New interview from ap.net, I love the part about their live shows.
Matt : Please state your name and what you do in the band.
Thomas : My name is Thomas and I play guitar and I sing.
Matt : I want to know everything you can tell me about Manipulator.
Thomas : It's coming out May 1st on Equal Vision and it's very angular.
Matt : What sort of way is it different from Doppelganger?
Thomas : In every way. It sounds completely different. The songs are very diverse.
Matt : How many tracks are gonna be on there?
Thomas : Twelve.
Matt : Is Ghostship Demo 4 going to be on there?
Thomas: No, that's gonna be a record done later.
Matt : Phantom on the Horizon?
Thomas : Yea. So that will be chapters in the story.
Matt : And that's gonna be based on a story around you as a captain?
Thomas : It will all be revealed eventually. That shit has been out for so long at this point and people are getting overzealous about it and they need to just chill the fuck out and get their mind on Manipulator and when that shit comes out everything will be explained.
Matt : I think a lot of people were blown away by the Ghostship Demos.
Thomas: Yea defintly. The new record is going to be more angular than that stuff.
Matt : Angular like Damiera?
Thomas : No, in terms of there are songs that are straight pop songs, there are songs that are 9-minute epic Fall of Troy songs. There's everything, there's a little bit of everything we do and we confide in the music. We're not being afraid to go in different directions with our sound. I think one big part of our band is that people are starting to understand we just do whatever we want and not confine ourselves to one genre or one sound.
Matt : What do you mean by pop songs? Like straight-up New Found Glory type stuff?
Thomas : More like Weezer, old Weezer-ish, almost kinda Nirvana feeling at time. That's what pop rock is to me. Old Greenday. Kids in underground music are very afraid of the word 'pop'. I came up with pop-rock.
Matt : I personally love Jawbreaker and Hey Mercedes. That's what pop is to me.
Thomas : Saves The Day too, Alkaline Trio. Whoever man. The Getup Kids, the Anniversary, the Lawarence Arms, The Appleseed Cast, Death Cab for Cutie, Modest Mouse, even going back further to like Sunny Day Real Estate and all that shit. That's what I came up listening to. Not hardcore. We're not a hardcore band.
Matt : I think a lot of people get that confused. People expect to hear you screaming, using heavy riffs.
Thomas : That's there dude too. That's the other side. When I started going to rock'nroll shows instead of just listening to it, that's when I discovered things like Botch and the Blood Brothers.
Matt : Are you a big Blood Brothers fan?
Thomas : Yea their drummer Mark is a good friend of mine. So like, yea I love the Blood Brothers dude. I've seen the Blood Brothers play shows since I was like 16. And like Botch and These Arms Are Snakes and all these Seattle bands.
Matt : I was actually going to ask you about the progressive style that Seattle bands seem to have. Gatsbys American Dream also. Do you see that as an only Seattle thing or a national movement?
Thomas : Well you can hear Tera Melos in the background and they're from Sacramento so I think it's a national thing, but I think the Northwest has the current monopoly on it. Portugal The Man also is a very progressive band. The East coast produced pop-punk. And I love pop-punk, don't get me wrong, but it's more about being tight and precise and affective over here and on the West Coast it's more about experimenting. It's more about not putting on the same show every night. Kids don't want to see the same show every night. I don't want to put on the same show we did for the kids in Jersey last night because that was their show. It's like an experience. I want people to feel like they're coming to a show, to a movie, or to a play, you know what I mean? I don't want them coming to a pre-fabricated concert. You want unpredictability. It's that element of unpredictability and what's going to happen next. You could go online and look up the setlist, but at our show you're not going to get that setlist and you're not going to get the song played the same as the night before. I don't think people read deeply enough into our band with things like that. We don't even try and play the song as it sounds on the record. That was just a snapshot in time. It's like taking a picture. I can take a picture of you now and see you next time and you won't even look the same. You're not going to look like this for the rest of your life. So neither will our songs.
Matt : You guys have a very different sound then most other bands that kids in the scene usually listen to and you draw a very interesting crowd. What's your reaction to scene kids and hipsters?
Thomas : Well we draw a very diverse crowd. I think that was kind of answered before with the conversation we had about before about being diverse. We want to bring together a lot of different kind of people and give them something in common. So maybe something different can happen for a night instead of going to a metal show where it's all metal kids or going to a punk show where it's all punk rock kids. And that is punk rock, by definition. To go against. I think everybody needs to learn. Everybody needs to be a part of something together as opposed to being a part of their own thing all the time. Sometimes you got to put yourself in situations with people you're nothing like just to learn. How else are people going to learn? Not from hanging out with their best buddies who do the exact same stuff as them and do the same shit every day. That's why you make new friends. That's why people talk and live life. That's the point. To learn as much as you can while you're here. You're not going to do that by sitting around and listening to one kind of music or talking to one kind of person your whole life. That would be racism. It would be as bad as racism to say that I'm only going to listen to one kind of music. That's like saying I'm only going to be friends with white kids or I'm only going to be freinds with black kids. We're trying to open people's minds and we welcome you with open arms.
Matt : As a guitarist, what type of music influenced you growing up?
Thomas : Hendrix, Paige, John McGlocken, but also stuff like Billy Corgan. Kurt Cobain, as a song
writer is probably my biggest influence.
Matt : Were you upset when you found out he comitted suicide?
