On the night of December 1, 2011, I attended a concert with Adelita’s Way, Art Of Dying, and Emphatic. Where I got to interview Art Of Dying’s manager, T.J. Sagen, and Cale Gontier, who plays bass in Art Of Dying. T.J really wanted to get my questions answered, but knew the band may have been too busy to do it, so he offered to answer them for me. He did his best, though there was a few he could not answer for the simple reason of he is not actually part of the band. Read some of the insight I got from these two wonderful people below. Please keep in mind that the questions were worded for the band, but were answered by their manager, so some questions may appear to be worded strange compared to the response.
What is the “Art Of Dying”? (How did you come up with your band name)? Cale: “It actually comes from a longer sentence, ‘The art of dying is my life to live.’ It means living your life well, and realizing it won’t last forever so make it count.” Who writes most of your songs? Is it just one person or is it a group effort? T.J: “It is a mix of all of them.” What bands have impacted your lives as musicians? T.J. “Three Days Grace, Def Leopard …those are definitely two that have impacted them.” Just this year, Vices And Virtues dropped, and it is a great album. I have to ask, where do you find your passion? You sing every line so passionately, like you’re really into every word. T.J. “I think a lot of their lyrics and passion just come from life experiences.” Are there any tracks that didn’t make it onto the album that were originally intended to be? T.J. “There’s a couple that didn’t make it, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t end up on future albums.” How did you get Adam Gontier into the song “Raining”? Cale: “We hang out all the time, and I suggest he get into it. We actually recorded about eighteen songs, and Adam sung in two of them. We just told him to sing on two tracks, and promised one of them would end up on the album.” I know that Cale is related to Adam Gontier of Three Days Grace, and that he’s featured in “Raining” but has he helped out at all? Lyrically, or in any other way in the music business? T.J. “Adam will show up and sometimes sing live with the band.” What’s your favorite track on the album? Cale: “Tough question. I’d have to go with ‘Raining’, just because Adam’s in it.” While I found it very difficult to pick a favorite, I ultimately decided on, “I Will Be There”. The form of compassion is very rare, and I loved the way its expressed. That brings me to my question though, what inspired that song? Cale: “Johnny wrote it about his girl.” What has it been like touring with huge bands like Avenged Sevenfold, and Adelita’s Way? T.J. “Its amazing. You get to know them, you see them every day. You build a friendship with them, after a while, they sort of become your family.” I personally have not gotten to hear the first album, but how do you feel your second album differs from your debut album? T.J. “A lot of it is the same, actually. It was a demo basically, and once they got discovered they re-recorded some of them for this album. What ones are on both? T.J. “ ‘I will be there’, ‘Get Thru This’, ‘Die Trying’, ‘Sorry’, ‘Inside Its Raining’ (Re-recorded as ‘Raining’. Um…I think that’s it. Look it up at some point, if you can.” I later checked to see if T.J. was correct, or if there was more. Turns out, “Completely”, and “You Don’t Know Me” were also on the original, self-titled album, which came out in 2007. So there you have it, that’s what T.J, and Cale had to say. Thank you so much to Cale Gontier, Art Of Dying’s bassist, and T.J Sagen, their manager, for being incredibly amazing people, and taking the time to do this interview with me.
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Thanks to Porky’s Roadhouse in Port Charlotte, Florida I got the honor of getting to interview Rick DeJesus. He did this interview spur of the moment, without me even fully asking. I mentioned to him that I am a journalist, and that I had questions for Adelita’s Way. He automatically said, “After the show let’s do it!” I did not even have to remind him, right after the show he answered a few questions, then showered, and answered the rest. He answered all kinds of things, while taking shots and goofing around with his friends in the band, and childhood friends like a local radio DJ by the name of DC. This is what all he had to say.
