Interviewing Say Anything's frontman, Max Bemis, was an eye-opening experience. I'd only ever talked to him as a fan, and this gave me the chance to speak to him as something else - a journalist. The interview went incredibly well and I couldn't have asked for a better conversation.
What have you guys been up to concerning preparations for the release of the new album and your upcoming tour?
As a band, we’ve been rehearsing the new songs and rehearsing songs that we’ve never played from our older records. And personally, I’m going on tour with my wife so that’s exciting. We’re both really stoked to be spending all that time together and we both love each others' band.
Also, my role in the band is to take care of a lot of the business and the creative end of stuff so I’m on the phone all day setting up stuff for the new records because it comes out in about a month now. So, I’m approving all these t-shirt designs and posters, ya know, what stuff for radio and it’s just like, I feel like I have a full-on day job and it’s funny.
In regards to the new album, was the writing process any different compared to In Defense of the Genre, …Is A Real Boy and even any of your other albums?
How was it different? Well, I mean my life was totally different. I guess compared to, it’s a lot more similar to the writing process for …Is A Real Boy because I wrote songs all the time by myself, and before I had a record deal and before it looked like we were gonna go on tour, I was just a kid who wrote songs, ya know what I mean? I was in Say Anything and we were talking to labels for many years, just having been a band from LA, but it was never like ‘OK, now you have to put out the record that’s going into stores.’ So, it was just like I wrote songs casually, there was no deadline, there was nothing.
Then when we got signed for …Is A Real Boy, it was like ‘Oh my god, I’m now on this label that I really like. They have this connection to all these bigger labels,’ and suddenly all these people were telling me that these two songs were really good and I was like, ‘OH MY GOD, now I have to write the debut record that’s good enough to be the debut record,’ because I’m such a perfectionist. And so, for …Is A Real Boy, it was this crazy period where I wrote all these songs and most of them were written during this time where I was like, ‘I gotta step it up.’ It came from the heart completely, but it was me challenging myself.
And then In Defense of the Genre was really written over the course of two or three years because we were on the road and just completely busy and my life became about music. And …Is A Real Boy did so well that we were just constantly on the road and constantly doing things and we were sucked into this really essential scene which is amazing because all of these people were really good friends of ours, but it was like – music, music, music; I’m no longer a regular person.
And then after In Defense, we had a lot of personal changes and I kind of became more focused on my personal life and I developed a lot as a person and we took a good amount of time off so I kind of became a regular person again. And it was really refreshing so by the time someone came around and was like, ‘It’s time. You gotta write your definitive record. It’s your third record, the third record is important for every band. It’s a time to really define who you are. Ya know, these were your first two records, it’s like being a teenager and now you’re a grown-up and you gotta be… So after that, I had already gone through this year of true inspiration so it was kind of similar to …Is A Real Boy where I had a lot of these real experience to draw on and once I was kind of, the gun went off and it was like, ‘Go!’, it just popped out of me over a pretty short period of time and it was very, it had a lot of direction to it and a lot of enthusiasm and ambition.
Of the tracks you've offered to let fans hear early, it seems like your sound has returned to the days of ...Is A Real Boy and the even earlier Baseball. Was this done intentionally or do you think it's just Say Anything's natural progression?
It’s both. I mean, I try to look at life like, certain things you don’t think are intentional actually are and the opposite [laughs] because you sort of have to make your own life. And as a musician, you form your own identity and you create the art. So you can’t say there’s no direction or intention when you create art. You have to be a complete idiot or completely pretentious to say that this just comes out of my ass. No. You painted it. You wrote it.
So yes, there was deliberation involved but my life, so many factors that were out of my control came into my life and played into this so it really wasn’t all me. It was very much God, and Sherri, my wife, and little things, ya know? A friggin’ deer getting hit by a car in Ohio probably affected the writing of this record in some way. I believe in this thing called the butterfly effect where anything that happens in the realm of physical reality effects everything that happens. And that very much so is encapsulated in this record and how it’s a story that, although it comes directly from me, it’s about the universe.