Thomas : Well I was really young dude, I was like 11 or 12. I wasn't old enough to go to concerts yet. They actually played the Pier in Seattle on New Years Eve and my older friends who I was playing music with were all 16 so they got a ticket for me to go to that show as like a present and my parents wouldn't let me go to it because I was too young and then he died and I was bummed out, but I wasn't really old enough to understand yet. It's a story it's a legend and it's a sad story, but it's beautiful and it is what it is. You can always listen to his records. I didn't know Kurt, you didn't know Kurt. We weren't his friends.
Matt : What's your favorite Nirvana song?
Thomas : That's hard to ask. That's like asking what's my favorite song that we've written. All of In
Utero is like my favorite shit of all time.
Matt : How long have you been playing guitar for?
Thomas : About seven years. Maybe a little longer. I can't really remember. It wasn't like I looked at a calender and decided today I'm going to be playing guitar. I was always around the instruments. There were always guitars around. I think I learned my first song when I was 13 or 14. Then I started listening Nirvana songs, and then Weezer songs since I got a little better because everything was power chords with Nirvana then Weezer had chords and power chords and that was a nice mix. Then I started learning punk and got into technical guitar playing because of the solos.
Matt : What got you into playing an instrument?
Thomas : Obviously my dad. I've been playing drums since I was two years old because my dad has been a musician his entire life so there were always instruments around. It just happens. There wasn't a defining moment. It's always been there. I love it. It feels like it's part of my family. It's tradition for my family almost to sit around the piano on X-mas. A lot of my family are musicians and if not then they're music lovers to the fullest. Even my mom who can't really carry a tune loves music. She loves her music and I love my music and we can all apprecaite each others. My sister is incredibly musical, my dad is incredibly musical, my grandma and granpa are incredibly musical. My dad's whole side of the family is very musical.
Matt : You never went to college?
Thomas : Well I started to go to college and then we got signed to EVR and it was like okay keep up in college or go make a record and go on tour for the rest of our lives. That was the reality then. They were like US tour and all that, so I was like 'alright'. I can always go back to college. If I wasn't doing this I'd be going to college.
Matt : Have you guys gotten any offers from major labels?
Thomas : Not like straight up offer because everybody knows we're with Equal Vision pretty firmly at this point right now. We have a lot of friends. We know a lot of freinds that are A+R's at majors. We have a really good freind at Capitol and a good friend at Epic. And they support us, but we're
when of those bands where a major label isn't going to come out and start throwing money at us unless we get a hit record.
Matt : Would you guys move up to a major if you were offered?
Thomas : It all depends on so many logistical things. The label would have to understand we're not a Fall Out Boy and it would take time. We're not going to have huge huge radio singles all the time. All our pride is in our live show so hopefully we'll be able to draw thousands and thousands of people for years and years and years at some point. That's my dream. It would be cool to sell out MSG but I'd be fine with selling out 1500 person rooms for the rest of my career and make enough money to live and sell records at our shows as opposed to getting a big radio single and a good video and being forced into an image. That is what that shit does. People hear one song and they go that's what it is and they see you on TV and they go that's what it is and then that's what you are. That's why videos are a hard thing for us. It's so hard because Manipulator has so many different sounding songs that when we put out a single that's just one little piece. I think we're going to have to put a disclaimer in the beginning of our song like 'don't think this is all there is', but I guess that's for people to go out and buy the record and figure out for themselves.
Matt : Do you plan on releasing a single for Manipulator any time soon?
Thomas : Probably within the next month or two. It's done already. We'll probably release a song on myspace before we release a real single.
Matt : Is Seattlantis on it?
Thomas : Yea Seattlantis is on it. That's on it and that's already out there as a live recording.
Matt : How'd you end up on the London XFM sessions?
Thomas : We do really well over there. We have a very strong following over there, competent people. People over there are very different then here. What we're talking about, with this whole concept, they already figured this out. You go over there and you have bands like Aiden that are huge, but you also have bands like The Blood Brothers who are huge. It's all the same siZe over there. It's not like here where Fall Out Boy is huge and Brand New is down here. You know what I'm saying? All those bands are huge. The kids over there that like Fall Out Boy also like good music too. They're not just like zombies. They go out and like music because they like music. They'll spend time with your records. They don't want to hear that single over and over 50 times. They want to know every song.
Matt : I think that's a big problem over here, but I think it's changing. I see bands getting better and better. I saw a Good Charlotte video last night and I'm not gonna lie, it's a huge improvement.
Thomas : I think people starting to figure out they can't be fed horseshit anymore. I think people are getting sick of it. I think the young kids that are coming up and 15 and 16 right now had kids like me on their assses when I was 17 years old and they were little kids. It's hard to explain. When I came into going to shows there really wasn't that much at least where I was from. You had to find your own shit and then bands like Blood Brothers started up and then all the kids at the time who were like 16, 17 found that band and we're all turning 21, 22 and the Blood Brothers are this huge band now because all the younger kids are like "wow these kids found this type of music". The age range of 21-24, we have a lot of good bands, but we had to find them out ourselves.
Matt : I agree with that in a way. A lot of kids who are now 21, 22 here on the East Coast were listening to Thursday, Brand New, Saves The Day, Taking Back Sunday when they were 16-17.
Thomas : Which is all great shit. Before that, they were listening to hardcore. There wasn't a lot of different types of music. But now I think music is heading in a really good direction.
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Oh and here's the album cover, I think it's kinda funny, but I don't really like it.
