Interview

EP: Alright, just for the record, state your name and what you do in the band.
Dan: My name is Dan, I play guitar and sing and do other things that aren’t important.

EP: So is the CD totally finished or…
Dan: It is all mixed, it is all mastered, well, I shouldn’t say it is all mastered. We got the first mastered version of the record yesterday in Buffalo and we haven’t been able to get to a good set of speakers to listen to it and judge it. We listened to it in the van yesterday and there were a couple things that we felt were a little bit wrong with it, but for the most part it is done. The artwork should be finished in the next week or so and release date is going to be August 8th.

EP: Who produced it?
Dan: This guy named Mike Watts and this guy named Steve Hagler. Most people don’t know Mike Watts, but he is a local producer from our area. He did our Blood and Aphorisms EP, he worked with Shawn, Cliff and I in our old band when we were like 17 years old. So, we have been working with him for a really long time and we are really comfortable with him. And Steve Hagler is a producer from North Carolina. He has worked with Brand New, the Pixies, Quicksand, he has worked with a lot of really good bands and he is a really awesome dude. The two of them co-produced it.

EP: I am sure you have gotten this question a lot but why did it take so long for the record to get released?
Dan: No, man it’s cool. There were a lot of reasons. One was that we took so much time off to write the record. We spent seven months writing and two months recording. We did not play a single show in that time span. So we went nine months without playing and touring. Plus all of us have said that we want to do this right this time around. With the first record, before we released the record, we had never toured and I feel like that really hurt the way things went for our band. Like, the first week, we sold 600 copies of our record; 500 of those being in Long Island, and the other 100 being around the rest of the country. We were incredibly naïve at the time and thought, “We have a great fan base here in Long Island, the rest of the world probably knows about us too,” and that is stupid. Obviously it doesn’t work that way. So it took us a long time to get any attention for anybody like other bands to take us on tour. I don’t even think we started touring until a month and a half after the record came out. So we made a lot of mistakes. We had only been to the west coast once, and we wanted to make sure we got around the country a couple of times, even before the record came out to let everyone know that, well, we were a band. Because we feel like there are a lot of people who know about our band and have known about us for a while but the vast majority of people have no clue who we are.

EP: As far the recording process goes, I bet it was a lot different now that you guys had found your way through…
Dan: Well, I feel like we did what we wanted to this time around. The first record we had been a band for about six or seven months before we got signed. We spent two months trying to write some songs and went in and recorded a record. We had never recorded a record before. It was the first time we had worked with a producer or some one we were uncomfortable with, so the chemistry between us and Sean O’Keefe at the beginning was a little strange as we were trying to get to know each other. Plus being in a band and coming from a certain style of music and wanting to be something different and not really being able to accomplish that with the first record, it was just a whole confusing process. It was a mess, and this time we wanted to do it right. So we took sometime off and wrote songs that we liked. Because a lot of time with our band as well, you write a song and you are really excited about it and in a couple of weeks it dies off. You realize that you were kind of in the moment. With these new songs, we spent time writing them and spent time away from them before we actually recorded them to make sure it was what we wanted to do. There are definitely songs that we wrote for the record, that aren’t on the record, that we thought at the time we wrote them, that it was going to be the best song on the record. You have that mentality. And a month goes by and you listen to it and you are like, “Eh, I am not sure if I like that.” And a lot of stuff, like for example, I wrote something and played it for someone in the band and they were kind of like, “Eh, yeah, whatever.” But a couple months later, they are like, “Oh, that sounds really good.” That kind of stuff happens. So we took our time with it.

EP: I know that in a couple days you are going to hook up with the June tour. Are you going to be playing mostly stuff from the new disc?
Dan: We are playing all new material. We are just so sick of the material from that old record. It is nothing against it, it is just being an artist and naturally growing away from those songs.
EP: Yeah two years is a really long time to be playing those songs.
Dan: Well we have probably had them for about three years. There was seven months between recording and releasing the record, plus writing the songs, so it has been about three years. Plus, we didn’t write anything before we wrote the songs for the new record so we played the same songs for three straight years and it is pretty boring.
EP: It that the main reason you are playing the new stuff? Just because you are sick of the old stuff? Was the label telling you to start pushing for this new record?
Dan: I think it is a little of both. I think we, as a band, feel the new stuff is better and thankfully, the label is too. They are much more excited about this record than the last one. We want people to hear it. It is not that we don’t want people to but Lafcadio, we don’t care if they buy it or not. We are more concerned with this new record.

