- Feb. 3, 2007:
Matt Embree and Me in the RxB Tour Van
Before the Rx Bandits played one of the most unique shows they have been a part of, to date, Matt Embree, RXB lead singer and guitarist sat down with me in the Rx Bandits touring van. We talked about a variety of subjects from near death experiences to schizophrenia and he really gave some great insight about the type of person and musician that Matt Embree is.
Eric - From what I’ve seen at shows, the fans have been extremely supportive of the switch to MDB. How is the band affected by leaving a large label and moving to MDB? How has the connection with the music and fans been better or different since the announcement?
Matt - Good question my friend, well…First and foremost there is a lot less money for promotion, for artwork and things like that, which really doesn’t matter to us because I know that our band isn’t a band that got fans from a good promotional campaign or big marketing dollars. Its not like there was that much marketing dollars spent on us previously anyways, so as far as that aspects concerned, I’ld say that the main thing that’s changed is that we’ve moved to a little bit smaller of a distribution company, so the CD’s are in less stores. Though that hasn’t seemed to make any difference because people buy a lot more CD’s at shows, so I think it actually evens out more in our favor.
Eric -
Do you think they are buying more CD’s because they know that you guys took that step to be off a label like that?
Matt - Oh yeah, plenty have kids have told me that for sure. Plenty of people have come up to me and told me that. They have a lot of respect for people going out on a limb and doing that themselves. As do I. I buy music, I believe in downloading music, but I don’t believe stealing music from people who are doing it by themselves. The face of the matter is if you download music from an independent artist, you are taking anywhere between 5 and 8 dollars from that artist. If you steal it from an artist on a major label, you’re taking like 10 cents to a dollar, and the principle is the same, but in the end, I think that what I’m trying to say is the majority of the financial hurt goes on. The record labels basically run the industry like a bank or credit card company who keep people in debt, sort of as there indentured servants. Whereas a record label would say, “Ok, here, we’re gonna put up the money for you, we’re gonna press your record, do the artwork, try to get you on tours.” Basically they have connections for you, just like a bank has connections. A bank can give you checks, you can establish credit, you can keep your money safe. But the bank and credit card companies will loan you the money, but you have to pay us plus interest. Same thing with a record label, you have to recoup all that money, so even though you feel like you are getting all this money up front, in the end, you are basically screwing yourself. I think its been better for us as a band because we are more responsible for the things we do, well, I mean it just feels good to know that the record is completely in our hands. The responsibility to get it out to people is in our hands, its up to us to make it work. There’s no one to blame and there’s no one to basically try and make decisions for us that we don’t want to make. It’s all ours and all the decisions that are made are made because that’s what we want to do.
Eric - You’ve talked about doing this for the love of the music, but when the band decided to put out ATBB with the help of MDB, the Rx Bandits put up most, if not all of the recording and touring costs. Has this forced the band to become somewhat concerned with CD Sales and Concert turnout, or is it more like a breath of fresh air just to be doing this on your own?
Matt - Oh, well yeah, this relates to the first question, the amount of royalty difference is huge. I mean, its almost 8 times as much, so it makes us less stressed out about it, not that we were in the first place, but it makes it easier for us, because we’ve always been a band that tours and relies on connections with people and interaction with the crowd, live music, using musicianship and then energy of people playing music on stage translates to other people as our way to communicate a song for you. So it doesn’t really change anything, it makes it better for us. So to use your quote, “A breath of fresh air,” it definitely is. We see where it all goes, we have control of all the money, its not like, “Well X amount of cd’s have sold, so what, we’re not seeing anything, we’re seeing a fraction.” And these other people are taking all the money. It makes it easier for us to live, it makes it easier for us to eat. Especially with what you were saying before, with fans, I wouldn’t say fans, I’ld say with people that like our music, I don’t like that word fan at all, it sounds so weird. Fan, it means fanatic, I don’t know it seems so weird. That’s kind of like saying if you like music, you’re insane. Anyways, people that like our music, they respect it. I think people that like good music respect grass roots entrepreneurialism so to speak. Something that basically you have control over yourself, doing it yourself. It’s like the difference between going to the corporate coffee chain or the little coffee shop down the street where people know your name and you can talk to people and coffee is better.
