Well still nice to know that AVA isn’t the only music out there.
this is an interview i found:
We’re redesigning our site right now, so I was just reading a bunch of “about” pages on you guys on different music sites, and pretty much everything listed, “after the break up of blink-182, they started this electronic side project, and Carol Heller left the band, then Craig and Shane joined.” It’s all the same thing, and I think that when it’s out there, it’s not really describing you guys as a band. What would you say if you wrote an “about” page?
MARK: +44 is a rock band, founded on a lot of different musical tastes and musical styles. We love all kinds of music and we don’t limit ourselves to any certain style or idea.
‘Baby, Come On’ is the current single, and I haven’t heard of much promotion or seen a music video. Is that still the single?
MARK: 155 is the single right now.
Is there going to be a music video for it?
MARK: Yeah, there is. It might be one that we end up doing ourselves, but there will be a video for it.
Sweet, so you guys would direct it and shoot it yourselves?
MARK: Yeah, we’ve been actually been shooting a video for it the whole time we’ve been on tour.
So is this going to be the last single for the album and head into the studio or are you going to keep promoting this one?
MARK: I don’t know, I think we’re going to keep doing this one. We’re going to go to Europe again after we finish this tour. It’ll be our third trip to Europe for this record. We haven’t decided if we’re going to go back into the studio or do another US tour, or what the deal is. We haven’t really decided yet. And I really hoped we’d get to South America with this record, too.
You started out touring in small clubs, which was really cool because a lot of us big fans got to see you up close, and now with the Honda Civic tour, you’re back in arenas. Which do you guys prefer?
CRAIG: I kinda like both of them. When you play to arenas, you get to play to people that wouldn’t necessarily come and see you otherwise, especially on the Honda Civic tour. A lot of younger kids get to come, especially since it’s summer time, but playing clubs is definitely amazing too, because, like you said, you’re right there with your fans. It’s much more intimate.
On the European tour, or in South America, what kind of bands would you hope to be touring with for support?
CRAIG: In Europe, I think we’re doing pretty much all festivals, so we’ll be playing with a group of bands. [muttering in background] I guess I was just told that we’re doing a couple headlining dates in the UK as well, but I don’t know who we’re playing with for those.
If you could choose any bands off the top of your heads, what bands would you really like to tour with one day?
SHANE: Dinosaur Jr. would be fun. Depends on every person in the band, you know. It’d be a different answer for everybody, I think.
Any up and coming bands (like i know you’re playing with Idiot Pilot at some of your shows coming up soon)?
MARK: Yeah. There’s a band called Socratic that I think is really cool.
When you were recording, you said that you had over 20 songs demoed out and near completion. A lot of the guys online really want to know, what happens with those songs? Will they maybe make it to the next album, do you scrap them? What happens to those songs that didn’t make WYHSB?
MARK: Some songs will never see the light of day, because you write an idea, you think it’ll be great, and then you listen to it later and it’s like, “Oh, that’s not what I wanted it to be, or that’s not really going anywhere.” Some, I think, have a lot of potential, and we’ll probably revisit them for the next record.
Will we see any more acoustic versions of the tracks off WYHSB?
MARK: We don’t have any plans on it, but that’s not to say that they won’t happen.
Speaking of the next album, you guys are already out demoing songs for the album, right?
MARK: Yeah, we’ve got a couple ideas.
I have a question for Craig and Shane. Because they joined later on during the forming of the last record, what do you guys think you’ll bring to the next album that that we maybe didn’t hear on the last one? What style will you bring to it?
SHANE: I don’t know, I think we put a pretty good mark on the last record, and we’re all constantly writing, so I don’t know. We’ll see what happens. I mean, everyone’s influences evolve every day, so you know, the stuff I’m writing now is different from what I was writing before, and it’s the same for Craig, Mark, and Travis.
