Back in July I introduced you to the non-stop two man touring machine that is Ohio's The Story Changes. Since then they've been tearing up the North American continent with Hawthorne Heights and fervorently writing and recording new material for a spring release. I pinned down Poppy & Mark in a fine (yet noisy) English pub on their first trip to Europe to talk accents, chocolate and backwards driving.
M: First time. We love it. We flew into London, had one day off and we went and started the tour in Belgium and did like 20 dates through Europe with We Are The Ocean and Hawthorne. It was fun but as soon as we got back to the UK we were like 'everyone speaks English...'
K: Well... have you been to Scotland?
P: Yeah we went to Glasgow. When people are quiet talkers I have a hard time understanding them, but other than that Scotland wasn't bad at all.
M: I can say that going into a gas station in Italy and someone speaking broken English - I can understand that better than in Glasgow. They were speaking so fast and the accent was so thick! I felt so bad for making them constantly repeat themselves. I felt like an idiot! I felt rude but I literally could not make it out.
P: I nod my head a lot. “Yup. Yup.” You could sign me up for the worst club in the world but I nod my head. “Yup.”
K: So, as vegetarians how are you finding the food?
M: We him try to eat off the rider. So we have our hospitality rider we get, and there’s definitely a lot of cheese and bread. A lot of chocolate.
P: I got 3 chocolate bars in my pocket right now. M: Prove it.
P: I’m hiding them.
*Poppy produces three chocolate bars from his pocket including a Twix*
M: Poppy just pulled out a chocolate bar let the record show. A mini Twix.
P: You know what? I like chocolate, period. I'm a big fan. Actually I'm really hot right now. I'm right by the radiator I'm afraid my chocolate's gonna melt. So, if i'm talking to a kid and I ask for money, should I say quid instead of pounds? Is quid more like street slang?
K: No I think most people say quid...
P: I’m gonna do it. We say cheers after everything now. I have a really bad fake English accent because I’m hearing it a lot so i’m mocking it. Not mocking it, but i’m trying to imitate it but it is totally bad. I’m not trying to make fun i’m just jealous.
K: What have you made of UK bands?
M: We Are The Ocean were awesome. We played with a band called The Xcerts who are from Scotland. They’re really good.
P: Over here I’ve noticed over here they might sound similar to Britain, but not to us. They’re really talented. In the states metalcore, everythings just metal and I do hear that’s making it’s way over here too. It’s become very popular. As far as british bands, we’ve only played with a few.
K: Ok so you (Mark) are doing Hawthorne guitars, and you (Poppy) are doing merch?
P: I’m on merch and being awesome!
K: Can you put that on your CV?
P: yeah yeah, it’s already on there.
M: He’s got a big responsibility of getting coffee with me every day and hanging out. P: I have the responsibility of not doing a damn thing.
M: Me too! I do this (imitates playing a guitar – actually more like a banjo)
K: Amazing! So how’s that going? You enjoying that?
M: Good i’ve been doing it for 7/8 months i think? Most of this year. P: Yeah, we started in May.
M: We’ve known those guys (Hawthorne Heights) a long time. We’ve known them since our band started really.. We’re good friends. They had a lot of success early on and they helped us out as much as they could and they got to a point where they were just so massive they couldn’t just bring smaller bands with them anymore. We remained friends and they did well and our friend Casey, who was in the band, passed away so obviously they haven’t had a guitar player in a while. We all knew Casey – he was a great dude. I think they tried it without another guitar for a while and i think they just realised why can’t we have a friend come out? It’s fun. I enjoy doing it. They made a point to help us out, they’ve taken us out on tour in the states a bunch. Actually as soon as we get home, we get home and have two days off including the holidays - we get those two days off - and we start a bunch of dates until Christmas.
K: You are always touring.
P: Yeah this year and the last couple years have been pretty busy. We haven’t had a lot of breaks. When we get home it’s not really a tour it’s like four shows, four days off, four shows, four days off.
M: I love it.K: So you get to go home inbetween?
P: Yeah but we’ll be out every Friday, Saturday, Sunday, some Mondays and then get to go home for a few days.
M: It’s kind of a bummer because it’s good to get into a groove on tour - when you’re out and stay out. But in the winter the Monday through Wednesday or Thursday shows are just dead. Even on the bigger tours there’s still people there but it’s not as many as on the weekend shows.
P: Especially when you’re talking about touring between states, when the weather is bad and everything.
M: I’m excited for it because we get to play some really big shows and some markets we haven’t played in a while. But this whole summer we were just gone and then we got a little time off and right before we did this we were in the studio recording new The Story Changes stuff. I’m excited that we get to go home and we still get to do this, but we also get to be at home for a little while too.
P: I guess it’s a pretty nice compromise.
M: Yeah. Either way I’m in England, getting paid to do something I love to do and talk to you guys, you know what I mean? I can’t complain.
K: Mark, was it easy for you to pick up the Hawthorne songs?
M: Yeah last year we did a tour that was about a month long with Hawthorne. Before I did it we’d just gotten off tour with them, so I was already familiar with the songs. When you tour with a band and you're hearing the songs every night you get to the point where you kind of figure them out so it was just a matter of learning them but I already knew how the songs went. It was a little cramming going on, I had like a week and a half to learn like 15 songs.
