You guys will be heading to both the UK at the end of this year and then Australia early in ‘09. What’s the difference between playing overseas vs. playing the States?
Well Australians are genuinely just excited that American bands traveled anywhere between 12 and 24 hours just to be there. I think that the nature of people there is just genuine and happy and carefree, so it makes for a better atmosphere.
England is a little different. It’s harder to get popular there if you don’t have a gimmick or a hit song or anything like that. Everything there is very dependent on media and how you look and all that type of stuff. I always say they have the biggest band in the world that month. Every month there’s a biggest band in the world in England somewhere and then a month later, they don’t exist anymore. It’s just how it works.
For a band like us to be making small progress and taking baby steps for eight years, England is somewhere we go and we love the country, but the shows certainly aren’t as good as even in Australia and we’ve only been there once. We love it and we wish we would do better there, but we’ll keep going back because of the 200-300 kids who want to see us there and do have fun, but we kind of are almost the antithesis of what a successful band is in the UK.
Where are some of your favorite places to play here?
We played The Troubadour in Hollywood and that was awesome. It’s kind of like the famous place to play in Hollywood. There’re a lot of places in California. The Ventura Theatre in Ventura, CA, is beautiful and it’s a great area. Whenever we play somewhere I like to just explore and go for walks. Chicago, The Metro, is always rad to us. If we play anywhere in New York, it’s awesome. I like playing in Orlando. The venue’s not that great, but I love the area and the shows are always good. Definitely Philadelphia. The Trocadero always treats us great. I wouldn’t say it’s a quirky venue, but it’s certainly got some history there. I’ve only played The Electric Factory once, but that was amazing. At this point it seems that we’ve probably played 10 different places in Philadelphia in the past four years, which is so good that the city has that many venues.
You talked about some of the bands that influenced you growing up. Who are some of the bands you listen to today?
The past couple albums I bought were Ben Folds and Jenny Lewis. I listen to Nada Surf just about every day; it makes me feel good about life. I’ve liked The Matches for awhile, but just being on tour with them really made me appreciate them a lot more. They definitely have a great energy to their music that makes me appreciate the live album a little bit more. We get to tour with great bands and they’re no exception.