I’ve heard the majority of the songs you’ve released for this album so far. Concerning "Hate Everyone" and "Property," it seems like you threw some random humor into each song, where did that stem from and is it present throughout the entire album?
I mean, that humor is present in my life period. Even songs that don’t have humor, but there’s still some dark irony in it. I find it very hard to write a song that has no, uh, that is completely self-serious without any acknowledgment of irony or any acknowledgment of why life is sickly funny. I guess I have a very dark sense of humor. So, to me it’s hard to not acknowledge it and that’s, if you feel that there are things that link it back to Baseball, that’s one of the things that was introduced when we became, from the beginning, when I wrote songs. It’s always been that way. So, I try to instill it and encapsulate it in this record more than it has in any other record.
This album is your third major release so I was wondering why you chose to self-title it.
For so many reasons. I mean, it just felt on so many levels like a self-titled record to us once we got into pre-production and writing it and all the songs were into it and our intentions and our feeling and the place we were in our life, it was like this is the record that is gonna define who we are as songwriters and musicians and what we want to project out into the world. If you want the basic cliff notes to Say Anything, it’s like this is the record. And you can delve into whatever you want. I’m sure there will be tons of material after this and there’s tons of interesting material before, but it’s the record I would recommend to people if it was their first Say Anything record. I think that that has a lot to do with me coming into my own as a person within the context of what inspired the record.
So its like I finally, ya know, when I started writing songs I was 14, I was just getting into teenage, I wasn’t too cranky, there wasn’t really too much going on. So it was an encapsulation of myself and my identity. And a lot of things happened. Being a teenager and being an early young man is very traumatic for a lot of people and it’s definitely a growing process whether it’s traumatic or not. I mean, you kind of come into your own and I found in myself like a mixture of this whole new person that I didn’t even know existed and then the person that I was when I was really young. And that’s why it’s self-titled, because it’s a step forward but it’s really from the beginning, it has these facets of the very beginning of Say Anything and what it was about.
I can kind of see that in that the tracks that you’ve released so far. It kind of reminds me of the older stuff.
Thank you.
Well, now concerning more of the tour, the release of this album adds even more songs to the already expansive discography you guys have. How do you choose what songs to perform on tour?
Part of it is what we want to play, but most of it is what we think kids like. Live shows especially, is us giving back to kids who enjoy our and band and trying to make them have the best time possible. Because we love all our songs, we love performing all our songs and, ya know, ultimately, coincidentally, most of the songs that people want to hear are the ones that we are most interested in playing. So it’s like, picking songs that you’ve never heard before, we love doing that. We love playing songs that we haven’t really gotten the chance to sing to and run around to and the songs that are fan favorites are probably also band favorites because they’re the best ones.
Well, I've seen you guys live quite a few times and you always seem to have opening acts that don't seem to be as well-known as openers on other tours. How do you go about finding and choosing who goes on the road with you?
The truth is that half of it is what we think fits musically with us because we’re a very quirky band and we kind of fall into these categories of this like, very experimental sort of band that older kids like and then a band that a lot of younger kids like so we try not to pander too much to either one. I mean there are completely random bands that we love that no one has heard of ever that we could take out, and then there are bands that are literally whatever kids really like right now that we could bring out and we try not to bring out either of those. ‘Cause then we end up in this weird position where there’s only a matter of like, a few bands that fit and feel right for every tour and feel right for that moment. Like, when we took Manchester Orchestra out on the last tour, there were plenty of bands that were much bigger than them that bidded for the tour and the some tiny bands that no one would have ever heard of that weren’t necessarily the right fit for the younger kids. So, we try to find the band that’s right in the middle that has some awareness of the band, that’s up-and-coming, experimental and unpredictable.
I think we’ve done a good job of that so far. I mean, we often bring out bands that are kind of on their way up or have a kind of niche, cool audience that’s really dedicated to them. We’ve brought out Circa Survive before they were, it was one of their first tours. Manchester is now pretty successful, Biffy Clyro is doing well. And now Eisley, these are all very cool bands that have a lot of potential.
