I recently had the chance to talk with Silverstein about everything they’re currently up to and their plans for the future.
Interview: Silverstein (Video Interview)
LATEST INTERVIEWS - PAGE 23
Interview: Shannon Taylor of Awakebutstillinbed
In January, Awakebutstillinbed released their debut album, What People Call Low Self-Esteem Is Really Just Seeing Yourself the Way That Other People See You – an early contender for album of the year – and signed to Tiny Engines Records. I was lucky enough to speak to vocalist Shannon Taylor about the record, the history of the band, and what makes an emo band.
Interview: Mason Maggio of The Republic of Wolves
I had the pleasure of sitting down with The Republic of Wolves’ vocalist Mason Maggio to talk about about the writing process for their long-awaited new album Shrine, which is due out March 27th, and what fans should expect from the record.
Interview: Kyle Durfey of Pianos Become the Teeth
Next week, Pianos Become the Teeth will release their fourth full-length, Wait for Love. It takes the band even further down the path their 2014 effort, Keep You, blazed and expands upon it, taking the band’s sound in totally new directions. I recently spoke with vocalist Kyle Durfey about the process of writing the album and following up such a radical change in sound.
Interview: Sleep On It (Video Interview)
Sleep On It are making winter fun again with their debut full-length Overexposed, which came out last month on Equal Vision Records. I recently sat down with the band to talk about their new album and their plans for 2018.
Interview: Waterparks (Video Interview)
Waterparks are on the verge of something big. After spending the last year and a half climbing the ranks of the pop-punk scene with their debut Double Dare, the band is slated to release their follow-up, Entertainment, on January 26th via Equal Vision Records.
I recently sat down with the band’s lead singer, Awsten Knight, and he is careful and thoughtful in his responses to questions about his band’s sophomore effort. If you watch carefully, you can see that Knight doesn’t want to reveal too much too soon. Viewers can see his excitement bubbling just beneath the surface. He reveals that the band is trying new things; spicing things up with synthesizers and taking a step beyond their previous work.
Interview: Corey Coffman of Gleemer
Gleemer’s fourth full-length album, Anymore, comes out next month. It’s a big jump for the band, as it’s their first release on Other People Records – or, for that matter, any label. Last week I spoke with vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Corey Coffman about the jump to the label, the concept of Anymore, and the weird process of choosing its album cover.
Interview: Riot Fest (Video Interviews)
I had the chance to do some video interviews with a bunch of bands at this year’s Riot Fest. Here they are for your viewing pleasure:
Interview: Wu-Tang Clan (Video Interview)
The Wu-Tang Clan have been together since 1992 and are about to release their new album, Wu-Tang: The Saga Continues, on October 13th. At Riot Fest, Wu-Tang Clan performed to a massive crowd and I had the chance to sit down with DJ Mathematics, RZA, and Cappadonna to talk about the new album, the first track “People Say,” and much more.
Interview: Noah Gundersen’s Restless Heart
In 2014, Noah Gundersen released his first full-length album. The record in question, Ledges, was a masterclass in contemporary folk music, loaded with confessional lyrics, acoustic guitars, and fiddles. By all accounts, Gundersen seemed like a traditionalist.
In 2015, Gundersen quickly followed Ledges up with his sophomore LP, the spiritually fraught Carry the Ghost. It was still a folk album, but Noah was fleshing things out, adding fractious electric guitar and other elements of full band instrumentation into the mix. It was clearly the work of a young songwriter who was yearning to grow.
Between the fall of 2015 and the early winter of 2016, Gundersen did two tours in support of Carry the Ghost. The first was a full-band endeavor, presenting the songs on Ghost as they were meant to be heard. The second was a solo tour, where Gundersen played songs from both Ledges and Carry the Ghost on acoustic guitar, solo electric guitar, and piano. It was a stark, intimate presentation, and it showed off what made Gundersen so special: his vulnerable, fragile voice; his songs that could work well no matter how much he built them up or stripped them down; and his honest, forthright lyrics.
