Joshua Cain - Motion City Soundtrack (21/08/2015)
Ahead of their 10 year anniversary tour for 'Commit This To Memory', The 59th Sound's Cassie Walker spoke with Joshua Cain of Motion City Soundtrack.
I’m very excited, the best gift I could have received this week was an exclusive preview of Motion City Soundtrack’s brand new album Panic Stations, listening to it I was giggling one minute, in tears the next. Although the band have all matured it’s nice to see life is still hectic enough to come up with these angsty lyrics. Are the subject of the songs current or is the band drawing on past memories?
I think as far as the lyrics go Justin (Pierre, lead singer) is always find different things to pull from, sometimes it’s his current vibe, sometimes it’s a story he’s telling. We really wanted pull from our live show and our energy of playing shows and how it feels to be angsty and what not and that’s why it sounds the way it does.
The sound musically it’s classic Motion City Soundtrack the rock driven pop tunes, I’m glad your not straying away or experimenting like a lot of other bands in the scene, do you have other musical outlets to experiment outside of Motion City Soundtrack?
The band takes up a lot of our time so sometimes we end up writing a bunch of songs and they’re just in the background, on our computers and it’s not an actual project just jamming with friends but Motion City Soundtrack takes up a lot of our time and that’s what we spend most of our musical time on. We’ve made other records where we’ve experimented a little more with our sound, with this record we really wanted it to be performed well live, have it to be fun to be perform live, so when we actually recorded the album we did most of the record live it was nerve wracking but a lot of fun.
The band has been on the road with the ‘Commit This To Memory’ 10th anniversary tour, which has been a huge success, it seems the band has been surprised by the response, what’s been the biggest surprise in touring this album?
When you take downtime from touring I think you never know if there’s still fans out there when you spend so much time off and we took most of the year off, kind of writing records and not really paying attention to being on tour and going out on this tour this year it’s been awesome, there’s been so many people coming out and the shows have been really big and it doesn’t feel like it’s over or we should give up or anything like that, it’s kind of reassuring that there’s people out there who love Motion City Soundtrack and are willing to come to our shows and rock out with us and have a great time. Some people are brand new fans and some started listening to us over ten years ago.
Watching the videos posted on the bands facebook of the fan sing-alongs it’s great to see such a variety of ages in fans, some look like they’re 10! Did you expect the album Commit This To Memory would be some timeless?
It’s one of those things that I didn’t know if we thought of it like that it just is what it is, we made the album, we loved the album, I think we try to make all our albums last forever in a sense but I think it actually being timeless is pure accidental, you make a record and you don’t know if people are going to care about it next week let alone ten years from now, but you don’t think about it or intentionally try to do anything except make something you really love and enjoy playing live.
How much has revisiting Commit This To Memory influenced Panic Stations?
I think it had a lot to do with the sound of the new record, I think one of the things we were going for was revival of that record, we wanted that energy we had ten years ago, we’ve changed, we have families and married and we may not still be the angsty kids we use to be, but we want to achieve that fun vibe we had, not that we’re old divas and not doing anything we’re trying to be awesome, be rock stars the best we can be, not rock stars that’s the wrong word, you know arrghh.. yeah, umm?
I don’t event know what to call you, you’ve just called yourself not rock star, rock stars, old divas it’s kind of pop rock punk stars.
Yeah if it was the 1990s it’d be alternative punk and I think closer to the 2000s it’s pop punk and it’s constantly changing. I think we’re pop punk.
Maybe energetic emo?
There you go! We’re in touch with our feelings.
Now I’m super excited, Motion City Soundtrack are bringing the Commit This To Memory 10th anniversary to Australia and when the initial 10th anniversary shows were announced for the USA I was among many Australian fans eagerly awaiting an Australian tour announcement, was it ever in the original plans to bring this tour to Australia?
I think we were going to do the first run and we love Australian and luckily for us we have done many straight up headline shows there we usually just do the festival stuff so with this kind of album tour really is a club tour and we want to take it everywhere we can, everywhere that people are interested and seeing this album played as an entirety and we’re more well received in Australia than a lot of places, we love Australia and we can’t leave you out.
I’m assuming the encore for this tour with preview tracks off the new album.
