If you’re new here, you might not know that there are two sides to Caroline. There is the side that wears a line dresses and pearls to work in her nice little cubical and there is the side that will scream and sweat and feel drum beats in her heart (almost- I’m missing my 2nd in 11 years this year) every summer at the Vans Warped Tour. Many of the people I look up to are part of the latter culture. There’s Kevin Lyman, the founder of Van’s Warped tour and one of the hardest working people on the planet; there’s Stacy Peralta, original Z Boy and the only person that I would be ok with making my documentary about Warped Tour (a good thing. Because he did.); there’s Travis Clark, total sweetheart and probably the most fan-friendly front man ever; there’s Jess Bowen, bad ass girl drummer and love of my life; and then there’s Jonnie of Relic Hearts, who I have claimed as one of my unofficial big brothers and who I turn to when I’m feeling uninspired.
When Jonnie and I met, I was literally carrying around flyers with the idea I had for Getting Warped, the documentary of my dreams. He was selling CDs. We were both sun burned and exhausted but the difference is that he’d been going for weeks on the what is widely regarded at the toughest tour in the business, and I was going home to take a shower and crawl into bed. He, and the rest of The Groundbreaking Ceremony, would finish that tour in a PT Cruiser after a horrible bout of luck with their transportation. Flash forward 4 years (ew), and I have watched Jonnie and his band, now Relic Hearts, grow and mature and I am absolutely fascinated by the evolution. He was nice enough to let me pick his brain on recording, the industry, and the band itself.
1. When I met you, you were in a band called The Groundbreaking Ceremony. What made you guys start over with a totally new band, even though the lineup is basically the same?
We had hit sort of a dead end with interest with The Groundbreaking Ceremony. We felt like two summers on Warped Tour, and winning the Ernie Ball Battle of the Bands in Scranton, Pennsylvania in 2010 was about as far as we were going to get with the style of music we were writing, and truthfully, we were all getting a little older and wanted something more mature out of our sound. We had a blast working with some of the best engineers and producers while working on GBC, Doug White (Gym Class Heroes, Every Time I Die), John Naclerio (Senses Fail, Brand New, and a plethora of others), and Paul Leavitt (All Time Low, The Dangerous Summer, and also a slew of other bands), but we just couldn’t get out of ourselves what we wanted when we were trying to do the pop punk genre, so we just sort of naturally felt the inclination to come up with a new name. Not to mention, The Groundbreaking Ceremony was a project that I inherited, and had already had dozens of lineup changes, a few of them occurring during my time in the band. It was just time for a fresh start. So we didn’t even change the band name, we just started writing new music. We hadn’t come up with the band name until our first five songs were written, and two of those songs haven’t even been released yet.
2. How have you and the band changed since the GBC days?
I’d say we’ve got a much different understanding of the music industry and the world around us. We sold a collective 10,000+ EPs across two summers on the Vans Warped Tour, and had a blast touring the country and made friends with some incredible people in some incredible bands (New Found Glory, Taking Back Sunday, The Used, Less Than Jake (Hi, JR!), and tons more. I learned a lot from Kevin Lyman just from watching what he goes through on any given day at a stop on that tour, and I never hesitated if he asked me to help round up a line, or inform patrons of something while waiting to get in. We just learned so much from such a tightly knit community, and we just sort of noticed a balance shift in the understanding of what the pop punk genre used to be to us — It’s the new hardcore, and we just sort of outgrew it. So how have we changed? We’ve learned to be more honest with ourselves, and in our music. We’re right now on the last day in the studio working on our the first Relic Hearts full length, and we were hoping to have it done and be walking out of here just waiting for a final mix/master — and as it turns out, I wasn’t very confident in a lot of my vocal takes, since we did a lot of co writing in the studio with Stetson Whitworth (producer credits include Our Last Night, Chelsea Grin, Get Scared and Jesse Lawson (ex-Sleeping With Sirens). So I’m going to come back in a month and knock out the ones that I felt were least confident, and make sure we don’t spare any expenses when it comes to making this record as perfect as we believe it can be. It’s a singles market, by and large, and we want each song on this record to stand out and just slam you when it hits you. We wrote with the intent of having too much fucking fun while playing these songs, and also songs that are naturally just driven and energetic for our listeners and fans. So I would say we’ve really learned to write with a better understanding of our audience and how we want to relay what we want to our fans.
