Emotionalpunk.com
My friend Meg and I were fortunate enough to sit down with Mae’s Dave Elkins.
EP: How are you this evening?
Dave: I am great.
EP: Awesome, well about three years ago Mae came to Columbus for the first time. That was a hell of a show at Midgard Comics, especially when Destination Beautiful had just been released.
Dave: Yah, like a couple weeks.
EP: How would you have defined success then and how would you define success now?
Dave: Success back then was selling a t-shirt or a CD and talking with someone after the show. It was just trying to get into their world and find out how they heard about our band, finding what kind of connection there was, and how we could deepen that connection. I remember loading into that place, we showed up a little late and probably played to thirty, forty, maybe fifty people tops. It’s one of our best shows and it’s on our DVD.
EP: I always wondered about that because I remember being up front…kind of curious to see what my seventeen/eighteen year old self was like.
Dave: I am sure it is on there. That was a very important show to us as far as…
EP: Yah, I imagine it helped you build some confidence. It probably was the start of all those experiences that lead to the Everglow.
Dave: Absolutely, we were so young and naïve as far as the hard work we were getting ourselves into. We had already been working hard for several months, we were just getting started with that tour in February, and we didn’t get home until mid June. That was our first time home in six months and it was our first expensive tour as a band. It just setup so many different moments for us.
EP: How do you feel your live show has changed since then? Is it more fun and relaxed, now that in a way you are veterans?
Dave: We are using a bit of technology to sort of guide our shows, so we’re a bit tighter. We have two computers on stage; one of them allows us to play along to a click and for the last few months we’ve been playing with inner monitors.
The inner monitors make it easier, as you don’t have to be concerned with how the stage sound is going to be. You don’t have to worry if you’re going to have a good, decent, or a great show…just because we can hear things right in here [points to ear]. Laying back on the click lets us relax and get into a groove. At the same time we’re used to playing along to a metronome, so we’re definitely tighter as a band without it, but with it makes for a better show and then we can add effects from the Everglow and Destination Beautiful that we can’t recreate live: like bells, melodies, percussion and loops.
I feel that our set is about as strong as it has ever been. We walk off stage every night and it’s not a matter of ‘oh shit,’ we messed this up and we did this wrong. It’s just like…that was great, just like the night before was great. We’re also recording a lot of our sets, hearing what we need to tighten up. The vocals are getting stronger and segues between songs are really matching up. We’re on our way to providing a vibe that’ll course through the entire show. It’s good and it’s fun, should be a better show for our fans and show goers.
EP: Out of curiosity, I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve seen Mae, but have you ever noticed that as soon as Mark plants his feet, he never moves again,
Dave: [Laughs]
EP: I’ve never seen anyone like that.
Dave: I think you might see something different tonight; he is sort of coming out of his shell.
EP: Whoa, three years later?
Dave: Yah, it’s taken him a while, it’s very easy for him to get nervous and overwhelmed in the moment. As far as playing and everything…he’s getting the idea, sometimes it’s taken a few jack shots to get him out of it, sometimes he has a good day and just ends up rocking out on stage. Mark is slowly moving around and slowly showing a little of his own character and emotion on stage, we’re getting there.
EP: What would a band influenced by Mae sound like?
Dave: I would say one of the key ingredients for a band is the piano or keyboards. There are a lot of bands out there with keyboards; unfortunately, it’s more of a gimmick than being essential to the music. There’ll be guitars, bass and drums all very rhythmic and then you hear these one-note keys…
EP: Same vain when the moog made a huge wave.
Dave: Exactly, so there aren’t many players that are really efficient on their instruments that are coming through these days. Although, there are bands out there, we’re friends with bands like Copeland and Aaron can play piano/Fender, and he incorporates that into their sound.
Something we’re going through right now, because you can always learn when it comes to music, is we’re sort of getting out of thinking in theory terms: like the one, four, five or six chord progressions. The real movements in music you can almost anticipate, we don’t want to surprise people constantly while we’re playing music, but at the same time we’re learning how to incorporate different chords and different intervals and provide even another level to the music.
So I’m hoping if someone continues listening to our band and can get influenced and begin writing their own songs, we want to encourage people to just learn music. Mae as it started stood for Multisensory Aesthetic Experience and right now Mae is standing for Musical Awareness and Education.
