SHREDnews

Jay Rowland: Why don’t you start out by telling me a little about how the band got started?

Jason Evigan: The band got started in my own studio. It was me and my little studio. I was just writing for myself. I got about twelve songs together and a friend of mine was like, “Dude, you should really do something about this.” So, I put an ad on Craigslist and I found Danny. Danny knew Spencer and I met TJ through a producer friend of mine who I was recording an album with at the time. I met Christian through mutual friends. The name of the band actually came from my hard drive. My hard drive was titled ‘the after midnight project’ because after work every night I’d go home and I would start working on it, and I would work on it all through the night. So I called it ‘after midnight project’ just for reference. Then the name kinda stuck.

Jay: What are some of the musical inspirations for the band?

TJ Armstrong: Deaftones, Muse… We even have a punk (Stooges, Minute Men) kinda vibe and it also has a lot of the Radiohead and U2 mixture thing too.

Jason: Yah, you’re right. We’re inspired by everything from singer/song writer Cat Stevens to fucking Pantera.

Jay: How bout you Christian?

Christian Meadows: My mom is my inspiration.

TJ and Jason: His mom is hot!

Jason: The first time I really saw her she came to pick us up in this really hot dress.

Christian: The funny part was; I knew they were looking at her. I got out of the van and got in my mom’s car and I texted every single one of them and told them to stop looking at my mom.

Jay: You guys have a reputation for an amazing live show.

Jason: Do we?

Jay: Well, that’s what I read on your website.

Spencer Bastian: Yah, we wrote that.

TJ: It’s actually our third show.

Jason: We’ve been touring for two years, but we just eat at cool places, hang out at parties, and get really drunk. We haven’t played any shows yet. If you are a good enough liar you don’t even have to have the gear.

Jay: What’s it like up on stage?

Christian: Detroit’s a great city.

Spencer: Detroit’s a home town show for me and Danny. I was feeling a lot more than the last few shows. Even if it’s five thousand people and the energies just not there it doesn’t matter.

Jason: You know the difference of hanging out on your couch when you’re home and your family being there at Christmas? Every body just trusts. There is this comfort zone. And the differences of hanging out on somebody’s couch that you don’t really know. When the crowd is there with you it’s the same. You feel at home. You feel like, “This crowd is here with me. We’re together.” When the crowd is not with you feel like you’re pumping on the strings and saying, “I’m here to perform for you guys.”

Spencer: That’s a really great analogy.

Jay: You guys have another reputation for having a good relationship with your fans. Do you guys usually hang out after the shows?

Jason: Oh yah. We’ll all go down there in the next ten minutes and start hanging out. We try and respect the other bands. We’ve been yelled at for hanging out. We get accused of being out there trying to sell CDs when we are just trying to talk to our fans.

Jay: I know it’s been a few months since Let’s Build Something To Break has been released, but let’s talk a little about that. What was the inspiration behind the album?

Jason: There was no concept behind the album. There was no theme. It was strictly just a medley of the last …

Spencer: Everything we had done. It had been so built up. Ever since we started playing together over four years ago we had been talking about our first full length record. I guess that’s the inspiration behind it. Everything we’ve been through. It’s not like the songs are directly about that. Jason had been writing a few of the songs, like “Take Me Home”, before the band even started playing together.

Jason: I wish I could say, “There’s an astronaut on the cover. The whole album is about our dream to get to outer space where we will find where we originally came from.” But no, it’s more literally just the last five years of growing up.

Jay: Are you guys excited about going back on Warped Tour in 2010?

Everyone: We love warped tour!

TJ: Unlike any other tour, you meet so many fans a day and its six days a week all day. There’s really nothing like it you can ever experience or imagine.

Spencer: We don’t need fake tanner any more.

Jason: We used to carry our huge tanning bed with us that we spent $20,000 on, but now on Warped Tour we can get it for real.

Jay: Last year on Warped Tour you guys did the whole contest thing. Do you plan on doing anything like that again at next year’s Warped Tour?

Jason: I think we will. By that time we will have some more fans so I think it will work out a little better. Sometimes I was standing there forever with the prizes waiting for the winner.

Jay: It really worked out great. Having Twitter on my phone made it so easy to find out what the bands were doing throughout the day.

Jason: Twitter is awesome! Follow @AMPLA

Jay: Are there any good tour stories?

TJ: How bout the time our trailer passed us? We were driving down the highway and Spencer looked out the window and was like, “Hey! Our trailer is passing us!” The trailer just jumped right off the ball.

Jason: Me and Jacoby from Papa Roach… we use our kung fu skills and do flying side kicks to ruin things.

Spencer: We won’t say where that happened, but it did.

Jay: What are plans for after the show tonight?

Spencer: We have a headlining show in February back in LA. It’s been almost a year since we have been back there. We’re booked with Story Of The Year in April. I think we’re coming to St. Andrews in March. Keep an eye out, because there are some really exciting things coming up.

Jay: Anything else you guys would like to say to your fans?

Spencer: Thank you for an amazing year. The tour has been great. We’ve seen a lot of familiar faces.

Jason: Honestly, we’re where we are now, because of the fans that have been supporting us. The reason we keep doing this every night is because we have fans that keep telling us how much it means to us.