Pop-punk band Motion City Soundtrack has been funkifying festival scenes since its formation in 1997 and rocking around the world with the likes of Blink 182, Fall Out Boy and Incubus. The band, which is now working on its fourth album following the success of "Commit This to Memory," will perform in Gainesville at the Real Big Deal Festival on Sept. 13. Bassist and back-up vocalist Matthew Taylor talks with the Alligator about the band's future, travel habits and what they love about the festival scene.
Alligator: Where are you right now?
Taylor: We're in Ashville, N.C.
Alligator: Are you touring, playing a gig?
Taylor: Yes, we are. Deer and the Headlights and Margot & the Nuclear So & So's.
Alligator: What are you excited about in coming to Gainesville?
Taylor: Well that day is a festival, too, so that will be kind of a nice break from the normal club-tour kind of feel. So, I'm excited to you know, I like playing outdoors and meeting up with a bunch of different bands for a day. And I'm really looking forward to the humidity. Just kidding. Is it humid there?
Alligator: Yes. It's like walking through the ocean when you're walking down the street.
Taylor: Oh cool. But not cool and refreshing in any way?
Alligator: No. It's hell to walk to class. What do you guys do when you're bored on the road?
Taylor: It depends. I, we have a million DVDs and video games and books and all that usual stuff. When we just hang out on the bus, we do any of that. I like to walk around the town a little bit. Like today is really good; there's a whole lot of little shops and restaurants and coffee shops, and all that stuff. So I kind of like to explore when I can. We usually go out after the shows. Like we'll go to a bar or something. Hang out. I don't know. I like to play music during the day. Just grab an acoustic. Just record some ideas. It's a good time-killer.
Alligator: Do you guys have any hobbies, anyone in particular? Or do you have any hobbies?
Taylor: Aside from music, we really don't do much. I'm trying to think. (Laughs) No we don't have hobbies. I don't think any of us do.
Alligator: "We don't have any lives outside of music" (laughs).
Taylor: Exactly. We really just devote ourselves to what we do. I don't know (laughs). Gosh, that's kind of sad. I hadn't thought about the fact that we really don't have hobbies. I think we do, just on tour it's kind of tough. I mean we'd bring our bikes if we had room for 'em and stuff like that, but eh, we don't really have room for 'em. We just kind of deal, you know?
Alligator: So, do you have any crazy tour stories of anything you encountered? Like one of the bands Morningbell was propositioned to have a three-way (laughing).
Taylor: Well, I'm sure some of us have in one of those late-night bar situations, but I don't think any of us have ever done that. We're not really that type of band (laughing). We're all just wholesome, young fellows (laughing). Oh gosh. I don't know. It's funny that that's like the hardest question to answer. Whenever someone asks me, I'm like, "uh?" Completely stumped. I mean, there's definitely been some really off-the-wall stuff that happened, but I of course can't think of it. That's how my mind works. Or how my mind doesn't work I guess.
Alligator: Do you have any experience with groupies? I know there's a lot of musicians that just totally hate groupies. Do you guys have any experiences like that?
Taylor: I don't know. Like again, we're kind of like the nerdy band that just kind of…I don't know. We'll go out. But I don't know. We have fans that pop up all over the place that hang out, and I don't know, hang around. I guess. But we don't really…we're really not that band.
Alligator: You're not like the Jonas Brothers with a bunch of crazed girls running after you?
Taylor: No, (laughing) those guys are out of control now. The biggest band in the world! Blows my mind.
Alligator: How much do you believe about those promise rings? They wear promise rings to symbolize that they'll wait until marriage…
Taylor: (Laughing) Yeah, give them another year. Those things are in the trash.
Alligator: What has your most fun touring experience been? What's a time you look back on, and you're like, "Wow, that was insane!"
Taylor: I have a few. Touring with the Rejects and Limbeck in Europe was just ¾ that's just like a golden era for me, and I think for everybody. That was just like a lot of fun, you know, for no specific reason other than they're great, great people. Like every single person that was out there was great. We got to go to Japan with Blink 182, so our first time in Japan was with those guys, so that was completely surreal, and they were just cool as can be. And we were, of course, star-struck at the time. We loved them. We loved their new record. And also asking us to tour with them ¾ you know, Japan in general is just amazing. Just having that experience, and on top just being in Japan was mind-blowing.
Alligator: What do you guys prefer: performing in festivals or concerts halls? Why?