EP: What kind of toll did creating the Everglow put on you, being so involved with every aspect of it? Has it affected your current writing and recording? Is it going slower, do you guys have anything new?
Dave: Yah, It definitely is, I’ve been under writer’s block for the last year. When Everglow was done, I felt that it was the best I could personally offer to the band and the creative process our band goes through. So for a very long time I was almost mute when it came to creating and offering ideas. It wasn’t depressing, but very frustrating for me because that’s kind of what I do.
EP: Yah, it’s seemingly your job.
Dave: Yah, you’re supposed to write and when a year has passed and there’s talks about re-releasing Everglow and we don’t have too many songs to add…it’s like ‘shit,’ what’s going to come next, what’s it going to be? We just spent a month at home; we rented a beach house and locked ourselves in there. Everyday we wrote from ten-thirty or so in the morning to sometimes as late as three or four in the morning the next day. At least thirteen or fourteen pieces of music came out of that.
It was great because for the first time I had sort of come to the table as a songwriter for the band giving everything. Even what the drums should be at certain points and what bass lines should be used. We had this dry erase board, which is sitting in the back lounge right now, and we would just write every single piece that we have…the key it’s in and a working title or explanation for the piece. Not necessarily a song title, but we have something called slow jam in f-sharp minor, only because it’s in the key of f-sharp and relatively mellow.
What we’d do is figure out what pieces are in the same key or what pieces have the same vibe and we’d start switching keys. I’d write something in D and Mark would write something in B and they’d both feel like they’re supposed to fit together, so if it made more sense we’d pull his thing in B up to D and figure it out on the guitar. It’s awesome, because at the same time it made us better musicians by having to readapt and sort of relearn the instruments we’re playing in order to put it all together.
It definitely worked out and now I can’t stop writing. I have my notebook in front of me and have been working on lyrics today, yesterday and the day before that. This record, once it’s done, is by far going to be the best Mae record that we’ve ever written.
EP: So you probably don’t have too many regrets or aspects that you’d want to change from the Everglow.
Dave: Oh no, I listened to it, actually my girlfriend lives in Austin and we played Austin a week or a week and a half ago and I was driving her car around looking through her CDs…
EP: Hope Mae was in there.
Dave: she was in school, so I was just going to try and find something to listen to and it was the first disc, which I guess is a good thing. It was like ‘oh,’ I haven’t listened to it for quite some time, and for the first time I objectively listened, and thought of what I would have changed.
I was never a trained vocalist or anything like that, so in the last year I’ve been taking lessons (actually three of us are going to take lessons again after this tour is done), so I’ve definitely grown vocally. I can finally hear things I wish I would’ve done, not regretting the Everglow, but at the same time learning from it as opposed to thinking that’s as far as I could go, because that’s where I was for quite a while.
Hearing songs like “This is the countdown” and hearing the chorus, it’s like ‘ah,’ I definitely could’ve made this chorus more soulful. I sing a lot of the songs off the Everglow live and I feel I’ve got more passion and more soul singing it live than I did on the record.
The thing is people identify with the record more than a live show. I play live shows every night, but we only come to Columbus once every six to eight months. That’s going to be lasting, but once we’re gone the Everglow is going to be the only thing around…at least it’s the first thing people would reference to hear what Mae sounds like.
We’ve definitely grown a lot and I’ve grown a lot and now I’m sort of on fire again as far as songwriting and melody writing goes. The new record is definitely going to be awesome.
EP: So I know most bands hate doing interviews; hopefully, this will be a little different. I tried to relate some basic themes from various literature, so bear with me on this stuff.
EP: In one of the passages from Sun Tzu’s Art of War, he says that one who knows the enemy and knows himself will not be endangered in a hundred engagements. One who does not know the enemy but knows himself will sometimes be victorious, sometimes meet with defeat. One who knows neither the enemy nor himself will invariably be defeated in every engagement. Who or what could you define as an enemy?
