It’s Wednesday, November 29th, and we’re at the Troubadour in West Hollywood, where A Static Lullaby is set to perform tonight, back in town with a fresh lineup and a new album. Here with us now are Joe Brown and Dan Arnold, who have found a few minutes to talk with us about what’s going on with the band.
AAM: Good evening, gentlemen, and thanks for taking time to share some conversation with us. First of all, you have a recent release, appropriately entitled “A Static Lullaby.” How are you enjoying the response so far to this record?
Joe: Love it! For the first time ever, we can actually play a show and see kids not singing the songs off of our first album, that really don’t have an idea yet about singing these songs from the new album, which is, I guess, the object that we’re trying to get across by re-establishing our band and releasing new records. So it’s really, really been positive, and the band’s at the best place that we’ve ever been in.
AAM: If you don’t mind, could you tell us the origin of the band’s name?
Dan: “A Static Lullaby,” hmm … Our original guitar player, our first guitar player, somebody that was in the band for a while, actually made up the name at a dinner we had when he was in the band playing for the first two weeks, and we liked it a lot, and it just stuck.
AAM: One of those “stream-of-consciousness” kind of things?
Joe: Yeah, well, we were throwing ideas around for about three weeks about something we thought about what we were making, the style of music that was just our own, and we wanted something to describe the band with a name, and we had a bunch of horrible ones, and that one came up, and it just stuck.
AAM: How much of the new album will you be performing tonight?
Dan: About six songs, about half of it.
AAM: How long do you expect to be touring in support of the album?
Joe: We plan on doing about a year. We’re going to go a full year, and then hopefully get back and do a new record. Right now we’ve got a six-month plan. We’re going to do the “Take Action!”Tour, and probably go overseas, and then, hopefully, hop on one more tour.
AAM: That’s just what we were going to lead to. An early report called this the “U.S. tour.” So then, you do have plans for some foreign performing as well? In what countries?
Dan: Yes. Australia, Japan, hopefully the U.K, and Canada, of course.
AAM: Can you please tell us more about the “Take Action!” tour leg, apparently taking off in February?
Dan: “Take Action” is a benefit, an anti-suicide benefit tour that’s been going on for years. The bands that are on it are The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Emery, Scary Kids Scaring Kids, Kaddisfly. It’s going to be a really good tour.
AAM: It’s to benefit the “Youth America Hotline,” right? This organization addresses a lot of issues that are important to young people everywhere, including stress, depression, substance abuse, and relationships. How did you guys get involved?
Joe: The band is really in a place right now where we’re trying to get in a good support slot on bigger tours, because we’ve got a new album, and headlining just doesn’t get it across right now, we want to play and hit people. And so this tour came up, and everybody attacked it. We called all the bands, talked to the bands, had our label talk to the other labels, to say we’d really like to be a part of it, and no matter what, just please consider us. And we got put on it about two, three weeks ago. The really neat thing about the whole thing is that every band is pitching in here and there. On tour, we’re going to have a shirt design, and we’re going to donate two dollars from every shirt to the cause. And every band’s kinda doin’ that, you know. Ten percent of the ticket sales go to the cause.
AAM: Last night you were in Pomona, somewhat closer to your own “Inland Empire” turf. What other clubs or halls are you used to performing at, nearer to your home playing field?
Dan: The Showcase Theater in Corona, and there’s the Glass House, and then there’s Back Alley, and Chain Reaction, which is more like between L.A. and where we’re at, and we usually play there a lot.
AAM: Your bio notes list “Chino Hills” as your town-of-origin. You probably have a solid or maybe even rabidly faithful fanbase out there where you’re from, right?
Dan: You know, the local high school is a big support. Well, we have two high schools now, which was a support when we were coming up, it was like most of our fanbase. If we were gonna play a show in town, they’d sell it out.
AAM: We heard there was a decent little “pit” at the show last night?
Joe: Oh yeah, it was goin’ on, it was happenin’...
AAM: Are there any distinguishing features of the “Inland Empire” mindset or personality that you could possibly describe for our readers from other regions, anything that might set the “IE” apart?
Dan: I don’t know, because the area we live in is more Orange County-ish. More like suburbish, and everything around us is really like... trashy... ha-ha!
Joe: Oh, it’s funny, because just growin’ up, the whole idea in any town is that you got your jocks and then your skateboarders and then you’ve got the dudes that want to play music. Except in this little town, it seemed everybody wanted to play music, and we were all rivals! And everybody was a jock playing music!
AAM: On that note, you mentioned skate culture, and maybe there might be a surfer vibe, or do you even run into any “extreme sports” kind of people out there?
Dan: Oh, yeah, I mean motocross, stuff like that, all that’s out there, people go crazy.
AAM: ASL’s new members are John Death on guitar, Dane Poppin on bass, and Jarrod Alexander on drums. Are these gentlemen all from your own general neck of the woods?
Dan: John Martinez is actually from...
AAM: John “Death” Martinez?
Dan: Yeah, he’s actually from Moreno Valley, which is IE, but deep IE, like the inner bowels is what it is.