Eric - It’s not like your fans didn’t know it, but getting of that major label just reassures to them that you heart is in it for the music, not for anything else, I think.
Matt - You think so? Oh that’s cool, I’m glad that people think that. I think that in an increasingly corporatized world, especially in a place like that, Phoenix with all these strip malls, where everything is so homogenized, where everything is so hard to find a trace of culture in a lot of places, its hard to find culture because you have the same stores and the same restaurants and the same everything. There’s one or two options for every kind of product that you could ever want, and that’s it. You don’t want to go to some other country and eat at Pizza Hut. The last time I was traveling in Central America, one of the first things I saw was Burger King, and I was so sad about it and I was like, “Man don’t you have enough money, and now you’ve got to come in here and ruin local cuisine that these people have, with your unhealthy sugar food.” The worst part is that it’s all for profit. These companies have so much money as it is.
Eric - The …And the Battle Begun video, tell me about making the video and why you chose ATTB?
Matt -
We chose that song because we think it’s a great song and because it is not a single in anyway, its 6 minutes long, has nothing to do with regular radio format, and we could careless. I personally believe that modern pop music, pop tv, helps manufacture a short attention span. It teaches people to think shorter or in mindless repetition. That everything is fast and fleeting. Nothing is permanent, and more than anything, the 2.5 minute to 3 minute radio song is undermining people’s intelligence, I think it’s insulting to human beings. Just to make a pretty simple example, in the early 20th century, people could remember the themes to an hour and a half or two hour opera or symphony. They can remember every major theme, and now, we remember a 20 second hook. And the worst part about it is that its all to sell advertising time. The songs are shorter so there can be more commercials in between, the shows on TV on shorter so there can be more commercials in between. It’s all just to sell people things and it makes me sad that there’s so much riding on production and consumption. It’s strange.
So, it’s a 6 minute song, we really like it. It has a lot of changes in it, a lot of things. If someone digs that song, it has the possibility to introduce them to a whole other genre of music. It has something like 15 different parts. We all though, wouldn’t that be cool to challenge the listener? Wouldn’t that be great? And our fans, the people that like our music already, they dig it, I think they do, I would if I were them.
The making of the video, this dude Adam Thompson who is really talented, he’s like 23 years old, he’s really young. He made the Vital MC video for Writing on the Wall. That’s how we met him, I put an email out on the MDB mailing list like, “Yo, if you’re a film student,” and he was film student at the University of San Diego, and he said I’ll make the video and we paid him like 300 bucks, really cheap. And he got all these actors together, it was really great, he’s got a really good vision, and he’s a really cool person, really creative. So we got him to do the video and he had this idea of putting up all these giant screens. So him and I went over the ideas to project on the screen and I told him what the song meant to me and so he go the necessary images and he got images of us playing and projected them and he also turned the camera to the screen and what was projected to cause that multiple imagery. I think it came out great, it was really cool. It doesn’t look anything like a normal band’s video.
It doesn’t have these like blown out close up and these sex symbol weird shots and doesn’t have any airbrush type photoshop thing happening. Also, we are actually playing, we’re not lip-syncing, we just played the song. We’ld start it over a speaker, so we could hear it, and then Chris is pretty much a human metronome, so after it go to the loud part and we couldn’t hear it anymore, we just kept playing. We probably played it like 40 times and they just synced it up, and they switched the set around. It was really cool, I really dug it.
Eric - You can almost see the progression of the band and the music from the Analog Boy video to this video.
Matt - Yeah, the Analog Boy video was interesting cause I’m not a good actor, I’m a horrible actor. I’m not a good liar, and I feel like it’s lying if you’re lip-syncing. Certain people that were making the video happen promised that we wouldn’t have to lip-sync, that we could play for real, and when we got on the set, they said, yeah so the guy way up said this is how we are gonna do it. I was like what? So they didn’t even have inputs on the amps, the amps weren’t even on. And basically I was pretty furious, it kind of got heated with the band members. So if you look in the video, I’m looking pretty lackluster. The thing about it is that we wrote this really cool treatment for it, and most of the video was going to be actors and stuff. It ended up being this weird performance and it sort of got pushed in this weird pop direction, and I can’t watch that. That’s cool that at least there was some of the acting in there though. Some of the story boards still go in.