Taylor: It totally depends for me. It depends on the weather. It depends on the band playing, the crowd. But, I think overall, I prefer doing like a club tour. I don't know why. I think it's just, I really don't know because the outdoor shows we normally do are Warped Tour. And those can be very routine and very hot. You know, I'm not complaining, but there's something about a club where it's a little more consistent. I don't know.
Alligator: So what can we expect next from Motion City Soundtrack? What changes can we expect, if there will be changes?
Taylor: Well, I'm always a proponent of change, and not in a drastic way 'cause it's a fine line you have to walk being in a band and making a new album. You know, you don't want to alienate your fans. But you do want to grow, and I know I, myself, I'm going back in time. I'm going back to the '60s, '70s, and I found some stuff that I just kind of missed along the way. So I don't know. I'm not saying we're going to make like a Crosby, Stills & Nash record, but you know, those little bits of things. That's when music was just finding its place. Rock 'n' roll was really finding its place. It's some really honest, pure things that happened then. People tend to get away from now. A lot of the stuff is sounding the same to me now. So, I'm finding inspiration going back in the past. I would like to not be inhibited, or like, I don't like to feel like we can't do anything that we want to do because it doesn't sound like us, or it doesn't sound current or whatever. I'm a believer that you can do pretty much anything, and as long as you have the characteristics of your band ¾ like our singer has a very unique voice. Like as long as his voice is there, and we have our keyboards, and we have our two guitars, drums, we have our sound, so I think it will pull through. If we want to get crazy, we can get crazy.
Alligator: What type of measures are you guys taking to protect yourselves from piracy? I know there was a problem with your second album, how it leaked out, and that's devastating.
Taylor: Honestly, at this point, it's so hard to prevent, and you know it's going to happen. It's just a matter of when. So on our last record, we were really careful, and it only leaked a day early, which is incredible. Like, I can't believe we actually did it. We just made watermarked CDs and gave them out to specific people, and they had their names on each copy, so they would have been traced back to the owner. So that was kind of like, that was the way we did it. I really have no idea in this day and age. A lot will change from now to the next six, seven months; whenever we're going to get to the point when we're going to release our record.
Alligator: Who are you listening to now? I know you guys are influenced by people like Ben Folds and Elvis Costello.
Taylor: Yeah, we're all over the place. Well, like I was mentioning before, the '60s and '70s. The Zombies are the main band that I've really just latched on to from the past right now. The band called She & Him. That stuff's really ¾ I don't know. I really enjoy listening to that stuff. Well, the new Ben Folds, Tony just actually ordered the limited edition of the new record that's coming out. He got a new download of the Regina Spektor/Ben Folds duet. It's awesome. It sounds like one of her songs actually. It's really interesting.
Alligator: What do you guys think about commercializing your songs? I know you have songs in movies like "John Tucker Must Die" in the end credits with "Better Open the Door," and I know you have been in a few other MTV productions. What's your view on this?
Taylor: It's a fine line. Basically it comes down to each thing. Basically, so far for us it's been if there's a movie coming along, we're like, "All right, is it going to flop at the box office? Then yes, we'll do it." That's not how we planned it, but that's how it seems to go. We're big movie buffs. We like movies, and having your song in a movie is pretty exciting for us still. You know, depending on the movie. We've turned down a lot of video games that we felt were kind of inappropriate and weird. I forget what it was. It actually just came out. It was a lot of, I don't know. It wasn't really a positive thing. Don't get me wrong ¾ we play the games, but we shouldn't have our song associated with those games for whatever reason.
Alligator: Do you have any plans for songs appearing anywhere else?
Taylor: No, not right now. We actually just had a song in "Gossip Girl," and that was actually really good placement. I enjoyed that. I've never heard of the show. I'm so out of touch, you know, until we got an e-mail saying, "Hey, we're going to be on this show." I'm like, "Cool, I'll set up my DVR." And I watched it. It was good. It was in the season premiere.
Alligator: What song was it?
Taylor: It was "Fell in Love Without You," the acoustic version that we released earlier this year. We actually shot a video for that on Sunday on a beach. I'll have to see the rough cut before I have any idea what it's about. We were just hanging out on the beach with some friends, and then it just opened up. We just get stormed on. It's like, "OK, we're going to have fun." And then it's like, "Oh no, we're not." Just your typical boo hoo, the fun/sad kind of thing that we do. So we'll see how it comes out.
Alligator: So do you want to say anything to Gainesville? Any message to your fans who are going to be seeing you this weekend?
Taylor: Sure. Hey. What's up (laughing)? No, just we want to hang out. We'll be around. We just want to hang out, so come say hi.
Alligator: You want to hang out with Tim Tebow?
Taylor: Yeah! Sure.
