Derek: I guess the whole thing technically started a couple winters ago. Jon and Chuck had their own bands but they'd linked up and started writing some songs together. I was somewhat new to the city and Jon, who I knew through some mutual friends, brought me into a practice with them and George Garcia, who was on drums. We had a good session, banged out a big stupid rock n roll song, and it was just a matter of time before we started playing shows. The idea at first was to write big, scrappy, simple rock n' roll, but after about a year of that we parted ways with George, found Sam on Craigslist and started working on new, tighter, slightly more serious material.
Jon: Sounds about right. Sam was a huge Craigslist find. I do like to think we still have the big and scrappy elements, but yeah, we've tightened things up.
Hearts Bleed Radio: You guys have really good guitar interplay, (and vocal interplay too), how do your songs come together?
Hearts Bleed Radio: You guys have really good guitar interplay, (and vocal interplay too), how do your songs come together?
Jon: That's nice to hear, man, thanks. Early on, it was more common for us to come in with relatively complete songs and sort of throw them around, but increasingly - and I think this leads to some of that back-and-forth interplay - we're coming into practice with ideas or pieces of songs with the desire to get everyone's input in order to complete them.
HBR: Do you feel like one of you has the job of the lead guitarist? It seems pretty split.
Jon: It's pretty split. The other thing that leads to that interplay is that Derek and I are both riffy as hell.
HBR: And vocally, the same applies?
Derek: It's pretty even overall, but I think Jon's got a tad more noodle in him and I lean a little more on the vocal duties. I like driving the guitar a lot but I get a lot of energy by pushing my voice, stretching into my upper range, doing back to back songs that get me a little raspy.
HBR: The old tag team!
Jon: Yeah, I've never really thought of it, but we've never had a moment of 'No, I think I should sing this one,' or anything like that. It's always just fallen in place. 'I've got some lyrics for this.' "Do it."
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Derek (left) and Jon (right) get down to business |
HBR: Do you write lyrics together? Or at least talk about the meaning of the song? Y'know, to make sure it makes sense? DOES IT MAKE SENSE?
Jon: Yeah sure, sometimes. 'Haymaker,' for instance, was about a 50/50 collaboration. 'Thunderclap' and '25th Hour' were also situations where I had incomplete lyrics and asked Derek to give me a chorus or a bridge or whatever.