3. Who have been some of your biggest influences, personally and as a band?
Personally, for all of us, music has shaped us as people, and our influences all range vastly. But they range from anywhere from the Beatles (for interesting chord choices and progressions), to The Used, Muse, Modest Mouse, dredge, Taking Back Sunday, Oasis, Third Eye Blind, Matchbox Twenty, 30 Seconds to Mars — this list is literally endless. We aren’t afraid to hear new music and take it in and differentiate what it is that calls us to it.
4. You’re working on an album now, what has been the biggest challenge of recording?
Yep, working on our first full length, and actually, in the history of me being in bands, this is actually my first full length ever. The biggest challenge has been the limited amount of time we had to get this done. We’re doing everything unsigned and have been funding everything ourselves, so it was difficult to save up the money for the recording time, paying Jesse as a producer, Stetson as an engineer and producer, multiple flights, hotel stays, food, beverage, etc. Ideally, if we made enough money to be in the studio all the time we would. The challenge has never been recording or coming up with ideas, or developing things thematically — it’s always just the money.
As far as the recording itself goes, the biggest challenge is not letting ourselves get clouded by thinking we have to overwork. There were days where we struggled to work through even an entire song. And then out of nowhere after going and grabbing food and spending some time outside taking a walk or just talking about life and the world around us, would come back and finish that song, and write an entirely different song, within two hours. In fact, one of my favorite songs on this record so far was a song we assembled the skeleton for in under two hours at the end of a day of recording. We’ve obviously picked at it since then, but the structure was there, and then it became all about how we wanted to color the song in.
5. I noticed that the whole band isn’t out there with you recording. How does that work, logistically?
Yeah, a few people have noticed that. I think the common conception is that the entire band goes to the studio and tracks all of their own parts, and writes all of their own parts, but that’s really seldom the case. When we did a cowrite with Ronnie Radke a year or two ago, it was just myself and Boss (Aaron Bossinger) that flew out to finish rearranging the song we had originally written with Matt Wentworth (Our Last Night). Boss is an incredible songwriter, and not just that, but an excellent studio musician, and that’s a big difference from someone who can play really well, but not as well when it comes to the studio level of performance you need to possess in order to track guitars, for example. So given that we were on such a tight budget, and Boss is the primary songwriter in our band, and could easily track any of the guitars (rhythm, lead, solo, bass) we just flew him out, myself, and Dirk to write/arrange his drum parts. It also keeps things less distracting. There’s a nice ebb and flow for each producer for how they like to get work done in the studio, and sometimes too many cooks in the kitchen spoils the pot. We don’t need to hear this sick drum fill you need when we’re just trying to work out rhythmically how we want to arrange a certain part of a song, you know? It’s like, we’ll get there, haha.
6. When you are writing songs, what comes first for you- the music or the lyrics? And does the whole band have a hand in it, creatively?
This is a case by case situation. Even if the song starts on an acoustic guitar first, there’s usually a chord progression developed first, and then a melody comes — but if a melody pops in our heads, we’ll figure out what key suits it best, and go from there and develop an idea. Maybe it works out well, maybe it doesn’t. We came to the studio with roughly 20 songs, and I think only 3 made it to the record, and we were more than happy with that. We came down with skeletons and ideas, nothing concrete. The idea that you have to walk into a studio with the idea already down, and not deviate from it is childish. There’s a lot of magic that can happen in the studio if you don’t limit yourself or hinder yourself from being able to explore new ideas and textures and concepts, musically. We’ve all also been around each other for a very long time, so when an idea pops up, we often just guide it into a direction that sounds best, and also would satisfy any member of our band, haha.
