Interview: Alex of All Time Low at Warped Tour ‘09

epicartsentertainment:

It’s Tuesday July 21st and Warped Tour has rolled in to Mansfield, Massachusetts and despite the (lack of) proximity, everyone will always refer to any date in Massachusetts as “Boston”. The press area consists of a maze through catering wherein photographers and journalists are told to stay out of the way of artists, not acknowledge them, get in their way, or take candid photographs. At least the first seems virtually impossible as the door to access said area is directly behind the line that forms for buffet style catering. Soaking wet from the rain pouring down outside, a number of “journalists”, mainly a bunch of young girls, cramps in to a tiny room waiting for Alex from All Time Low to snag their various interviews. Though we were told to keep it short, five minutes at most, EPIC kicked off Alex’s interview session and managed to snag some dirt from All Time Low’s (lack of) album expectations, what doesn’t constitute “cheating” for a live performance, and why the music video for Weightless can’t be played in Canada in it’s original form (hint, Jack and a chick).
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EPICartsentertainment: Your new album Nothing Personal came out a few weeks ago. How did you arrive at the name?
Alex: The name came from us playing on the joke that nobody likes a band’s new record.
Eae: Nobody does. No, kidding.
Alex: There you go! Case and point! It was basically us in our own way saying that we’re still playing music we love. We’re still playing music we want to write and it’s nothing against them [the fans]. If you’re going to do it, do it.

Eae: Did you ever imagine you’d make it to number 4 on the charts let alone debut?
Alex: No. That’s a plain and simple answer to that one: no. We were all taking bets the day before the CD came out on what we thought we would sell the first week. Pretty much all of us were 25,000 off. Lower. It was so crazy. It speaks to our crowd and to our fans about how badass everybody is and motivated about actually going and picking up a physical copy or at least getting it on iTunes which is awesome.

Eae: What is next for All Time Low and what do you hope to accomplish?
Alex: What’s next? We’re booked through the year; I mean we’re touring for the rest of this year. It should be crazy. Radio just now started picking up Weightless, which was never even planned. KROK just called us one day and were like “we’re going to add you guys and start spinning it and see what happens and how many requests you get.” We just found out yesterday that Weightless was number 1 on KROK for requests so it’s very possible that we might get added to a lot of stations. That’s awesome. The song that’s supposed to go to radio, Damned if I do You is going in two weeks or something. We’ll see how that does. It’s weird though, because Weightless is picked up by alt-rock radio and Damned is going to top-40 and pop so it’s like…
Eae: Double penetration?
Alex: Yeah, exactly! We’re just fucking the radio industry in all holes.

Eae: Where did the idea for the Weightless music video come from?
Alex: it was a mixed effort between us and the director, this dude Matt—who’s incredibly talented. It goes along with the theme of the record and the whole shit-talking and acknowledging everybody’s stupid little flaws. All the things that are fun to point out. So it was really just that. We tried to think of all the ways and all the things we could possibly make fun of at an All Time Low show and we just did. Including making fun of ourselves, which is probably the best part. Even some of them, like the sparrow tattoo, Zac has. We all wear v-necks.
Eae: So how often do you want to hit girls…
Alex: Almost every day. No, dude, funny story about that. They won’t play that version of the video in Canada because Jack punches a girl in the face. I was like I guess in American you’re allowed to hit girls?
[room breaks in to laughter]

Eae: Who were you most looking forward to seeing on Warped Tour?
Alex: Less Than Jake is one of my favorites. I had so much fun watching them. Hit the Lights. I’m stoked to be on tour with those guys again, I love those dudes.
Eae: Most underrated and overrated bands on the tour?
Alex: On Warped Tour? Uhm, I hate to say it but I think one of the most underrated is probably LIGHTS. I think she’s really good and people outside of Canada haven’t really given her a chance yet. And then overrated…
Eae: All Time Low?
Alex: [laughing] yeah.

Eae: Some of the bands on Warped have taken to their blogs because some acts on Warped Tour are being accused or have been “caught” lip-syncing. Does it shock you? And how do you think it reflects on a tour like warped tour?
Alex: Does it shock me that bands have been caught lip-syncing? No, not when they’re booking all kinds of bands that don’t play instruments. Like, what do you expect? You’re signing up for it. I’m surprised that kids were surprised!
Eae: And care.
Alex: Most kids probably don’t. I wouldn’t give a fuck if I’m going to see that kind of music I would expect it to be tracked anyway. I was just surprised that all the kids were like “aw that’s such bullshit!” Are you kidding me? You were really taken aback by that?
Eae: I was surprised they used a CD that skipped… who uses CD’s any more?
Alex: Yeah, right?

Eae: What are your feelings on bands that use backing tracks?
Alex: we use backing tracks. But nothing that I would consider “cheating”. We don’t use vocals and we don’t track guitar or anything. None of the instruments that we can actually play. We have in-ear monitors and we have a click-track so that we don’t fall off. We also have shit that you hear in the background like beeps and boops and keyboard. Stuff like that. Stuff that we can’t physically do because there’s only four of us. Even the harmonies, we use Matt live. We just put him hidden in the back with a microphone. We really don’t cheat much at all but we do have a few tracks, admittedly. I think it is what it is. For bands like us, bands have always done that. Greenday has done that. A lot of the time you kind of have to especially in bands that are only three or four members because it’s hard to get a really full big sound if you don’t have all these things filling in the sound underneath you. But once again, it kind of sucks that the current trend within the scene is leaning towards a bunch of manufactured… weirdness. It is what it is. I think it will die out pretty quickly.

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We hope, Alex. We hope.

photo taken by hollyanne from atl’s MONEY tour
for more photos from the tour click here

ps sorry for the date typo before. transcribing and no sleep is apparently bad for you