A friend of mine works for his college radio station and was fortunate enough to get an interview with Matt Taylor who is the bass player for the band Motion City Soundtrack.  He has forwarded me the interview and I felt it was only fitting that we put it on the blog since he is an avid reader himself as well as a random guest blogger.  The interview can be seen below

February 1, 2010

Interview with Matt Taylor (Bass/Vocals Motion City Soundtrack)

Interviewer: Andrew Robinson

My Dinosaur life is the new record. This is also your first Record with Columbia. How does it feel to be back on tour?

“Its still very fresh to us. I wouldn’t even say the songs are comfortable yet. Hopefully it doesn’t show. Every time we play a new song I am thinking very hard and hoping I don’t forget a part or something. It’s really fun. I really miss playing new songs. You get used to playing your old songs and kind of just turn your brain off. That’s  my favorite part about being back on tour. You get back on stage and feel very vulnerable whereas after two years of touring, you kind of get used to it and you can turn off your brain and just go crazy. “

Would you say your currently still developing these new songs in your live set?

“Yea actually we are still doing that. We only had about three days of rehearsal and that was like two weeks before the tour started because we had other promo stuff to do. There are actually songs we haven’t even played yet. There are a couple songs we really had to think. Pulp Fiction is a very keyboard heavy song and we only have one keyboard player. So we had to figure out what parts are absolutely necessary and then have other people play them and then mimic the other parts on guitar and bass.”

Your drummer Tony Thaxton broke his arm last year just before you guys were about to start recording. How did this effect how the songs were written?

“It completely through us for a loop. We had the general outline of the schedule set in place so the second that happened, we had to throw on the breaks and immediately everything was pushed back a few months. We knew we weren’t going to track without him. We knew we weren’t going to hire someone else to come in and play the parts. And we still had to write songs. We weren’t finished writing. Luckily we had gotten two sessions of writing in. We had a good handful of songs and a lot of ideas, but we didn’t have finalized ideas by any means. So we ended going to back to LA while Tony was still in a cast just to be together and get some ideas flowing. He was even playing with one arm. And we actually had two or three songs that made the record from that session.  But we were all very discouraged, especially Tony. It’s hard to play with one arm and make the songs sound very rockin’ you know. The songs didn’t sound anything like they were suppose sound to. We ended up cutting that session short. Basically that forced us to work on our own more than we ever had before. When we used to write records we’d all get together and work in one room. But this time around, Me Justin and Josh would open up pro-tools and send ideas to each other. Josh would send me guitar and I would build some bass on it. Justin would get a vocal on it and I would build some harmony’s. We would just piece it together that way. So we were still writing while we were apart.  I personally would like to do that again as well as write together. That’s what we did this time. We had both.”

Can you describe working with Mark Hoppus (Blink 182)?

“Obviously we went back because we love the guy. I think that sometimes when you go to major label there can be a lot of pressure or people put pressure on you, but fortunately we didn’t feel that and we don’t feel it. It’s been a very smooth transition. Part of the reason we went to Mark or the main reason for me was because he’s very comfortable to work with. That’s the most important thing for me. A knowledgeable producer is great but if the guys going to make you uncomfortable or make you feel like to you don’t play well, it’s not really going to work out. That was the motivation going back to Mark. We knew that we liked working with him and that we could be comfortable doing whatever we wanted to try.  We went into this knowing we wanted to make a more raw sounding guitar heavy record and obviously he was a big supporter of that. He’s really just one of our friends”

Would you say the rawness of the record was a natural development of the band or a conscience decision?

“That would be the one conscience decision we made as a band. We knew we just wanted to rock a little harder and have a little more crazy raw energy. That was the only concrete idea we had. As far as the explicitness of lyrics, that always just happens. The lyrics come last. Justin will come in and sometimes spend a day, sometimes a month on the lyrics. He always lets us have our say, but the good thing is that we can totally just let him run with it. It may be obvious or not but that guy just loves words. We were just talking about the song disappear today in an interview and how Justin just wanted to actually make those words sound ugly. Not just the meaning but the actual pronunciation of the words. He actually thinks about English as a language and the sounds of words. There’s a lot of stuff going on. “

How is your audience responding to the new songs in your live shows?

“Its been really good. I’m actually surprised. We’re doing like seven new songs a night but people are really getting into it so it depends where we are. The UK is very similar to here. They actually rival our shows here.  Australia is good too but it really depends on how often you go. You really have to keep at it and keep playing in those places if you still want people to go. “

Motion City Soundtrack will be playing February 2, 2010 on late night with Jimmy Fallon and you can follow their tour (The Dino Trail) at their website www.motioncitysoundtrack.com