Interview with Jeremy DePoyster and James Baney

With the trend these days being grungy hair and a ‘fuck you’ attitude, it’s refreshing to meet a band who are what they are, no front required. If you didn’t know any better, you might think them just another Midwestern band riding the MySpace fame wave, but if you look closer, you see much more.

These guys wear their beliefs on their sleeves without taking themselves too seriously, something that is rare for a Christian hardcore band screaming and growling about such deep and intense subject matter. But with a debut album they wished to hide from the public and a tourbus filled to the brim with SIX band mates, you’d have to keep your sense of humor about you, right?

Guitarist Jeremy DePoyster and keyboardist James Baney met us backstage while supporting Silverstein recently to talk about Chirstianity, music, and their own immaturity…

S!: As an openly Christian band, how do you feel about the mainstream success that Christian hardcore has had recently?

Jeremy: I think it’s cool! Definitely! Any spotlight on Christianity that’s not a negative one, especially in music, is a good thing. Like a lot of times, it’s really cliché and trendy to just bash on Christianity in music, so I think it’s cool that a lot of bands are speaking about what they believe. Not even necessarily Christian bands, just like any kind of band, like if you believe strongly in something and you’re saying it in your music, that’s a good thing. And it seems like a lot of times, people don’t think that applies to Christian bands.

S!: What do you think has been the catalyst for the rise of Christian hardcore at the moment?

Jeremy: I don’t know…

James: Actually, I’ve never even really thought about that…I don’t have any idea. I could say it’s certain bands, but then, what made those bands big?

Jeremy: I mean honestly if you ask me, I might say it’s the hand of God doing things, but I don’t know what the ’secular’ answer for that would be!

S!: Well you don’t have to have a secular answer…why do you feel He may have decided to intervene at this point rather than say 10 years ago in this way?

Jeremy: I think he was still intervening 10 years ago, just in a different way. There’s always been bands like Striper, or even just Christian rock in general, and jazz bands and stuff before that. I think music’s just a way of expressing yourself, and a lot of times, people that are in Christian bands, that’s just what they want to express.

S!: How do you think that the genre’s recent popularity has affected fans?

Jeremy: I think with us, it’s not even that we’re trying to convert people, so to speak, like I don’t think we’re too much of a preachy band. If we have something to say, we say it. But I think just having a positive impact is even a good thing, you know what I mean? There’s so much negativity in the music that’s out there in this scene (and other ones) right now, and I personally don’t see a point in that. Like, why just stay in negativity and feel negativity when you can turn it into something positive.

S!: How do you feel it’s affecting the music industry as a whole? Do you feel that it’s spilling out into other non-Christian markets now?

James: Could be the case…I think there are a lot of Christian bands out there now who are truly Christian and are spreading among other secular bands…I don’t know!

S!: Hard question?

James: [Laughs] Yeah, usually they’re not so much, but you’re asking completely random questions!

Jeremy: Yeah, it’s better than ‘where’d you get your name,’ is that on there?

S!: No, I know where you got that!

Jeremy: [Laughs] Wow!

S!: We were gonna make a joke and ask if the Devil also wears Gucci, though…

Jeremy: Dolce & Gabbana…

James: God wears Gucci, Jesus wears J.Crew!

Jeremy: Yeah, Billy from Silverstein made that one up! Or was that you?

James: I think it was Paul…no, wait, that was Kevin!

S!: [Laguhs] Well ok! That’s gonna be the next catch phrase to sweep the internet now! Moving on, a lot of your lyrics are said to be based in scripture. How do you guys choose which parts of the Bible to draw inspiration from?

Jeremy: Mike writes all of our lyrics, but I think it’s his own interpretation of things. Alot of times it IS Biblical, but a lot of times, it’s just personal things that happened in his life and how that affects him. I think for him, it’s just a really, really personal, private process, and he just brings that in. It’s almost kind of like a journal.

S!: You had three instrumental tracks on Patterns of a Horizon. Can you tell us how those came to be part of your debut CD?

Jeremy: Well, it was kind of like a demo, an EP…

James: We kind of called it an EP with the intent of writing the next record with alltogether new songs, but when we got picked up so quickly by a label, we were like ‘well, we haven’t even sold many of these Patterns‘ so we decided to make our first record on a label be a better Patterns.

Jeremy: I think we just felt like that would be good. I don’t know, we just like doing things like that, doing things different than every other album.

James: I would say that that’s one of the biggest common misconceptions is that Patterns is an actual record, but it’s not really.

Jeremy: It was like demo songs that we wrote, and were gonna shop around, and then we got signed so fast that we were just like ‘alright, let’s put this out for everybody to hear.’

James: We had written two songs for a new record (”Texas Is South” and “Dogs Can Grow Beards All Over”), and those songs were supposed to be part of a brand new record after Patterns, but when we got picked up so quickly, it wasn’t worth writing a whole new record, because we’d literally done nothing with those songs at all. So we were like, ‘let’s throw these other two songs that we just wrote into Patterns, and re-record it, make it better, and let’s release it as our first record! No one will even know that Patterns existed!’ WRONG! [Laughs]

Jeremy: One difference between our new album Plagues and Dear Love and Patterns with the way the intros and the interludes and stuff like that worked is we still wanted that same thing, we wanted the same feel, like transitions between songs, but we tried in Plagues to make them all within the track, like at the beginning or at the end of the track, so it wasn’t using seperate tracks. I think that was kind of cool how we did that. So there’s no ‘filler’ tracks.

S!: Is there anything that you’d go back and change about Plagues?

Jeremy: There’s probably a lot of things I wish we did differently. There’s a song, I won’t say which one, but we wrote it really, really fast and kind of last minute, just to squeeze another one in, so I wish we would’ve taken more time on that one. Actually, a lot of kids tell me that’s their favorite song, and I feel kinda dumb. I don’t know…yeah, I’m sure there are a lot of things I would change, but I’m happy with it, I think it’s a good CD.

S!: I’ve never had anyone else answer ‘yes’ to that question! Everyone else completely stands by it!

James: I’ve literally never heard a perfect song. I have artists that I LOVE, and they’re like the BEST thing ever, but I can listen to one of their songs and be like ‘if I had been in the band, I probably woud have wanted this to be different.’

Jeremy: I’ll 100% agree with that, yeah. Also it has to do with when you’re in a band with six people, and not just one person writes all of our songs, like, we all write our songs…there’s always gonna be stuff where you’re like ‘eek, I wish we didn’t do that,’ but you know that everyone else likes it , so maybe it’s better.

S!: The titles on Plagues involve lots of pop culture references. Was that meant to be a theme of the album?

Jeremy: It’s mostly due to the immaturity of our band, and the fact that if we wanted to make serious song titles, we probably wouldn’t know how! We’re just…idiots [Laughs] Everybody makes serious song titles, and they always sound so cliche and so generic. We just make goofy ones on purpose.

James: I have a feeling that if we wrote serious titles, no matter how serious we were about it, people would make fun of them, like ‘well that’s dumb. Why would you name a song that?’ But if that’s our intent, then someone would be like ‘that’s retarded’ and his friend would defend it, like ‘it’s supposed to be retarded, that’s why they named the song that!’

S!: You’re confirmed to play the entire Warped Tour this summer. Who are you most excited to be touring with?

Jeremy: [before question is even out completely] Relient K! I love that band…I absolutely love that band. I love every CD that they’ve ever made.

S!: If you could pick any band, living or dead to be on Warped Tour with you, who would it be?

Jeremy: The Cure.

James: Linkin Park!

Jeremy: Obviously, The Cure is a much better choice!

Interview by Ashley Apathetic

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