But something was wrong. Gundersen was having a crisis of faith—not the same crisis of religious faith he wrote about on Carry the Ghost, but a crisis of faith in his own art. When I saw Gundersen on the solo tour for Ghost, he was pointedly reserved. He bantered with the audience occasionally, but during the songs, his eyes were cast toward the floor or closed entirely. And at the end of the show, when a condescending moderator led a Q&A session and suggested that Gundersen was “so young” and “couldn’t have possibly experienced what he sang about in his songs,” Noah seemed at a loss for how to answer—at least politely. When the Q&A ended, Gundersen headed quickly for the stage door.
Interview: Brian Sella of The Front Bottoms
Brian Sella is a notoriously sweet guy. So sweet, in fact, that he doesn’t even correct me when I refer to his band’s new single as “Raindrops” rather than its correct title, “Raining.” When I ask him if he still gets nervous playing shows, he replies, “Oh, totally!” When I inform him that I’ve been doing interviews for three years now, but that I was still nervous to speak with him, he laughs.
“Oh, don’t worry about it! You’re a professional. That’s what you’ve gotta tell yourself.”
In the context of The Front Bottoms’ discography, Going Grey reflects Sella’s current “vibe,” a word he uses frequently in our conversation. As he’ll tell me, the band learned that an “anything goes” attitude in the studio can result in plenty of band and fan favorites. In this way, Going Grey is an expansion of the polished-yet-experimental sound of their 2015 powerhouse, Back on Top. It continues to analyze topics such as mortality, relationships and getting older – oftentimes within the same three-minute pop song.
Interview: Anthony Raneri of Bayside (Video Interview)
Bayside have been going strong since 2004, but it was the band’s 2007 release, The Walking Wounded, that solidified their place in the alt-rock scene. The New York-based band decided to celebrate the ten year anniversary of the album with a small club tour. I sat down for a video interview with lead singer, Anthony Raneri, prior to the first night’s show at the Ottobar in Baltimore, Maryland.
Interview: Keep on Dreaming Even If It Breaks Your Heart: The Renaissance of Will Hoge
Will Hoge almost got the dream.
In 2015, the independent Nashville-based recording artist seemed poised to win the country music lottery. He and his band had been picked by a major radio conglomerate as a spotlight artist, to be introduced on a mass scale to radio listeners nationwide. Looking back now, Hoge says the slot was virtually a guarantee of a top 10 record in the country music sphere. “This is exactly what the program is for,” the radio group told him and his band: spotlighting new artists or independent acts and helping them find a home in the infamously commercialized world of country radio.
For Hoge, being picked as a next big thing was the realization of a long-held dream. He’d released his first record—as part of the band Spoonful—in 1997, before going solo with 2001’s Carousel. What followed was a series of well-liked and respected records that melded country, southern rock, and heartland rock into something that sounded like a twangier Springsteen. For 2003’s Blackbird on a Lonely Wire, Hoge got scooped up by Atlantic Records, but the album failed to take off and it was back to the independent musician game after that.
Still, Hoge kept trucking and was eventually rewarded for his persistence. In 2012, Eli Young Band recorded a version of “Even If It Breaks Your Heart,” a song from Hoge’s 2009 record The Wreckage. The song was the opening track and second single from Eli Young Band’s Life at Best album, and it ultimately reached number one on the Billboard country chart. Suddenly armed with a number one song to his name, Hoge landed his 2013 track “Strong” in a widely syndicated ad campaign for Chevrolet Silverado. The song charted modestly on country radio, but it was enough to convince Hoge that if he really tried to play the game, he might just be able to make some magic happen.
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Interview: The 2017 APMAs (Video Interviews)
I recently hit up Alternative Press’ Music Awards and interviewed a whole bunch of artists on the red carpet. You’ll find links to all of the video interviews below. Enjoy!
Interview: Sir Sly on Repurposing Tragedy with ‘Don’t You Worry, Honey’
On the eve of the release of their sophomore album, I sat down with the trio from Sir Sly at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles to discuss their excitement about the new music, the breakout success of “High,” the personal events behind the album, and why they never want to be outworked.
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