You lost him? Did he die?
No, no, no! It wasn’t really working out with him. He’s an awesome guy and we had a lot of fun with him but it just wasn’t working out. We needed new direction so we got Chris. And then our drummer, in about May last year, was like “I can’t do this anymore”. He’s an awesome graphic artist and that was his true passion, and that’s what he wanted to do, so he went off and did that. Chris our bass player is a phenomenal drummer, the natural move was for him to move back to drums. And I decided that I would pick up bass – if they would have me (laughing) instead of getting a fifth member of the band again. Thought we would keep it simpler at four. And that’s what we have been since June.
And you are currently recording your first full length album?
Yeah it will be a full album. Yep we’re in the process of doing that right now. We’ve made a four song demo that is just a handout while we’re recording the album. Something we have that has all the band on it. That’s the only problem with that EP (Soft Radio) is that it is old songs of mine that don’t have the other guys on it. While it does generate publicity for Airline now, it’s not Airline. It’s there though and it’s a fun listen. But now we’re recording these songs that we have been working on, and playing, and there is full collaboration. It’s fun sitting down with maybe Ryan or Chris will pick up the bass I will sit down at the keys and he’ll think of some cool bass line and I’m like “yeah I’ll play that, sounds great!” It’s kind of that… that goes on and we’re all open to each other and that’s kind of the process we’re using in recording this record. A lot of the songs are done and we are playing them live but we are also working on a few new ones.
Tell me about your song writing process. You said on the EP, Soft Radio, everything was yours but your new stuff is all collaboration. How do you write songs together?
Basically, I’ll write a song on my guitar, just sitting at my desk here, and if I like it or not, if I want to do something with it; usually it will be finished and I’ll take it to them and I’ll be like “Well guys here’s a song. Do you want to do it?” And they’ll either say yeah or they’ll say “Well it doesn’t jump up and grab me like some of the others.” But if they’re into it we’ll sit down and I’ll have a structure already kind of decided but they will talk about it and they’ll throw around ideas and they’ll throw in how they think it should feel, or where the dynamics of the song should come down or where it should stick. Cause you can convey that, just a guy and a guitar but there is so much more with the other people. The do a good job of that. Sometimes I’ll bring them just a piece of a song and I’ll say “Guys help me flesh this out.”
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