EP: Could be anything like the road, weather…
Dave: Right now, it seems that the industry is the enemy. It seems that we are fighting an uphill battle. At the same time, for the last three and a half years Mae has slowly been on the incline. It’s difficult, there’s a frustration going on with us. It’s not overwhelming, but at same time, I wonder why some of the music and some of the bands out there (whether it comes from this scene and goes big or just radio because there’s a format for it) are so watered down. You sometimes wonder, why? What’s the motivation behind writing music?
We are on a major label now so we are kind of playing the major label game and it’s weird and it provides a certain type of pressure, yet it’s almost laughable. You know that these guys are just all kind of sitting around everyday in L.A. or New York with suits on and they’re just waiting to see what the next thing is. They put a [fuse?] throw it on the wall and they try to make it stick. They just pour gasoline and set it on fire and try to let it last as long as it possibly can. That’s exactly what we don’t want to do. We want to be a band in ten years who can still play the current songs, along with fifty others.
EP: In a similar fashion to the idea of complete knowledge, and how it equates to success, how has being on tour and having everything come out affected the band?
Dave: One of the plus sides to being in a van as opposed to a bus is that everyone is sort of right on top of each other. Everyone is constantly interacting and you get more quality band time. Not that we have a lack of quality band time we’re never more than fifteen feet away from each other.
We just re-released Everglow and it comes with two hours of DVD footage and it’s awesome for me to sit and watch, it’s like a documentary of what I’ve been doing the past year and a half. Obviously, it shows our immaturity at times and it shows how we work, what we do right, and what we do wrong, but I think it’s just very important to be real. If anyone takes something from our band, it’s just a bunch of guys hanging out and we happen to play music together.
So yah, there’s nothing special to us, except that the five of us click and we can write music together. It’s not just talent, because we have a little bit of talent; sometimes the experiences we share make us a better team. I think the DVD captures that so well, what we’re thinking what we’re feeling, why we do what we do and it’s great for us to look back and see what we’ve been up to.
EP: In many Greek and classical stories, specifically the Odyssey, there are intertwined themes of identity and kleos. Kleos being this sort of immortal glory a hero attains when people talk about him long after his death. In Odysseus’ case, his kleos can only be achieved if he makes it back home. In the ancient world, one’s place of birth and family is very much the beginning and the end. Odysseus wanders and adventures from place to place for ten years and everywhere he lands, he is disoriented and unsure of what lies ahead. Essentially, he is homeless, unaware of his destiny and fate, yet he just has that drive to push on to achieve his kleos.
As a wanderer yourself, who has very close ties with his family, can you touch upon some of the fears and triumphs you have had away from home.
Dave: One of the big things we’re going through right now is there’s been this misconception of Mae as a Christian band. Part of it has to do with the fact we were on Tooth and Nail for quite a while, but the truth and reality of it is; we grew up in a very Christian background. In Virginia there’s a church on every street corner, everyone knows everyone else, and it’s very close-knit.
There’s no real room for personal exploration and growth. Once we got out of where we came from (we still have very strong ties, my family is personally the most important thing to me, along with this band), getting out of that scene gave us the opportunity and chance to sort of pursue our own truths and find out things for ourselves.
We’ve been wandering around now for three and a half years. We’ve been meeting so many people along the way with different and fresh perspectives on life and it’s really given us a sense of rebirth. We have the opportunity to not rush it and find out who we are and not have any outside influence or tradition or whatever it may be that might push us very stiff-arm along the way.
EP: You guys have mentioned before how you feel this is the right step in your respective journeys, but not necessarily the last step. Do you feel that the band is focused right now? Clearly, there are different backgrounds, such as Rob having a law degree etc. After the success of Everglow, do you feel that same drive for Mae or are there any side projects or talks of a break? As you said, you had writer’s block for a year and you guys have been at this for a while now.
Dave: There’s so much to do within a band, we’ve had moderate success with Mae and the last record, yet we’ve only scratched the surface based on what we want to do. If I have writer’s block for a year I’ve got four other guys in my band that I can depend and rely on who can pull me out of my funk and can also take over the reins when need be.
