RC: It makes the whole record sound more honest.
SL: Well, no one's going to praise him for being the best writer in the world, and like I said I don't think he considers himself to be a writer really, but what I think people are drawn to with his lyrics are that they're not superficial. They're really what some guy feels, and I think that's pretty neat.
RC: So what's next for the band? You're going to Europe again.
SL: Yeah, we're going out in a couple of weeks with the draft, which is pretty cool, and we're actually playing a couple of shows on the West Coast before that, coincidentally with Chuck Ragan. The Draft are three fourths of Hot Water Music and Chuck Ragan is the other fourth, so it's kind of funny that all 30 of our shows we have booked are with some form of Hot Water Music, which I'm sure a lot of people reading this will be jealous of, because I get to see both bands.
RC: Are you guys planning on hitting the states after Europe?
SL: We do really well in Europe, we doe really well in Japan and we do really well in South America. But, unless something has changed the last couple years, we don't that well here, especially in the smaller cities in America, in bigger cities we still do OK.
We've sort of slipped in popularity in America, and the big stumbling block of booking a big month-long tour is that Jason has a hard time getting off work at all, and we just did a tour of Germany last week, and we're doing this other European tour coming up, and we want to do Japan and we want to do South America, so we just have to juggle what we do around his work schedule. It's not just to blame him. It's also Jeremy, it's all of us.
We're definitely going to hit the East Coast and the Midwest, but we're not going to do a five-week states tour. Which I'm kind of glad about, because we used to tour America, sometimes three times a year back in the '90s, so we've probably done it somewhere around 30 times, and if any one's toured around America, they know that it's kind of... you know, it's really fun to be on stage and offstage when you're in Sao Paulo or Tokyo or Berlin, but when youre in Akron, Ohio or Oklahoma City, it's just not that fun. You're staying at Motel 6 and you're eating at Denny's, and more often than not you're playing at a club where the people that run the club don't give a s**t about you, which is much different from Europe and other countries. It's a lot harder to tour in America and there's longer drives.
We definitely want to, but I don't think there's going to be a five-week tour that will take us there. It's more like we'll probably do a tour from New York City, out to Detroit and Chicago and back, that will take like a week and a half. And we're planning on doing that sort of thing in the first part of 2007.
But it's first things first. Europe has to take priority over America just because we have a really big following there. You've just got to go where it's viable. It sounds terrible, but I'd rather play Cologne where there's going to be 1,00 people, than make my way to Cleveland, where hopefully 250 people will show up if we're lucky.
RC: Then after that, any plans for another record?
SL: We don't have any plans. Like I said, this isn't a career, it's just something we're doing for fun, and we want to keep it fun, and we want to keep it true to ourselves instead of making it a career again, but I don't see any reason why we won't. I think we will. We'd like to, I'd like to. I like playing music.
I can always have a job when I'm older, but I can't always be in a band where somebody's going to listen to it. I really hope I can continue touring and making records, but it's only as long as someone wants to pay for it, and there are people out there interested enough to buy it.
Who knows, this record sell ten copies and Hopeless will not be so interested in paying for us to record again. Not to be negative, but it's always a possibility.
RC: Is there anything you want to leave the readers with?
SL: Well, I hope that when we do come to any of your readers' towns that they come check us out, and that I'm stoked that the people who are still with us after all these years still are. It's a really good feeling when you're playing and you talk to people and you get the feeling that all the s**t I went through in the last 10 or 12 years playing music wasn't for nothing. There are actually people who kind of listened.
I'm thankful for it, and appreciative, and I want to let the people know who do care that this is a band that appreciates it, and definitely doesn't take it for granted.
