E: Max, the Actual has been playing music since 2001. How have you dealt with any preconceptions that some people may have for your genre--and in what ways have you tried to defy them?
Max: That's a very good question. It really depends on what genre you think we fall into, which usually--thankfully--isn't just one. I, at least, see us first and foremost a pop band. Our first priority is to have catchy, memorable songs that will mean something to people. Sonically, however, what we do is informed by a lot of different things--we sort of try to take our catchy little pop songs and wrap them up in a sound that's at once really furious, but very jangly at the same time. As a result, we always have one foot in the punk door, one in the pure-pop door, and a little bit of things like Rush and The Police. As a result, we're sometimes not quite punk enough for the punk kids, not straightforward boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-upset-about-girl-and-won't-stop-singing-about-girl for today's pop-punk/emo crowd, which can be frustrating. And then someone will come up to us at a show and say "I hate pop-punk, but for some reason I love you guys," and suddenly we know that we're doing something really great.
E: How much have you allowed other bands you've interacted with to affect what you do?
Max: Sometimes they've inspired us, and in a couple of cases really discouraged us... but thankfully, more inspiration. When we toured with the now-defunct Fontane from Abilene, Texas, it was really inspiring because we both just thought the world of each other. Even at a show with, like, ten people there--which would happen sometimes--we really felt like we were two bands making great music, and that eventually things would fall into place for all of us. Then they broke up right after that tour, which really affected us, because that tour... it was like we were one band. When we opened for Superdrag in Milwaukee and John Davis said I played guitar like a motherf*cker, it may have been the greatest moment of my entire life. And seeing how effortlessly they combined some of the catchiest songs ever written with one of the most electrifying live shows I've ever seen totally gave us a clearer idea of how we wanted to rock. Others: Io, The Response, Zolof the Rock and Roll Destroyer.
E: How will the performance of other bands you play with at a show affect the outcome of your own set?
Max: If a band plays before us and are just totally awesome and electric, we get, at the same time, scared and inspired to be extra good that night because we don't want to look bad! Sometimes I've been like, "How the hell can we follow that!?" And then we go way beyond our own expectations. It's really great when it happens, but the five minutes before you play can be really daunting. Also, we have a lot of songs. A real lot of them, so if we're playing with the same band night after night, we try to keep them entertained by playing really different stuff every night.
E: How challenging is it for a band to compose a song that strays from its normal sound?
Max: That's an interesting question. What we like to do is write a certain kind of song that's seemingly different for us and then make it totally ours. Like the song "Dancing on the Perimeter"--I was at a nightclub standing on the edge of the dance floor, afraid of going to the middle, since I'm horribly self-concious about that kind of thing. And I thought, "If we wrote a song with a total disco beat that was about being afraid to dance, it would be simultaneously a total departure for us, yet totally us in its melody and content." The hook came into my head right then, and I went home and finished the song and it's become a favorite. I think the challenge is to do something different, yet still have it be undeniably yours. When we're at our best, that's what we do. It's like how Green Day did "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)"--it was sonically so different for them, yet totally in his lyrical voice, which is one of the many things that made that song so great.
E: When you play shows at placed you've been before--or simply places where the fans know you-- are there ever songs that they come expecting to hear you play?
Max: Everyone expects us to play "Hospitality Girl," and we always play it. We're psyched that people like the song enough to tell us that we better play it or else!
E: Is touring something you anticipate whenever you're back at home?
Max: Oh man, yes. I personally love being on tour. Every day on tour is more eventful than any two week period at home. Also, when we play every night, we really get so locked in that the shows just get really electric and intense and we find some higher place for twenty-two minutes or so, less if we speed the songs up in the middle. When we're at home, we don't get to be Max from The Actual, Jeremy from The Actual, and Jeff from The Actual all day, and our dream is to really be that. When we're on tour, it's like whatever mundane crap we do during the day here in LA isn't part of our individual identities: our band is the thing that we're all the most proud of, and it's great being on tour and being known as the guys from The Actual, not the guy who works at such and such, or the kid down the block, so on and so forth. Hollywood is a great place to live, but being a band here is just... well, for one, it's a total cliche. We're three guys who moved to LA to start or find a great band, and miraculously met each other for some reason or another. Here in LA, there are literally thousands of bands with that same story. And do you know how many of them tour independently? I can only think of one off the top of my head: Big Collapse. I'm sure I'll think of one or two more later, but you get the picture. There are thousands and thousands of bands here in Hollywood who just sit here in Hollywood and play. It's very hard for us to differentiate ourselves from that in such a saturated scene. Most of the bands we're really close with are hometown heroes, like The Junior Varsity from Normal, IL; Fire When Ready from Binghampton, NY; Fontane from Abilene, TX; the list goes on. Fire When Ready are to Binghampton what, like... the cheesesteak is to Philly or something. For us, we're just another group of guys in another band in Hollywood when we're not on tour. And the other bands in Hollywood are like, "You guys tour? How?" And they're really jealous that we get to play two hundred shows a year, but the only reason we get to is because we're willing to work really hard at it. But once we get on tour, it's like we're not in this city where everyone's in a band and everyone's (rightfully) sick of people in bands. People in LA are very close-minded about music because everyone they know is in a band. You get to Minneapolis and suddenly when kids hear that there's a great band from Los Angeles coming to town, they get interested.
E: In a scene where the tradition of "power trio" bands with three members becoming a rare breed, how do you think smaller groups compare to bands with a larger number of members?
Max: I'll start with the mundane sh*t. When we're on tour with a five-piece band and we get the same amount of money every night, we're eating steak while they eat hamburger. We can also sleep in the van at the same time and not have to pull a trailer. Also, if we want to schedule band practice, it takes us two phone calls, and we each only have two relationships to manage. Now for the important sh*t. Musically, being a three-piece band is hard work! If I miss a note on a guitar, you hear it. There's no other guitar to cover me up. And I'm singing while playing really complicated chord structures, and all the while trying to not just play it correctly but make it electric, too. Jeremy and Jeff both also have a lot of space to fill up and we pride ourselves on the fact that we sound like a three-guitar band when we play live, even though we only have one. This is less obvious, but the material we write really has to be good. We're friends with a lot of great bands that are four or five pieces and have lots of guys in the band who sing backing vocals, etc. It bums me out from time to time that Jeff and Jeremy can't really sing backup, but I think it's benefited us in the following way: if a lot of bands write a song that's merely good, not great, they can fancy it up with vocal harmonies, Iron Maiden dueling guitars, one guy screaming while the other guy's singing, so on and so forth. With my little voice and one guitar, our song better rule, because if there's anything wrong with it, you're gonna end up hearing it. A bad lyric sung in four part harmony can get masked up, and a weak melody can get all harmonized until you sound like Queen. With us, our material's really extra airtight because we don't have any fancypants tools to cover it up. Trios equal the best. Our goal is to be the Jimi Hendrix Experience of punk rock.
E: What do you pride yourselves on as musicians?
Max: Taste. We all have chops up the wall, but we never play anything that doesn't have more emotional impact.
E: Well, this should about do it. Thanks a bunch for doing the interview.
Max: Nice job. I really liked your questions. |