It’s important for every single one of us to be able to get out of this band what it is; it’s not just me learning how to be a better songwriter, better lyricist, better vocalist or better guitar player, it’s about the five of us growing constantly. I don’t think I’ve ever been so close, I don’t think I’ve ever been so focused, because now that we know…
Destination Beautiful was just about five guys sitting in a studio space writing songs for the fun of it. Everglow was about us realizing we are living our dream and now it’s about taking what we’re doing and really respecting it and really doing something worth more than ourselves as individuals and even as a collective bunch. We’re no longer playing in a room to each other everyday. We’re playing to audiences, we’re on this Yellowcard tour, and we’ve played some big crowds, in Salt Lake there were about eight thousand people. We’ve had amazing opportunities to go oversees and play with Foo Fighters and Weezer, they're these avenues we have and we can’t be giddy little kids laughing it up in disbelief.
We do still respect that, yet inside of us is the goal to continue reaching people. We have a newfound dedication to it and that’s the best part. If I’m not writing songs at the moment, I’m still engaged with the four other dudes in something very big. Whether it’s on a tour trying to win new fans over or just going through the business of the band. Figuring out our next tour, ordering new designs, everyday it’s so consuming.
If I realize where I’m at, then everything else…the bigger picture just sort of comes out and then I can fill up this entire notebook in a week, I can just write anything and everything.
EP: In Where the Red Fern Grows, I don’t know if you’ve ever read it
Dave: yah yah yah
EP: Billy, the protagonist is distraught when his dogs Old Dan and Little Ann die. He is only able to move on when he finds a red fern growing at the dogs’ graves [The red fern is symbolic as only an angel can plant one]. Billy in a way discovered and got what he needed in order to be able to leave town with his family and move on with his life.
What do you like to do in each city so that you feel ready to move on, that you made your mark?
Dave: Sometimes it’s just as simple as eating at the same spot I go to every time I’m in town. Sometimes it’s just a Jimmy Johns [sweet sub shop]. Sometimes when we’re in San Diego we’ll go to the cliff (we did this the very first time and have since done it several more times). I’ve seen the moon set over the Pacific Ocean as the sun is coming up. You can see the entire sky and at that moment when it’s so dark before the sun starts to rise, you can’t tell the difference between the ocean and the sky. It’s just one black vast space and all you see is stars, but you don’t see where they stop reflecting and they actually become stars.
When we go to Seattle where Tooth and Nail is, we’ve been able to see a lot of the city. We’ll go to coffee shops and the market. We haven’t been to places like the Grand Canyon, but we’ve been to Niagara Falls.
We’ve been to ground zero when people were still working on it. It’s really about us trying to tap into all the different resources and moments the cities provide. A lot of it is parts of nature and the most important parts of the cities.
EP: I am a bit curious about the whole writing process. In 1984 one of the ways in which the Party had control over people was through New Speak. Simplistically, it was a form of mind control. Yet, Orwell really got at the significance and possibility of language: from our social structure, translation of ideas and management of our own thoughts.
In a previous interview, you’ve said, “we write with a meaning and a purpose. We write knowing that our experiences, and our thoughts can affect someone else and we leave them to interpret our lyrics in their own way…(NL)”
On the other end of the spectrum from the Party, how confident are you that after a year of stalemate you’ll be able to reach a level of control and precision over language? To write with such purpose, yet without alienating the creativity of the listener.
Dave: One of the good things about having a girlfriend that’s still in school is her access to different books. I’ve gone to the bookstore with her on three different occasions and bought some writing and English books to try to have more colors available, simply to be able to paint a clearer, unique picture. At the end of the day it’s always about what the audience interprets. It starts with the five of us, yet as soon as it leaks or as soon as records are on shelves it’s not about us anymore. It just becomes about us performing the music.
At this point when I play “Summertime” or “Soundtrack” I’m just playing it because it’s supposed to be in the set somewhere. It’s not necessarily that I can’t identify with it anymore; it’s just that four years have passed. It’s so important for me to keep drawing, keep changing, and keep learning as far as lyric writing goes.
EP: Is this mastery of verse something that you will need to hone in order to create the environmental experience? Can you expound more on some of the ideas Jacob has had to present this kind of mind-blowing live show that encapsulates the Multisensory Aesthetic Experience?
Dave: You hear a lot about bands on tour, just dudes in bands going from town to town and girl to girl. In “Someone else’s arms,” the song starts off and it’s got this intro this riff. The whole song is about searching, looking, and not finding it and at the very end of the song you realize you’re at the same place you started. That whole movement, the intro of the song is the outro for the song, so we’ll do certain subtle things like that, making the song and music come full circle. As far as an actual Mae show, Mae was something Jacob studied in college and we liked the idea. When we were deciding on band names Mae sounded right for our band.
