never met…and we were thousands of miles from home! Except, we were all dying because it was hot as “who knows what.” We were all just panting.

JASON: We were playing on the sun, basically.

NICK: It’s very fair to say that we were just as excited to talk to these people as they were to talk to us.

TARA: We have been lucky to open up for bigger bands and festivals and blah blah blah. But, I think one of the coolest things was when we were in DC, on one of our last tours. We played this show and people we didn’t even know were singing along to our songs. That was really humbling and cool. Strangers would come up and say, “I’ve been watching you on YouTube!” It’s so kind and so welcoming. While touring, sometimes we’ll have spent a couple of weeks feeling kind of alone (outside of having each other). And then, you see people singing along to your songs…and you don’t feel so detached anymore.

MATTHEW: As musicians, we all have songs that mean something to us. To have people make a Facebook comment or say something like “This song means whatever reason…it could be anything” That moment is the most rewarding. It’s the highlight of it all. That’s why you do it.

BARRY: Let’s talk about Toto and your current cover song (“Africa”).

JASON: This is Chris’ brain-child so we will let him answer the question.

CHRIS: I don’t know…I like Toto. I think when you do a cover, you want to do something that everyone knows, so it always lands. And, that’s a tough thing because you think of a song and you’re like “Everyone knows that song!” but then you start talking to people about it and no, they don’t. Toto, “Africa” – everyone knows that freaking song. It’s tough to find a cover like that and then trying to think of a way to do it in a way that doesn’t sound like the same song. We’ve done a lot of covers, but I still think Toto is our best.

NICK: I think we’ve put a lot of ourselves into that cover. When you hear the Toto cover, you’re like “This is obviously something ABL would do.” We changed it enough where you can see Toto, but you can also see ABL. We aren’t doing fucking Toto karaoke. I think that’s what makes it cool.

MATTHEW: It’s a fun cover and hopefully, at some point, we put out our own version of it. We’ll see.

BARRY: Is there anything about the music industry that surprised you, now that you are starting to get some traction?

CHRIS: Nobody has any idea how they did anything. No one! It’s crazy. You talk to a guy who’s a millionaire and has had a bunch of gold records – “How’d you do it?” “I don’t know…I don’t know how this happened.”

NICK: There’s no algorithm.

MATT: There’s no right way to do it. You have people tell you that. “So, what do you do?” “Oh, you can do this…or that…or that…or that…” An hour and a half later, you are like “So, there is no answer. OK. Good to know.”

CHRIS: We are in the wild west of the music world right now. Nobody knows exactly how to monetize streaming completely. All the artists are getting boned. Physical record sales have gone off the map. LPs or actual records have come back a little bit, but it’s still not enough to level the playing field. I always thought you write a really great record and people buy it, and we buy Ferraris. That’s supposed to be how it works. Now, there are bands out there who are huge names but they have second jobs. It’s a crazy-town.

NICK: There are so many variables now. Not only does music popularity come in waves, but how music is consumed has come in bigger waves. There’s a really interesting book called Wired. It talks about how the internet changed the music industry. Eventually, as a band, when we consider how we create music, we start having discussions about what to do with the next record. “Should it be on USB? Should it be for free download? Should it be on CD? Should it be an LP?

CHRIS: I just thought more people would know what’s up. We would get to this level, there would be an office we walk into, and this guy named Brian would be sitting there. “Alight, you guys have made it to that point! Sign here and we’ll take care of the rest.” You just go “Oh! That’s how this works! We’ve done all the work. Here you go.” We would then walk through this other door, and some dude puts a guitar on Jason, I get like a leopard suit, my kit immediately has extra kick drums and toms on it for no fucking reason, and there’s just a crowd waiting outside our first arena show (which happens right after we walk out of Brian’s office). Then, it’s just smooth sailing and I go buy my gold-plated Lamborghini. Tara owns her harem of cats. Jason starts his drug addiction…
That’s how I imagined the whole thing worked. Until recently, when I realized that’s not how it worked. That was a surprise to me. That even at the top, it’s a crap-shoot.

BARRY: Knowing all that, is there anything you would have done differently?

JASON: Honest answer? I would have gotten these five people together and said “Instead of putting a band together, let’s put together some weird business and the five of us can put that much time into it and actually make money.

CHRIS: I think I would have skipped a couple of lineups. Like, if that was a reality, I could have gone “Alright, here’s the perfect band!” If I had known what we would be, I would have tried to pull that off. I’m glad it happened the way it did. I don’t know if we would have ended up being the same band that we did, but I wish we had met each other sooner.

TARA: I think I would be unabashed, in the sense of what we post and how we present ourselves earlier on in this social media climate. It’s very naked but curated too. I think everyone gets really hung up on “Oh, make your feet look beautiful. Don’t post anything unless its perfect.” I think people are craving authenticity.

CHRIS: I think I would have learned to be more selfish, too. I know that sounds really terrible. But, for a long time, I think we were trying to please everybody else and also try to move forward. I think its ok, as a project, that we be selfish. We need to make decisions that are going to help us out and then, if it helps other people, it’s great. I don’t think we were necessarily hurt by it, but, we might have gotten places quicker if we were more selfish in the past.

MATT: You try to be a team player amongst each other and “Well, you know what? We didn’t need to do that. We wasted time on that.” But, you learn. You learn a little from everything you do.

BARRY: What’s on your playlist in heavy rotation?

MATT: Plini’s “Hand Made Cities” and the last two Ghost albums. Plini is all instrumental and proggy and Ghost is…Ghost. Very cinematic. For me, it’s like those two vast differences between bands is really cool. I thrive on both those things. Also, I am looking forward to the new Death Cab for Cutie that’s coming out. That band always kind of sticks out in my eyes. They evolve, but in a weird way.

JASON: I’ve been listening to a lot of Manchester Orchestra lately. I’m really stoked about the new Hands Like Houses album. Our good buddy, James Paul Wisner mixed it.

CHRIS: I never stop listening to Closure in Moscow. Been listening to a lot of Plini lately. I’ve also been listening to a ton of Manchester Orchestra.

TARA: “Bones” by Son Lux. The last Woodkid album. But then, I always listen to my Less Than Jake, Ghost, and stuff like that.

BARRY: One thing you do that’s different, in your live show, is Chris plays drums sideways, rather than facing the crowd. Why did you make that choice?

CHRIS: The reason I play that way is, I think, visually, it offers a lot more. As a drummer, you get stuck behind the cymbals and you’re just like a weird, floating head. I think it adds more to the live show because people can see what you’re doing. By seeing that, people hear more of what you’re doing. A lot of people hear what they see. When they can’t see you doing a lot, they don’t hear all the little things you add into the music. Plus, when I do backup vocals, it’s nice to face the audience, rather than facing my hi-hat.

MATT: Also, it’s fun when one of us messes up. We can easily just scowl at each other.

BARRY: Are there any other interesting facts or fun stories you want to share?

MATT: We are on tour with Rookie of the Year, from the middle of September all the way through the middle of October. We are going up the eastern coast, over to the Midwest states,

TARA: I would say that playing the Warped tour has been a life goal [and that just happened].

JASON: And we managed to just sneak it in! Barely!

NICK: One time, I ordered a hot dog while we were playing. It was in Georgia. There was a window behind us. I got my wireless and just walked out into the street. Chris was so mad. I came back and was like “What’s the fucking problem? I was just getting some food!”

 

Website | Facebook |YouTube | Twitter | Instagram |