Taking Back Sunday. Special to The Appalachian

All Information Compiled
by Emily Melton
Lifestyles Editor

Q&A with guitarists Matt Fazzi of Taking Back Sunday and Mike Kennerty of The All-American Rejects

The Appalachian: In Boone, really popular bands are hard to come by; why are you performing at Appalachian State University?

Mike Fazzi: I imagine it’s just – we try to take the best opportunity that comes along for the entire package, so I’m sure that we went with the school because the school was just willing to accommodate all three bands, take good care of us and put us in a place where the capacity is good and we can just have the best show.

Mike Kennerty: I guess your school submitted and sought us out, and we’re excited they did. We always have fun playing at college shows. We’ve done a couple other shows so far. And yeah, we’ve never been there, so that will be exciting.

TA: What will the atmosphere of Thursday’s concert be like?

MF: Luckily, on this tour, I feel like all three bands really mesh well together. I think Anberlin and The All-American Rejects and Taking Back Sunday all share some common thread. All the bands sound different, but they all compliment each other well, and the vibe is good all the way around.

Good bands, good people, good crew – everyone’s just really great and I think it just [transitions] into the show, too.

With Anberlin opening up, they bring out energy in that they’re a super solid live band; singing’s always perfectly on point. Every night, we kind of swap with the Rejects and we’ll close a night.

Then, they’ll close a night, so it’s awesome to swap back and forth like that and I think all the bands do a really good job of keeping the crowd alive and hyped up for the next band.

MK: All three bands – us and Taking Back Sunday and Anberlin, we’re all bands that really put everything we have into the show. [There are] a lot of bands, these days, that try to be cool and just stare at their feet while they’re playing and put on boring shows, and none of our bands are bands that support that. We all go out there, all guns blazing. So, expect an energetic show, but we also expect an energetic show back. [The kids] gotta be crazy at our show.

The All-American Rejects. Special to The Appalachian

TA: Is the band coming out with anything new in the near future?

MF: We actually just came out with a live album on iTunes. We played at Bamboozle in [New] Jersey, where the band has played several times before. We were lucky enough to be able to headline this year, or, co-headline with No Doubt, so we recorded our entire set there and put it out on iTunes just within the last few weeks. It’s really the first official live album Taking Back Sunday’s ever done that encompasses all of the records up till now.

MK: We’ll see. After we take a little break, we’re going to start probably working on some new stuff at the beginning of next year, so hopefully that’ll go smoothly and maybe by the end of 2010, we’ll have a record out there.

TA: If you could give any advice to college students, what would it be?

MF: I guess I would say that if you find something that you’re passionate about, to commit to it 100 percent, because I think that you can get to wherever you want to go, you just have to give it 100 percent, and I’ve been fortunate enough to get to my position within Taking Back Sunday just because, luckily, I discovered that music was my passion at a young age and I just kind of went for it. If you know what you want to do, you just give it 100 percent and you get there.

MK: I only went to college for two years and then I quit, so I’m probably not the best person to give advice, but I’d just say, make sure you’re studying something you like and something that you’re going to want to do forever. I’ve known people that went and got degrees and then realized they hate what they studied and they end up never even using any of it. I don’t know if it’s something you can really predict and tell while you’re doing it, but I would say that’s probably a good thing to think about.

TA: What does your tour look like for the rest of the year?

MF: Our tour just kind of got started. It still has about another month to go. That’s going to finish up the year, almost, for us. This will be it for the year and then we’ll have a little time off until we go to Australia in February.

MK: We’re just continuing out this tour and it takes us right up till Christmas, so we’ll take a little bit of a break, but we’ve been touring non-stop since last November, which was when we finally finished recording "When the World Comes Down," so as soon as we we’re done…we’ll finally be able to take a breather.

TA: At the moment, what are your favorite songs from your perspective bands?

MK: It changes a lot. We have a song on “When the World Comes Down” – “Another Heart Calls,” which is a duet. It’s our first time we’ve ever had a guest in a song with us and them. We got these girls called “The Pierces" to sing in it with us, so, I’m thinking, right now, that’s my favorite, but we never get to play it hardly, and so I rarely hear it and I think that’s probably why it’s my favorite.

There are a whole scope of moods and sounds in it. It starts off very mellow and ballad-ish and kind of picks up and by the end, it’s a very aggressive rocker song. It’s the kind of song we do maybe once a record.

MF: I think my favorite song is probably a song on the new record called “Carpathia.” I really like that song, not only because it’s a fun song to play live, but it has a few elements that kind of feature the new line-up of Taking Back Sunday pretty well and, kind of, the direction that we hope to go in. It’s got three parts and it’s got interesting chords and chord turns, so, I’m very proud of the way that song turned out on the record and it’s probably my favorite song, currently.

TA: How is the sound of Taking Back Sunday changing?

MF: Whenever Taking Back Sunday does a record, I think the goal is to always to try and keep moving forward in some capacity. So, this time around, I think the band has just gotten a little bit smarter about song arrangements and just general quality. I mean, you pick up tools and learn things along the way and it just makes you better, so, this time around, we tried to just wipe the slate clean and try a bunch of different things with the band, stylistically. For example, there’s this song that didn’t even make the album but it has a very R&B-sounding chorus that’s very different from anything that Taking Back Sunday has ever done in the past. We try to move into a different direction and do things the band has never done. Hopefully, that’ll be the plan when moving forward, just to keep growing musically and getting better writing songs, but at the very heart of everything, we all just love good music and good songs, strong songs.

TA: What is it like being in the band?

MF: It’s awesome. We all get along really well. Luckily, for me, I’ve been friends with them for a few years before I joined, because they liked my previous band and they took my previous band on tour, so it was a really seamless and easy transition when I joined the band, because we were already friends, so our friendships just got a lot tighter and it made it very easy to, kind of, step in musically, too, and they gave me a lot of freedom on the new record to help contribute in the writing and direction, so, everything, from the start, has been awesome, a really comfortable situation, and I think, they’ve kind of been through this more and they know what to expect in how to make it work this time around, in a better way. So, everything has been super positive and we’re all having such a good time being able to play for people every night and putting out a good record that we’re proud of.

MK: It’s awesome. Growing up, all I’ve ever wanted to do is play music and aspiring to do it successfully, just to be able to do it, and somehow won a lottery, and now get to do it every day.

It’s pretty incredible and I can’t complain. The rest of the band, too – we all have this rare, lucky number where none of us get in fights with each other. Obviously, when you live with all guys, we’ve seen a lot of angry and self-destructive bands and we lucked out. We like each other, we get along, we have a good time and we all have the same focus, which is: the band is our lives. It comes first. It’s been a really fun ride and we’ve been doing it for, like, eight years now and it just keeps getting crazier.

TA: Anything else you’d like the fans to know?

MF: I guess I would just encourage them to go out and pick up our latest live record, “Live from Bamboozle” on iTunes, and also, if you haven’t picked up “New Again,” to pick up “New Again.”

MK: We have a Web site: allamericanrejects.com, where we get on there and have video blogs where kids can talk to us while we’re blogging. We love to talk to our fans.

APPS Concerts will present “Taking Back Sunday/The All-American Rejects/Anberlin” in the Holmes Convocation Center at 8 p.m. Thursday. Tickets are $25-$35.

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