I got the opportunity to interview the bassist for one of my favourite bands, Motion City Soundtrack, Matt Taylor. Excitedly
I started out with asking him the main inspiration behind their newest album, “My Dinosaur Life”, specifically asking about the song “Delirium”.
Matt replied “I don’t write the lyrics, but I do have kind of my own ideas, where he(Justin Pierre) was going with that stuff. Just my opinion of what they mean, “Delirium” was basically, it’s a very frantic song, a very desperate song, which I think really shone through the lyrics, but it’s basically someone who is kind of trapped, some one who needs help and has taken a step to get help, and realizes that they’ve taken this giant step and now they’re freaking out, just realizing the reality of what you have to do to be a real human being, so that’s where that one came from, that’s what that one means to me.”
I next asked how Warped Tour was compared to all of the tours they had been doing previous.
Matt: “Well, it’s different cuz there’s so many bands, you only get to play a certain amount of time- 30/35 minutes. As in a club, you could play longer. And you’re also not having to entertain a crowd that’s not necessarily there for you, you hope they like what they hear and listen to you. And obviously, some people won’t like you but whatever. It’s outdoors so you have to deal with the elements, if it’s raining or 112 degrees. The obvious differences.”
I asked Matt if he prefered a festival tour or a club tour.
“I think I prefer a club tour. I still have fun out here, but it’s I think if I had to choose, I would choose clubs.”
Asking him about his hobbies, I got the response:
“I have a few. My main hobby is music. When I’m not on tour, I’m usually just playing or recording stuff, just to do it. And XBOX. I’m a little bit of a game nerd. TV a little bit. You know, movies.”
I then asked him about the best practical joke played on tour, either on them or that they played on somebody else, and laughed when he told me:
“Story of the Year, on the last show we played with them, I think it was 2003, they came out on stage and taped me and Justin together while we were playing. It was very awkward. And my bass ended up breaking because of it. I admire their effort. And then, actually, I think on the same night, we ended up taking their drummer’s drum set away, piece by piece. So by the end of the song, he had no drums left. So someone would come up, take one piece, and then ten seconds later, someone would take another piece. So he was sitting there like “What?” That was kind of awesome.”
I asked him how they formed their sound, at least when he joined the band.
Matt said “That’s one of those things, I mean, we don’t, it’s not a conscious thing, we get five people with five different set of influences all around and what comes out, comes out. The songs you write, you write. I mean, we don’t ever make decisions to say “we gotta sound like this”, “we’ve got to evolve to this”. On the newest album, we did go in with the idea that we wanted a bigger rock record, sounded bigger, bigger guitars, maybe an extra guitar track to make it sound bigger, but other than that we don’t really make too many conscious decisions of what we want it to sound like.”
I couldn’t get the whole question out here. Me: “Did you always know Motion City was gonna make it or-“
Matt: “No. Nooo. Absolutely not. I mean, I joined in 2002, so they had been going for almost five years at that point. Fortunately, I was outside of the situation, I could see how they were doing, I knew that they were starting to get more serious, stay on the road, they wanted to do it. So I was like “okay”.
I really liked I Am The Movie, which they released and I saw they needed a bass player and I was like “this is a really serious band, they’re going on tour, record labels are starting to call them, I think that they want to do this for real”, so I kind of jumped in at the perfect time.
But none of us ever thought that we were going to be doing this today. I think if you do think that, you’re in trouble. Because then you’re just expecting something to just happen. So we just tend not to expect anything and if stuff happens, whatever.”
I asked him the question we asked everybody else: who he discovered on Warped Tour. (It took him a while to answer this one.)
“That’s a really good question. I haven’t really seen any bands, I honestly…I’ve been watching bands I’ve known for years, I haven’t really seen too many new bands.”
The last question: and embarassing or unexpected song on his iPod or iTunes.
Matt: “Well, Adam Lambert is on my iPod. Because my fiancee made me download it, I swear. It’s not because I wanted it. Not that I’m embarassed, whatever, music is music. That would have to be my answer, I think.”
A funny, talented, nice musician, and one of my inspirations. Another great interview at Warped Tour, which just made the day that much more memorable.