Motion City Soundtrack
Interview with Matt Taylor of Motion City Soundtrack
Eagles Ballroom, Milwaukee, WI

Interviewed By:

Eric: The question everyone is dying to hear from you guys, what’s your take on the Tiger Woods situation right now?
Matt: I just heard about it yesterday. I’m actually-I’m super bummed about it. I’ve actually just started playing golf so I kind of have been like-this is super nerdy but, I’ve been going onto Tigerwoods.com, seeing what’s in his bag, you know, just checking it out. I don’t know, I think it’s horrible. If my facts are straight he’s actually guilty of messin’ around, right?
Eric: Jury’s kind of out but he did admit to some transgressions.
Matt: And then, got drunk and wrecked his car? What was sup with that?
Eric: Jury’s out on that one too, I mean, something up. (laughter)
Matt: Well, when the Jury comes back maybe I’ll have an opinion, but right now it’s just a bummer.

Eric: Milwaukee, any memorable experiences in the past coming through here at all? I know you said you’re from Virginia, probably not too many road stops in Milwaukee.
Matt: Every time we come here, we play the Rave. When we were just starting out, we were playing the bar. Then you move downstairs, then you move upstairs, and then you go to the top floor so it’s like we’re pretty much just growing up in this building here. I think we’ve hit the Taco Bell a couple times back in the day and Star Bucks is always a stop in the morning and the Ambassador Bar after the show.

Eric: Playing with Weezer, what’s your take on that?
Matt: That is a dream come true since high school. I think I can speak on all of our behalf on that one. I got the Blue record in eleventh grade and ever since then,  I’ve been, you know, a huge fan.

Eric: I’ve heard different people compare your music to Pinkerton and some other Weezer records.
Matt: Definitely a huge influence for all of us, for sure.

Ben: What other influences to you guys bring to the table?
Matt: I don’t know, we kind of see eye to eye on a lot of things and then we all kind of branch off but bands that we all liked were Ben Folds and then DC area stuff like Jawbox and Fugazi, Q And Not U, a lot of the disc core kind of angular stuff. Justin’s a huge Superchunk fan as well as Josh. Josh is way into the Steve Albini stuff from the 90’s. I’m kind of a touch of metalhead-itis.
Ben: What’s that?
Matt: Well, my fiancé actually got me into it. She’s way into European stuff like black metal. Now she’s into Keltic Metal which I’m kind of on the fence about.
Ben: Keltic Metal?
Matt: Like full on, you know, folk music instruments – three or four going over the top of just pummeling metal riffs, it’s pretty amazing. Jury’s still out on that one, for me.

Ben: You guys are going overseas after the new album aren’t you?
Matt: Yes…
Eric: Australia or?
Matt: Australia, Japan, at some point we’ll be hitting Europe.
Eric: And that’s for the new record, “My Dinosaur Life.”
Matt: Correct.

Eric: How did that name (My Dinosaur Life) come about?
Matt:  Justin came up with that one. He says he heard a quote from a movie and misinterpreted the quote. It was apparently- it wasn’t my dinosaur Life, it was my dragon life or something like that. He took it from that and kind of ran with the idea.
Ben: What about the band name?
Matt: That was something Josh’s brother actually came up with. Josh and Justin were playing at the time…
Ben: And you’ve been with the band since 2002?
Matt: Yes. They formed in like 97 and Josh was like, “Hey I have this band, we don’t have a name.“ They couldn’t decide on a decent name; they were going to be Jesus Butter but they decided that wasn’t very cool . Uconn Cornelius didn’t stick either. So then Motion City Soundtrack, Josh just kind of borrowed it from his brother I guess (laughter).

Eric: Other than Weezer influences, are there any other cds in particular that have really influenced you?
Matt: Yeah I mean, I started playing bass in high school so if you’re talking about going back that far, I started to… kind of the more popular alternative stuff when I was in high school. The Chili Peppers “Blood Sugar Sex Magik” to me was like the coolest thing I had ever heard in my life at that time you know, and then Primus of course. I really gravitated to the showoffy bass players first because I kind of realized “Whoa, that’s a cool instrument” you know. And then from there I kind of fell into bands like Radiohead. Colin Greenwood is super solid but not flashy. Kim Coletta from Jawbox, her tone was very influential to me. So those are some big ones but the new Phoenix record…
Eric, Ben: Yeah we were just listening to that on the way here, that’s a great record…
Matt: Yeah, that and Passion Pit, there’s some songs on that record that are just really-really good.
Ben: Manners?
Matt: Yeah, just got that one. 

Ben: When you practice, I know you’re one of the hardest working bands out there is what I read (winks), when do you find time to practice and come up with new songs?
Matt: Don’t believe everything you read (laughing). We generally don’t. I don’t know if you know, I live in Virginia, Jesse’s in Brooklyn, two guys are in Minneapolis and Tony’s in LA. So, practice for us is like, let’s fly in 5 days before tour, get our shit together and go. But this whole last year we actually did have some good chunks of writing time in there. About a year ago we had two sessions in Minneapolis. So we just kind of block out big chunks of time and rent a room or studio and go at it now. We do a lot of writing apart now with technology, it’s helped us a lot.
Ben: Send it to each other?
Matt: Yeah, a lot of emailing and iChat. Just little guitar parts back and forth, it’s actually cool, we’ve built a lot of songs that way for demos this time.
Ben: There’s something new that Tommy Lee is working on that you can send in parts to contribute, to collaborate on songs.
Matt: Oh yeah! That’s a really cool idea, it’s crazy.

Eric: Alright, one final question given you guys are going to be hitting the stage shortly. This kind of goes for all musicians, do you ever find yourself nervous before hitting the stage?
Matt: Every single show. As soon as your guys leave, I’m going to get in show mode and I’ll get nervous. And then right when were waiting to go on when the intro starts I’ll be… I’ll be shaking. The second we start playing, I’ll be fine. But, every show. We plaid an acoustic show yesterday and I was almost puking, I was so nervous. I’m fine once we start playing, I don’t know what it is.