July
For Kings: JoeJuly
For Kings: Joe
11/21/02
by Rebecca Clark
Who
or what inspired you to start your band or to start playing?
Well my first musical influence was my mother, she was really into music when I was growing up. So I was raised on all different kinds of music. I met these guys when I was in the 6th grade, we were kind of a click and shared a lunch table together….
<Rudely interrupted by the asshole security guard telling us to move out of his space pssh whatever….>
Ahh it looks like the exies are going to sound check
Okay that’s it were not moving again!! If it gets noisy we will wait it out!!
So anyway we were kind click in grade school and then umm….you know it’s sort of one of those random things like Sam was playing drums in marching band and Travis got a guitar for Christmas and I couldn’t play anything cool, so I was just a singer by default, and really it was that kind of process. And then I actually started writing sort of as an outlet,. My father died when I was 12, and from then on it music became an important part of my life and then writing songs and dealing with all that, I just never grew out of it I guess.
What was your goal as a band when you first started? Just for fun or did you want more?
I think well … I know Sam didn’t initially take it very seriously, he was always talking about that first time that Sam Travis and I, were sitting around saying and I said “we should jam sometime” because Travis has a guitar, and Sam said “Yeah right, whatever.” For me the second the idea entered my head, you know from going to concerts when I was younger, that was it. It was like wow that’s what I want to do. And I don’t think it was…you know it didn’t take long for everything else to sort of fall into line. And by the time I graduated High School it was time to make the decision if we wanted to stick together and go for it for real or <guitars start tuning and I cannot understand what Joe was saying!! Something about separating and going to different colleges but decided to stay together>
The guy at the bar was asking us what we were doing
Joe: we are doing a sound check interview
Bar dude: this tape is going to be great!
Me: Ya I know <laughing>
Joe: Woah you know when I was little….<makes drum noises>
Bar dude: HHEEYYYY (ya know like checking the mics)
Me: giggling like a moron….
What do you think you would be doing now if your music career didn’t take off?
Umm well I went to….let’s see since I was a kid I think I knew that I wanted to do something creative with my life. My biggest interest as a child was drawing and painting and anything creative. So you know it’s always been important for me and I think music just ended up being the most creative. If I wasn’t doing this, I probably would be painting or drawing…
I would be starving either way! I figure this way at least my best friends can all starve with me!!
Who or what inspires your writing?
Umm this is going to come across as kind of in the shade, but I write just about everyday. All sorts of things that I deal with, but I think the album…you know there are sort of love songs and songs about a girl and that kind of thing, but there is at least more to it than that. I guess it’s in our variety of subjects, but everything is you know something that happens one day and I go to the guitar and feel like I need to tell people about it.
It’s not….yeah, well it seems really random. I do not think I am not to that point as an artist where I am real controlled about the way that I work, and set out to do this and that’s it. For me it is still a very organic process. Sometimes I will have an idea and I’ll pick up the guitar and that’s it. You know wow that’s a good song, most of the time…if nothing comes up I just keep writing and whenever I feel inspired, because you can’t really force anything.
You said on your album you had some religious phrases that pop up here and there, and that you thought no one would pick up on them….What do you think of artist such as POD and Creed that do similar things?
I don’t know, but I definitely think that there is a place for spirituality in music. I always liked songs that inspire people to do good things and to be nice to each other and no matter how you look at it there is nothing wrong with that. But I never thought it would be...ummm…shit…like a marketing tool or anything like that. Because I really don’t think of myself as a real religious person, but I guess some aspects of my spirituality comes through. And even if that’s popular right now or not that’s just how it worked out.
What do you hope that the audience or fans will take from your music? Because a lot of people do not even know you were even performing tonight?
<interrupted AGAIN by guitar tuning>
Joe: We can go outside.
Me: Ok it’s up to you!
Joe: It’s a little rainy
Me: yeah…
Joe: Uh let’s go outside! It’s not going to get any better!!
So we go outside….
Joe: Ya see this is nice…
Me: yes!
Joe: I haven’t been out here!
Me: ALL RIGHT!!
Joe: So yeah these shows (SR-71 shows) are kind of surprise gigs I guess. “Oh well this is the third band? Oh OK cool…” but I think it’s fun doing stuff like this. It is fun to play for different sorts of crowds, SR-71’s fans in general are bound to be very perceptive and enthusiastic. You know it’s sort of a younger crowd at a lot of places so it’s cool. I always think at least if we make one fan or if one guy comes up to me after the show and says wow that really got to me I really dug you guys cause of this or that….it’s cool.
Yeah I was surprised that no one advertised you guys being here, I was like what the hell?
Yeah it was a last minute too, we have been out for a month and a half on the "You Saw it First' tour, followed by the Nine Days and Dishwalla dates. Then we had a week off and we were just sort of waiting for dates to come in and these were just sort of last minute things, but it is more important for us to be in front of people and new people at this point.
