Events

How has the band’s sound been evolving?
We’ve been developing pretty rapidly as a band in the past few months. We took more time off the road than we’ve had in three years this fall and everyone used that time to be creative and further their own production skills. Aaron [Gorsch] and Packy [Lunn] became way savvier with electronic production and composition. I focused a lot on my own songwriting—studying what makes a good song. I saw some fan videos of people covering our songs with an acoustic guitar and began to think that a truly great song should be able to be played or arranged in multiple ways based on the strength of the melodies and lyrics alone. That’s not to say that we’ve stripped back at all. Our sound is actually fuller than ever, especially with the addition of Steve Learson playing bass and synths. We’re just more focused on finding precisely the right sounds to play precisely the right melodies. And Steve has also brought a lot of knowledge to the table in this whole quest. 

Is the band playing new material on tour?
We’ve been playing three of the new songs on this tour but the rest will probably be played as we get closer to the release date. We’ve also released an acoustic video for one of those songs, “Won’t Let You Down,” through our Pledge Music campaign, which is accessible by pre-ordering the new album or ordering any of the exclusive offers we have for our fans. We just finished a five week run of shows and I gotta say it’s a lot of fun playing with this group of musicians. Russ (our manager) also added a new light show and I think the show is at a really high level right now.

What do you love about Buffalo?
We actually spent a lot of time in Buffalo preparing for the new album and rehearsing for the tour. I recently had a quintessential Buffalo experience: drinking my way through a lake-effect snow storm to get to a bowling alley. My favorite part is that that kind of extreme weather doesn’t really faze anyone when most places would just shut down. There’s a lot of pride in Buffalo and we’ve learned not to ever sound check during a Sabres game. We almost lost a drummer to that.