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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 Andrew, David, and Matt September 14th, 2005 |
David Braun - Vocals, Keyboards Barrett Slagle - Guitar, Keyboards, Synthesizer Matthew Mason - Guitar Andrew Honore - Bass, Vocals Josh Stephens - Drums |
| E: Great Glass Elevator, you guys are a SoCal indie band with a few EP's and a solid fanbase to your name that's progressed out of the localized area... how do you think a band at your level can properly rate their current success?
Andrew: Well, I think it's been a little bit easier to rate our "success," because we've been getting some good attention lately. Most recently being played on Jonesy's Jukebox on Indie 103.1�which isn't one of those local shows. But one of the most important things has been earning the respect of the venues that we play at. That can be very difficult sometimes, when most venues are just looking for a band with a good draw. David: Southern California, specifically the LA/Orange County area, is one of the hungriest and most fickle music markets on the face of the planet. Nowhere else will you find such a wide variety of music styles and bands per capita. So being able to come out of that scene on top and with any sort of fanbase is an accomplishment that takes lots of work. Andrew: We had to work hard to set ourselves apart from a lot our friends' bands. Matt: Just take today, for example... someone who I'm friends with asked me, "How's Great Glass Elevator?" and some girl he was with said, "You're in that band?" We've developed ourselves all around, and I run into it daily. David: We're in a pretty comfortable spot right now. We've been played on the local radio, we get lots of great shows, and most importantly of all... Matt: ...people who we respect musically also respect what we do musically. David: ...hot fourteen-year-olds talk to us online all the time. E: With where you're at right now, do you think that fan attention is more of a priority than label executive attention? Or are both equally important? David: Well it depends... the most important thing to us is achieving our goal of being able to create music for a living. Without fans, that'll prove impossible. Matt: I think they work hand in hand. I think that fan attention outside of the LA/Orange County area will be more readily available with help from a label. Andrew: I would agree with Dave�having a fanbase is more of a priority. David: We're always striving to get our music out there, but what use is a label going to be to us without the people who love the music? We just want to get out there, do our thing, hope people connect... and then if a label sees something great in it, we'd love to work with them to push it to the next level. Basically, having a label without a fanbase is useless, but a fanbase without a label gives our lives purpose! Andrew: For example, Korn. Tons of money and label support, but the album tanked. David: Why the hell would you bring Korn into this?? *Laughs* Just kidding. E: Was Great Glass Elevator's unique sound the result of hard work? Or was it a natural accumulation of varied influences? David: A mixture of both. Andrew: All of us have really different influences, and trying to write at first (and to this day) can be really hard. But we all get along, so it usually works out all right. Matt: I don't think we worked too hard musically early on... but recently that has changed, and we work hard on piecing things together. We fight sometimes, it gets heated in a sense, but we all love each other at the end of practice, like there were no disagreements. Andrew: But we're seriously like five producers in one band. David: We've all been brought up musically, but in different ways... and something about all of our tastes clashed together, mixed around, and produced what you hear from GGE today. You can never completely rely on chance, or what's "natural" to perpetuate a great sound. Andrew: We're always changing songs, trying to make them better. David: There's always going to be buttloads of hard work involved. Matt: We just try to work off of each other's strengths and weaknesses. Andrew: ...Coldplay is so good. David: Ack! *Laughs* This is where it gets interesting. Our tastes clash so hard. Matt: Yeah dude, we're listening to the new Coldplay. David: Whereas I'd prefer a good spin of the new Jack's Mannequin album. Andrew: Yeah, Dave's into pop-punk. David: And where Matt loves hardcore, Josh despises it. Matt: I'm wearing a Bane shirt right now! Andrew: Dave just bought New Found Glory on vinyl. David: And we somehow channel that influence into our band, which sounds nothing like hardcore or pop-punk. E: Having so far been keeping your releases limited to EP's, when do you think the time for a full-length will be due? David: We're working toward one right now. It's just a matter of when we have enough money to record, and a set of songs we all feel solid enough with. Hopefully early next year. Andrew: Definitely. Matt: Yes, around that time. David: We have our next four or so full-lengths planned out, but we can't really talk about them now because that would spoil the surprises. *Smiles* Andrew: We're writing a bunch of songs