- July
19, 2003: A Closer look at Matt Embree and the Rx Bandits
***** Note, Matt said he would only do the interview if I made sure not to edit any of it, and therefore, it is a bit lengthy, but great quality, enjoy*****
This past Saturday at the Arizona CD Release show, I had the pleasure of sitting down with the RxB frontman Matt Embree and asked him questions about the new release, the full length DVD, and about their situation with Drive-Thru Records. Here is what he had to say.
Eric - Alright Matt, what was your favorite part of making the resignation?
Matt - My favorite part of making the resignation? Uhh…my favorite part was the full creation of it, everything, everything from writing it to recording it, the recording process was really cool and because we did the majority of it live, and that was really cool cause of that total sense of unity within the band members because we were all like, it was almost like a sports team, we were just like alright guys, we gotta get this take again, do this take again. And so yeah, it was really cool, it was good to finally put feelings into artistic expression.
Eric - Do you feel like you were able to capture your live performance on stage in the cd?
Matt - Definitely more than on any other album, although there’s a difference, cause when you are playing it live, that’s the only chance you get. Usually when we play live, we have sections in each set where we just jam and make up stuff every night, so we tried to do that on the record a little bit with Never Slept So Soundly, and Serpent, and Mastering the List, and a little bit with Decrescendo. There’s like some jamming stuff that we just, every take of the song is different, and the take on the album is the take we like the best. Cause there was stuff that we didn’t really write out, we just wanted it to sound a certain way, we just kinda like all agreed on how we wanted it to sound and tried to make it sound like that. More than the other album it definitely does (capture the live performance), but recording is never the same as live.
Eric - So why is this the best lineup for the bandits, and can you sort of explain your relationship with Steve Choi and Joe Troy cause if you look back, Choi was thanked on Progress and Halfway, and Troy was thanked on the Original version of Halfway, and it said that he co–wrote wrong with me, can you explain all that a little.
Matt - Wow dude, you did some research. Joe Troy and I went to preschool together, and we went to Elementary school together, and we went to middle school together, and high school together. Then he moved away to go to college, up north, and basically him and I and Chris have been playing music together since Joe was 14, I was 14, and Chris was 15. He moved away, and after we went through a bunch of bass players, and Joe had been playing bass forever, and it was just a natural thing, it was like he was a really good friend, and in this band we have always worked better with friends, so we just got in the band. Yeah, he helped write some of the lyrics in Wrong With Me.
Eric - I think a lot of people felt that when you went through all the bassists, and then Johnny, Chris’s brother was playing for a while, it just seemed like Joe Troy was this guy who came on and started playing with you guys, I don’t think anyone really knew that he was your friend.
Matt - Yeah, he is a good friend. He is a good guy. Steve Choi we’ve known since, he used to live in Santa Cruz, and we stayed at his house when we were on tour with Slow Gherkin and the Hippos in 1999, and we met him then. Pretty much I became friends with him because we battled Tony Hawk. And he was really good at Tony Hawk, and I was pretty good too. As a side note, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater is the closest video game to music there is. It has so many different options and button combinations. Its almost like having a guitar. So he played keyboards on the demos of Progress, but we ended up not having him play on the album. It came together, ya know, we wanted a second guitar, a keyboard. We wanted him to just fill in after Progress came out and he was down with playing with us forever.
Eric - Progress made a huge leap for you guys musically. Was it hard to live up to something like that, when making the Resignation.
Matt - No. Cause Progress was a totally different vibe and I was 20 years old when I recorded progress, and I was 22 when I recorded the Resignation, and there was no way I was going to play the same stuff. There was no way we were all going to collectively gonna play the same thing. Progress was basically Chris and I recording everything, and the Resignation was a full band, everyone had their parts. There was nothing to live up to, I knew it was gonna be better.
Eric - During the recording of the record, musically and otherwise, what was everyone’s influences?