AAM: And Dane would be...?
Joe: Dane’s actually born and raised in Alaska, and he just moved out, he was going to Berkeley School of Music in Boston. And Jarrod actually hails from Mississippi, then went to Boston, went to Berkeley, then came to Orange County, he’s been in Orange County and San Diego, all around Southern California for a while.
AAM: Would you say that you’ve achieved a satisfying musical compatibility with this line-up?
Joe: The best we’ve ever had.
Dan: Uh-huh, yeah.
AAM: We encountered an interesting musical description recently, used in reference to ASL and other current bands. The term is “screamo.” Joe, you’ve said that you don’t mind being called “emo,” as long as the band is getting emotions across to the listeners, but how do you feel about this newer designation, “screamo”?
Joe: Well, I’d like to say that the band was a part of creating something, okay, and when this whole genre came about, everybody was on this whole emo kick, right, emotional. I mean, they’re all rock bands, just playing indie music, I guess, and then everybody just stamped it “emo.” Now, we scream, and we’re playing aggressive music, so I guess the first thing anybody would do is say, “Okay, here’s screamo, sounds great! Everything’s emo, now to screamo...“
Dan: That actually came out around the beginning. At first we embraced the term, and we were fine with it, and then it became this kind of cliché, like, we put screaming in the music, and everything became “screamo.” But now, with this album, I guess we’re kind of embracing it again, we’re not gonna say we’re not, because we were part of it, you know, and we’re just gonna take it to a different level.
Joe: We’re gonna set the bar for “screamo!”
AAM: Besides you two core team members here, Joe and Dan, plus the new crew on board, who else collaborated on the new material?
Joe: Steve Evetts. He’s our producer.
AAM: Which usually comes first, the words or the music?
Dan & Joe: The music!
AAM: Joe, we saw with an axe in your hands during sound-check. Do you play any instruments yourself during the composition process?
Joe: I fool around on guitar while they’re actually writing music. I make noise. I understand what a power chord is, but not what note I’m hitting.
AAM: Tell us please, what bands can ordinarily be found in, on, or near your CD player?
Dan: Save The Day, Foo Fighters, At the Drive-In, everything and anything from Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Joe: Pantera, He Is Legend, As I Lay Dying, Mastodon, The Fray. I got the heaviest and the most gay, all together.
AAM: Joe, you’ve spoken of taking care of your voice by taking it easy on the booze and smokes. Do you do any additional fitness training, or do you enjoy any particular sports?
Joe: Actually, I drink booze, I smoke, I gargle with glass and chew on sandpaper. No, actually, I’ve been feeling it a little bit for the past year, gaining a little weight around the lower body, so now it’s sit-ups every morning. But yeah, one favorite beverage is a Black Tooth, which is Crown with a little shot of Coke.
AAM: Dan, do you have a favorite guitar?
Dan: My “A” guitar right now is a 1957 Les Paul re-issue. That’s the one, right there.
AAM: What effects do you favor for your sound?
Dan: I like “wah” a lot, but I don’t have it right now. I like “delay,” delay’s always fun. That’s about it. I’m not really too keen on effects.
AAM: Do you try to duplicate a studio sound onstage?
Dan: Yeah, but you know, in the studio I don’t use too many effects. John’s more the “effects man.” I’ve never been so into a lot of effects – I just try to make noise with my guitar, and it’s fun.
AAM: Apparently, ASL has had some rough automotive incidents on the road, such as a van that nearly flipped off of a bridge. But how about onstage? Any particularly memorable mishaps that come to mind from your touring experiences?
Dan: Dane, just recently, actually. He was rocking out on one of our older songs, “The Shooting Star that Destroyed Us,” and he kind of like tripped backwards, and caught himself before he fell, and spun around to catch his balance, and he ran his face into his bass head, and we thought he had a crack in his tooth, like just straight down the middle of one of his big teeth, but it just turned out to be silver paint!
AAM: Joe, we heard of your recent marriage, congratulations, and we wonder if this may have a moderating effect on any wild-and-crazy behavior, either onstage or off?
Joe: I guess. Well, we’ve never been the type of band to be extremely crazy. I mean, we’re nuts with ourselves, like beating each other up, but we’ve never been that type of band onstage. On stage, we try to bring it one hundred percent every night. I guess that as I’ve gotten older, I haven’t broken so many bones with what I do, but that stuff’s becoming a little too much.
AAM: To bring the focus back to the music, could the two of you sum up what one message, meaning, or flat-out feeling you’d like listeners to come away with, after experiencing the songs of A Static Lullaby?
Dan: Confused, ha-ha!
AAM: Well, that’s a start. Joe?
Joe: We could give them a sense of ambition. To do something cool. And I want them to feel... Conquered!
AAM: Well, I think we might experience a taste of that tonight. On behalf of AAM, thank you, Joe and Dan, for your time and consideration, as we all get ready for a rockin’ show. We’re looking forward to much more good music from ASL in the times ahead. Rock On!
