Yellowcard
November 24, 2005
Sarah Shandi
Yellowcard definitely hit it big with 2004’s, Ocean Avenue. Since then, these boys have been in a whirlwind with nationwide and Canadian tours, multiple-hit singles, and intense press coverage. Sense’s Sarah Shandl recently sat down with the members of this pop-punk quartet to follow up on January’s release of Lights and Sounds.
Sarah Shandl: What are you doing after your Canadian tour?
Yellowcard: We’re still in the process of mixing our new record, so we have to go deal with that. We have five days in the studio, a video shoot, and then fly to Europe.
SS: How’s the new CD?
Y: We’re really happy with it. The song writing we came up with couldn’t be better. We set out to give everything that we have, and we did it. We were so much more prepared for this than with Ocean Avenue.
SS: How did living in NY affect the writing of the CD?
Y: We knew we only had so much time off before we had to be in the studio, so we had to pick a place to go to write. Ryan and I had always talked about living in New York, and we couldn’t go back home to Jacksonville or stay in LA because we know too many people and we wouldn’t get anything done, so we wanted to go somewhere we only knew a couple of people, and that was it. And it was a tundra while we were there, a frozen tundra. But we wanted to, I guess, become civilians again, we wanted to rack that emotion of having to settle into a new place, and readapt. There’s a constant theme on the album of life just being a constant struggle to just sustain anything, to just be, that constant struggle, and I guess a lot of that came out of having a new place to live and having to adapt.
SS: Is it musically darker as well?
Y: No, no. Musically there’s just so much more depth to it. It’s not the bouncy, breezy stuff that gets stuck in your head. This is fun to listen to… it definitely took a different direction lyrically, rather than musically. We wanted to go deeper and provoke more thought in the music. Ask, ‘oh, what are they actually doing there’ rather than a riff that’s ‘oh, haha’. We’ve always prided ourselves in our musicianship, and putting on a great show, and we wanted to bring out everything we could as musicians, and not just write catchy songs.
SS: Who are the “guest artists” that are apparently on the new album?
Y: There’s two… I can’t leak anything about who they are, but I can tell you what they do. We have a big female vocalist, very very big female vocalist, and then we have a saxophone player. Saxophone player isn’t so much a big time player like the vocalist is, but his repertoire of who he’s played with, and who he plays with, is definitely an eye opener.
SS: What made you decide to include these people?
Y: With Ocean Avenue, on one of the songs we have a female vocalist, and we were nobodies then, so we couldn’t get who we actually wanted… who we actually got on this record. It’s an acoustic ballad, with an orchestra, and it turned out almost being a duet, and it’s just a great song. It was kind of an idea, that turned into some thought, and got some hope, and then we could actually pull it off. And pretty soon she was standing in our studio singing one of our songs, and we were thinking, ‘this is incredible.’
SS: What other types of opportunities or perks have you gotten with your newfound fame, and what are you still hoping to do with it?
Y: The ability to travel has been probably the biggest part, and we don’t even realize it. We’re so brainwashed into ‘this is what we have to do,’ ‘oh it’s another airplane ride from London to Australia’ that you forget that you’re going to Australia. As far as what is to come, the way things are going now, I feel bad asking for more. So as long as we can stay on any motion going forward, the only thing I could ask for is to continue, and exist like this. I don’t know what I did to deserve this. I’m blessed, and spoiled in a way.
SS: You’re wrapping up your “Wish I Was Canadian” tour… how’d it go? Wish you were Canadian now?
Y: It went so well! It was one big, two and a half week party. We haven’t been on the road since December, so when we all got to Montreal and got to our hotel, and got on our bus the next day, it was crazy because we hadn’t been on the road in a while. There’s no better place to start, though, then in Canada. The fans are great, and it’s right across the street from us. Great environment, and the friendliest people ever, so laid back.
SS: What “Canadian stereotype” did you find to be true up here, such as our “eh”?
Y: Oh, totally eh. Absolutely eh. It’s very uppity. I think of South Park a lot. Canada’s very… not American. No matter what’s going on, everyone’s like ‘ok cool, how you doing? What’s going on?’ A common courtesy that we all grew up with in the South of just saying hello to everybody in the streets, and everywhere else in the US, that’s not there. If you hold the door for somebody in New York, they go [gruff New York accent] ‘what you want from me?’ or in LA somebody will be nice to you, but you think, ‘why, what do they want from you?’ But up here everybody’s just friendly and easy-going, and I don’t know if that’s necessarily a stereotype, but it’s one thing that I’ve found. I know I’m not going to be approached by any
SS: Hopefully…
Y: Yeah, right. Great, now I’m going to get jumped after the show tonight!
SS: I know you can’t talk about the recent absence of your lead guitar player, Ben Harper, but how are you dealing with it as a band?
Y: You know, we’re dealing with it. I can’t talk about it, but without going into detail… things happen. No matter what you do in life, with family, relationships, working partners, something’s bound to come up, and that’s what we’re dealing with. There’s just a difference, and in terms of the future, how it’s going to turn out, I don’t know, that’s what we’re working on. And it’s hard for all parties, it’s not a one-sided thing, we’re all touched and injured by it.
Now you go...
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