right now. David: You can hear hints of them in our EP. E: How far ahead are you thinking in your hopes for progression as a group? David: Musically, or chronically? Matt: Until Barrett writes the music for his own funeral. David: Yeah, there ya go. *Laughs* The sky is the limit, Robby. Andrew: Well, one of our long term goals is to play the Hollywood Bowl. I'm satisfied when we do that. David: Lemme give you the GGE schpiel on how we look at our music progression: We feel that music took a wrong turn somewhere in the late 80's and 90's... not all music mind you, but most of the more major stuff. Leading to trends like nu-metal and rap-rock, which aren't all bad�I mean, we all love Rage Against the Machine as much as the next angry kid. But what we've set out to do is take it back a bit, really keep our style hovering around the best of the 60's and 70's, with a touch of the later decades thrown in there. And to really build off of that in the direction that we like. And we'd like to keep doing it as long as there are ideas to keep it going. E: With that in mind, how do you feel about operating as a band in the digital music/internet age? Would you rather be in your prime during the decades of vinyl records and radio dominance? David: Yes! Andrew: Yeah, I would have to agree with Dave. David: Then we could've seen Star Wars when it first came out, too. The 00's got nothin' on the 70's. Except Lindsay Lohan. Pre-skinnification. Andrew: The internet stuff is good, but it's really fickle. David: Exactly. It's like a golden bird that flies away, a candle's fickle flame... man, I love Cake. Matt: With the 70's and 60's, people would devote their entire lives to a band, because not every kid could form a band and go on tour. Andrew: I just saw a band last week that got so much internet promotion that they sold out shows all over the country, but were a really bad band. David: Yeah, the internet can be a great means of getting your stuff out there, but it also causes a lot of positive and negative bias. Matt: I think the internet is one of the biggest reasons there are terrible bands doing pretty well. But at the same time, I love the internet. David: For example, you might hear about a band and see something praising them on a message board, but you can't trust if the opinion is genuine or someone they have promoting them. And a lot of websites hand out great reviews like free candy, because they have people who love whatever specific style of music it may be review that style. Which is great in that other fans of that music can get the opinion of someone with similar taste, but at the same time, it skews the general reaction, because it's not a completely objective review, usually. Andrew: Our growth hasn't really been happening over the internet, but rather friends just telling friends about GGE. David: Yeah, it's really cool like that. E: Your new EP has a very Pink Floyd-reminiscent track, "The Cinema vs. The Circus," complete with eerie singing children. Where'd you find all those kids? David: Cousins from Alaska! Andrew: *Laughs* Siblings and their friends. David: Friends, brothers, sisters, friends' brothers and sisters... you name it, we got 'em. We're just hoping they don't grow up and sue us, like the suit Floyd was just slammed with for The Wall. Andrew: Probably our two biggest influences for the last EP were Pink Floyd and Queen. David: I guess we could cut them a portion of the profits... which at this point will basically be each of them giving US forty bucks. Andrew: *Laughs* David: *Laughs* We spend a lot of our money on this monster. Andrew: Well, a lot for us. Matt: Yeah, because we don't make much. David: Yeah, exactly. Matt: Floyd has and always will be one of our biggest influences. They basically are what I want to eventually be�a band who was in the top ten with a song that is in the 5/4 time signature. E: Do you ever worry about where the line is between being unique enough to stand apart, but not so unique that you isolate a large possible fanbase? Andrew: We struggle with that all the time. It makes writing a lot harder, because we're trying to package our art in a way that it can be digested relatively easily. David: Yeah, I mean, we want people to respond well to our experimental tendencies, but you can't really expect folks to line up to watch five guys bang chickens against chemical drums while screaming the alphabet backwards. I doubt we'll ever progress that far, though. We're still a pop band, even when we get really weird musically. Matt: As Wayne Coyne from the Flaming Lips said, "We're a weird rock band." Andrew: I think that in a lot of ways, it would be really easy to become an obscure band... but it would be indulgent. All we played yesterday was weird prog shit that didn't really mean anything, but we realized it will lead to really interesting but still catchy pop songs. David: *Laughs* Yeah. Andrew: But that works for some people, like Genesis and the Flaming Lips. E: Thanks a lot, guys. David: No problem, man. Andrew: No, thank you, Robby�we love talking. David: Any last questions? Andrew: Give us a tough one. E: What broke up the Beatles? David: That flipping YOKO! |
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