Mae Interview - 04.16.2005
| Interview with Zach Gehring (guitar) Interview by Jason Schleweis | 04.16.2005 | East Lansing, MI | Michigan State University  How in your opinion has the reception of the new album been? Um, it's been awesome! We did more than I thought we would first week as far as number's go and just the kid's that we play to every night have been really supportive and awesome so, so far it's been awesome. When you set out to record The Everglow, did you plan on making it into a large and cohesive story or was that something that fell into place as you went? When we were writing the record it kinda fell into place. Dave [Elkins, vocals] realized that a lot of the songs, even though they were written independant of each other...see we didn't write them in any kind of order or [didn't mean] to have a concept record or story record. But since the start of writing this record, all the songs have kind of fell into place because of what we've been through and what we're going through and that was something that kind of fell more into our favor. And since we seen we could do it we figured we might as well try. And that's kinda just how it happened, it wasn't pre-meditated. Is it feasible to suggest that The Everglow will be more of a building block for Mae in the future as opposed to your previous album Destination: Beautiful? Yeah, I think that both records definitely serve they're purpose as far as where the band was when they were released. I mean, the first record the band got signed without even playing a show yet and it was just really weird how things happened for the band. It just seems like more of a natural progression and I definitely think this is going to give us a great, great year. And hopefully by the time we put out the next record we'll be in a different place because of what this record has done. So, yeah. Do you think with future records you guys will want to continue the cohesive story element and maybe make what could be another chapter in the overall story? We really haven't even thought about that. The new record just came out and all our brains are just...(Laughter)...we worked really hard on this record! I know we'll try to make each record it's own record so we'll see. Now you guys have mentioned before how you want to make your live show trigger other senses in the future. Are there any preliminary ideas you have been throwing around or just how do you plan on accomplishing this? We haven't really been able to delve into it and think about it yet just because we have been so busy, and also, when you're doing something like that it's just financially something that has to be thought out and planned. So we definitely want to do that and bring something else into our shows besides our music to enhance the experience of hearing music being played. But we just haven't had the time to sit down and start planning things, but we've definitely been throwing around ideas. We just haven't been able to start planning like we want to. I haven't seen this question answered anywhere, and while it might not seem to important, I figured I'd ask it anyways. What musical influences have you had through the progression of Mae? It's hard. I dunno I think we just have a staple of the music we listen to as being timeless. Definitely timeless like U2, The Police, or The Beatles. You know Bruce Springsteen and things like that where they're songs are as relevant now as when they were written. They're not jaded you know, like they have a message not just like bubble-gum pop tunes but at the same time they're poppy. You know? U2 would just be a perfect example because they're so listenable and you can sing along but they have a message. And they do what they do so well, and you don't think of a band like U2 as one that's going anywhere anytime soon. So as far as musically, we just want to write songs that won't fade away with a new century or a new decade or anything like that. I think that's our main goal, is to just write good songs. Now you guys have a pretty lengthy stretch of tour dates coming up, including a considerable portion of Warped Tour so how do you plan on dealing with the insanity of all that coming up? We played Warped Tour last year for the first time and it was definitely a new experience cause we had never done anything like that and no showers and hot sun everyday. But once you get used to it and meet friends...we shared a bus with the dudes in Hidden In Plain View and became pretty good friends with those guys. And you see the things people do everday so you adapt easily. So we're really excited to be doing it this year since we got our feet wet last year. And this year we're doing the other half which takes us down into Florida in the summertime so that's going to be awesome. So we really can't wait, it's going to be fun! As a follow up to that, which song or songs do you believe best represents who you guys are musically? Probably a song like "Anything" or "The Ocean" is a personal favorite of mine. Something like that. Is it a big deal for bands and you guys in particular when you reach over a million plays on Purevolume or things like that or don't you pay attention to that sort of stuff? It's definitely awesome. But... It's not something you set out to achieve. Yeah we just put ourselves up there to try and get as many kids as possible and obviously it's worked. Like a million plays, that's huge. Something like that is just kind of hard to comprehend. Like I can't even imagine ten thousand or twenty thousand, but a million? That's just awesome! Now you guys don't have a video off of The Everglow yet do you? Not yet, I think we're actually going to end up shooting one before Bamboozle. It'll be for the song "Suspension." So that'll be the first single if you can call it that. Do you guys have any story board ideas for that? It's all still being written out and we've got some ideas down. It's just a matter of finding someone who can do it so hopefully we'll come up with something. This part is just where we get a little playlist from you guys and what you've been listening to lately so if you could just name a few artists or albums that'd be great. I love this question so much. It's just a hard question to answer. (Laughter) Personally, I got Heatmiser recently, and that's an older band, that's Elliott Smith's old band before he went solo. I've been listening to Discover America, they're new album. This guy named Chris Staples who was in this band called Twothirtyeight years back and he's got this new thing coming out [Blackest Hair, Bluest Eyes] so I've been kind of listening to that. Days Away, a band from Pennsylvania who's got an album coming out [Mapping an Invisible World], and The Snake The Cross The Crown who's a new band on Equalvision. So there's a couple. Any final comments? Thank you for the interview. And thank you to all of those people that come out to the shows and everything. Just a big, big thanks! |