I know how intense Say Anything's live performance is, but for those that haven't had the opportunity to see you guys live before, how would you describe it?
As a band, we’ve been rehearsing the new songs and rehearsing songs that we’ve never played from our older records. And personally, I’m going on tour with my wife so that’s exciting. We’re both really stoked to be spending all that time together and we both love each others' band.
Also, my role in the band is to take care of a lot of the business and the creative end of stuff so I’m on the phone all day setting up stuff for the new records because it comes out in about a month now. So, I’m approving all these t-shirt designs and posters, ya know, what stuff for radio and it’s just like, I feel like I have a full-on day job and it’s funny.
In regards to the new album, was the writing process any different compared to In Defense of the Genre, …Is A Real Boy and even any of your other albums?
How was it different? Well, I mean my life was totally different. I guess compared to, it’s a lot more similar to the writing process for …Is A Real Boy because I wrote songs all the time by myself, and before I had a record deal and before it looked like we were gonna go on tour, I was just a kid who wrote songs, ya know what I mean? I was in Say Anything and we were talking to labels for many years, just having been a band from LA, but it was never like ‘OK, now you have to put out the record that’s going into stores.’ So, it was just like I wrote songs casually, there was no deadline, there was nothing.
Then when we got signed for …Is A Real Boy, it was like ‘Oh my god, I’m now on this label that I really like. They have this connection to all these bigger labels,’ and suddenly all these people were telling me that these two songs were really good and I was like, ‘OH MY GOD, now I have to write the debut record that’s good enough to be the debut record,’ because I’m such a perfectionist. And so, for …Is A Real Boy, it was this crazy period where I wrote all these songs and most of them were written during this time where I was like, ‘I gotta step it up.’ It came from the heart completely, but it was me challenging myself.
And then In Defense of the Genre was really written over the course of two or three years because we were on the road and just completely busy and my life became about music. And …Is A Real Boy did so well that we were just constantly on the road and constantly doing things and we were sucked into this really essential scene which is amazing because all of these people were really good friends of ours, but it was like – music, music, music; I’m no longer a regular person.
And then after In Defense, we had a lot of personal changes and I kind of became more focused on my personal life and I developed a lot as a person and we took a good amount of time off so I kind of became a regular person again. And it was really refreshing so by the time someone came around and was like, ‘It’s time. You gotta write your definitive record. It’s your third record, the third record is important for every band. It’s a time to really define who you are. Ya know, these were your first two records, it’s like being a teenager and now you’re a grown-up and you gotta be… So after that, I had already gone through this year of true inspiration so it was kind of similar to …Is A Real Boy where I had a lot of these real experience to draw on and once I was kind of, the gun went off and it was like, ‘Go!’, it just popped out of me over a pretty short period of time and it was very, it had a lot of direction to it and a lot of enthusiasm and ambition.
Of the tracks you've offered to let fans hear early, it seems like your sound has returned to the days of ...Is A Real Boy and the even earlier Baseball. Was this done intentionally or do you think it's just Say Anything's natural progression?
It’s both. I mean, I try to look at life like, certain things you don’t think are intentional actually are and the opposite [laughs] because you sort of have to make your own life. And as a musician, you form your own identity and you create the art. So you can’t say there’s no direction or intention when you create art. You have to be a complete idiot or completely pretentious to say that this just comes out of my ass. No. You painted it. You wrote it.
So yes, there was deliberation involved but my life, so many factors that were out of my control came into my life and played into this so it really wasn’t all me. It was very much God, and Sherri, my wife, and little things, ya know? A friggin’ deer getting hit by a car in Ohio probably affected the writing of this record in some way. I believe in this thing called the butterfly effect where anything that happens in the realm of physical reality effects everything that happens. And that very much so is encapsulated in this record and how it’s a story that, although it comes directly from me, it’s about the universe.