What did you do to get arrested in Mexico, where you came up with the name Adelita’s Way? “Nothing. In Mexico, the police arrest you just so they can rob you.” Out of all your songs, do you have a favorite? “Alive.” How did Adelita’s Way start as a band? “I knew Trevor, and a mutual friend name Tyler introduced me to Keith, and other friends helped, now their all like my best friends.” I heard most of this tour has been smaller places, do you prefer the bigger venues or smaller venues? “We’ve played for 70,000 people before, and as few as a couple hundred. I like them all.” Something on your iPod nobody would ever expect? “A lot of Boyz II Men. I like a lot of old school R & B.” When you’re not touring, recording, or writing new music, what do you do in your spare time? “Hang out with my wife, watch a lot of movies, go to the gym.” If you’re not big on music videos, why have you agreed to make them? “I do like them, but for different reasons. Its just so fans can see a live persona but videos are expensive to make, and since nobody really plays them anymore, you’re just paying for YouTube.” What’s it like hearing your songs on the radio? “It’s the coolest fucking thing ever!” What inspired the song, “Sick”? “I had a million shitty bosses over the years. All of them sucked except my dad!” Your album title (Home School Valedictorian) baffled me until I heard the explanation, because I was home schooled and knew there was no such thing as a home school valedictorian. Has anyone in the band, or someone close to you been home schooled? “None of the band has been home schooled, but I’ve known people who have been. Its all about someone who thinks they’re better than everyone else.” I heard you’d love to collaborate with Three Days Grace’s Adam Gontier, have you talked to him about this yet? “Yes we have, and I wanna do it.” Who are some of your favorite bands? Metallica! It was very nice of Rick to take the time to actually talk to me, I appreciate that so much. Thank you so much to Rick, and again to Porky’s Roadhouse. Without them, and their hospitality, I would not have gotten to do this. Home School Valedictorian is now in stores, go check it out. Through email I played an accidental game of 21 questions with Mayday Parade’s bassist, Jeremy Lenzo. One of the questions got over looked, but everything still worked out. Some of the questions were intended to be for the entire band, but since plans for an in person interview fell through, Jeremy did his best to answer them himself. Here is what he had to say.
How did you come up with the band name (Mayday Parade)? “We had recorded our EP Tales Told By Dead Friends, and wanted to started passing them out at shows, but we didn’t have a band name. So we started throwing around different words until we came up with a combination that we liked. I wish the story had more to it, but that’s it.” Each album has had a man with an umbrella on it, is there any real significance to that? “The umbrella man is sort of like our band mascot. He never really had a story, but we’re giving him one with our new, self titled album. Our music video for “Oh Well, Oh Well” features the umbrella man, and throws you into the middle of the story. We are hoping to do two more videos which stem off of the first one.” What was the inspiration for the “Oh Well, Oh Well” video? Are you into comic books, and that’s why you went with that style for the video? (If yes, what’s your favorite one?) “Yes, I do love comic books, and my favorite comic is Dead Pool. As for the video we originally wanted to do it live action, but couldn’t afford the budget. So we thought, ‘Hey if we can’t do it with real people, then we will make it like a comic.’” Can you explain the inspiration behind every track off of Mayday Parade? “The lyrics for all the sons deal with real things that have happened to us. The up’s and down’s of relationships, the death of friends, the frustration of labels. I feel this album deals with a lot more personal situations than our previous albums.” Is Derek the main songwriter or is it more of a collective thing? “I would say Derek comes up with the most ideas. We as a band turn those ideas into full songs. Usually it is Derek that deals with the lyrics though.” Why does the “Miserable At Best” video not have the full song? “That’s a good question. When we were doing the video for that song, the label thought we could rotationally use that song on the radio, but in order for that song to go to radio it had to be forty-five seconds shorter. So what they did was just cut out the middle section and caked it a day.” Brooks, why do they call you “Cabbage”? “Actually, they call Jeremy ‘Cabbage’, but he doesn’t tell anyone why. He likes the mystery more than the story.” What would your dream tour be? (Both to be on, and see) “We would love to be on tour with Brand New, Taking Back Sunday, My Chemical Romance -those were some of our favorites when we were getting into this scene. I think it would also be a great tour to watch.” Who’s been your favorite to tour with so far? “We love everyone we tour with, we have become really good friends with The Maine, We The Kings, A Rocket To The Moon, Every Avenue. Those are some of the bands we’ve been friends with since the beginning.” Does Derek really hate being tickled? “Derek does hate being tickled. He gets super pissed if you try and tickle him.” Out of all of you, who is the biggest nerd? “Musically Alex is the biggest nerd, if we’re talking about