Eric - Being in a successful band has afforded you opportunities to travel all over the world with the band, and even on personal vacations. What has been the most fulfilling experience for you?
Matt - That’s a huge, broad, really good question. Well...its hard to pinpoint just one thing, but if I could try…and I’ll try…I would say one of the most fulfilling things about being in a band is to be able to tour and travel, as you were saying, but the reason is, as you were saying, is because you get to see, especially the way we tour a lot, staying in people’s houses and getting to experience one day of their lives. To be able to kind of put yourself in other people’s shoes, and all over the world, see what people eat, see how people talk, their slang, their customs their families, the geography of the area, how it affects the social situation, everything. Everything about traveling is something that really opens your eyes to the world. Especially traveling to poor places and being subjected to the kind of bias that homeless folks are subjected to. Because our home is the van on tour, and you know, cops don’t tend to like people in vans, just to scratch the surface. It’s nice, we’ve been helped a lot of people who we were raised to believe that wouldn’t help you or that’s the people to, “oh stay away from them, they’re crazy, they’re homeless,” or whatever people say. Another thing is to be put out of your comfort zone is such an untouchable experience, its infinite, its….whats the word?...its priceless man, cause when you’re put out of your comfort zone you learn so much more about yourself, so much more about how much you can handle, about how much you actually need in your life.
There was a time in Nebraska when our vans breaks went out when we were going downhill and we ran a bunch of red lights and narrowly missed being killed by a bunch of cars. We finally came to a halt in front of this hotel in Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska. And the Lincoln Town Fair was in town so there were no hotels were open, plus we really didn’t have any money to stay, but since this was an emergency, we would go. So it was raining outside, so we basically just chose. There were 6 of us, and three of us would fit to sleep in the van, and the other three would have to sleep outside. So me, and our bass player and sax player at the time, Noah and Franz, we all slept outside in trash bags. We went to the hotel and asked if we could just have trash bags to cut arm holes and head hole, and pull it up over our legs and put sleeping bags over. And we just slept on the cement in the rain, and that experience changed my life for the rest of my life because the things our society, the constructs of society, have attempted to convince us that we need, it shatters all that.
Seeing people, so much more poor, then you. Like you were saying, time to travel on my own, all the traveling I’ve done in central American, when you go to a 3rd world country, and I’ve been to North Africa, and some other pretty impoverished places. There are some places in America that are pretty impoverished places, if you ask me. You know, there are some places, off the top of my head, you know Detroit, bad, now Louisiana, practically the whole state, but you realize you need to appreciate what you have, and it also makes me feel an urge to help other people gain a consciousness of the world that surrounds them. That whatever is happening in your little life, if you take a step back, it’s not a big deal. Things always get worse, and they always get better, it’s a constant up and down, but in general, the fact that I was born in the US automatically affords me so much, you just have no idea, so much. The amount of opportunity that you have, even if you are poor, if you are born in the United States is unbelievable compared to other places in this world, and I think that is the greatest thing to be learned.
Oh, also, I know very long winded, but politically speaking, although I pretty much knew, just from reading other countries indie news, indiemedia.org, a whole bunch of other stuff, not your average news, stuff from other countries where its not filtered through the media here. It’s unbelievable to see what other people in other countries think of American, and it’s really split because a lot of people really want to live here and they want to be here, but a lot of people don’t understand why the people in this country allow things to happen that happen. Why the politicians in this country, the government, just the social constructs in general are the way they are. You know, going to Europe and stuff, people are always talking to me about it. “What the hell, whats going on, whats the deal, you’re supposed to be the richest country in the world, but you don’t have socialized medicare, socialized education, where’s all the money going to?” To war, basically. It’s really an eye opening experience. It’s a good juxtaposition. It’s nice to hear other people’s opinions from other parts of the world.
