A Static Lullaby Interview - 03.27.2005
| Interview with Dan Arnold (vocals) Interview by Rob Todd | 03.27.2005 | Phone  Does it ever get to you guys that people focus so much on how fast you made it into mainstream? I don’t really hear much about that actually because it’s sort of a long time. When we first started as a band we got out there right away and we didn’t screw around at all getting on tours. We did a lot of tours just by ourselves and a lot of self-funded tours. Then we got on Ferret [Records] and we've been on Ferret for a good while. I think, for the most part, as far as fans go, they think we’ve earned what we’ve gotten just because we’ve toured so much, we’re never not on tour. I haven’t really talked to any interview people that have said that. It just seemed to me like a lot of press had focused on how quickly you went from forming the band to touring constantly. Yeah, you know, we did it. We just wanted to get out there ‘cause we were all pissed off and wanted to get away from home. That’s the best way to do it. Do you think some people get the wrong impression about how difficult it is to make it, especially when they don’t know that you guys really did become a band before ever signing? It’s very hard to get your name out there. Touring is not an easy thing, it’s hard work, you have to fast for a couple days sometimes. Sometimes you just don’t have money at all to do anything. You’re just stuck in a little van and it gets rough. You start fighting with your best friends just out of frustration, being frustrated with life—it’s a lot of hard work. We thought it was gonna be the funnest thing ever and it’s really fun but at the same time it’s real job as well. I read yesterday that you have tours booked with Anberlin and The Black Maria and later with Sum 41 and Unwritten Law. You’re on Taste of Chaos now with some huge bands and you’ve already got tours booked with some more huge bands. Give us your reaction to that. We’ve always wanted to tour with Sum 41 ever since we’ve been a band. That band seems like a lot of fun and we like their music, they’re cool guys. Ever since we’ve been a band Joe [Brown has] always been like, ‘We should go on tour with Sum 41, that would be so fun,’ and we finally it out of nowhere and we’re like, “Hell yeah,” so we’re pretty excited for that. It seems like a lot of bands I talk to say the same thing. Somehow the Foo Fighters and Sum 41 always come up when bands are asked about who they’d like to tour with. Definitely. Those are like our two top choices as well. Give us your impression of the Taste of Chaos tour. It’s the biggest tour we’ve ever done and it’s amazing, it’s so amazing. All the bands are really cool. We’re friends with Saosin, we’re friends with Underoath, we’re friends with My Chemical Romance and we had met a couple guys from the Used prior to this tour. It’s a lot of good fun, there’s no beef anywhere which is always good ‘cause when you go on tour with bands sometimes some of the bands don’t get along and it’s just a weird environment for everyone but this one is just really awesome. Buddy Nielsen of Senses Fail said that maybe this tour is different because really nobody has a big ego about themselves whereas The Used could easily think they’re better because they sell way more records. Yeah totally, but they’re just the most humble people, like total awesome guys [who] just want to party all the time. Bert [McCrackin] is like the raddest dude I’ve ever met. Were you guys kinda bummed about not getting on Warped Tour or is there something planned for summer? Actually, I don’t think we’ve ever been offered Warped Tour. We would like to do it because we think it would be good for the band but, at the same time, we hear it’s really miserable just ‘cause it’s super hot. A lot of the bands we talked to don’t have fun on it but it is good for your band. In a way, I’m pretty bummed about it but in a way I’m relieved that we don’t have to do that hard touring. We get to go to Europe for the first time instead of doing Warped Tour so it kinda works out in a weird way. In an interview that Joe did earlier this month, he was talking about the cover art and said that you guys had to haul around a generator and lights in the mountains just to get the shot for the cover art. It seems like a lot of work since the cover looks pretty much computer generated. The actual shot of the tree, we went and got that shot. The tree is a real picture, the whole thing, but it was done in Photoshop because the way it looked plain we didn’t want it just to be a plain picture. There was a lot of stuff on the mountain as well like these weird cactus things growing up that we kind of blocking the shot so we had to photoshop all that out. And then he showed us what it looked like when it was done and it was still a real picture and he had photoshopped some stuff out and we were just like, “It doesn’t look like an album cover. It just looks like a really nice picture of something,” so he was like, ‘I’m gonna trick this out and make it look all crazy,’ and we were like, “Do it.” He gave us the finished project and it’s awesome. The lights at the bottom are Christmas lights that we strung down the hill and it’s giving off this crazy glow and the way he photoshopped it just made it look like lava or something. It seems to me like you guys are much harder live than on the album. Is there a reason you think you come off that way? It’s hard to find the right producer to capture that live energy. I think a lot of bands come off harder live. The Used definitely comes off harder live than they do on the record. It’s just something you have to deal with. How was recording this album different than recording And Don’t Forget to Breathe? This one was awesome ‘cause we did it in Malibu and we were up in the hills and it was beautiful, we had a great view. We did it at this place called Indigo Ranch and we did the drums at this place in Burbank called Ocean Studios. It was just a good time ‘cause the last one we did in Jersey and we had to drive out to Jersey and it was rainy and miserable and we’d all were getting sick. Brent was recording drums and he got sick so he had to quarantined for the rest of recording. He didn’t get to hang out during guitars and shit so that