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HELLO! IF MY GOOGLING IS RIGHT, YOU ARE ON YOUR DAY OFF RIGHT NOW ON THIS TOUR. SO THANK YOU FOR MAKING THE TIME TO CHAT. HOW ARE YOU?
Oh no worries. Sorry it took so long. It’s been such a task to find a good window of time to do it. I’m good. Just hanging out in a parking lot, somewhere in Pennsylvania.
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YOUR PREVIOUS RELEASES FEEL A BIT DARKER/NEGATIVE IN A WAY WHEREAS THIS IS LIKE A BIT OF A SOMBER SELF-REFLECTION. IS THAT WHY THIS ALBUM IS CALLED SWAN SONG? JUST MOVING ON PERSONALLY. OR IS THERE SOMETHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT?
It’s kind of like a goodbye letter to negativity. It’s kind of like saying goodbye to what I’ve done with art for such a long time. Like I feel like it’s all been so negative and down that I think I’m at a point where I kind of just want to flush it out and try some new things. So this is kind of my last “here you go this is all the fucked up shit in my life”. Enjoy it. But yeah it’s kind of like a departure from that.
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IS THIS ALBUM PUT IN ORDER, LIKE SHOULD IT BE LISTENED TO FRONT TO BACK?
Yeah I think so. Obviously that’s the order I put them in but at the same time, most of the songs are about different things. Like first song is about losing a friends then it goes into a current friend that’s still alive. So it’s all over the place. It touches on relationships between me and people I’ve dated or the person I’m with to old friendships and new ones, family and stuff like that. So it’s pretty all around the spectrum as far as subject matter. I think you can listen to it in whatever order you want but it’s definitely meant to be the way that I put it in there.
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I’M A BIG FAN OF ASKING ABOUT THE ALBUM ARTWORK. HOW DID THE ARTWORK COME ABOUT BECAUSE YOU’VE ALSO USED DIFFERENT POSES BUT SIMILAR STYLES FOR ARTWORK AND VIDEO VISUALISERS?
I had the idea for the concept and it was kind of different. It was going to be an aerial view of them in the bed together. But the photographer (Fever and Form) took like hundreds and hundreds of photos and whenever we opened them up and saw that one we were like – well I think it was Josh that noticed it first and he was like what do you think of this one actually and I looked at it and I was like yeah actually it sends the same message but looks more iconic I guess, at least we thought so. It’s basically two people in their naked form being vulnerable with each other. You can kind of tell there’s hints of she seems kind of distraught and he’s not looking at her either . So you can tell there’s love their but also tension. So yeah it felt like it summed up a lot of what the record touches on.
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FOR THE ‘FACE ME’ AND ‘PARADIGM’ VIDEOS, THEY WERE ESSENTIALLY MORE BAND FOCUSED VISUALS. BUT THE ‘TOO FAR GONE’ VIDEO WAS DEFINITELY MORE OF A STORY BEING TOLD. I SAW THE BTS WITH GREEN SCREEN AND STUFF AS WELL. SO I WANTED TO ASK ABOUT HOW YOU GET YOUR IDEAS FOR THE VIDEOS AND WHAT THE PROCESS IS LIKE?
I’m going to be completely honest with you, I had nothing to do with the storyline for the ‘Too Far Gone’ video. I think I’ve only watched it once, I don’t even remember what it’s even about. That was probably me least favourite out of all of them but it looks cool so yeah. Probably the worst answer.
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MY FAVOURITE VIDEO IS THE ‘FACE ME’ VIDEO.
Yeah me too. I think that one turned out really cool. Those guys are really really talented. I’m not trying to shit on this, I think it was just a rushed situation but it turned out fine.
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WERE THOSE VIDEOS DONE DURING LIKE COVID AND STUFF?
Kind of. It was over the summer and everyone tried to be careful and wear masks and stuff like that. I think things were pretty much back to normal., But we did all 3 of those videos in 2 days. We did ‘Face Me’ in 1 day and the next day we did two green screen videos for ‘Paradigm’ and ‘Too Far Gone’. The green screen ones are easy, you just stand there and act like you’re doing stuff for a couple of minutes.