I’ve heard the majority of the songs you’ve released for this album so far. Concerning "Hate Everyone" and "Property," it seems like you threw some random humor into each song, where did that stem from and is it present throughout the entire album?
I mean, that humor is present in my life period. Even songs that don’t have humor, but there’s still some dark irony in it. I find it very hard to write a song that has no, uh, that is completely self-serious without any acknowledgment of irony or any acknowledgment of why life is sickly funny. I guess I have a very dark sense of humor. So, to me it’s hard to not acknowledge it and that’s, if you feel that there are things that link it back to Baseball, that’s one of the things that was introduced when we became, from the beginning, when I wrote songs. It’s always been that way. So, I try to instill it and encapsulate it in this record more than it has in any other record.
This album is your third major release so I was wondering why you chose to self-title it.
For so many reasons. I mean, it just felt on so many levels like a self-titled record to us once we got into pre-production and writing it and all the songs were into it and our intentions and our feeling and the place we were in our life, it was like this is the record that is gonna define who we are as songwriters and musicians and what we want to project out into the world. If you want the basic cliff notes to Say Anything, it’s like this is the record. And you can delve into whatever you want. I’m sure there will be tons of material after this and there’s tons of interesting material before, but it’s the record I would recommend to people if it was their first Say Anything record. I think that that has a lot to do with me coming into my own as a person within the context of what inspired the record.
So its like I finally, ya know, when I started writing songs I was 14, I was just getting into teenage, I wasn’t too cranky, there wasn’t really too much going on. So it was an encapsulation of myself and my identity. And a lot of things happened. Being a teenager and being an early young man is very traumatic for a lot of people and it’s definitely a growing process whether it’s traumatic or not. I mean, you kind of come into your own and I found in myself like a mixture of this whole new person that I didn’t even know existed and then the person that I was when I was really young. And that’s why it’s self-titled, because it’s a step forward but it’s really from the beginning, it has these facets of the very beginning of Say Anything and what it was about.
I can kind of see that in that the tracks that you’ve released so far. It kind of reminds me of the older stuff.
Thank you.
Well, now concerning more of the tour, the release of this album adds even more songs to the already expansive discography you guys have. How do you choose what songs to perform on tour?
Part of it is what we want to play, but most of it is what we think kids like. Live shows especially, is us giving back to kids who enjoy our and band and trying to make them have the best time possible. Because we love all our songs, we love performing all our songs and, ya know, ultimately, coincidentally, most of the songs that people want to hear are the ones that we are most interested in playing. So it’s like, picking songs that you’ve never heard before, we love doing that. We love playing songs that we haven’t really gotten the chance to sing to and run around to and the songs that are fan favorites are probably also band favorites because they’re the best ones.
Well, I've seen you guys live quite a few times and you always seem to have opening acts that don't seem to be as well-known as openers on other tours. How do you go about finding and choosing who goes on the road with you?
The truth is that half of it is what we think fits musically with us because we’re a very quirky band and we kind of fall into these categories of this like, very experimental sort of band that older kids like and then a band that a lot of younger kids like so we try not to pander too much to either one. I mean there are completely random bands that we love that no one has heard of ever that we could take out, and then there are bands that are literally whatever kids really like right now that we could bring out and we try not to bring out either of those. ‘Cause then we end up in this weird position where there’s only a matter of like, a few bands that fit and feel right for every tour and feel right for that moment. Like, when we took Manchester Orchestra out on the last tour, there were plenty of bands that were much bigger than them that bidded for the tour and the some tiny bands that no one would have ever heard of that weren’t necessarily the right fit for the younger kids. So, we try to find the band that’s right in the middle that has some awareness of the band, that’s up-and-coming, experimental and unpredictable.
I think we’ve done a good job of that so far. I mean, we often bring out bands that are kind of on their way up or have a kind of niche, cool audience that’s really dedicated to them. We’ve brought out Circa Survive before they were, it was one of their first tours. Manchester is now pretty successful, Biffy Clyro is doing well. And now Eisley, these are all very cool bands that have a lot of potential.