Matt - I would say lyrically for me, life was my biggest influence. Just looking at the state of the world. Just looking at everything around you, taking everything in. Anything from like, driving the streets of LA, all the billboards, and societies sculpture basically, the sculpture for the status quo so to speak. Obviously what was happening in the world at that time and what was happening in my life, and how I felt and musically all of us come from totally different places, and we just play until we come up with something. We don’t really go like I wanna sound like this, I wanna sound like this. A lot of the songs were built on an aesthetic image that I had at first. Like Falling Down the Mountain, like literally we were like, lets make this song like a Mountain. Like a Mountain scene. Starts off all craggy, like your scaling a tough part, and when u get to the top, you’re cruising for a while, and it gets kinds crazy, you tumble down to the snow, and land in a little patch of green forest. A lot of the songs were done like that. Like Mastering the List, that we Kinda had a robot battle in mind. Kinda reminds you of a robot battle, like humans versus robots. Actually originally, and this might happen depending if we can find someone to do it. We wanted to animate the entire the album, and have it come out on DVD that you could also play in a cd player, and the DVD would be an entire animated movie. That’s why we did all the songs into each other, so that we could do that. Like Decrescendo is like a barren volcanic scene with bats and pterodactyls flying around. When you listen to the song, we all have like a Kinda landscape image.
Eric - There’s been a lot of talk in the fan community that this is your last Drive Thru release, can you shed any light on that and any Mash Down Babylon info that you have?
Matt - As far as being our last DTR release, that would be up to them, cause we have one more album left on our contract. I don’t think that they wanna drop us, we have a very good relationship with them, they don’t try to mess with any of our music at all, and we did all the layout ourselves. As well as all the music, we chose the producer, and they let me co-produce the album. We basically chose everything, we have no discrepancies with them. Sometimes we get grouped into the category of pop-punk, emo, or whatever their main genre is, which is very unfortunate, but I think that anyone who groups a band into the label is being ignorant themselves, cause a label is just a vessel for projecting music for masses of people. With Mash Down Babylon, right now its just Seekret Socyetee, we working with this other project called Two Drunken Poets, and I might put out Arellano, I might put out his solo album. And there are about 4 or 5 projects in the works, I don’t know which ones are actually gonna come out on that label. I don’t know, there should be some new stuff, there will be some new stuff before our next tour.
Eric - What’s the full length dvd situation?
Matt - It’s coming out. We finished all the footage, everything is complete. So we’re just editing it right now. Even if it’s done soon we aren’t gonna release it soon cause Resignation just came out. But it will probably come out before Christmas.
Eric - Why is it that Arizona is so lucky and gets to see the Bandits so often, and has the pleasure of one of the 3 cd release shows?
Matt - Cause Arizona has always shown us very much respect. We’ve always had very good shows here and I feel like all the kids that come to our shows are really really cool people. We don’t have a problem with kids doing stupid stuff, ya know people here like the music so they want to respect what we’re about. This is one of the places that first started to give us respect before anyone else did, so we feel like we owed it to give them the respect that we have received here.
Eric - I don’t know if you have heard anything about it, Those Damn Bandits goes for nearly like 100 dollars a shot on ebay, do you have anything to say about that?
Matt - Uhh, I don’t know. It’s weird.
Eric - Did you ever think that it would go like that?
Matt - It blows my mind. Its weird that someone would spend 100 dollars on an album that’s not that good. We were 16 when we made it. 7 years ago, big changes.
Eric - You seem like in your life you feel the need to be encompassed by music. When the Bandits stop making music, what do you think you are going to do?
Matt - I’ll do another band. You’re right man, I mean I don’t really, I’ve pretty much sacrificed, everything that I have loved in my life, I have sacrificed for music. To quote Duke Ellington, “Music is my mistress.” And it’s the one thing I know that I truly love, and the greatest thing about it is that it will never love me back. Ya know, its there, and I love to create music, and I love to see the way music effects people. I love the way music affects me. So I’ll play until I can’t play it anymore.
Eric - Your fans almost have a sense of community, and it seems like they almost feed off of the bands willingness to hang out and chill after the shows. You thank the fans on both the cd booklet and the DVD. What do you have to say to the fans, and why do you guys have such amazing fans?