We will definitely play some new stuff, normally what we do, not to give secrets away but we play the album, we leave the stage and if people want more we’ll come back and play a lot more it’s like a second set almost, we’ll make it fun, it’ll be a good night. Anyone who comes to the show will leave satisfied to some extent, they’ll either be like “I’m done with loud noises” or “I had the time of my life”.
For me there’s a group of us getting together, either flying interstate or just making that special effort to be together for this show, have you noticed that happening throughout the tour?
Yeah, there’s a lot of people coming with their groups of friends and there’s definitely the nostalgia group of people that are like “I use to listen to you” and then there’s also the 6 year old brothers and sisters of old fans and they’re coming out and seeing us for the first time, there’s this whole generational thing, there’s a giant mix of people who come to our shows. We’ve been a band for quite a while and it’s surprising of how many people have never seen us and make it worth their while.
Have you altered to merchandise to appeal to the wider market?
We have baby jumpsuits, we’ve had them for a while. I have a five year old so we had to get them immediately.
You’ve gone from a young teen to a husband and father are you more conscious of the music your making knowing your child will be listening and understanding the music?
I use my daughter as a sounding board, if I have an idea and I think it’s really catchy and fun to play and sing I play it for her and she locks onto to she’s going to like the good stuff right away and maybe not like the other stuff, she loves our music, loves Justin our singer, she’s obsessed with him! We played Minneapolis, our home town recently opening for Weezer and we played one of our brand new songs and my daughter found a little microphone side of stage, I’m assuming it’s part of Weezer’s gear and she sang into it like she was on stage singing the songs to the audience which was pretty cute.
That’s the best 21st story, she stole Weezer’s microphone to try and outshine Dad.
Exactly. There was just a microphone that was her height for some reason and she has her ear phones on and she’s just really into it, eyes closed, feeling it. She tells me she wants to be a rock star when she grows up.
At least she has a great mentor. Would you be proud of her if she pursued a career in music?
Yeah! I’d be proud of her if she followed anything that she loved. One thing I had growing up was really great parents that wanted me to do well in school and they tried to make me focus on that but once they noticed me applying myself really hard to music they understood that and didn’t stop me from music, they’d say things like “if you applied yourself to homework as much as guitar you’d be doing well in school” but in reality I was applying myself to my future. I don’t suggest that anybody doesn’t go to school and doesn’t try to get good grades but if you’ve got a passion and it really makes you feel the way you need to feel and you really want to do it nothing can stop you from doing that unless you want it to stop you.
Now you’re a responsible adult with a successful career in music are your parents proud of what you’ve achieved?
My parents got real proud. My Mom use to do the bands accounting to help us out. When we played in England with Blink 182 for the first time they flew there and went to the show and seeing it just made sense to them. My dads an engineer so he likes to visualize things and see how they’re working, I think once the band started functioning like a business, they understood it.
That’s great, what a team effort.
Yeah it was great. We outgrew that situation after a while, but it was great, you just don’t want to put that kind of band business stress on your Mom.
We are running out of time so I should let you go, finally what do you see the future holds for Motion City Soundtrack?
I see we’re going to make music and we’re going to make it more awesome than we have been, the industry is changing, the way people are getting music and enjoying music is changing, I don’t know what the future brings, I don’t know if we’ll figure out how to deliver our music to people better or not but we’ll make more music while we can so people can enjoy it.
Because those new generation kids are going to grow up and going to club shows and going to want to party to your music so you have to go on for at least another ten years.
There you go, that sounds great.
Cassie Walker
Motion City Soundtrack play...
WEDNESDAY AUGUST 26th – THE STUDIO, AUCKLAND 18+
Tickets available at www.ticketmaster.co.nz
FRIDAY AUGUST 28th – MANNING BAR, SYDNEY 18+
Tickets available at www.oztix.com.au | www.ticketek.com.au
SATURDAY AUGUST 29th – MAX WATT’S (THE HI FI), BRISBANE 18+
Tickets available at www.oztix.com.au | www.maxwatts.com.au
SUNDAY AUGUST 30th –170 RUSSELL, MELBOURNE – 18+
Tickets available www.170russell.com | www.oztix.com.au
WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 2nd –THE GOV, ADELAIDE – 18+
Tickets available at www.oztix.com.au |www.moshtix.com.au
THURSDAY SEPTMEBER 3rd –THE ROSEMOUNT, PERTH 18+
Tickets available at www.oztix.com.au
I’m very excited, the best gift I could have received this week was an exclusive preview of Motion City Soundtrack’s brand new album Panic Stations, listening to it I was giggling one minute, in tears the next. Although the band have all matured it’s nice to see life is still hectic enough to come up with these angsty lyrics. Are the subject of the songs current or is the band drawing on past memories?