kinda sucked. The first record was a lot of fun too ‘cause it was a mission to get it done. We did it in 13 days and it we were really pumped about it. This new record was a lot more laid back. We had some time to experiment with different effects like guitar effects and it was just a lot of fun. We stayed at the place where we did the recording, they have their little château where bands stay. Everyday we’d wake up, we’d do some tracks and it was a lot of fun. As far as the songs on the album go, which ones did you already have written and which ones, if any, were written in the studio? Or what got changed in the studio? It didn’t really change too much. At pre-production, one that we worked on a lot that wasn’t coming out right in the demos was the song “Cash Cowbell.” It was really riffy and the chorus sounded weird. We got in pre-production, the producer said the chorus sounded weird, and I had been saying something as well prior to that like, “This chorus is kinda weird and I think this song could be really good if we just mess with the chorus,” so we just went aside and worked on it and tried to simplify it a little bit more to make it a huge chorus and it came out really really fuckin’ good. I’m really into that song now, it’s really good. Your first record was on Ferret, which is getting more attention as a great indie label. What happened that A Static Lullaby is now signed to Columbia? We were on Ferret for a year and it seems like they did all they could do for us as far as indie labels go, as far as promoting the first record. Our manager thought it was time to step it up. At first we were kind of iffy, we didn’t want to go to Columbia. But, the thing about Columbia is they showed a huge huge interest and they actually came out—Tim Devine came out with this guy, Josh Rosenthal, that works for Sony who actually brought the band to the label’s attention and was really passionate about it. They came out to Kansas City, MO at this place called the El Torreon, which is just this little theater, a little tiny club. There was maybe twenty kids there and we had a really good night, that night we played really well I think. They were just so into it, they were there—flew in from California—without even telling anyone. They were like, ‘Oh, hey, we’re from Columbia. We’ve been scouting your band, we really like it a lot and we’d like to work something out with you guys.’ It was just totally surprising, our manager didn’t know they were out there and they just showed a big interest by going out there and confronting us telling us what was up. Usually you have to showcase for labels to find one. The thing was, we weren’t actually looking for a major label at the time. We were just touring on the record and doing our thing and we told our manager and he flip a lid and was like, ‘We gotta do something about this!’ We’re really upset about having to leave Ferret ‘cause we were like family with them but we worked something out so Carl (from Ferret) could get some could distribution through Sony Red for Ferret to get those bands out there so it worked out for everyone. Was your contract with Ferret up at that point or did Columbia actually buy them out? It wasn’t up, we got bought out. Our contract was really small with Ferret. We had one album with an option for a second album or EP and [Columbia] just bought out the whole deal. Who do you guys look up to as influences? We look up to Foo Fighters a lot, we look up to Smashing Pumpkins a lot, Weezer—bands that we were into that caused us to get into music—Green Day, stuff like that since that came out when we were in junior high and that’s what got us all playing our instruments and wanted to start bands with everyone. We were all, except for Bret, Bret was always a punk-rock/hardcore kid, for a while when we were in high school we were really into ska and stuff (laughter). Yeah, we went through that whole phase. Just a lot of ska bands, Reel Big Fish, just the mainstream ones. Nowadays, Nirvana, looking back on the music that we had when we were younger that we didn’t always listen to but kinda got into. More recently, ‘cause we’ve been busy experimenting with bands in our genre, finding out who we can take on tour. Then we started straying away from that – listening to our own stuff. Getting into Björk, we’ve always liked Radiohead. Radiohead’s always been a big influence on us. Muse I think is the newest one. Muse is just incredible. What bands do you think are deserving of attention or credibility? There’s bands like Codeseven who are just fucking incredible and no one really gives two shits about. They haven’t gotten much promotion which is understandable, but they do tour a lot. The kids are like, ‘whatever,’ about it ‘cause they’re all these stupid hardcore kids at shows that we play. They’re there to go to a show, not to listen to music, they’re just there to hang out. They used to be a hardcore band and they went the cave-in route of things—just being more rock ‘n’ roll. They’re really fuckin’ good. Another band called Christian Sin which recently just changed their name to Your Highness. They’re just a good, solid rock band. They’re kind of At The Drive-In meets Rollingstones, it’s weird, it really riffy rock but it just kicks ass. The Bled, but they’re getting some recognition, but I don’t think they’re big enough for how good they are. What’s something (for fun) that you would include at show etiquette? For example, not wearing a shirt from the band you’re going to see. I think that’s the main rule but a lot of kids break in all the time. Especially at these kinds of shows in our genre, kids are so stoked to come see bands like The Used and 50% of the kids will be wearing The Used or My Chemical Romance shirts. Another one would be…don’t spit on bands (laughter). I don’t know, I think the shirt one is the main one that goes for everyone everywhere. That’s the only main rule of going to a show. Oh, duh, don’t ever go to a show on mushrooms, especially one of our shows (laughter) then freak out in the back. Speaking of spitting, a friend of mine actually got some on her from My Chem at another show. It’s just how it goes. Just don’t get pissed and spit back. Yeah, you should just be happy that you’re that close. Yeah, you got good seats. |