If we do something like that it’s going to be so far down the road and it’s going to be so much money, as far as us earning and having tour support and sponsorships from technological companies and things like that.
I’m really excited to actually start referring to the band Mae as Musical Awareness and Education, because it doesn’t downplay what Jacob did, but that just sort of says one facet of our band, it isn’t the reason we do what we do.
EP: I think people had just made a big deal about it before, so it’s good to squash any rumors. It is a shame there won’t be any rockets or fireworks coming out of the ground.
Dave: Yah, no rockets, no pyrotechnics as far as the show goes tonight.
EP: It’s probably for the best, especially if Mark catches on fire.
Dave: Exactly, he’ll stand still and not even know what hit him.
EP: Last one of these lit questions.
EP: In To Kill a Mockingbird, one of the most humbling fixtures is Scout’s maturing process. Learning from Atticus’ lessons, Scout sees the cruel world through a new set of eyes, yet she remains delicate and retains her childlike sensibilities.
Kids have come up to you guys and said how your music has prevented them from committing suicide or gotten them out of depression. What kind of new perspectives on the world have you learned from being able to interact with thousands of people?
Dave: Well for us that’s the whole point of writing the next record. We grew up with the mentality that there was one answer and one answer only, which gets back at growing up in a Christian background. Now, we’re sort of coming to a point where we’re realizing how many absolutes there aren’t and how the more you seem to know it ends up you just have more questions. You realize that you don’t know nearly as much as you thought you did and for us we find more peace of mind and more clarity in interacting with people who are influenced by our music than we do when we write our music.
Everything is open to interpretation and every interpretation should be validated, especially when it comes from five people, because five people don’t have all the answers. If we can bounce our ideas and filter them through whoever wants to talk after the show or by e-mail or through Myspace and let us know how they’ve been affected…
“This time is last time” has encouraged at least three people not to commit suicide. For me, the song was written about people I was tired of hearing just speak nonsense and just sort of command attention, but really have nothing to say. So it was a very sarcastic tongue in cheek song, yet it provided hope for other people. I can’t really think about the song in those terms anymore. I can when performing it, but when I sit down and read the lyrics and see how it helped people, that’s the best part and it’s humbling. You realize that whatever you write is not yours to own. Once it’s out there…someone who lives in Wisconsin owns that song too.
EP: I have to imagine that you still must write for yourself. If you were to start thinking how to write a song so someone wouldn’t commit suicide, it just becomes too much pressure.
Dave: Definitely.
EP: There is a Buddhist belief that one should not cling to material possessions, as everything is impermanent. Having relatively few possessions on the road, does it become easier or harder to live a simpler life when you go back home? Personally, I haven’t been the same since my Ipod broke.
Dave: It’s probably easier because we spend so much time on the road. The necessities for me are my laptop, Ipod, and my acoustic guitar. I can get by with just those three things. There’s something…not holding onto too much, letting the moments that we live in for months of a time define who we are and shape us. I don’t need possessions to entertain myself, being on tour and the people I hang out with are enough.
EP: Is there a favorite prank you have done to one another or to an interviewer? I remember Rob telling a story about how he fooled an interviewer into thinking he learned to play the keys by practicing on bamboo shoots.
Dave: [Laugh], yah I remember that. We haven’t done anything super crazy in a while. It’s just been pretty chill; we’ve been playing a lot of Frisbee.
EP: If you had all the time and money in the world how would you make a record?
Dave: Oh wow, I would get George Martin who did the Beatle’s records and Trent Reznor.
Roll Credits: Thank you very much to Dave, Amanda, Jenn, and Adam for your time, patience, and effort.
The quote in the 1984 question was from an interview conducted by Stephanie Barger. Here.
The success question, and all time/money question originated from a Limbeck interview by Si Robins. Here.
The what would an influenced band sound like question was from an Arcade Fire interview by Tyrone Warner of tinymixtapes. Here.
P.S. It’s been a while since I’ve read some of those books, forgive me if I butchered something : ).