I think as far as the lyrics go Justin (Pierre, lead singer) is always find different things to pull from, sometimes it’s his current vibe, sometimes it’s a story he’s telling. We really wanted pull from our live show and our energy of playing shows and how it feels to be angsty and what not and that’s why it sounds the way it does.
The sound musically it’s classic Motion City Soundtrack the rock driven pop tunes, I’m glad your not straying away or experimenting like a lot of other bands in the scene, do you have other musical outlets to experiment outside of Motion City Soundtrack?
The band takes up a lot of our time so sometimes we end up writing a bunch of songs and they’re just in the background, on our computers and it’s not an actual project just jamming with friends but Motion City Soundtrack takes up a lot of our time and that’s what we spend most of our musical time on. We’ve made other records where we’ve experimented a little more with our sound, with this record we really wanted it to be performed well live, have it to be fun to be perform live, so when we actually recorded the album we did most of the record live it was nerve wracking but a lot of fun.
The band has been on the road with the ‘Commit This To Memory’ 10th anniversary tour, which has been a huge success, it seems the band has been surprised by the response, what’s been the biggest surprise in touring this album?
When you take downtime from touring I think you never know if there’s still fans out there when you spend so much time off and we took most of the year off, kind of writing records and not really paying attention to being on tour and going out on this tour this year it’s been awesome, there’s been so many people coming out and the shows have been really big and it doesn’t feel like it’s over or we should give up or anything like that, it’s kind of reassuring that there’s people out there who love Motion City Soundtrack and are willing to come to our shows and rock out with us and have a great time. Some people are brand new fans and some started listening to us over ten years ago.
Watching the videos posted on the bands facebook of the fan sing-alongs it’s great to see such a variety of ages in fans, some look like they’re 10! Did you expect the album Commit This To Memory would be some timeless?
It’s one of those things that I didn’t know if we thought of it like that it just is what it is, we made the album, we loved the album, I think we try to make all our albums last forever in a sense but I think it actually being timeless is pure accidental, you make a record and you don’t know if people are going to care about it next week let alone ten years from now, but you don’t think about it or intentionally try to do anything except make something you really love and enjoy playing live.
How much has revisiting Commit This To Memory influenced Panic Stations?
I think it had a lot to do with the sound of the new record, I think one of the things we were going for was revival of that record, we wanted that energy we had ten years ago, we’ve changed, we have families and married and we may not still be the angsty kids we use to be, but we want to achieve that fun vibe we had, not that we’re old divas and not doing anything we’re trying to be awesome, be rock stars the best we can be, not rock stars that’s the wrong word, you know arrghh.. yeah, umm?
I don’t event know what to call you, you’ve just called yourself not rock star, rock stars, old divas it’s kind of pop rock punk stars.
Yeah if it was the 1990s it’d be alternative punk and I think closer to the 2000s it’s pop punk and it’s constantly changing. I think we’re pop punk.
Maybe energetic emo?
There you go! We’re in touch with our feelings.
Now I’m super excited, Motion City Soundtrack are bringing the Commit This To Memory 10th anniversary to Australia and when the initial 10th anniversary shows were announced for the USA I was among many Australian fans eagerly awaiting an Australian tour announcement, was it ever in the original plans to bring this tour to Australia?
I think we were going to do the first run and we love Australian and luckily for us we have done many straight up headline shows there we usually just do the festival stuff so with this kind of album tour really is a club tour and we want to take it everywhere we can, everywhere that people are interested and seeing this album played as an entirety and we’re more well received in Australia than a lot of places, we love Australia and we can’t leave you out.
I’m assuming the encore for this tour with preview tracks off the new album.
We will definitely play some new stuff, normally what we do, not to give secrets away but we play the album, we leave the stage and if people want more we’ll come back and play a lot more it’s like a second set almost, we’ll make it fun, it’ll be a good night. Anyone who comes to the show will leave satisfied to some extent, they’ll either be like “I’m done with loud noises” or “I had the time of my life”.
