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[ purple door 2005 | lewisberry, pa | august 20, 2005 ]
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cMusicWeb.com: I'd have to say that your CD is the best new disc that has passed my desk in months.Jeremy Edwardson (lead vocal, guitar): Thank you. It has been a long hard road, but we are very happy about it, too.
cMW: I have tried to describe your music to people and sometimes it depends on what song I heard last. How do you describe your music?
Steven Tracy (guitar): Probably European influenced rock. We definitely got a lot of our influence from the UK and what is going on over there.
cMW: I read that you like Floodgate Records because they have a lot of ideas that you are also passionate about. What are some of those ideas?
Jeremy: We present the same music for everybody, whether they be a Christian or a non-Christian. Something that everybody can relate to and it can reach everybody.
cMW: You have been a band for a while, so what made you all of a sudden decide that you wanted a larger distribution?
Scott Davis (drums, backup vocals): One of our motivations was just so we could do it full time. So signing with a label seemed like the right thing to do. Because you want to get the music out there and it is hard to do it independently because you do not have the funding and the backing. So for three years prior [to being signed]... the ultimate goal was to do this full time, be with a label, and go on the road.
cMW: So were there any struggles along the way? Did you ever think, "Hey, why aren't we signed yet?"
Jeremy: I think it is always good to remind yourself why you are doing it. For each one of us there is a love for music that extends way beyond record label goals and being signed or going to the next level. [And we needed to be] content with just loving music and wanting to share that with people. So there was a struggle like, "What are we doing?" sometimes but I think we all could just rest in loving and playing music. Even before we were signed.
cMW: How was the writing and recording process different this time from previous independent releases?Scott: This is the first time we ever worked with a producer. We used to do everything on our own. So it was great to have him [Aaron Marsh of Copeland] come in to give us some objectivity to our songs and to be able to put in some input in the writing and the whole process like we had been doing for the last few years.
cMW: Was that hard?
Scott: Yes. Well, ultimately it was good. It was a tight process because you become attached to ideas and parts and that sort of thing. And to have somebody come in and start chopping it up and put in their opinion as to what they think is best for the song is tricky sometimes, for sure.
cMW: A lot of times there is a band, they get signed, and they put out one album, and then you never hear from them again. Where do you see yourself in five years?
Scott: Still doing this. Still making records. We do not want to do one record and bail out.
Jeremy: I think one thing we were working really hard to avoid is releasing our first record, hitting the road, and never writing again. We have been encouraged to write while we are on the road. We have been motivated to do that because I think that is one reason why you see a lot of bands that write a record and it is great and then they fall off the map. Because being out on the road, sometimes a band will forget that they are going to have another that needs to come out at some point, you know, a year from then. But they are just going non-stop on the road. We definitely love doing this and we want to do it for as long as we can.
cMW: Have you been able to write songs on the road?
Jeremy: Absolutely, yeah.
cMW: Do you all write together?
Jeremy: Yes.
cMW: What is the reason behind that?
Scott: Trial and error. We presented our own songs and we found that the ones we stuck with were the ones that we really molded together and hashed out together.
Steven: Everybody brings something that is valuable, and if it were just one of us, it would be two-dimensional. It took us some time to figure it out.
cMW: What is the last thing you usually think just before going on stage?Steven: For me I think it is the opposite. It is trying not to think. It is trying to clear my head of logistics and to be able to just enjoy the set — less from a logistical level and more on a spiritual level and hope that people connect with that.
cMW: Some people say that a Christian should write songs that talk about God in every sentence. And yet I do not walk around talking about God in every sentence. That is how I usually respond to these people. How do you respond?
Jeremy: I would say, "Open your Bible." I think a lot of the Bible is experiences through life from a Christian perspective. There is not always a gospel presentation. I think we write songs that are [from] life experiences. A lot of them are very forward songs about some personal experiences with God and a lot of them are what we have learned along the way about life.
Steven: [Some people] can't find God outside of the word 'God'. I guess that concerns me because you find God in nature, and you can find Him in a symphony that does not have any words at all. Ultimately, God is omnipresent. You cannot help saturate everything with Him.
Jeremy: God created the music we play and God created art. So He owns it.
Jon Young (guitar): Doesn't that describe the relationship when you come to know the Lord? To make sure that every aspect of your life, whether it be music, songs or the beat, is God-driven? It does not make sense to ask, "Is it a Christian song or not?" I am a believer, and I believe whole-heartedly.
cMW: Have you ever had a song that you wrote where people have written a review and a song was misinterpreted?
All: (laughter)
Steven: Yes, there is a song on the record called "A New Language." There is a lyric, "and two by two we slip down." And one review talks about (and it is a nice review) a brilliant analogy of the Biblical account of Noah's ark. And it has nothing to do with that. It has to do with two separate relationships and struggles that we were having.Jon: Which we were actually pretty stoked about it. I mean in a sense that we keep our lyrics somewhat ambiguous for a reason and we do not force an experience upon our listener. But they actually form their own experience or attach their own experience to the lyric. So for us it was kind of neat that even though it was taken really far. We have learned that some of our favorite songs on albums from other artists where we formed our own opinion of a song and we found out it was entirely different.
Jeremy: I chose to keep my first view of what that song meant. One of the coolest things about listening to music is to create in your mind what the author is trying to present. And with poetry a lot of times that first initial reaction could bring you to tears and later on you find out that has nothing that it had to do with but you can hold on to that moment, too.
cMW: That is actually why I rarely ask, "What does this song mean?" Partly because I don't want to change my mind about what the song means, let alone someone else's mind.
Jon: Isn't that what art is all about? When you go look at a painting [for example] ...A painter does not form their own opinion of what they want to see. Sometimes it is for you to visually stimulate yourself and see the colors or to see certain things that you see. Some people are color blind, like myself, so I do not see the same colors that are vibrant. But I might see the shapes and sizes. I look at the painting differently than others would. In the same way, some people listen to a song differently than others. A musician will look at a song differently than a non-musician would.
- Kim Flanders
December 2005
December 2005
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