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IT SEEMS LIKE AN INTERESTING EXPERIENCE IN THAT YOU ARE PERFORMING, KNOWING THERE ARE GOING TO BE VISUALS BEHIND YOU, BUT NOT KNOWING WHAT YOU’RE WORKING WITH.
It’s a very bizarre time. I’ve never done it. That was our first green screen video ever. So it was kind of awkward and strange but it works, it looks cool. I feel like a lot of people are going to do that because it’s just a lot easier.
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YOU’RE CURRENTLY ON TOUR WITH SILVERSTEIN. I WANTED TO ASK, WHEN WE WENT BACK TO SHOWS, I FOUND IT OVERWHELMING AND IT WILL PROBABLY BE THAT WAY AS WE COME OUT OF THIS LOCKDOWN AGAIN. HOW WERE YOUR FIRST SHOWS BACK AND HOW IS THE TOUR GOING?
It’s been great. The first show back, we sounded like shit. We were very off. Everyone was so nervous and just wanting to get the first one out of the way. I was hitting some real bad notes. It was definitely a mess. By the 2ND or 3RD show we were solid and back in the groove of things. It’s been cool. The shows have been very big and awesome crowds. Everyday is still bizarre to be back after being gone for so long. It kind of started to feel like it was never going to happen again. I’m glad that things are kind of back to normal. There’s some weird covid restrictions on this tour. We’ve gotta wear masks everywhere outside of the bus, we’re not supposed to hang out with people outside of the tour, we’re not supposed to have people on our tour bus, we’re not even supposed to have people in our green room and stuff. That’s all really weird but aside from that everything’s pretty much back to normal.
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THAT SEEMS SO STRANGE BECAUSE YOU GET SO USED TO HEARING ABOUT FUN TOURS AND BANDS MEETING FANS ETC. BUT I GUESS YOU NEED TO WEIGH UP THE PROS AND CONS.
We saw so many tours get cancelled because people were getting covid on the road. So yeah Silverstein just said we need to be strict about this and be careful. We did a headlining show in Jacksonville, Florida. I had some friends come out who I hadn’t seen in forever and I had to be like yeah I can’t hang out with you. That sucked. I had to say on stage we’re not allowed to meet you so we’re going to be getting off the stage and walking straight to our bus so don’t touch us essentially.
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YOU’RE ON BACK TO BACK DATES AND NOW YOU’RE DOING PRESS ON YOUR OFF DAY. I WANTED TO KNOW IF YOU HAVE MUCH OF A ROUTINE OR LIKE HOW AWARE YOU ARE OF YOUR VOCALS AND THAT ON TOURS LIKE THIS?
Usually I’m pretty good about maintaining vocals. I get off days are a godsend, I don’t think I could get through the tour if we didn’t have off days. I think at this point I know my voice pretty well and I know hot to maintain it. It’s pretty much like, I lose my voice easier just hanging out on the bus and goofing off with the guys. Even laughing, I’ll lose my voice to laughing, even more than the actual set. I just have to be very mindful of not being loud, can’t cough too hard, just like stupid things like that. Drink a lot of water.But aside from that, I’ve been really really lucky with my vocal health in general, especially the last 5 years, I think I’ve lost my voice once or twice. I got lucky. I was just saying this in the last interview I did, I think I blew my voice out so much in the early days that I just developed a scar tissue on my vocal chords. Like those things are unstoppable at this point.
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THE TIK TOK VIDEOS YOU’VE POSTED RECENTLY HAVE BEEN HILARIOUS. THE BUNK SQUEEZE AND JUST CLIMBING OUT OF EVERYWHERE EXCEPT THE BUNKS. WHERE ARE THESE IDEAS COMING FROM?
Sheer painful, brutal boredom. That’s where it comes from. Just another level of pain. I don’t know. We’ve been doing that for years anyway. We target one person and we all crawl in their bunk and just see how many people we can cram in there. Finally we were like, we need to video tape this. So we got I think it was 6 or 7 people in 1 bunk and it was brutal. I thought I was gonna die. Then we all tried to fit in as many cabinets, refrigerators etc. I think next we’re going to see how many people we can fit in the bathroom. I think we’re going to try go for 15 people. That’s the stupid shit we do to keep ourselves sane.
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Photo Credit: Kaitlin Molchen
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I SUPPOSE THAT’S WHAT YOU DO NOW THAT YOU CAN’T HANG OUT WITH PEOPLE AND STUFF.
