You worked with both Chad Gilbert from New Found Glory and Adam Dutkiewicz of Killswitch Engage. Did you go with them because they both reflect the duality in your music?
That’s exactly what we did. With our band it’s kind of hard to find people to do our CDs because all these producers specialize in one thing. When it came to producing, Chad Gilbert automatically came to our heads because he’s in one of the biggest punk bands of all time and then he was in really influential hardcore bands like Shai Hulud. So he of all people understood where we were trying to go with this record. So he’s an awesome person to have in control of producing the stuff. He’s amazing at what he does, he’s an amazing artist, musician, a great engineer and we love every CD he’s done when it comes to sound so we’ve always wanted to work with him and it was awesome that he took time to mix our record and we love how it turned out.
The artwork for the album is really interesting too. You guys had a hand in developing it?
Yeah, for sure. I had a pretty detailed idea that I had for Dan Mumford to draw out for us and he’s an amazing artist. He does some really detailed work, so it was sick to be able to get somebody who’s that good at what they do to work with us and work with him on an idea. We came up with some pretty cool stuff. There’s like a hidden code in there, a key to figure out what the sign says and we just tried to have fun with it.
There were video studio updates you guys posted during the recording of this album which spoofed The Real World. But how is the recording process really?
Well as I said, it’s different every time. This one we wrote it all on the road and we worked it out in the back of our bus with Chris Rubey and Andrew Wade and Chad produced it on the NFG tour. We came home and started tracking it with Andrew in Ocala and that was really awesome to be home and be working with somebody that we trust. Andrew’s been a part of pretty much every ADTR record. We sat there and those [videos] were all meant to be funny and keep people interested. We had a really good time doing that.
Was there any real drama moments that played out in real life?
No, we were passed that by the time we got home to track it. All the drama was on Warped Tour and the NFG tour.
Yeah, I was going to ask if it ever feels like you’re in The Real World being on the road with the same people.
It’s exactly like The Real World. You’re with five of your friends and you’re trapped somewhere where you can’t get away from them, then you got to live with them. You got to learn to live with people that aren’t the same as you. You’re friends with them, but it’s hard sometimes because some people don’t understand because a lot of people in our band still live at home with their parents and you learn a lot from having a roommate or living on your own. We’ve all been doing this for awhile and at the end of the day we’re all friends.
Going back to New Found Glory, would you consider doing an album of cover songs as they did, being you have two under your belts?
You never know, maybe. I know I would enjoy playing a few cover songs. Not like gimmicky cover songs, I’d love to actually do cover songs of bands that we grew up listening to.
ADTR is on both the first and second Punk Goes Pop albums, but I read you were interested in the Punk Goes Crunk one as well. Did you have a song you wanted to do?
Yeah, we’ve been talking about this for years. Like we had this great idea before they even talked about doing Punk Goes Crunk. We told our manager we were like, ‘Any, any of those Punk Goes… series we want to be on.’ Because we loved all those series growing up and that was like a goal for our band to be on something like that. A long time ago, I was just like, ‘Oh, I got this greatest idea for like a rap song, so if they ever do one for rap, we are on it, hands down.’ Because we were going to do Chingy’s “One Call Away.” It would have been awesome because I knew exactly what we were going to do, it would have been sick. But, it happened and I didn’t even know about it until pretty much the songs were already recorded. So we missed out on that one, but they asked us to be on Punk Goes Pop, so that’s cool.
Homesick is in stores now. Check out ADTR at the Trocadero in Philly on March 31 and at The Fillmore At Irving Plaza in NYC on April 1 and 2. For more info, visit myspace.com/adaytoremember.
