Alex's Interview with Review, Rinse, Repeat!

[letsgetreckless]

We were lucky enough to speak with Hey Monday’s Alex Lipshaw prior to the band’s home­town show ear­lier this week. The band dis­cussed their recent Decaydance-driven suc­cess, and the process of pro­duc­ing a follow-up - which may not be titled Beneath It All.

Maria@RRR: So this is your home­town show, and it’s sold-out tonight. How are you feel­ing about that?
Alex: We are excited. We’re really excited because we all get to go home for a lit­tle bit, clean-up, do laun­dry, chill with our fam­i­lies. We’re really look­ing for­ward to play­ing the show tonight because we know a lot of peo­ple here and stuff.

Maria@RRR: How has the AP Tour been treat­ing you so far?
Alex: The AP Tour has been amaz­ing. We’ve been able to play the direct-support slot which is right before the head­liner, which we’ve never done on another tour. We’ve had a great crowd reac­tion, bet­ter than any other tour before.



Maria@RRR: So I read that there’s only 8 songs on the new album. Isn’t that more like a long EP rather than a full length? What’s the rea­son­ing behind only record­ing 8 songs?
Alex: We fig­ured we would put out less songs on our album, but we’re going to have the 8 songs that are on the album, or what­ever amount that we choose to be the best songs out of the songs that we wrote so we don’t waste any music. We don’t want to put out, you know, any songs that aren’t going to do any­thing, you know? We just feel like there’s a few other artists that are doing it too, doing the same thing, and we fig­ured it would be for the better.

Maria@RRR: Cassadee co-wrote the songs on the new album with Sam Hollander, Dave Katz, Butch Walker, and more. How did these col­lab­o­ra­tions with these song writ­ers come about?
Alex: I guess she fig­ured out the direc­tion that she wanted to, you know the direc­tion of the album that we wanted it to go. Then we fig­ured out, well they would be the best pro­duc­ers to work with if we want to do what we want to do. So they came in to play, and things came together pretty well.

Maria@RRR: How do you think they influ­enced the songs on your album?
Alex: They just kind of give it that pro­fes­sional touch. They know what they’re doing, and we’re just kind of young kids, that we know how to play music, but we haven’t been doing it for years and years. So [they can] tell us what’s going to work, and what’s not.

Maria@RRR: How was the record­ing process for your new album?
Alex: It was amaz­ing, it was really fun. We went up to New York City. We had a lit­tle bit of time up there, we kind of like lived in the city for a lit­tle bit. And the record­ing stu­dio was super chill - everyone’s friendly, everyone’s really nice. Everyone just liked to hang out and make music. It was like a really cre­ative envi­ron­ment, it was amazing.

Maria@RRR: How do the new songs com­pare to the songs on Hold On Tight?
Alex: I think that the new songs are a lit­tle bit more mature sound­ing. I know a lot of peo­ple say that, but you’ll know what I mean when you hear it. It’s like, it’s just a lit­tle bit more, less pop rock, I guess like less pop-punk rock, and its more just kind of like pop rock, should I say? Just you know, more mature sound­ing, that’s really the best way I can describe it.

[note: this part of the inter­view was repeated, as we were interrupted and Alex then wished to con­sult Cassadee]

Maria@RRR: Could you have Cassadee explain the sig­nif­i­cance of the album title ‘Beneath It All’?
Alex: She said that, hon­estly the album might not even be called that. That was just some­thing that she was test­ing dur­ing an inter­view, that I guess some­how got out so it might be called some­thing else, we don’t even really know.

Maria@RRR: What are you hop­ing to accom­plish on your new album that you didn’t already accom­plish on your last one?
Alex: During this album cycle, we really hoped to, I mean just take it as far as we haven’t gone now. Just keep going in the right direc­tion, and just take it as far as we can go. We hope to def­i­nitely tour the world on this album. Go to places that we haven’t been, like through­out Europe and South America. Hopefully we can accom­plish that with this album.

Maria@RRR: How do you feel about the suc­cess of your band since releas­ing Hold On Tight?
Alex: I think it’s amaz­ing. It’s just a bless­ing. I could be stuck in a band where the man­age­ment and the label don’t know what they’re doing, but we’re so for­tu­nate that we really have peo­ple that are smart, peo­ple that know what they’re doing. It’s been amaz­ing, I couldn’t have asked for more.

Maria@RRR: You’re going to be play­ing on Warped Tour this year. Is there any­thing you’re look­ing for­ward to on Warped?
Alex: Yeah, sup­pos­edly Warped Tour is like the ulti­mate tour. Supposedly, when you’re a band on the tour, you just make some of your clos­est friends for life. It’s sup­posed to be an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence, I’m really look­ing for­ward to it, and the bar­be­cues every night, and stuff like that. Yeah, it’s going to be amazing.

Maria@RRR: Are there any bands play­ing Warped Tour that you’re excited to hang out with or share the stage with?
Alex: I’ve always been a fan of Sum 41, and I heard they’re play­ing the entire thing, so I’m pretty stoked on that. That’s going to be crazy.

Maria@RRR: What are your plans after Warped Tour?
Alex: We really don’t know yet. I guess we’re just going to let the album drop and see what hap­pens. That’s when we’ll plan out our future.

Maria@RRR: Do you have any crazy tour sto­ries to share?
Alex: Yeah, it’s kind of like, every night’s a story. Everywhere we go, some­thing crazy hap­pens. Perfect exam­ple, last show we played in Jacksonville, we just played right by the beach, the show went amaz­ing. Everything was pretty much flaw­less that day, and then we just went out on the beach, had a party, every­one hung out. We were up to like, prob­a­bly, six in the morn­ing, just hav­ing a great time in Florida. Kind of like every night, there’s some­thing crazy that hap­pens. For the most part, it’s usu­ally just chill like that.

Maria@RRR: Yeah, that seems pretty chill. Do you have any­thing cra­zier than that? Maybe an FBI story, or some­thing out of the ordinary?
Alex: Let me think… I’m try­ing to think of some­thing appro­pri­ate. Okay, I got one. The other day, we were dri­ving from Salt Lake City to Denver, and there was a bliz­zard, that was kind of like fol­low­ing the trip that we had to take through the moun­tains, and it was like an eight hour drive or some­thing. The entire night, our bus was just slid­ing all over the road. I think one of the other buses got stuck on the free­way, slid off the road, stuff like that. Fortunately, our bus was the only one that made it through, but it ended up being like a 12-13 hour drive because our dri­ver had to drive like 30 miles per hour through the moun­tains. Yeah, that was pretty appropriate.

Maria@RRR: Thanks for tak­ing time to do this inter­view. Is there any­thing else you’d like to add?
Alex: Yeah, just check out the album when it comes out. It should be out right at the begin­ning of the sum­mer, but we should have a new sin­gle com­ing out, like really any day now. So, just keep your eyes peeled!

Hey Monday will release their sec­ond album this sum­mer via Decaydance Records.
(source)