K: How do the Hawthorne fans embrace you standing in for Casey?
M: I think it’s cool?
P: I’ve definitely heard some people back in the states not be happy about it.
M: Really?
P: Yeah absolutely. But I think over here I haven’t had anyone come and ask me ‘Where’s Casey?’ Actually I take that back, I have had people ask me.
M: Really? Honestly I’ve not heard a peep about it but most the kids come up to me are nice about it. I’m not in their band it’s not an issue of replacing Casey. They’re just saying ‘hey we’re trying to play our songs and we need another guitar.
P: Yeah it’s being done for the kids that come to the show.
M: To me I hadn’t really thought about it in that way until just now. I’m just helping my friends out and playing guitar.
K: So tell me what you've been doing in your time off from touring.
M: We actually yesterday got the mixes back from the studio we recorded at. We did five songs.
P: We had to do some writing when we got home so we had to book studio time to get done before we left.
M: We did all the drums with our friend Brian Whitten and our friend Micah from Hawthorne Heights. We recorded at the studio and then we did all the guitars and vocals and it turned out cool. I’m not sure what we’re gonna put it out on but it was more like that we had been so busy on tour we had these songs for so long that we’d keep chipping away at and then go back out on tour for a couple months and forgetting about them and getting back and starting them again. So we finally had some down time so we used it. I’m sure there’ll be something out soon hopefully.
P: We’re supposed to be putting a 7” record out. That’s the talk.
M: Should be out in February.
P: That’s the plan. And then the rest of the songs will probably be released by us or something. I dunno, just something small. When we get home before the holidays we’re gonna try and write some more songs, just to have more songs because we don’t know what we’re doing for the rest of the year. We might be going on tour again or we might be out with Hawthorne.
M: But either way will probably will be touring!
P: So we’re gonna be really busy for the next 7 months.
M: It’s never a question of ‘are we busy?’. It’s more a question of where we’re busy - do we get to be at home. I can’t tell you as much as right now we sound like “aw home!” but it’s just that we’ve been in another country for like 30 days or something. But once we’ve been home for like 5 days, if we were doing this in the states we’d be like “Tour! Tour! We can’t wait!”
K: There’s just two of you in the band, and I know you must get this all the time, but how does that work?
P: I have what they call magic fingers and that’s really how it all works.
M: Wizardry! No, just new technology. It’s 2010. Loops, tracks... it’s fun for us. We’ve been doing rock-pop, indie, punk, whatever for a while. When we started out we had another dude but it’s just been the two of us for a long time. We tried having a touring guy come out with us and we did that and we tried it just the two of us and the loops and we liked it but we really weren’t sure how it would go. It just took one tour of doing it like that and everybody was just like “that! That’s the way!” So then we embraced it and now we have way too much gear for just two people but we love it. He’s more in the forefront that any other band I’ve seen’s drummer and we play off each other and it keeps the focus on that energy.
P: People always assume that our bass player is just not on stage, but there’s not really one there. But it’s all there musically, you hear everything’s there just you don’t see it thanks to the magic fingers. The only thing that makes it hard with two people are: loading in and the driving. On this tour there were 7 of us loading in and we never drive. When it’s us we’re always loading in, always loading out, always driving.
M: This entire tour I’ve spent riding backwards the way my seat is. So when we get home everyone’s gonna be on the other side of the road for one. For two I’m actually gonna have to drive after not driving for a month. And for 3 I’m gonna have to drive forwards.
P: I don’t think i’m gonna drive for a while. Just hire a driver.
K: In the manner you’ve become accustomed to?
P: I think so. I’m gonna ride in the back seat and everything. I’m taking donations for that – “pay for my driver fund”!
K: So do you think you’re gonna come back over here with your band?M: Yeah! Nothing set in stone yet but we’re really concentrating on getting home. Then early in the year we wanna finish writing and probably finish another record and we definitely wanna come over. I really like what’s going on over here and I think we would do well.
P: I think it’s more of a case of getting everything set up. Here we’re still a very unknown band, especially over here. To do it so far we’ve been smart enough to not lose money in the states. Coming over here I don’t think it’d be smart for us to spend thousands of dollars to do a tour to lose more money so it has to be planned a lot more. But I would love to come over here and play.
K: Do you think you might come over as a support for bigger bands?
P: That would probably be the smartest thing to do. It’d be either with someone we’d met or a band from the states that’d come over and would want to take us.
M: One thing that’s worked in our benefit – it’s worked in the states and it’s worked over here – is that just being a two-piece it’s very easy for someone to bring us out. It’s not that much more expense just to take two more guys. Our set up’s pretty easy too so it’s worked out well in the states, so hopefully....
K: Parting thoughts?
P: We didn’t break up. We’re still alive. Our band’s still together. We’ve just been in another country. Don’t forget us We have a new record coming out - an actual record hopefully.
M: Everything we do’s on itunes and there’s so there’s no shipping involved.
Here's to hoping the boys come back to Europe soon to play us some of their own brand of infectious indie-pop.
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