Pierre x The Record Company 2021
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00:00It is 93.3 WMMR in Philadelphia.
00:03It's been a while since we have heard something new from this band,
00:06the band being the record company, but we finally have a new record.
00:10Their third official called Play Loud.
00:13It came out on Friday, October 8th.
00:16And since it's been a while since we've seen them,
00:19we're going to be able to change that as well with a date.
00:22The last time was New Year's Eve of 2019, by the way.
00:26But the date will be October 27th at the same place, the TLA over on South Street.
00:32Finally returning to Philly and with a new album.
00:35What a pleasure to welcome Mr. Chris Voss to MMR.
00:39Good day, sir.
00:40The pleasure and honor is all mine.
00:43And thank you to the loyal listeners to this fantastic show.
00:48As you know, Pierre, Alex grew up in the Philadelphia area
00:51and he grew up loving and cherishing your melodious voice
00:57and the rock and roll that you brought to people.
01:01And I also wanted to tell the great listeners of this great MMR program that
01:07the last time that we played before this whole BS storm happened,
01:14we were in the presence of the one and only Pierre Robert backstage afterwards
01:20in the last pre-COVID concert I ever played, getting just...
01:25Well, I'll say what I was doing.
01:26I won't rat you up here.
01:27I was getting just absolutely hammered, as you should on New Year's Eve,
01:32holding flowers, holding whatever the heck we could, each other.
01:36It was a beautiful scene, Pierre.
01:37That memory gave me a lot of hope for the future
01:42as we stood in the midst of the shadow of the 2020.
01:46And I'm glad as hell to see you again and to be back out here on the road.
01:50No, we're heading back in your direction, man.
01:52And to be sitting in this dank basement, brick walls, graffiti,
01:56that's not suitable for radio.
01:58It's got to be rock and roll.
02:00Detroit, St. Andrews.
02:02Man, I'm loving life.
02:03Let's do this.
02:04What do you want to talk about?
02:05Well, I mean, I want to talk about this new record,
02:08but it's cool that the very place you're going to be playing
02:12was the last place you played.
02:14And I remember you counting down New Year's Eve from the stage at the TLA.
02:19And then I was equally as pain-free as you were, by the way.
02:23So I'll fully cop to that.
02:25But, you know, toasting the beginning of a new year,
02:29there's always this optimism on New Year's Eve.
02:32It was the end of 2019.
02:33And you guys were rushing back to L.A.
02:37to work on what was the new album at the time.
02:40It's still the new album.
02:42But it didn't quite work out the way we thought.
02:45But that sense of optimism that we get on New Year's Eve
02:48wasn't quite fulfilled within a few months of the following,
02:52you know, as we entered that following year.
02:56But we had no idea, did we, that that would be the case?
03:00No.
03:00And I think, you know, we all we all.
03:03One of the things that I think about as artists and as people is we all.
03:08I don't know if we've ever other than like, you know,
03:11and I don't want to turn it into a drag.
03:12Let's just acknowledge the reality other than maybe, you know, 9-11.
03:16There wasn't anything that we as a group of people had ever experienced.
03:20And so now we're talking about the whole world.
03:22So it's like we all have this this struggle.
03:25We've all endured.
03:26And I think there's two ways we can go with that.
03:28It brought a lot of things to light.
03:30And it brought a lot of things, I think, individually,
03:34speaking for myself, to light inside myself.
03:37Walking away, not having the ability to testify live music
03:42made me come to terms with the fact that a lot of my emotions
03:45and who I was was tied into healing through that process.
03:48So I had to find a whole new way to do it.
03:50And writing this record and being a part of this record
03:52was both freeing and a revolution of the soul for me and the band.
04:02Because on the one hand, you're taken back to being a 14-year-old kid.
04:06You've got no social agenda.
04:08You've got no ability to go anywhere or do anything.
04:11And the only thing, by far the best thing you can do with your time
04:15is pick up your guitar and write a song.
04:17And that is it, man.
04:19And so we go in.
04:20We're about to go into the studio.
04:22Then all of a sudden, it's like, nope.
04:23So we just kept writing and kept writing and kept writing.
04:26And then we get the protocols.
04:28OK, you can go into the studio.