Dude, things have got so weird. We have developed a new genre of humour I feel like. We do weird stuff. We play a lot of Mario Kart, that gets us through most of the days. We’re EXTREMELY competitive. We’re pretty much always playing some kind of game. It’s either dice, poker or Mario Kart. Or everyone’s just sitting on their phones.
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FIRST TIME FOR PLOT IN NZ! AFTER ALL THE CRAZINESS, DOES THAT EVEN FEEL REAL OR WILL IT BE CLOSER TO THE TIME?
I feel like it will be closer to the time. We’ve done Australia quite a few times so that’s not really anything new. But yeah New Zealand, I’m always excited to go to any new country for the first time. It’s a cool feeling. New Zealand is one I’ve wanted to go to for a very very long time so that’s going to be awesome. I’m excited to see if we have fans.
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WHAT SORT OF SETLIST CAN WE EXPECT?
I think we’re going to try do a good mix of older stuff and new stuff. Obviously us ourselves, we have way more fun doing the new stuff, especially since who knows how many more times we’ll be able to make it out to New Zealand in our career. Yeah we’ll try to make it a mix of old and new to appease everybody since it’s our first time. We’ll do our best.
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OKAY I HAVE TO ASK ON BEHALF OF A FEW PEOPLE. ERRA IS OBVIOUSLY JOINING YOU IN AUSTRALIA BUT NOT HERE. SO WOULD YOU DO A SOLO SET BEFORE YOUR PLOT SET?
I would love too. That idea has definitely been tossed around for sure. It’s still earlier enough. I’m currently trying to figure something out for Australia as far as doing some solo shows. Jesse from Erra also has a solo project and it would be really cool to merge and do some shows in Australia. So yeah maybe, I’m definitely going to look into it because I think it will be a blast. It’s definitely not off the table.
FUN QUESTIONS:
FAVE SNACK?
Honestly, this tour, I’ve been eating tons of popcorn. Just because it’s not that bad, it’s not going to make me blow up or anything like that and it’s salty & great. And it’s ALWAYS all over the floor because I’m an idiot and don’t know how to eat correctly.
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I THINK I SAW A VIDEO OF YOU GUYS STOMPING IT INTO THE CARPET AND STUFF?
Yeah it was a rough night. We needed something to cheer us up.
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WAS IT THE WHOLE LOT OR JUST THOSE BOTTOM BITS THAT YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT?
Honestly I was like really really drunk. One of my best friends, he guitar techs for us and he just threw 1 on the floor, then I threw 1 on the floor, then he started smashing his and I started smashing mine. Then we just started throwing handfuls and then just dumped the whole bag. Typical night in our camp. That was probably one of my favourite nights on the tour, I had so much fun.
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OVERUSED PHRASE?
We say a lot of fucked up shit I probably couldn’t say. Whenever we’re playing Mario Kart, if you hit someone with a shell, instead of calling it abuse we call it buse. We just say that. Then it spilled into normal life. So if you do something to someone they don’t like then you call them a buser. I wish I could explain why this is funny but it doesn’t make any sense. Me saying it out loud makes it sound more ridiculous then it was.
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IF I SAID NEW ZEALAND TO YOU, WHAT’S THE FIRST THING YOU THINK OF?
Just beautiful. Anytime I’ve seen anything from New Zealand it just looks gorgeous. Even the people. Everything looks nice, well maintained, clean, am I right?
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YEAH.
That’s good. Hell yeah.
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I’VE ONLY BEEN TO AMERICA TWICE SO YEAH.
America’s pretty dumpy. We don’t know how to take care of our shit. You guys look like you care.
THANK YOU SO MUCH AND I HOPE YOU GET A BIT OF REST TODAY!
After this I’m going to eat a bunch of meat and pass out.
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OH YEAH I THINK I SAW ON YOUR LAST OFF DAY YOU SAID YOU HAD BURGERS AND WENT BACK TO SLEEP?
Dude, yeah this whole tour as far as food goes, we’ve just been scumbags. Steaks. We like to fine dine quite often, that’s one of our big things that makes us happy.
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WELL THANK YOU SO MUCH! WE’LL SEE YOU NEXT YEAR.
Thank you for having me. Absolutely. Come say what’s up!
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