Signals Midwest
Talk about their latest release "Latitudes & Longitudes"
"Latitudes & Longitudes" is now available for purchase at: http://tinyengines.bandcamp.com
How did the band form? Loren and I played together in a ska band from the ages of 1 4-1 8. Towards the end of that band, we started going to house shows in Cleveland and discovered a lot of great local Cleveland bands like The Sidekicks, No Target Audience, Ghost Town Trio, and Echoes of Harpers Ferry. Being around a very active DIY scene was really inspiring. I had been writing songs that didn't fit with any other project I was involved in, so Loren picked up the bass and we started playing through pop-punk songs together. Shortly thereafter in September 2008, Loren met Steve through a girl he knew from school and he turned out to be an awesome drummer and an awesome dude. I remember things really clicked as soon as we played through our first song together, which was "The Devil's Takin' Names" by the Lawrence Arms. We played as a trio for about two years, during which we did some small tours and recorded our first record "Burn the Blueprints". Jeff joined on 2nd guitar in July of 201 0 and since then we've seen both coasts of the US and most places in between and have also released another full-length "Latitudes and Longitudes" as well as a few 7"s.
How does it differ from previous material? Initially we just wanted to be a pop-punk band. In my opinion, our first record and "Latitudes and Longitudes" barely sound like the same band. The first record was entirely comprised of songs I wrote when I was 1 61 9 years old. For the new one, we wanted to experiment a lot more and had done a lot of growing and learning together. We also got a second guitar player and that allowed us to branch out and try a lot of new things. I still think the pop-punk influence shows through a fair amount but it just feels like a whole mess of influences to me. Someone called us "post-pop-punk" and I thought that was pretty funny. I like The Weakerthans, Jeff likes Braid, Loren likes Small Brown Bike and Steve likes Osker. I think we do our own messy version of punk that falls somewhere in between all of those bands. What was the most difficult song to compose? "I Was Lost" gave us a lot of trouble. It's a much different song than anything else on the record because it has almost like a hip-hop or Fugazi-type drum beat and the rest of our songs are much faster overall. I re-wrote the lead guitar line a few times. Initially Jeff and I were doing this crazy tapping thing at the beginning and after playing it through fifteen times straight we realized it sounded really stupid. I kept swapping out lyrics to try to get them to fit together right and couldn't seem to do it. I had three or four verses written and just ended up switching a bunch of lines around and trying to sing it and make it work. Loren also had this "bass solo" idea which I initially hated but we made it work somehow. We never play it live because it's kind of a headache, but I'm happy we recorded it!
How was the recording of "Latitudes & Longitudes"? It was the best experience I've ever had making a record. We recorded it at Bad Racket Recording Studios, which is housed in a big grey warehouse on the west side of Cleveland. Rather than recording each instrument separately (first drums, then guitar, then bass, etc.) we tracked almost the entire record live (other than vocals) and only added a few overdubs. I think it really helped with the energy and feel of everything; you can hear a few notes that we miss, random feedback and room noises, but I like it better that way. I'd take that over something overproduced and squeaky-clean every If your music were to be adapted into film, what story would it tell? time. Star Wars. Episodes IV, V and VI. Jeff is Han Solo and Loren is Chewbacca. I'm probably C3PO because I worry about everything and What's the concept behind it? Steve is Emperor Palpatine because he has magic hands. I wasn't entirely sure when we were writing it, but lyrically I think I was just trying to approach the concept of distance in various forms and how What's your album of the year? it manifests itself in our daily lives, whether it's the distance between There have been some amazing releases this year. 201 1 was an loved ones, between aspirations and day-to-day life, between the living abnormally good year for music. But if we're going on sheer times I've and the dead, and also just traveling a lot and trying to see more of the listened to a record from front to back, I'd have to say the Joyce Manor world than Northeast Ohio. I didn't really set out to write it that way until self-titled full length. We got to play with them twice this summer, once we had six or seven songs and at that point it was like "oh...there's a in our hometown of Cleveland and once with them in their hometown of theme here!" From that point on, the other songs were kind of shaped Los Angeles. I was grinning like an idiot the whole time. around that. There's also a repeating part on the record that tries to tie everything together. 'm not sure if it does or not, but it was my favorite line I had written for the record ("I was counting the miles, you were Design & Interview: Rick counting the days, ain't it strange that the numbers we wanted were Words by: Max moving in opposite ways?") and I felt like it was a good representation Photo courtesy of Signals Midwest for the overall feel of everything. It shows up in four out of ten songs. Hopefully people pick up on it. Maybe it's obvious. Or maybe I just gave away something that people would rather discover on their own. Oops...