CRAIG: It’s really hard to say, because the last record started with just Mark and Travis, like you said, and it was kind of pieced together as we went along, so obviously it’ll be completely different right off the bat. It’ll be all four of us as a band, doing lots of touring and stuff, so we’re at a completely different point.
On the last record, you guys said that you really wanted to just have the people in the band so you could really present what +44 is, but on the next album, any ideas or any hope to have some of your friends come in and collaborate on the next record?
MARK: Yeah, probably. We haven’t really talked about who we’d have come in, but we’re definitely open to that idea. I mean, we really haven’t even started to get into the actual recording of the next record, so it’ll be a second before we know exactly what that is, and even once we go into the studio, we never really limit ourselves, or say, “this is what it’s going to be” although we have actually had those conversations. [laughter]
Obviously with the Internet has made a huge impact on the way music is listened to, and the way bands are discovered and followed. How do you feel that there are fansites like +44online that actually post news about your band on a daily basis?
MARK: It’s really cool. To be honest, I find out things about our band from checking out the websites. There’s some things that I didn’t even know were going on, or announced, or things like that. So, it’s cool.
Do you guys ever go on the message boards and see what kind of things kids are talking about?
MARK: I don’t really go to the message boards too much. I’ll look at like, you know, the posts on the fansites and things like that, but I don’t get into the message boards.
Yeah. I think it’s pretty nuts, like when you guys play a song and we put a video up the next day, like 10,000 people have seen it on Youtube. It’s pretty amazing.
MARK: Yeah, definitely.
I know a couple weeks ago you guys were asked on Muchmusic, “If you were an audience member, what would you ask +44?” I know that question seemed kind of unexpected, but what would you want your fans to know? What should we be excited for in the future of your band?
MARK: Just that this is our main priority. The thing that people always ask themselves is, “Is this band going to last, is this something that these guys are dedicated to, is this a part time thing” and it’s not. This is our life and our love and something that we’re totally dedicated to and plan on doing for a long time.
I think that’s really awesome because you definitely have a lot of fans that have never heard any of your other bands before. One question that was asked by a user is if you had to play one of your songs for someone who had never heard your music before, which song would you choose to play?
MARK: I’ve always thought that ‘Baby, Come On’ is a really good combination of all the things that I think +44 is about. It has huge choruses with pounding drums, and loud guitars, but it also has an electronic part with clean guitars and programmed drums combined with live drums, and it’s got, you know, some quiet parts, and some pretty dynamic loud parts. So I think that’s a good indication of the broad swatch of +44.
Do you have any funny stories that you could share with us from this tour?
MARK: There’s a lot of stuff that goes on, but a lot of it goes up on our Myspace or the himynameismark site, or something like that.
CRAIG: Hole in the wall?
MARK: [laughs] Oh yeah, okay. This is one. The other day in Miami, we were about to go on stage. Craig was warming up and he punched the wall. He actually punched a hole through the wall.
CRAIG: So we start talking about it would be funny if that Run DMC/Aerosmith video, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it, but one of the guys from Run DMC just pops through the wall. So I thought it’d be funny if I put my arm completely through the wall, and all of a sudden Fall Out Boy were kicking it in their dressing room and my arm just shot through the wall. So I punched my whole hand through the wall, and there was nobody in there, of course, so excitement was totally ruined. But one of their guys, Dirty, decided it’d be funny if he emulated the video and stuck his head through the wall. So he stuck his whole head through the wall, making the hole bigger, and I guess after, we’d already left, Pete from Fall Out Boy decided to do a cannonball through the whole wall. He went through the whole thing and made this big, gigantic mess.
That’s awesome. So you guys have fun while you’re out on the tour. It was really great talking with you guys. You’ll be in Arizona in three days, that’s where I’m from, so make sure you guys kick ass there.
MARK: We’ll do our best.
Well thanks again. I really appreciate Logitech for setting this up and for you guys helping us out with the site.
MARK: Thank you for everything you do for our band!