04:29We were the first band, Dave Sardi, who produced this album.
04:32We've done hundreds of records.
04:34LCD Sound System, Oasis, Wolf Mother, the new Modest Mouse record,
04:38et cetera, et cetera.
04:39We were the first band he had in since COVID.
04:41So he's like, I've made hundreds of records.
04:42I've never made a COVID record.
04:44So this is new for me.
04:45And the fear of that, plus the isolation, all of that went into the record.
04:53And it made the music really pure to the moment.
04:59And our inclination as people is when we are feeling like crap, our desire is to fight back
05:10against that and go, no, I'm not going to just say, I feel like crap.
05:16I'm going to say like, yes, I feel like crap.
05:18And I'm getting the hell over it.
05:19I'm moving on.
05:20Or you're acknowledging it and just saying, I'm dealing with it.
05:26But it's not like, oh, woe is me.
05:28What do I do?
05:30Which those songs are needed, but those aren't the songs that we do.
05:33And this album was the saving grace of my year.
05:41I think everybody found ways to get by.
05:44It was just really, I know I'll never, I hope I never have to make a record under these
05:48circumstances again.
05:49But I felt like we owned it.
05:52We wrote the best songs we could and made us open up to new possibilities.
05:58It's the third record.
05:59You establish who you are on the first record.
06:01You know, you listen to like the Beatles.
06:03Beatles, one, two, three, four, five doesn't sound like Rubber Soul.
06:06Doesn't sound like Sgt.
06:07Pepper's Stones now.
06:08Doesn't sound like Let It Bleed.
06:10Zeppelin 1 doesn't sound like Houses of the Holy.
06:13You've got to evolve.
06:14And that's what we wanted to do on this third record.
06:17And you add all this other stuff in there.
06:19And that's what you're left with.
06:21And this is our album, Play Loud.
06:22Well, Alex, your bass player, has said, and he produced the first two albums and kind of
06:29didn't want to do the third one.
06:31And you found Dave Sardi, as you mentioned, who has such experience.
06:34I'm wondering how a still young band like yours courts and finds a connection, courting, I
06:43think being the appropriate word, to a producer that they can sync with and that you know that
06:50you're both teams are firing on the same cylinder that he or she gets what you want to do and
06:56you can receive direction and guidance from that producer.
07:01That is such a great question and shows your experience at interviewing bands about this
07:08process because nobody's ever asked me that.
07:11And that's huge what you just say, chemistry, chemistry, chemistry.
07:16We're very insular because we had to be.
07:19When we formed this band, we had all been in other bands.
07:21And the first two records, we were like, we're doing it our way, our way, our way, our way, our way.
07:27That was our, that was our marching artist first, our way, second, our way, third, our way.
07:32We will live and die together.
07:34You know, that's it.
07:36And we didn't care.
07:38Honestly, when we started, it's not that we didn't care.
07:41We didn't think about, oh, are people going to listen to this?
07:44Is it going to get on a radio?
07:46Is it, is this going to make our dreams come true?
07:48We had been, our dreams have been completely smashed and crushed our entire careers.
07:52The best thing that ever could happen to us.
07:54Because when we got together, all those mistakes, we said, let's not make those anymore.
07:58So we did it ourselves.
07:59We're like, we're in the middle of Los Angeles.
08:01We want to play rock and roll.
08:03And it's not in fashion at all.
08:07Screw it.
08:08We're going to do it anyway.
08:09And it just ended up having that attitude worked.
08:12And what happened with Dave is Dave has that, he, we, A, we were huge admirers.
08:21So that's a thing.
08:24When you're going to do a great project, the first thing is, do you like the work of the person?
08:29And we loved it.
08:30You know, we have those records in our record collection.
08:32You know, you look on the back of those records and we're pulling the records out in Alex's and we were just laughing.
08:37It's like, oh, there's that LCD sound system record.
08:39There's his name.
08:40You know, like he was a pie in the sky.
08:43We didn't think this guy would ever look in our direction.
08:47You know, you don't expect to have a guy like that say yes.
08:50Find out he's a fan.
08:51That's encouraging.
08:53Now you got to go meet him.
08:54Now you got to go into this meeting being a fan.