7. What can we expect from the album being recorded?
Expect huge. We really swung for the fences on this one. There are a lot of melodically heavy and large sounding songs on this record. We also tried some new things this time. Added in new elements, and strings, percussion, screaming, etc. It’s just a very diverse and wide album, but it all somehow is reeled in together as a Relic Hearts record. And taking a month off to really submerge ourselves in the record (I’ll probably spend the next month walking around in public singing and wearing headphones) will be really good for us. I’ll come back in a month with Boss, and we’ll finish out the rest of the album vocally, and layer in more harmonies (that’s actually what we’re beginning to tackle today), and some screams and shouts. We’ll redo some leads if something strikes Boss while we’re home, and come back refreshed and ready to really nail down the final takes on this record.
8. As a band and close friends, how do you all mesh together? Do you fall into certain roles, other than the obvious “who plays what instrument?” For example, who’s the bossy one, etc.
Of course we do — I am the absolute asshole boss, with total lead singer syndrome (kidding). It’s an art first for us, which is what has made this record so much fun to write, but to get it out there, and get it in front of more people, it’s also a business, and so we have weekly meetings, discussions constantly, and are always progressively thinking about what we should be doing. I sort of lucked out with spear-heading the band as a leader/planner, but Boss is 100% our songwriter, and makes sure that everything is nice and tight at rehearsals before we play out. We all pitch in equally for investments we want to make for the band (equipment upgrades, photography equipment, etc). Dirk and I usually keep a close eye on our finances. Scott is who usually runs the social media pages, for posting stuff, but really we share that responsibility, and regardless, we’re all always checking our social media pages. Nick is usually the peacekeeper — he’s a really good mediator, and honestly, you can’t NOT have one in the band when you spend time in a studio or van for any amount of time longer than a few days. We definitely have specific roles, aside from our instruments though, and I’m happy to have everyone in this band.
9. Relic Hearts hasn’t toured yet (#sadface) but you toured with GBC and you’ve been on the road with other bands. What are the best and worst parts of touring? And are there any plans to tour once the album is done?
Right now, we haven’t been focusing on touring yet because we don’t really feel our audience is large enough yet. The idea of touring to make fans is kind of ridiculous, and we would know first hand (fight me). The amount of times you’re lucky enough to break even and make it home is still not even close to the amount of times you have to call family and friends for money on the road sometimes, especially when you’re starting out. And we did that for a long time with The Groundbreaking Ceremony. Instead of coming back breaking even (but really down money because we all have bills to pay and whatnot when we get back), we’d just rather continue to work on the music, or do a cover to market ourselves, or save and invest in ourselves. I’m not saying you can’t tour and make fans, but the number of fans you’ll make on your own, as opposed to marketing yourselves on a global platform like Youtube? It just seems like a moot point to argue — unless you’re being taken out on a 2,000 cap tour, I would never headline or spend my weeks opening to 10-20 kids a night and attempt to make a career out of that. It’s just not realistic, and anyone who says otherwise hasn’t paid their dues long enough to see the error of their ways.
10. I follow you on all social media and you’re pretty good at being inspiring. If you could narrow down your advice to one solid piece of inspiration for up and coming musicians, what would it be?
You have to be in it for love of the game. The music should be first, and ideally, know your market. Know the kind of fans you want to attract, and write the music that speaks to them. If you’re writing the music for yourself, then know your audience still, and be honest with yourself. If you’re not sold on something, don’t expect anyone else to be. Another sound piece of advice would be to invest in yourself/yourselves. No magic hand in the music industry is going to come down and scoop you up and take you to the top. It’s going to take work. It’s going to take blood. It’s going to take sweat. Tears. Frustration. You’re going to lose friends. You’re going to make enemies. At the end of the day, if you know what your music is worth, and what you are worth, then go out and get it. Don’t let anyone tell you that you shouldn’t be doing music. You’re not going to be the best at anything you do when you first set out to do it, and as Macklemore would say, “The greats weren’t great because at birth they could paint. The greats were great cause they paint a lot.” There’s going to be sacrifices to be made, and choices — there are in all walks of life. Keep choosing the path that steers you in the direction of your dreams, and I have to believe that one day you’ll get there.
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Photos in this post used with permission from Jonnie by Ryan McKinnon