I know how intense Say Anything's live performance is, but for those that haven't had the opportunity to see you guys live before, how would you describe it?
It’s pretty hard to do, it’s weird. We’re a pretty intense band on record but there’s a polished element to it because when it comes to recordings we look up to bands like Queen and The Beatles and later bands like Green Day and Weezer who, although it’s loud, the music is very proficient and polished in the studio and controlled and there’s a lot going on and we want you to hear it on record, ya know what I mean? It’s where I pour my emotion, especially vocally, there’s a lot of raw stuff that goes on behind the scenes vocally when I record a record, but especially the instruments, it’s polished.
And then live, it’s sort of chaotic. It’s very much so channeling the raw emotions of every single song and it’s very crowd-participatory. That’s something that I would want fans of our music, especially someone that hasn’t seen us live know, that it’s a total… we try to harken back to the kind of shows that people were more enthusiastic about, things that I was when I was younger that a lot of people, younger people especially, that there isn’t that much of that out there right now. There’s nothing that’s mature really out there, but that also has a crazy participatory live show. It’s kind of either or right now, ya know? You’ve got your All Time Lows and Metro Station and then you’ve got your Arcade Fires and it’s kind of like you’ve got, ya know, we try to be somewhere in the middle. And be great musicians live and we want you to sing back and we want you to live like, ‘this was one of the best nights of my life.’ And that’s what I have to offer from the bands that I grew up listening to whether it’s At The Drive-In or The Get Up Kids or Saves The Day or Alkaline Trio, back when those bands were the bands that had call-and-response mixed with chaos and a stadium-rock type show and there aren’t that many bands doing that anymore.
Yea, I would definitely agree. I mean, your shows are always like… I’d say they’re probably some of my favorite shows that I’ve been to. Just the energy and the feedback from the crowd, I love it.
Thank you, thank you so much.
Well just to wrap this up, I’m based in Philadelphia and I know you guys have been here quite a few times so I was wondering, what do you think of our city?
I love it. I really like it. I mean there’s a particular area, I think it’s called South Street?
Yea, South Street.
Yea, I really like it. I know it’s like, the trendy, really popular area but I love it because there’s such a cool comic book store there and there’s really cool shops there and there’s cheesesteaks. I mean, I’m a really cheesy guy when it comes to Philly. [laughs] I like the tourist-y stuff but it’s cool, I love it. It’s a great vibe, the people are nice, we know a lot of people from Philly, bands that we’re friends with and ya know, it’s always been one of the best markets for us and I hope it always will be.
Alright, well that’s pretty much all I’ve got.
Awesome.
Thanks so much for talking to me.
No problem, thank you!
And I’m hoping I see you guys at the Philly show on the first of November.
Awesome. I hope so, too.
NOTE: As long as this interview is, there were so many more questions I had to ask that I was unable to. I was only given 15 minutes and I felt that these were the most relevant questions for the article I have to produce.
Well just to wrap this up, I’m based in Philadelphia and I know you guys have been here quite a few times so I was wondering, what do you think of our city?
I love it. I really like it. I mean there’s a particular area, I think it’s called South Street?
Yea, South Street.
Yea, I really like it. I know it’s like, the trendy, really popular area but I love it because there’s such a cool comic book store there and there’s really cool shops there and there’s cheesesteaks. I mean, I’m a really cheesy guy when it comes to Philly. [laughs] I like the tourist-y stuff but it’s cool, I love it. It’s a great vibe, the people are nice, we know a lot of people from Philly, bands that we’re friends with and ya know, it’s always been one of the best markets for us and I hope it always will be.
Alright, well that’s pretty much all I’ve got.
Awesome.
Thanks so much for talking to me.
No problem, thank you!
And I’m hoping I see you guys at the Philly show on the first of November.
Awesome. I hope so, too.
NOTE: As long as this interview is, there were so many more questions I had to ask that I was unable to. I was only given 15 minutes and I felt that these were the most relevant questions for the article I have to produce.