EP: What is the name of the new record?
Dan: It is self-titled. It is really hard to think of a good name for a record. We came up with a few, and after a while, after thinking about it, we realized one idea was too pretentious, one didn’t have enough meaning behind it. We had the opportunity to do a self titled and let it just be representative of the band.

EP: Who are your biggest influences? Maybe not just musically but as an artist?
Dan: Well, I know a lot of bands have influenced me. I am obsessed with Bjork and Jeff Buckley. Songwriting wise, Neil Young is a huge influence for me, especially “After the Gold Rush” and “Harvest.” Two are two of my favorite records. Who else? Actually a band that more people should know about that is a huge influence on our whole band is a band called Elbow. They are a band from England and are in the same vein as Radiohead or Coldplay but are a little more under the radar. And O.A.R. is a big influence on us.
EP: Really?
Dan: No. (Luaghs)

EP: In a similar vein, what kinds of stuff are listening to in your van right now?
Dan: Oh! You what a good record that just came out that we picked up is this artist called Feist. She is like a singer-songwriter from Canada. She is in a band called Broken Social Scene. She does the female vocals in Broken Social Scene. They are one band I am really into right now. Julio, who else are we listening to right now?
Julio: D’Angelo.
Dan: Yeah, Julio is obsessed with D’Angelo.
EP: Is it the abs?
Julio: Yeah (laughs) Pretty much it is D’Angelo, Tribe Called Quest, Broken Social Scene, Feist…
Dan: Bjork
Julio: Ray Charles, Alicia Keys, Buena Vista Social Club, Miles Davis…that is about it

EP: A couple of the new songs we have heard have been more atmospheric guitar sounds. Are there going to be quicker songs on the record? Or…
Dan: As band we were trying to describe the new stuff and I guess it is a lot more atmospheric than the first record but it is more straight-forward. It is a pop record in a vague sense of the word. The tunes are catchy but they are a lot more dense. It is very groove heavy, very drum and bass oriented. Whereas, with the first record, I would say I was the main song writer for the band. I would come in with a chord progression and a vocal melody and we would put drums and bass around it. This time around, it was a more collaborative effort. Like, Cliff would come in with just a drumbeat and we would write a song around a drumbeat. Actually a lot of songs were written that way. We would get together and just have drums or bass.
Julio: All the songs started as small pieces rather than some one coming in with just a song.
EP: So the songs started more from the ground up than someone just coming in with an acoustic guitar and writing a song from there?
Dan: Yeah, but even if it was written on acoustic guitar, because there were a few songs written that way, like for instance, there is one song on the record, which doesn’t even have a title yet, we just call it “Summer,” I remember writing the acoustic guitar part and the vocal melody. But when the song was done, there was no rhythm guitar part in it at all. It would be based on drums and bass and atmospheric guitars. So we would strip away the root of it and write something else around it.

EP: Are there any surprises on the new CD? Guest vocals etc?
Dan: No guest vocal. The songs are very track heavy. There is a lot of instrumentation; there are two songs with horn parts, orchestral horn parts in it. There are a lot more vocals going on. The first record had pretty much one main vocal and there weren’t many vocal harmonies or counter melodies. This record is very vocal. Everybody is singing. The last record had like, one main vocal track. This one has like 20-25 vocal tracks.
EP: So everyone gets a mic?
Dan: Yep, five mics on stage.
EP: Triple Crown, like many labels, has been the breeding grounds for some great bands who have already made the jump to a major label. Have you been approached about that? Would you be willing to make that jump?
Dan: We kind of contradicted ourselves. We signed a new contract through Triple Crown this last year and it was through the EastWest division, which Hit the Lights, the Receiving End of Sirens is on a bunch of other bands and other labels are though EastWest, which a division of Warner Bros. which means that any band that, for example, signs a contract with Triple Crown/EastWest or 111/EastWest, Warner Bros and all the labels in the Warner Music family has first right of refusal to the band. So, they can pick us up at anytime, well, we would still have to negotiate a contract and we would have to be cool with it, but they get first dibs on it. At the same time, the more bands I see signing to major labels and what happens to them, the more weary we are about signing to a major label. It is kind of scary. A lot of good and bad things can happen. A band can get lost in the label, but at the same time, distribution would be getting us outside the box.

EP: Awesome dude, well anything else you want to say to the EP.com readers?
Dan: New record comes out August 8th, self titled. Pick it up!

Thanks to Andrew, Dan and Julio for all their help.