Interview: Maps & Atlases
Meet You At The Show: So I know you guys have got a lot of shows coming up, how’s the tour been so far?
Dave Davison: It’s been really excellent, it’s definitely been interesting. It’s crazy cause, you know, with Frightened Rabbit and they’re a really cool band and everything and we’re really excited about the tour but it’s such an excellent response. Their fans are so into them it’s really exciting to be a part of a tour like that. It seems like the kind of concerts I went to when I was a lot younger, the level of excitement is crazy and everybody knows all the songs, it’s so much fun to be at shows like that all the time.
MYATS: So has touring with them been different than with other bands?
DD: I don’t know, it’s kind of hard to wrap my head around it now because we’re only like 4 or 5 days in but right off the bat they were super friendly, it was really mellow and friendly vibe. So we were excited about that. I think it has been different because we’ve toured with bands that have had a really devoted followings but these shows are just wild. People are so crazy for them in such a cool way. Everybody knows all their songs. Yesterday people in Boston we’re crying and stuff and singing along which was just like wow really cool. The crowd is a little bit older, around our age. It’s really interesting to be able to connect with people your age so deeply. Typically if somebody was like “yeah their were fans like crying and losing it” I would sort of envision a younger crowd and they have such a connection with their audience, it’s really interesting. We knew they we’re a good band but we had no idea such great fans and they’re just super down to earth guys.
MYATS: You guys haven’t been touring for that long then but I saw that Montreal’s your first Canadian date right?
DD: Yeah, well we’re doing Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver later on, but we’re definitely really excited for Montreal. I’ve only been there I think one time and we just went up there and did a show and we headlined for the first time. It was better than we expected considering we’ve never played anywhere near there but it’s a city that we all really wanted to go to before hand and now that we’ve been there once, we really want to come back. We really like it a lot.
MYATS: Do you guys feel any different touring in Canada than back in the States?
DD: I guess it’s not really too different. I mean, the cities are a little bit different. I feel like Toronto definitely feels pretty comparable to cities in the U.S. Vancouver too, it’s a unique city, but it doesn’t feel totally different. But I do feel like Montreal and Quebec City are definitely different in a really interesting way. When we played Quebec City a friend of ours who was on tour with us had lived there for like 6 months a couple of years ago and she showed us around town through all the different sites. It was just so pretty and interesting. It’s crazy that it’s so close to us you know? Everything is so different and scenic. In Montreal, we had spent so much time wanting to go there and figuring out ways…Like every time we’d be in upstate New York, there would be signs like: ‘Montreal! 270 miles.’ When we got there last time we we’re on a tight schedule, we had some hours so we all went for really long walks in the city, checking out some stuff but we we’re a little bit strapped for time so I’m excited to have more time up there this time.
MYATS: What are you’re favorite cities to play in? Do you have a city that you guys always like to go back to?
DD: I think there’s specific places in every city that when you have a chance to go there, you see that their awesome but I really love Philadelphia, I love New York, San Fransisco and L.A. I don’t know, it’s hard to say our favorite city because we have specific destinations in all those cities that like if we do have a chance to go there I’ll be super excited. Like today, there’s so many people we’re looking forward to seeing in Philadelphia. There’s so many good places to eat and it’s a good walking city. I think that that’s an element that I really like in a city is if we have a chance to go for a good walk and check out the neighborhood, which is definitely my experience in Montreal too. So I guess Philadelphia or New York would be my favorite.
MYATS: So how would you describe your music to someone who has never heard it before?
DD: I guess the most basic way would sort of just be ‘technical pop’ or something like that. I think we definitely try to write pop songs and we use technicality to help make them more interesting along with layering the instruments and different rhythms and stuff. So I guess the quickest description would be technical pop.
MYATS: Do you find that you draw inspiration from bands similar to yourself? Where do you find the most inspiration from?
DD: I think most of it comes from bands that are really different or that we sort of grew up with. It usually takes place like in the editing process we’ll be conscious of it like, ‘oh we kind of got this kind of sound or that kind of vibe’ but in the initial stages when you’re inspired to create something, I think it’s a lot of times it’s just a big jumble of influences and the ones that are most ingrained like classic rock or old prog rock or folk or soul or a lot of stuff that’s a lot different than our band, all sort of mixed together.
MYATS: Do guys all come from the same city?
DD: Well, we all kind of came from different places when we were younger but we all went to college in Chicago which was where we met and we all lived there for a while. When I was a kid I lived in Pennsylvania and then I lived in Indiana when I was a teenager and stuff. Erin came from Hawaii and moved to Wisconsin when he was a teenager and Chris moved from Texas to Wisconsin and those guys met and went to college together. Shiraz was originally from Chicago and so we all just met in college.
MYATS: So you all met in the same place.
DD: Converged!
MYATS: Haha. So a lot of our readers are involved in music writing. What do you find is the easiest way to write music? Do you find your end product is usually how you envisioned it or does it change a lot throughout the process?
DD: I think it’s really different with certain songs. It’s always really interesting when a song sort of just comes out from beginning to end in a really quick period of time. It’s crazy, and it almost seems like you didn’t even write it. It seems like it just happened or something. A lot of times I’ll just be walking or whatever and jotting things down or recording things on my phone or this little hand recorder I have. Sometimes I sort of just piece those things together or if their just thematically similiar, I’ll change them to work together. I think for me, having this period before there’s any editing or any kind of framework that I’m thinking about putting the song into, I need to just let it be fun and keep it going and when I’m able to do that for the longest period of time, I think that’s when the song’s get totally finished. I think that the more editing that you do, the more solid the song could potentially be. But then also the more you just let it out the more interesting and the more natural it might be.
MYATS: So you’ve got the new album coming out in June, Perch Patchwork. What can we expect from that? Is it different from your previous work?
DD: I think it’s definitely different. I mean, it has a lot of similarities too but there are a lot of things that are different like the process which was geared towards making something that was sort of a progression of our EP’s. With the EP’s a lot it was just sort of documenting what we were doing live at the time and we did them really fast and used instrumentation that we couldn’t use live. On the EP’s we just used guitars, bass and drums and vocals, then on the new record we used all kinds of crazy instruments and tried writing all kinds of different arrangements for different things.
MYATS: Well thanks so much for taking the time to call, I really appreciate it!
DD: Yeah, no problem! Thank you very much. I’m really excited to come to Montreal.
Interview Conducted by Kailey Diogo
-
zakir