modding amps and pedals. If we are talking about technology nerds, I’d have to say Cabby (Cabbage, or Jeremy). If we can’t get something to work right, he can figure it out.” Were you asked to do the covers you’ve done, or did you pick them. I heard Derek was a fan of Queen and started wondering since you covered “We Are The Champions” for Punk Goes Classic Rock. “Yes, we picked all the covers we’ve done, and Derek is a big Queen fan. We always like doing those covers for Fearless.” Name one fact about each other nobody outside of the band (or close friends/ family) knows. “Jake used to be a kicker in football, Brooks and Derek have been playing together since middle school, Alex’s favorite band is Oasis, and Jeremy has laser eye surgery. Who’s the bigger ladies man of the group? “Well, obviously the girls like Derek because he’s the singer, but second to that I would say Brooks.” What bands made an impression on you as musicians and songwriters? “Emery and the Plain White T’s -the impression they left on us was more of teaching us how a band should act, how we should treat other bands smaller than us. They really made and effort to hang out with us and always invited us onto their bus when we were in a van, and that really stuck with us, and we try to do that for other bands we tour with now.” If you weren’t musicians, what else would you do as a career? “I’m not sure. Probably something still related to music somehow.” Is there anything you do while you’re not touring that you miss doing while on tour? “Just being with my friends and family, that’s the only thing.” I heard you wrote the album in a beach house here in Florida. Why’d you choose to do it here and now somewhere else? “Honestly, we could have been in a cabin in the Appalachian Mountains. The place really didn’t matter so much, we just needed to be secluded. Whenever we write when we are at home we always get distracted with our friends and family who are there. So we decided it would be better to get away from everything and write. The beach house was just the closest place. We only went on the actual beach a couple times.” Do you have any pre-show rituals? (If yes, what are they?) “We get in a circle, put our hands in, and say a little something to pump us up and then at the end we count to three and yell, ‘bang-a-rang’. We have been doing that since the beginning of the band. It comes from the movie Hook.” You have a song called “Amber Lynn”, is she a real person or is that a pseudonym? “It’s a pseudonym.” Weirdest or scariest fan experience? “We have a couple of crazy fans, but we can’t really talk bad about anyone in particular. As long as they are coming to the shows we can’t complain.” So there’s what all Jeremy had to say, it was good time. Thank you once again to Jaime Rosenberg, their press manager, for helping me get this, and to Jeremy for taking time to answer all my questions. Check out their self-titled album, Mayday Parade, which is now in stores. The other night, I interviewed Bryan Stars on the phone while he had a squirrel
harassing him. No joke, he had a squirrel harrassing him as he walked by. He likes animals, they apparently don't like him. Bryan was very helpful, and gave me a lot of insight into his life as an interviewer. Read the questions I asked him, and his answers below. 1. Have you ever been interviewed before? Yeah, I was in the New York Times, USA Today, and was on a local TV station. 2. Does it ever feel weird being the one who's being interviewed, not the one doing the interview? It does when they ask me my own questions. Like this one guy who interviewd me exactly like how I do interviews. That was a little weird. 3. I was actually going to ask you one of your own questions. What would be your porn star name? Starblaster! (laughs) 4. Do you have any advice for an aspiring interviewer? Do a video or article you'd be interested in, be respectful and professional and let the bands do the talking. Also remember what kind of people you're interviewing. Don't ask fun and silly questions to serious bands, and don't ask serious questions to fun and goofy people. One on one interviews are always more serious, two or more people are always more fun. Bands love to pick on each other and that's always more fun. Keep in mind also, that this is their job, so when you're trying to get an interview with them make it sound very beneficial to them, like you could help them get more publicity by doing an interview with you. 5. In an email once, you told me that you started at a local TV station. How'd you get from there to YouTube? I was eighteen, going to the University Of Nebraska, and started interning at this TV station for college credits. They eventually came to me and told me they wanted me to start doing interviews for a segment on one of their shows. They would have me recording the interviews, and I'd just put them on my YouTube channel as well as give it to them. I actually started Bryan Stars on accident, because I logged in one day and saw my Metro Station interview had like a ton of views on there. It started from there. 6. Who was the first band you remember interviewing? Metro Station. I had a number I was supposed to call when I got there, so I did and the man came and got me. I was in shock when I first saw them, but as we were walking, there was a window. Outside were screaming fans, and that was when it hit me, I wasn't just a fan that night. I was there for a reason. 