E: So Jamison, your newest release with JamisonParker, Sleepwalker, hit stores a couple of weeks ago off Interscope Records. You first debuted to listeners with the Notes and Photographs EP--was this first release, in your opinion, a good taste of what fans were going to want to expect from your eventual full-length?

Jamison: Not really. I mean, I always kind of feel weird talking about it, because the guy who produced the EP... there was never any question about his production or him as a musician, or any of his skills. So to make sure that's out of the way--I just wanted to make sure that no one thought I was thinking negatively about his part of it, because I really love the band that he was in before and all that he brought to it. But... the EP is definitely something that I wish we had re-thought a little bit. When I look back on it, I wish it had come out a little differently, just because I don't think it prepared people for what we really wanted to do, you know? So I think that song-wise, the songs are still somewhat similar... like if you stripped them down and looked at how they're structured, the kind of style of songwriting and melody-making is pretty much all there. It's just they're presented so much differently, and we didn't quite jump into our influences at that point, partially because with the time we had, we just went in and put them down and tried to make the most solid collection of songs that we could, off of about five songs, obviously. I think another part of it was... I don't know if maybe the confidence was there, where we were ready to say, "This is everything that we're really thinking." I think we just kind of let out a little bit, you know? So I don't know--I definitely don't think that it prepared people for this album, because a lot of people who were into the EP seemed to like it, but they're not sure where the huge change came from. But the thing is, those songs were what I've always wanted to do, and it just so happened for various reasons. Like, vocally, my vocals changed a lot and I wasn't quite confident enough with my voice to sing in different ways on the EP. There's a lot more dynamics, instead of always belting it out. There's a lot of dynamic to it on the album, and there's just a lot of confidence issues [on the EP] that didn't allow me do totally everything that I wanted to do, and I kind of feel like on this album we got to do that.

E: Your band's sound has consisted a lot of an innovative acoustic/electric combination of styles. Is this something you think will stay consistent in the band's future?

Jamison: I don't know--I mean, I guess it just kind of depends from album to album, like know that we tend to write 90% of the songs on acoustic guitar, just because I feel like if you can play a song with just a guitar and vocals, and it comes across strong and gets your point across, then that's the best starting point, the best foundation you can have--if you can pull off a song with just a guitar and a voice. So I mean, the acoustic's always going to play a very important part in the making of the songs. I'm not sure if it's always going to be something that's always used in all the songs... I feel like we strayed a little bit farther from the acoustic, but the funny thing is that there's always an acoustic guitar in pretty much every song on the album, but it just tends to get buried a little more on certain songs. I guess it just depends on what kind of phase we're in at the time when we go to write songs and record the songs, how they turn out.

E: It's fairly common knowledge that your band consists of just two people--you and, of course, Parker. While this isn't unheard of, it's still not the most typical arrangement for a band--do you think it shapes the band's production as much as some people might expect?

Jamison: You know, the less the amount of people I have to deal with, the better. I don't really work that well with other people, and I think Parker is kind of the same way, so I think it actually works better. I think that if we had to go in with like a full band, and write songs, and make all these decisions with four or five people as opposed to just the two of us, then we probably wouldn't even have gotten around to recording an EP yet. *Laughs* So I think it actually helps us in every aspect of the band, to just have the two of us kind of being able to go back and forth between everything.

E: Do the two of you generate ideas together as a pair, or do you combine separately developed notions together when it comes time to compose a song?

Jamison: Usually it's either, I write a song and then either demo it with all the instruments or I write it on acoustic, and then we work on it together afterwards, or Parker will have a riff or something, and we'll just kind of build off of that. So I mean, it kind of varies from song to song. Like a lot of times it will usually end up with me bringing an acoustic song to the table, and then he and I kind of sit down and work it out afterwards.

E: Does the band's live performance set-up differ a lot from how you record your material? You obviously have more than two people's worth of instruments on each track.