For me there’s a group of us getting together, either flying interstate or just making that special effort to be together for this show, have you noticed that happening throughout the tour?
Yeah, there’s a lot of people coming with their groups of friends and there’s definitely the nostalgia group of people that are like “I use to listen to you” and then there’s also the 6 year old brothers and sisters of old fans and they’re coming out and seeing us for the first time, there’s this whole generational thing, there’s a giant mix of people who come to our shows. We’ve been a band for quite a while and it’s surprising of how many people have never seen us and make it worth their while.
Have you altered to merchandise to appeal to the wider market?
We have baby jumpsuits, we’ve had them for a while. I have a five year old so we had to get them immediately.
You’ve gone from a young teen to a husband and father are you more conscious of the music your making knowing your child will be listening and understanding the music?
I use my daughter as a sounding board, if I have an idea and I think it’s really catchy and fun to play and sing I play it for her and she locks onto to she’s going to like the good stuff right away and maybe not like the other stuff, she loves our music, loves Justin our singer, she’s obsessed with him! We played Minneapolis, our home town recently opening for Weezer and we played one of our brand new songs and my daughter found a little microphone side of stage, I’m assuming it’s part of Weezer’s gear and she sang into it like she was on stage singing the songs to the audience which was pretty cute.
That’s the best 21st story, she stole Weezer’s microphone to try and outshine Dad.
Exactly. There was just a microphone that was her height for some reason and she has her ear phones on and she’s just really into it, eyes closed, feeling it. She tells me she wants to be a rock star when she grows up.
At least she has a great mentor. Would you be proud of her if she pursued a career in music?
Yeah! I’d be proud of her if she followed anything that she loved. One thing I had growing up was really great parents that wanted me to do well in school and they tried to make me focus on that but once they noticed me applying myself really hard to music they understood that and didn’t stop me from music, they’d say things like “if you applied yourself to homework as much as guitar you’d be doing well in school” but in reality I was applying myself to my future. I don’t suggest that anybody doesn’t go to school and doesn’t try to get good grades but if you’ve got a passion and it really makes you feel the way you need to feel and you really want to do it nothing can stop you from doing that unless you want it to stop you.
Now you’re a responsible adult with a successful career in music are your parents proud of what you’ve achieved?
My parents got real proud. My Mom use to do the bands accounting to help us out. When we played in England with Blink 182 for the first time they flew there and went to the show and seeing it just made sense to them. My dads an engineer so he likes to visualize things and see how they’re working, I think once the band started functioning like a business, they understood it.
That’s great, what a team effort.
Yeah it was great. We outgrew that situation after a while, but it was great, you just don’t want to put that kind of band business stress on your Mom.
We are running out of time so I should let you go, finally what do you see the future holds for Motion City Soundtrack?
I see we’re going to make music and we’re going to make it more awesome than we have been, the industry is changing, the way people are getting music and enjoying music is changing, I don’t know what the future brings, I don’t know if we’ll figure out how to deliver our music to people better or not but we’ll make more music while we can so people can enjoy it.
Because those new generation kids are going to grow up and going to club shows and going to want to party to your music so you have to go on for at least another ten years.
There you go, that sounds great.
Cassie Walker
Motion City Soundtrack play...
WEDNESDAY AUGUST 26th – THE STUDIO, AUCKLAND 18+
Tickets available at www.ticketmaster.co.nz
FRIDAY AUGUST 28th – MANNING BAR, SYDNEY 18+
Tickets available at www.oztix.com.au | www.ticketek.com.au
SATURDAY AUGUST 29th – MAX WATT’S (THE HI FI), BRISBANE 18+
Tickets available at www.oztix.com.au | www.maxwatts.com.au
SUNDAY AUGUST 30th –170 RUSSELL, MELBOURNE – 18+
Tickets available www.170russell.com | www.oztix.com.au
WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 2nd –THE GOV, ADELAIDE – 18+
Tickets available at www.oztix.com.au |www.moshtix.com.au
THURSDAY SEPTMEBER 3rd –THE ROSEMOUNT, PERTH 18+
Tickets available at www.oztix.com.au