Umm well there are a few things…let’s see…shoot I have trouble answering these questions because I don’t want to put anyone else down you know but…but I guess music is really important to us and I think the group is sort of like a real band…I mean like I said before we have been hanging out together and making music since we were kids and I think when you have a group of guys that are that close and we have that history and I think that we are able to connect with each other…yeah I don’t know where I am going with this…I have no idea…
I can’t insult the rest of the music in the world <laughing> …T Plays the cello during the show, that’s interesting…
Yeah we do, but it hasn’t gone to MTV or MTV2 or whatever yet, but we did do a video for the song called “Normal Life” which is the single. It’s not a big Hollywood production or anything. It was all shot documentary style and we had a friend come out to the recording and just shoot stuff just to have it and then later we started going back through the footage and a lot of the stuff was really great so we just put together a music video out of footage of us actually recording the song. It’s cool, it’s very real and very straight ahead but cool.
What goes through your head before you get on stage? Do you have any rituals that you do?
I used to…but I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but it seems like the more that we play the less sort of mental rituals I have to go through. <laughing> It’s certainly not going through the motions or anything but we used to get together and have like a band meeting you know and get all psyched up and I swear every time we did that we played like absolute shit! <laughing> So from now on especially at big shows we make a point not to have a band meeting or anything like that before the show because it always seems to ginks us! It is better to just keep yourself comfortable and just do anything we regularly do.
I do sometimes, I get nervous at the weirdest things to and now I am sort of a used to it. Just every once in awhile I will have one of those nervous nights and the other night the last show we did we had so much technical stuff go wrong it was amazing. Our microphones stopped working, Jason’s bass stopped working, but it was still one of the most comfortable shows that we have done in awhile for whatever reason. I don’t know why, I can’t figure that out yet!
Umm I guess when we were on tour with Collective Soul maybe…those were big shows. We played in front of one thousand two thousand people a night at least. We did Bogarts in our hometown I think there was about 1700 people there…that was awhile ago.
Oh
comedy actually.
Comedy??
We have been listening to comedy since we left home. Bill Hicks and Sam’s a big Joe Rogan fan, some pretty vulgar stuff.
Yeah we are all opinionated with what sorts of music we listen to, so there are very few bands that all five of us will agree on you know…so we find our selves listening to really strange stuff like that.
Well I guess there are two big things…for me anyway and the first one is just getting used to being away from home being on the go all the time, it can be sort of tiring. You miss your family or your girlfriend or whatever so you have to figure out how to make that work in your own mind and what sort of things you need to do, or ways you need to look at it so you don’t get down about it. And the second one is just figuring out how to get along with four other guys.
Yeah well you know it’s like a family and you fight with your siblings
It’s just one of those things you still love each other but you just got to fight especially when your living like two feet from one another in a van <laughing> we don’t even have a whole house!
Other than reading that’s about all…I love to do visual art, but I never feel like I have enough time to drag everything out to get started. So we all have little things that we can do and not get too into where we won’t be upset when we have to quit. I am reading Lord Of The Rings.
“Without Wings” I think and that was a new song that song more than any other track on the album went through a whole lot of different incarnations. We went through a lot of drastic changes to it over and over until we finally settled on the final version, or we thought we had. It really wasn’t until a couple of days before mix down that we changed the arrangement again. Some songs are just easier than others! I think A minor…I think writing songs in A minor I don’t know if I am ever going to do that again! For whatever reason those are the most difficult to figure out how to record.
We don’t play…let me think about this…no we don’t play anything from our independent album that didn’t make the new album. The record on MCA was almost like a best of since we have been writing for like four years. So it took a few years to sort of narrow it down from those older songs and then settle on the ones that were going to be on the record and then from those and had to narrow more down depending on the time. Then every once in awhile we will play newer songs that we have finished since the album.
We do covers every great once in awhile like if we are doing a headlining show and if we have time for it we do a cover of Behind Blue Eyes by The Who and we do a Instant Karma cover by John Lennon.
Playing music, I keep thinking that it is to that point with me anyway that there is no way I am going to be able to turn away or to stop. It’s just not going to happen regardless how successful we are with album sales or with the single or whatever there is just so much about being able to write songs and play them for people, I think no matter what that’s what were going to do.
I see you have your contact information on your site do you save time to answer that?
Yeah I still answer every email that I get but it’s getting more difficult and it takes more time. Either I have a week to keep up with it or I get a half an hour or an hour a day. And then some weeks I don’t and when we are off tour I’ll take a whole day.
No I think that’s about it except with the website www.julyforkings.com it’s still our baby, we still do everything on our site. That’s part of the reason for the email addresses and all that we are still very hands on with everything and it’s a good way to keep in touch with the fans.
You’re very welcome!