Layna and I met up with all the members of Seven Day Sonnet, a five piece rock/metal/alt band from Chicago. We stepped onto their RV, which had a mini hotdog grill outside of it. The second I saw that, I had a feeling these guys would be nice, goofy, and fun.
Mary Magpie: Does your band name, Seven Day Sonnet, have anything to do with Shakespeare?
Ben VanBuskirk: "Not really. It's like a sonnet, 14 lines, but no. It's about a poem Anthony wrote a long time ago."
Anthony Lojeski: "Yeah, it was the title of something I had written."
MM: "The 'Farewell To Good Days' video it hints at the government, poverty, unemployment. What's the message?"
Rick Tauber: "Something I think we all agree on is that we're not really a politically-driven band. We got together in this band to make music. We all have different beliefs, but we all kind of keep those at the door. Out whole thing, as cliche as it might sound, we'd really like to just use music to bring people together, not to divide people. As far as the video goes, the whole reason we wanted to do it was because in the last three or four years, especially in 2008, I graduated from college, to not being able to get a job. Then you start hearing all these stories that are similar. Like 'I can't keep up with my bills', or 'I got sick and I don't have health insurance'. And it's not just your own story. I tour around the country. It doesn't matter where- like Alabama or Michigan. You start talking to people at shows and they have the same stories you do. So I think everyone's been affected- directly or indirectly- by all these things and it's just we wanted to do something that [Ben: Create an open dialogue about it.] We're a band. We're not gonna get up there on a pedestal and say that we have the answers to any of these problems, but it's definitely something that seems to be affecting everyone, whether they want to talk about it or not. So it's just one of those things. I think if people start talking about it more, and get more involved, it can only go up from there.
Anthony Lojeski: "It's real. The video is real. It's not about politics and poverty. It's just about real. Day to day life for all the average normal person. It's life."
Rick Tauber: "How many people can go to college these days and not have eighty thousand dollars worth of student loans?"
Anthony Lojeski: "They have to pay it back. And then they get their degree and they don't have a job, or they do have a job and it's not in the field they have a degree in. Houses being forclosed on and just a really factual based video to really make people see this is happening right now. We wanted to portray that. We see it every day. We go city to city and we see all that stuff."
Rick Tauber: "All the b-roll is from Detroit. We have friends from Detroit and we used that as a little cross section of what's going on. Like on the west side of Chicago, you see those things every day."
Layna: "Why'd you choose it as your single?"
Anthony Lojeski: "Well, it's a really real topic and it's relatable which is huge. You've gotta be able to really relate yourself to something, you've gotta be attached to it. I think people will hear that."
Rick Tauber: "The song really isn't about that directly, we just figured that song would be the right visual topic to attach to the music. The song itself is about [Ben: The hard times]. Well it's about dealing with hard times. Just like I said, around 2008 when everything started to shift. A lot of people want to live in the past. A lot of people want to say 'Aw man, well this sucks but remember how it used to be?' but that also kind of keeps you stuck. You have to almost say 'this is the reality of the situation' and once you accept the reality of the situation, you can work through it. For us, that song has different meanings pretty much for each member of the band so you figure it's a universal sentiment, let's apply it to this topic. The whole goal of playing in a band is like 'how can we best take our music, and the sentiment behind the music, and let's find something that's relatable.' That's something that the whole idea of the video was before; we had that in mind. We thought it'd be a good single. You know, like I said, we talked to all these people and found this was a common thing that kept popping up in conversation. Like having a beer with someone, 'hey, how are things?' 'I had to sell my car to pay my bills.' You start hearing it more and more and it's a no brainer. Us, our friends and family to one extreme or another, varying degrees (deal with this). Some people have it really bad, much worse than us."
Anthony Lojeski: "You can take the lyrics for what you want. 'Farewell To Good Days'. It could be anything. It doesn't have to be politics or bills or school. It could be about a mom or a girlfriend or a friend passing. You can really relate it. We all have times where we wake up in the morning and you don't want to get out of bed. Like, 'I just got out of bed and today sucks already'. It's just the way that we as humans feel emotions. Like 'the good days are over, they're behind us. Why am I getting up in the morning? Why am I doing this? I don't like my job, I don't like how my life is going.'
Rick Tauber: "You usually think about things in depth when you're going through something like that. Like 'Man, everything sucks. Why does it suck and how can I make it not suck?' I don't know about you, but I always had a lot of personal growth during periods like that, where you wake up and it sucks already. 'What can I do to get out of this?' It's kind of like the roundabout that applied to the video so much."
Ben VanBuskirk: "It's in the lyrical content, for sure."
Rick Tauber: "The deeper meaning behind it is that you've pretty much gotta accept how it is. We don't write about rainbows and such. [He points to the band] As you can see, black is a recurring theme here."
MM: "Is music something you always wanted to do?"
Whole band: "Oh yeah, yes, mhmm."