Eric - It’s clear you draw much of your inspiration from the world around. There is currently a lot to draw from right now, as the US is fighting in a war that there is much opposition for, there is mass genocide taking place in parts of the world, and the US is entering into a Presidential election season, to name a few. I know that personally it is a frustrating feeling, but I’m sure as much as it helps you to write the lyrics, it helps the fans to hear the lyrics. What is the feeling to know that your words help your fans cope and deal with issues today, and inspire them in many ways?
Matt -
It feels great. It’s the best thing I could have ever asked for. Ever. Because growing up, to me, I think music saved my life. I went through some tough times growing up as a kid, didn’t have 2 parents, and there was a lot of anger on both sides and there was a lot of anger from me, and I found all of my comfort, everything, in music. And I always just felt, that if I could just make, if someone could just listen to one song that I wrote, that I recorded, that I made, if it just made one person feel better, for them to feel like they’re not as small as they think they are, or that everything is not as bad as they think it is, then, I made it. I did what I wanted to do. So, I did what I wanted to do, already.
Sometimes its pretty heavy, I’m just a person, and I get a lot of emails and I’m pretty bad at writing back, cause I don’t know what to say. I’m not like…I’m just a dude, ya know. Sometimes life is really hard for me too, ya know. A lot of times, that’s just how life is, back and forth, the ying to the yang. There would be no black without white, ya know, evil doesn’t exist without good, Vice Versa. Sometimes people come to me and they lay these just…they say things to me that I just can’t even answer, I just don’t know what to say. I’m nobody’s savior or prophet or anything like that, I’m someone who is just saying what I want to say. Through luck or circumstance, I don’t believe in luck, so just through circumstance, I got to put music out there and people could hear it. Thanks to technology and this day and age, it all came together for just one moment, and that’s how everything is, circumstance. Ya know, whatever you want to believe, whether our life is one track or random events or whatever, I don’t even know. I don’t purport to know, I’m not a religious person, but some people come to me and they tell me things. This one woman came up to me in England and she was crying and she like pulled down her sweater and she had slashes in her wrists. And it was like, they were vertical slashes, they were down like this, not across, she was trying to kill herself. Across doesn’t kill you. And she told me all this stuff that she’ld been raped and she didn’t want to live, and she tried to kill herself and she had planned that night to kill herself, she was going to kill herself. And she was laying in her bathtub where she was going to slit her wrists and she was listening to a mix tape or something, I don’t remember exactly what it was, but one of our songs came on and she decided that she wasn’t going to kill herself. What do you say to that? I don’t know. Music is stronger than the sum of the people making it. It’s a lot stronger. It’s awesome, I know how she feels. I never went through trying to kill myself, but I’ve definitely felt real bad and real low and real small. Very insignificant you know, and there were times were certain music pulled me out of that. And I don’t know whether it’s music or the way music makes you feel, whatever. It’s the sound, it’s the harmony, the melody, the mathematical interpretation of sonic projection. Whatever it is, stuff like that, experiences like that. That’s happened to me a few times, nothing as heavy as that, nothing as heavy as where someone I have never…so, I just hugged her, and told her its not worth killing yourself. She asked me, do I believe in God, and I said no, and she said, “Well then what?’ And I said, you’re alive, this is all, there’s nothing wrong in believing that this is all you get, and if this is all you get, its not worth taking it out, no matter how bad you feel, because if the worst you can possibly feel, it can only get better. It can’t get worse than the worst. Ya know, that’s the meaning of the word. So, I don’t know man, I just answered that question for like 5 hours.
Eric - The Rx Bandits have been going strong for 10 years or so. There have been a few ups and downs, but it seems that no matter what type of adversity, the band hasn’t missed a beat. The fans would probably say it’s your love of the music, but does it also help to let your creativity out through all of the side projects? Do the side projects make it easier for everyone to want to come back to make and play music as the Rx Bandits?
