How were The Push Kings different from Everybody Else? 

The Push Kings was a band that my older brother and I started when we were in high school, that continued through college.  The main thing that's different is that Everybody Else is more focused.  I think that having two songwriters is more difficult to get a unified sound.  The Beatles were able to do that successfully, but towards the end it fell apart a little bit.  That happened to The Push Kings as we got into different stuff.  He's made a couple of solo records since we broke up, and if you listen to his stuff and then listen to my current stuff, you can see why we broke up.  His new music is dark, down-tempo, rootsy stuff.  He's an awesome songwriter, but we definitely went in different directions.

How did Everybody Else form? 

The Push Kings played with The Waking Hours, which is the band that Mikey [McCormack] was the drummer for.  Mikey quit them around the same time The Push Kings broke up.  I started making demos on my own, and had a little ProTools rig, where I just sort of threw all my ideas down and played all the instruments.  I played with a few different drummers before I met Mikey, who was tired of playing the drums at that point because he felt that a drummer would never be creatively involved, and would just be sitting in the back playing a beat, which he has demonstrated is not the case.  Finally, I convinced him – although he would say he convinced me – and we played together, and as soon as he got behind the kit, it was worlds different from the other people who were playing the same songs.  A band is only as good as their drummer, so I have to give him serious props for the record sounding the way it does.

Why did you move to L.A.? 

To make it in the music business, which is why anybody moves there, either that or to be an actor, right?  The Push Kings were living in Boston when we were all in college, and said we were either going to move to New York City or San Francisco, those were the two choices.  We were in Washington, D.C., hanging out by the Potomac, and we flipped a coin, and San Francisco won.  But we only lived there for six months, and every time we came to L.A., we realized that it was a lot more exciting than San Francisco, so we eventually moved there.  Mikey moved to L.A. from Virginia, where The Waking Hours were from.  And then Austin [Williams, the bassist], the most recent member to join, moved from Fresno soon after he saw me play an acoustic set with Butch Walker.  We met at that show and he moved down soon after that.