Ben VanBuskirk: "I don't know what else I would do. I have no other skills. [band laughs] I never aspired to ever have any other kinds of skills. I'd probably compose things, play french horn."
Anthony Lojeski: "He'd be homeless.
[Ben: Yeah, I'd be homeless.]"
Rick Tauber: "If I wasn't doing music I'd probably be involved, like engineering, there's so many fields in the music industry that you can get involved in. Like live engineering, studio engineering, management, promotion. There's so many things that you can be involved in and still be around music all the time for a living so. If I wasn't doing this, I'd be doing something behind the scenes. It's fun. You still get to hang out with all the bands, you still get to do all the stuff, but it's just not up on stage, that's the only drawback."
Layna: "What keeps you guys together as a band?"
Ben VanBuskirk: "This wonderful RV."
Rick Tauber: "Hugs, kisses."
Anthony Lojeski: "Rainbows, unicorns."
Rick Tauber: "I think it's because we're all so understanding of eachother. Like times when someone needs space or you need to help them out a little bit more."
Anthony Lojeski: "We just want to bring this band as far as possible and we have our differences at times but when it comes down to business, that goes to the side and you do what you have to do that night and work it out."
Rick Tauber: "We've been together for four years but we've all known eachother. Besides Dan, he'd only lived in Chicago for like five years now. We've all known eachother for a very long time."
Ben VanBuskirk: "I played in bands that played with Anthony (Lojeski)'s band years ago."
Michael Scarlata: "He tried out for one of my bands, nine years ago? He was just in high school."
Rick Tauber: "It's kind of weird how it all came together. We'd all known eachother from others or through the grapevine."
Layna: "What do you hope to accomplish this year?"
Anthony Lojeski: "Touring. Just touring, building fanbases."
Ben VanBuskirk: "If this is a wishlist, I hope 'Farewell To Good Days' makes it to number one."
Anthony: "Open for Tool-"
Ben: "Yeah, exactly."
Rick: "Realistically, we just wanna stay busy and really finish the rest of the album so we can release it next year. But one of the things that's really important to us is we don't want to put out fillers. One of the things we can't stand is like, you hear the single and you're like 'alright, this is gonna be awesome!' I still buy music in the world of piracy, and you buy the record and hear the single, 'alright, cool this is gonna be awesome' and then it's just like 'skip, skip, skip, skip'."
Ben: "All of our favourite albums are albums you can listen to all the way through."
Rick: "And that's kind of one of our goals is to like put out music where you don't really want to skip through and one of the things we really like is the feedback we've gotten before. Someone will put the CD in their car, and leave it there for three weeks. Hopefully we can get the next record to be a not-skip record."
Whole band: "This is our recording studio right here. [They point to a cabinet with some speakers, headphones, and other recording devices.] That way we can write when we're on the road. It's not very easy, it's not glamourous but it does the job. What better platform to write it on? You go through all the motions while you're here on the road. You're happy some days, sad some days, angry some days. When you can really put your true human emotion into it, that's what makes a good record. A recording studio is a controlled environment and here it's chaos."
Rick: "You could be on tour and it could be the best day of your life, and the next day could be the worst.
Ben: Five minutes later it could be the worst time
Rick: Yeah so maybe some of that will come out. Some days you're having the time of your life, and others you just want to drive the RV off a cliff. Or put a cinderblock on it with everyone else in it. Fill it with cement."
MM: "Can you guys describe yourself in three words?"
Anthony: "[About Rick] Big, hairy, edible." [the whole band laughs]
Rick: "[About Ben] Icy, head, snowcone"
[Everyone about Ben] "Dork, geek, dorkus, they're the same thing essentially but you're that much of all of them."
Anthony: "Like, we have a band iPhone and he sits and plays Final Fantasy, watches anime-"
[Whole band joins in] "Watches anime, plays games, then he'll read a Harry Potter book…"
Rick: "He has shoes with wheels in them."
Ben: "Yeah, I'm the only 28-year-old I know with Heelies."
Anthony: "If he didn't have those, he'd definitely have velcro shoes."
Rick: "It's okay because the rest of us balance it out."
Ben: "…I listen to death metal, though."
MM: "What's an embarrassing or unexpected song on your iPod?"
Rick: "Paramore."
Anthony: "I got Goo Goo Dolls 'Iris' on there."
Ben: "I got 'Jukebox Hero' by by Foreigner."
Rick: "I'm not kidding. We'll listen to death metal, then put on Paramore, some of the dubstep stuff too."
Ben: "I get weird dreams to Paramore. Everytime we're driving and I'm falling asleep and Paramore's on, it's always in my dream."
Rick: "Gotta keep your pop sensibilities."
Ben: "We all like Echotrend."
[Band lists off]: "Circa Survive, City and Colour, WhiteChapel, Acacia Strain."
Ben: "I can't stop listening to I-Empire. It's almost disgusting. We all love them but we're never gonna get the songs out of our head."
We all stepped off the bus to get a picture together. These boys were so nice, and apparently like hot dogs.