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| ::Interviews:: |
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| review & interview content, as well as web site graphics & design, copywrite 2003-2004 Euphonia Online. use of materials granted only with reasonable purposes. |
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| interviewed by robby sumner |
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| Interview with Blake October 2nd, 2004 |
Chad Atkinson - Vocals, Bass Blake Means - Guitar Ryan Edwards - Guitar Juan Pereda - Drums |
| E: Name Taken is a band signed to Fiddler Records and has been one of Southern California's most reputable bands for several years now. You guys are currently on tour with such great bands as Emery and Brazil. How's the tour gone so far?
Blake: The tour we are on right now is awesome. Everyone's radical, and it's fun--the shows are good and we're happy. E: How would you describe a successful tour? Blake: A successful tour for me is when you have fun, meet people who are nice, and have fun with people who are friends... and then a super-successful tour is that, combined with lots of people hanging out and liking our band. That's a super-successful tour. E: Has this tour been any different from those in the past? Blake: This tour is kind of different, but not really... it's only different because it's a really good tour, and we've only been on one or two really good tours. We've done a lot of small little baby-tours and this is a really good one, so there you go. E: Have you been going places you haven't been before? Blake: Yes. We are going to go Chicago, Detroit, Minneanapolis... some place in Iowa I've never been to... and... some place in Pennsylvania that we've never been to. So, a lot of places. We're looking forward to them all. E: You guys have a new drummer--have you had the chance to play many shows with him so far? Blake: Yeah, we've been on tour with Juan--he's our new drummer--for, like, six months. We've been on tour non-stop, so maybe even more shows have been played with him than with our old drummer, who was in the band for two or three years, because we never toured him. E: Have you mostly been performing songs off the new record, Hold On? Blake: We play only stuff on the new record because we hate our old stuff. It's stupid. No matter what anybody says... it's stupid. We don't have any new songs yet because we got our new drummer Juan right after we recorded the album, so we had to teach him all the new songs, and then we had to leave for tour a couple weeks later, so we haven't had the chance to write anything new. So nothing new, nothing old--just the full-length that's out. E: Your recent full-length is on Fiddler Records... how do you think it's different from previous records you've recorded? Blake: Well, it's definitely clich� to say this, but... it's more mature. The songs are more well structured... Chad's voice has gotten a million times better through age and experience... and just a more open mind. We've played around a little more on guitar, so... we're definitely not fifteen and sixteen like we were on our old CDs. Definitely more mature, and definitely older-sounding. E: Do you think that you were slightly closer to how you are now when you did the split with Bayside? Blake: Slightly, but it's still pretty different. When I've listened to it, it seems pretty different to me, and it feels different. E: Once you start writing songs with Juan, the new drummer, do you expect to have another change in style? Blake: We will mostly certainly have a change in style on the next CD because with our old drummer, we wrote songs that didn't make the CD because it was all the drummer's opinions... we kind of clashed a little bit with our basic opinions on music. With our new drummer, we've jammed a couple of times, and just through that we can tell we're going to have a great time. Juan's an awesome dude and an amazing drummer, and our next album will definitely be very different, and hopefully better. E: How was working with Beau Burchell on the new album? Blake: Well... Beau did the Bayside split, too, so we've known him for a couple of years. Awesome dude, good friend, and... I would say that we hate him and we think he's an idiot and we don't ever want to see him or talk to him again, but then Saosin fans will be mad, so I won't say that. *Laughs* E: Are there any plans for writing a new album in the near future, or will you most likely be touring for the next year or so? Blake: We are touring until December, and then we are going to take a month, two months, maybe three months off and just write a crapload of crap, and hopefully it won't be crap. Then we'll start touring again, hopefully doing a couple of U.S. tours and what not. E: You guys did a video for the song "Control" off the new album. Is this something you've had experience doing before? Blake: We had never done an actual video before, so that was definitely a new little experience there. E: Do you think that from what you learned you'll be doing the next video somewhat differently? Blake: Yeah, we'll definitely be a lot pickier, and we'll definitely want to be more involved with the concept and just the overall production. And we won't wear silly clothes again. *Laughs* E: So right now you guys are at the start of your tour... do you expect to be in a slightly different mood by the end of it? Blake: Not at all, I mean... we've gone on tour for literally five or six months straight with a week off, like, twice, and I don't understand why people say the road's so hard. I've definitely had the time of my life. I'm having fun, and I haven't had any problems. Our band gets along great--we never punch each other in the face, like people do... I don't see more touring changing my thoughts on anything, other than that I like it and I want to do more. E: Have the fans you've been meeting been pretty loyal so far? Blake: The old fans are kind of pissed off at us because we don't play old stuff. Hopefully they'll eventually get over it, because we can't force songs out--it's impossible. We've tried it... we forced out a couple of songs for a couple months, and we couldn't do anymore. It was ruining our good time, and that's why we're in a band. But other fans that aren't the angry fans--that are the nice fans... there are like two extremes of fans: there's the pissed ones and there's the ultimate, awesome, let's-hang-out-and-have-fun and become-our-great-friends-fans. Those are the ones we're hoping to find some more of. And if they're pissed off fans, hey, that's cool, too. They're all great. E: Well thanks a lot. That should do it. Blake: Okay then. Thanks to you, too! |