Matt - I don’t know why we have amazing fans. We’re really lucky. I thank the fans because, especially in this day and age, which we collectively as a band we have tried to deem the age of hype, where bands come out of no where, get signed to a major label. Millions of dollars, and you see there posters and their stickers and everything everywhere. I feel like its so rare for a band to actually start from the ground up anymore. Its like now people, the kind of music that everyone is playing is so marketable, especially the whole indie scene. Its become the mainstream, its not independent at all. Indie is like a word used by major label execs now, ya know. We do, we came from nothing, we started in my mom’s garage, and we just played shows. And we put out our first record ourselves, cause no one would sign us. And, we built this for ourselves, and we know without people receptive to the music and without people that understand us, or people that want to support us, that we would never be here. Like, we don’t have any huge…we’re not on MTV, we’re not on the radio, we’re not one of those like hip new bands that its really cool to be seen wearing their hoodie, or whatever. We’re just a band that plays music and we try to play it honestly, so that’s why we give so much props to the fans, cause I feel like the people that come to our shows really understand that and really wanna be a part of it. And I’m really stoked that they wanna be a part of it. (Matts cup falls over) And my cup keeps falling over.
Eric - The best show I’ve personally seen was at the Nile with Slowpoke, Yellowcard and the Exit. What’s your favorite lineup that you guys have ever played with?
Matt - Oooohh…umm…I don’t know, our Roxy lineup that we just played was really dope. Seekret Soceytee got to open, ya know, Fairweather and No Motiv are good friends of ours. Although, we had a really dope show in London with this band Red Lights Flash from Austria, and the Exit, and us, and a band called No Comply from London. And, it was really cool, really good. The progress cd release party was pretty dope. We had Defacto, this really cool dub band, and Finch opened the show, and that was cool. I don’t know man. Like I said, I don’t really like that many bands these days, unfortunately. A lot of music, new music, doesn’t inspire me at all. The Exit inspires me a lot, and Seekret Soceytee inspires me. Ya know, I’ld have to say that the 2 Food Not Bombs shows that we played in Orange County at the Chain Reaction in March, those were, I think those were the best lineups, if only the Exit had gotten to play. There was Seekret Soceytee, the Return one night, and Chris Murray and Mike Park acoustic. It was cool having like all those textures of music. It was really cool that everyone was so respectful at those shows, like everyone was really cool about it, everyone was really open minded to listen to different styles. That’s what we’re trying to do, we’re trying to put bands that are way different from us on every show, in hopes to inspire people to listen and go search from themselves, for good music.
Eric - Is there anything else you want to tell the fans of the RX community?
Matt - Pretty much everything that I wanted to say, I’ve said on the record. I don’t want anyone to consider me a prophet or some ultimate knowledgeable person cause I am just another human being with an opinion and I just choose to express my opinion, and I feel like we would all get more of what we wanted if we expressed our opinion. One of the most prominent problems with society right now is the lack of ability to make a confrontation. Not necessarily a violent confrontation, but any confrontation, whether its looking someone in the eye when you walk down the street, or standing up for someone when you know that what there saying is right. (Tape Ended and flipped to the other side) More than anything, I’m just a human, and I make mistakes, and I have a whole bunch of human error, and I’m proud of them because that’s who I am, that’s why we chose to record the album the way we did. That’s a lot to do with the artwork of it, the absolute human ethic of it all. More than anything, I don’t want to seem untouchable or I don’t want to seem like a rock star. I want to encourage anyone that comes to our shows or anything to come and talk to me, especially if you don’t agree with what I have to say. I’ld love to hear other people’s opinions and the way it works, cause my opinion changes everyday, as I watch the world change, and as the earth turns, and as the moon rises. There’s so much to live for, there are so many things thrust into our faces and in our lives, that people feel the need to harvest for themselves, in order to feel like they are part of a society, part of like having new cars and jewelry, and the right brand of clothes, look the right way, listen to the right bands. Its almost like a lot of times, people have to strip themselves of their own opinion in order to become part of the “cool faction,” or to feel like they are a part of something, like they are ok. When it comes down to it man, none of that, to quote my good friend Leron Herney “I’ve never seen a hearse with U-Haul attachment.” There is so much more to live for, its wonderful to make mistakes, and its wonderful to feel sad and feel happy and feel human. Its wonderful to be able to be alive at this time, and have the opportunity to move your arms and your legs. To speak to other people and listen to other people. I really appreciate how I get to be in a band, and to get to listen to people’s opinions and get to learn from people that I meet at our shows, and I feel very blessed to have been given the gift of musicianship from my parents and my environment. And have met the people that I have in order to start the band, and that’s about it. “What you own will only own you.” That’s it. Peace.
And so that is what Matt had to say. It was a great interview, as well as a great show afterwards. Hope you guys liked this informative interview.
Eric Freed - www.rx-bandits.com
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