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'SAY ANYTHING' INTERVIEW
Category:
Interviews
Posted:
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Website: sayanythingmusic.com
Interviewed: June 25, 2008 at Van's Warped Tour - Glendale, Arizona
Band Members:
Max Bemis: Lead Vocals
Coby Linder: Drums
Alex Kent: Guitar
Jake Turner: Guitar, Vocals
Jeff Turner: Guitar, Vocals
Parker Case: Keyboards, Vocals
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 Brief band history:
This band has been together for about three years now. But the band has been around forever. Max and Coby started out.
Coby: The summer of my eighth grade is when Say Anything started. So that was 2000. Me and Max met at junior summer camp during the summer of eighth grade. We went to different high schools, but we just jammed together a lot. We made the band name up at summer camp, took a little break, and then we met up again, did an EP and sold some stuff.
There have probably been, like, 15 members since then. And we finally found our niche. There were people who played, like, three shows at one point, but we found the starting lineup.
What kind of stuff did you guys listen to growing up that influences what you do now?
We all come from different places, and met each other on tour - we all found that we pretty much grew up listening to the same stuff. Saves the Day, Era, Ghandi, Ill Effects, NFG Self-titled
What are you guys listening to now?
That's where we're all so different: My Bloody Valentine, Red House Painters; a lot of instrumental music, Cancer Conspiracy's latest album, Mice Parade. We all love the same stuff, but then we all branch out. We still listen to everything from back in the day. I still put on Propaghandi and Strung Out and all that. Some of us have been listening to a lot of video game music. I just got the Super Nintendo Zelda soundtrack, which is good. And Metroid. Echo the Dolphin, which is cool because it's sort of like instrumental music, but it's really epic. Black Moth Super Rainbow - they are an epic band.
 You guys did that whole sort of rock opera album. How did that come about?
...Is a Real Boy - our first record. Max was writing it, I think he had a concept for the whole record. Originally, I think he wanted to do even more than what it turned out to be. I think he wanted it to be an actual straight-up rock opera. It kind of fanned out to where he didn't have enough time to do it. He was not really mentally stable, and his health wasn't too well at that time.
Did someone come in and start to write a musical?
Yeah, Stephen Trask and these two girls who worked for our publicist at the time. It was an idea that didn't actually fully get pushed to be the musical that I wanted it to be. But I feel like overall that it's still a story, and it's still very animated. We learned that the music told the story with the lyrics. You can picture the scenes through the vocals.
What's it like doing Warped Tour, vs. touring?
It's definitely different. It's not your standard headlining tour. You can go and walk around the city. You have a sound check. You have time. You wake up, you don't know what time you're playing. It's super hot; you have to wait for food with catering. It really is like summer camp, but on tour. It's really fun.
There's a lot of nice bands on this tour. It's cool because you're not with the exact same bands, or you don't have to hang out with the exact same bands every day. There are a lot of the same bands that you want to hang out with, like if you're on the normal tour, but at the same time there are new bands that come in every once in a while that are really fun. They really provide you with a lot of cool stuff. They've got a masseuse on the tour if you've got problems with your back. Or there's a personal fitness trainer who does yoga in the morning. They have a lot of amenities.
It's cool because Jake likes to live the dream a lot. Part of living the dream is you go around and you tell everyone to live it. So that makes it much easier on the tour because there are so many people to tell it to.
 What role has Internet and electronic media played in your success as a band?
It's helped us out a lot, and it's also screwed us over. It just depends on exactly what it is. For instance, I'd say that MySpace is a great thing. We did the first-ever MySpace Music Tour, which was amazing. We got a lot of free publicity. They put us on the front page every day. Tons of people saw it.
Web site: Absolutelypunk.net - So many people check it, randomly - every time we have an update on anything with MySpace or whatever, Jason Tate, the owner, throws it up immediately. There's like, 7 million people sitting there looking at this Web site, and then they can read about us. We're always on fresh; we're always on peoples' minds.
It's great for promotion, but at the same time, when it comes to album sales - and I am no one to talk because I am an avid downloader of music - five years ago if you released an album in October, it would have been like 10 times as many albums sold. The decrease of first-week sales is so large right now. The Internet is, in a sense, sort of dwindling the music industry.
One thing I have to say about the Internet and how much it really helped us especially when we first started - we did records in high school all by ourselves, and gave them to our friends. We played local shows in L.A., where we're from. It would all leak onto Napster and whatever was around then. When we went on our first tour, we actually had fans in different cities singing along. We'd be online and they would buy it. It got us - not a serious following, but there were, like 10 kids at every show.
Before I was in Say Anything, I was in my old band on tour with Say Anything. My old band had a few fans in the cities we were in. Say Anything had people coming. I remember talking with their fans that had driven for eight hours from Canada or something.
It definitely got us moving, if anything. I would have taken us double the time to get to where we are now.
Interviewed by Ben T.
Photos by Julie T.
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