7. Your most popular interviews are your Andy Biersack interviews, but who's your favorite to interview? I have always enjoyed interviewing All Time Low. They are my favorite band, and its always fun when you get Jack and Alex talking back and forth. Or Black Veil Brides or Christopher Drew because they're fun to interview. Any band I'm a fan of really. 8. What's your favorite All Time Low song? "Weightless". I like songs that can help you forget the shit in your life, and I feel "Weightless" can do that. 'Maybe its not my weekend, but its gonna be my year.' I like songs with hope. 9. Does Andy Biersack ever make you uncomfortable by the way he picks on you? Not really, when I'm working, I don't really care. With #4 I was so tired, I had done 17 interviews before him, so I was good. 10. Why are you always in blue? I'll let you in on a secret, I only wear blue in interviews. I was always worried about what I was gonna wear to interviews, and one time I wore a blue hoodie and thought, "Damn, you look freakin' sexy." After I had done that a few times, people started commenting on it. Around the first time I interviewed Black Veil Brides, who always wear black, and that's their thing, I decided that could be my thing. 11. Has anyone ever told you that you look like Micheal Cera from Scott Pilgrim and Juno? Yeah, I get that a lot actually. I like him though, so I take it as a compliment. I love his awkwardness and quirkiness. 12. Have you ever thought about getting your videos on iTunes? Yeah, but I don't know if you can do that. If there was a way I could make money off it, I would. This is my job and people do have to realize that. A few more questions were asked, but those were more so normal conversation questions, not nessicarly ones for the interview. Once again, I thank Bryan very much for his time. Go check out his videos, and buy some of his T-shirts while you're at it! I'm sure he'd appericate it, and you can show it off with pride. Bryan also mentioned that he will have more T-shirts hitting his store soon, including one for a soul animal. So go check it out! Thank you again, Bryan. :D Through Facebook private messaging I asked Jason Nott from the Califorinan band, Drive A, if he'd do my first ever interview with me. I kept it pretty short and simple, but I was happy with the answers I recieved. I asked mostly about thier music, and musical influences, as a lot of time you willhear a band but never really know anything about what inspires them. I hope everyone who reads this finds the information to be very interesting.
You guys seem to have a pretty unique sound, but does anyone inspire your sound or lyrics? "We look up to many bands, some of our favorites though have always had a raw sound. Bands like The Clash, The Sex Pistols, and Sham 69 defenitly influence our raw, intense, "dangerous" energy. We don't want to limit outrselves to that though. We also like Green Day, Rise Against, Billy Talent, Muse, and Kings Of Leon. Lots of modern stuff. For us, the message for the band has always been 'Do what you want, don't let anyone tell you that you can't do what you want.' We aren't an 'Anti-Christ' band, despite what our logo shows. We don't go around saying 'Fuck the government' we're more so saying, 'Fuck living a one sided life.' Do what you want, what makes you happy, not what you were taught is 'right'" Who's the main songwriter of the group? "Bruno writes all of the lyrics and musically he'll bring in a song idea or sometimes I will, and the rest of the band will build a song from there." What's it been like touring with these big bands like Bullet For My Valentine and Escape The Fate? "Every tour is a different experience because we always tour with different genres. The tour with Bullet and Escape was amazing, the crowds were very welcoming of us and defentily showed us a good time. We became friends with Escape The Fate, and eventually we toured with them again. Great dudes, and great friends of ours." I haven't gotten to hear much of The World In Shambles yet, but I have to ask where did the idea for "Young Cunts" come from? "The song came from seeing so many types of girls on the road, some only hung around the band for "certain reasons". We got sick of seeing social climbers and groupies hanging around, that's a bit of where Bruno got the idea for the song lyrically." What has been your favorite tour so far? "Every tour has been great in its own way. The current tour we're on with Hollywood Undead had defentily been the most fun I've ever hard on tour, but touring with The Used and Alkaline Trio was so much fun, because those are both bands we grew up listening to." What's your favorite band, and why? "I'd have to say The Clash have had the most influence on me as a performer and a song writer. Seeing early videos of them performing all those years ago made me go, 'Shit, that looks so fun. They're so dangerous.' They make music look like fun while staying passionate and having a great message." So there you have it, a bit of information from Drive A's Jason Nott. I thank Jason so much for letting me do this interview. For more inflormation please visit their website, or Facebook. Both are linked below. Don't forget to check out their newest album, The World In Shambles. https://www.facebook.com/#!/driveahttp://drivearock.com/ |
InformationThese are interview that I myself have done. They have not been found anywhere, they have not been done for me. They are my work. Archives
July 2016
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