Jamison: When we play live, we always have a bass player and a drummer. We did have a keyboard player, but I don't know if we're actually going to use keyboards live anymore. We actually end up doing a lot of things, and because it's just the two of us, we can usually add or take away parts of the show pretty freely. So there's been times where we've done tours just he and I playing acoustic guitars and singing, and other times we've done remixes--when we went out with Coheed & Cambria, we basically did remixes of all the songs on the EP, and did backing tracks and drum machines and just a ton of stuff, and he and I on electric guitars. And then like I said, we've had a couple of different incarnations of the "full band," where we use the two of us on the guitar and then drums, bass, and keyboard, or now we've taken the keyboard away. It's just kind of a mix of whatever seems interesting at the moment, and whatever's gonna make the songs come across the best.

E: Would you call the songs you write specific messages to the fans listening, or are they just mere statements of yourself?

Jamison: Everything is pretty much kind of like a journal or a diary, I would say. I mean, everything that's written is always true. As things happen, I write them down, and then they end up turning into songs one way or another. I just started writing again in the past week, and I'm kind of experimenting, mixing it up and creating these stories and then turning them into songs. I'm really kind of a lot like a singer/songwriter. I kind of want to try that route out a little bit, but I'd say the new album and the EP are honest-to-God real life situations, whether they're annoying, boring, beautiful, whatever it is that people might decide they are--at least they're real, you know?

E: Whenever you write a song, is it always with the intention of it eventually making its way to an album?

Jamison: No, definitely not. The song "Tearing Through Me" I actually wrote for my girlfriend as a present--I wanted to give her something important and special, so I wrote the song and recorded it and made the packaging and stuff for it, and wrapped it up and gave it to her. The version that she has ended up being a total one-eighty from what's on the album. It's just some piano, chimes, and acoustic guitar, and the one on the album is like this huge, 80-something track guitar monster  that goes on with tons of feedback and stuff, so yeah, the songs are never written for the specific reason of being put on an album. I feel that if I did that, I'd be writing songs for the wrong reason. I never want to write a product--I just want to write songs, and that's pretty much what I love doing, so if they happen to make it on an album, and people happen to enjoy them, then that's just kind of a bonus, I guess. But songs are always first and foremost written because it's something that I enjoy doing.

E: You guys are on Interscope. With bands like Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance saturating TRL and recent music charts, do you think that the definition of "making it big" has changed over the years?

Jamison: Yeah, I guess. I mean, I don't know--I can't really say for sure what's gone on in the past. I'm kind of naive as it is, and I was far more naive before we started all this. So I can't really even honestly say how I've viewed things in the past, prior to this whole thing happening, 'cause it's kind of an eye-opener. But, I mean, I feel like there are bands that seem like getting big is the goal, instead of writing great songs, which are almost one and the same, because if you write great songs, then people will find them and enjoy them, you know? But it seems now that the focus is to make a million dollars off of your t-shirt sales in the mall, or to have two million hits on PureVolume, or to see how many friends you can get on Myspace, and I guess my version of getting big or being successful is just, you know... one of these days, someone is going to be able to look at a fat catalogue of a dozen albums and say that they really enjoy the entire career. Or I could look back on a career and say, like, "This is something that I'm proud of," that I can show my family one day. I don't quite understand what the point of getting big is, so that's the same reason why, even though I love being part of the Interscope family, and I couldn't imagine being anywhere else... I almost feel like a hypocrite sometimes, because I love writing songs, but I feel that if I love writing them so much, then why the fuck am I selling them? Why don't I just write the songs just because I enjoy writing them? So that's kind of like a paradox that's constantly fucking my brain, because I enjoy music, but at the same time, I'm selling my most private thoughts to people that have no idea, that would never pay attention to me if I was working at McDonalds, or if I was mopping floors somewhere. The only reason why people are paying attention is because we're able to go out onb tour, and because we have an album out. Those are the same thoughts I've had my entire life, but for some reason now I get to sell them. And so I'm so happy to have the opportunity to do this, but at the same time,  feel like such a piece of shit, because I'm whoring out my personal life, you know? So it's kind of comes down to deciding what's the best middle ground? Can you write songs that make you happy, and write songs that mean something to you, and hope that people get them and understand them, and that if affects their life in some type of way... that they get to take something for it. And that's like the perfect exchange for it, And kind of feeling the way that I feel about selling songs, is because if the people who are actually paying attention to the songs pull something from it, then it's all worthwhile.

E: Well great, thanks a lot.

Jamison: Well thank you. Sorry I like blabbing so much--I kind of ramble sometimes. Thank you for taking time with me--I really appreciate it.