Matt - Oh yeah, it’s great. I’ld go crazy if I couldn’t. I mean there is so much music in my head, I feel like if I didn’t just let it out, I would go insane. I can’t function, I’ve been having a hard time functioning lately because there’s so much music in my head and so many projects that it just gets overwhelming because you are trying to do so many different things at once, and then on top of that, ya know, your computer will break, so you can’t record on Protools, or whatever. It’s great for all of us, cause everyone has, everyone’s got so much music going on, and everyone loves it so much, and being able to be in a band for a living like we do, not having to have a job gives us so much free time to let it out. I feel like, I wouldn’t call it schizophrenia, but there is music in my mind at all times, and sometimes I just wish that it wasn’t there, ya know, ha ha. I love it, don’t get me wrong, it’s great, but sometimes, it’s almost a constant feeling of, not panicking, but anxiety because I need to get it out of my brain so new stuff can come in cause it feels like its pushing other stuff, so all of the side projects really help to move that around, and now I need to just get off my ass and record these projects that I’ve been telling myself I need to do.
Eric - Without the side projects, without the flexibility that the band sort of allows…you had said before that the band is kinda a democracy, if the band, if they didn’t want that happening, do you think that the Rx Bandits would still be there?
Matt - I honestly have never thought about that Eric, never. Everyone has their own side projects. Everyone has the same passion for music. Even when Borth was in the band, he had his own side project. Everyone does, whether they are released or not, everyone is working on stuff. Sheets has his own stuff, he almost has a whole album ready, Joe and I obviously have side projects, and Choi is in a hardcore band called Machines, they just recorded an EP, Chris has Technology, he has literally 6 albums like already recorded. He’s unbelievable, how prolific it is, so I don’t think it would ever be an issue, because everyone wants it, and I think it’s really healthy too cause it makes us appreciate Rx Bandits more, and once we get back in the Rx Bandits vein, then we are like, yea yea yeah, this feels great, of course this is why we did this, of course, this makes sense. But its also a good release, its kind of like if you’re in a relationship and things are going to fast and you take a break and you realize what you love about that person and the things that you could have done to make that relationship better, or the things you did that you may not think were the best ideas, and its not like we take a break from each other, but its nice to have different aspects.
Eric - The upcoming tour with Gym Class heroes, if I recall correctly, is the first US tour that you guys have been a supporting band in quite some time. What can the fans expect from the band in the upcoming year?
Matt - I don’t know how to answer anything about expectations, I’m not too into them. I would say expect nothing. We just play music cause we love it and we’re so fortunate to be able to do it as means of existence in this capitalist society, and that’s great, and we’re all so happy about it. It’s gonna be a different tour, mostly hip hop acts, which we’re totally cool with cause obviously MDB, we’ve got a lot of hip hop acts too. Hopefully it will help our MDB community to grow, it will, not hopefully, it will, and maybe some of the guys on that tour can start becoming a part of those projects as well, and hopefully we can play in front of some open minded music lovers who get into it, ya know. As far as stuff after this tour, I don’t even know. We’re playing, oh I can’t say this yet, can I say this now? (Choi said no, but since it’s already been announced I’ll put in what Matt told me) It’s really good, we’re playing Bonnaroo with The Police. That’s pretty huge for us, that’s like one of the hugest shows ever. Hopefully we’ll be going back to Japan, and hopefully making a lot of international moves cause we’ve been in the states too much, to the point where its time to leave, that’s why we are doing a support tour, cause we felt like we’ve just been over saturating. and people have heard…so international tours for the future.
Eric - Any new music coming out, any albums?
Matt - Oh yes my friend. I have a new project, its called Pebaluna sp? And its with this woman Lauren Coleman who’s a fabulous Jazz singer, she’s only 20 years old, she’s incredibly talented, it’s pretty intense. We just made a myspace page for that, that we are going to release an EP for that in April. And we are also doing my solo record, I’ll probably call it Love You Moon, maybe my name, I don’t know, but that’s a lot of the songs swimming around in my head that need to come out. I think that will be released in the summer, and I think we’ll be writing and recording a new Rx Bandits album in the summer, and probably another will come out next winter so that we keep it moving. And Chris put out a new Technology EP, and I think that he is going to put out a full length, hopefully, coming up soon, he’s just finishing it up, so…ya man. And I’m also working on another project, but I’m not really supposed to tell you what it is because we’re supposed to keep in anonymous and silly like we did with Sound of Animals Fighting for a while. Maybe people will find out eventually. But its weird, its gonna be weird, like very almost unlistenable, yet beautiful at the same time.
Eric Freed - www.rx-bandits.com
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