08:57But you also got to know, this is your album.
09:00This is, this is, your life is on the line when you make a record.
09:04This is, rock and roll music is always pushing all your chips to the center of the tape.
09:10Always.
09:11Maybe you leave one chip to have a chip in a chair to move forward.
09:15But I've always been pushed.
09:18So you've got to know that this works.
09:22Within seconds, you knew.
09:25The guy just had this energy and we met a lot of people after him.
09:29And he just was one.
09:30It's like, if you go out on a date and you meet that one person, you go on a few more dates
09:34and that one person is still lagging back behind your head going, hmm, maybe I should go back,
09:38back to that person.
09:40It just, nobody, it just, he was the one.
09:42He knew how to, he knew he was not intimidated by the insularness of us.
09:47He was, he knew how to break through that, how to get our guard down.
09:51And then once inside, you knew when to cause a ruckus, you knew when to push, you knew
09:56when to cradle, you knew when he, he went egoless.
10:00We were not afraid to tell a guy like him.
10:03If he said, how about this idea?
10:05We're like, nah.
10:06And if he really liked it, he'd be like, all right, dudes, you ain't hearing it.
10:10And if he thought it wasn't really buying it, he's like, okay.
10:12And he did the same to us.
10:13We were like, look, listen to this.
10:15And he'd be like, eh, not buying it.
10:17And it sounds like cold and callous, right?
10:20But you got to understand that's who we are.
10:22That's how we work.
10:23That might not work for another band.
10:25He might not be that way with another band.
10:27He had enough experience to know how to get to your creative center and, and push you higher.
10:33And he turned me into a ball of like a nervous wreck.
10:37And he made me feel like, you know, I was levitating off the ground, ready to, you know,
10:43fly into the atmosphere all within the span of sometimes an hour.
10:46And that's, that's where good rock and roll, I found out this is where good rock and roll
10:52comes from.
10:53And Pierre, I know I'm going along with this answer, but I got to say one more thing.
10:57Cause you asked a really great question.
10:58And I'm going to put this out there to any listener who's listening to thinks about like
11:03what a band thinks about, or if you are in a band, I think this is really, this is something
11:08I heard take it or leave it that hit me really hard.
11:10I'd never thought about this.
11:12First day we meet him, he goes, Hey, you need to work with somebody.
11:15That's going to lose sleep over your record.
11:17Just like you.
11:18And I was like, that's got my attention.
11:20Cause I grew up on a farm.
11:21I know all about not sleeping.
11:24And I'm like, you don't sleep when you got work to do you work.
11:28And I love that.
11:29I was like, all right, this guy is going to care.
11:31And it just felt that way.
11:33The other thing he said was when you make an album, he's like, you see, he had albums
11:38on the plane.
11:38So you see that Rolling Stones album over there.
11:40Your album is up against those albums in the grand scheme of rock and roll.
11:46So you better put your best foot forward.
11:50If you want to land on a shelf with these records, he's like, and you can't make this record
11:56thinking that way, but you've got to know that that is what you're trying to do.
12:02And it blew my head off.
12:04I was like, I never, you know, you think of these things as these big sacred things,
12:08but when you're like, you're not trying to compete with that, but it's like, you don't
12:11go into it thinking I got to get my record on that shelf, which means I got to dig deep.
12:17Your record is not going to get on that shelf.
12:19And it's up to the listener to put it on the shelf or not.
12:22But as you as a band don't go heavy, hard into that sensation, it's never going to make
12:28it.
12:28And I'd never thought that way.
12:29And that gave me a lot of confidence and it also broke me down in nothing because I'm
12:35like, and he steered us through all of that.
12:37And that's what a great producer does.
12:39He says things that scare you and then he leads you through the woods.
12:44You know, he's like, I know the pathway through this gentleman.
12:47And it's, it was a hell of an experience, Pierre.
12:50A life-changing experience, man.
12:53We're speaking with Chris Voss on 93.3 WMMR on the Zoom.
12:57And I want to play how high we've been playing it, obviously, but it was the first single
13:03from the record.
13:05Tell us about that song.
13:06Because I think it was done before the pandemic.
13:08I think you had it done, right?
13:10No, we had, well, we had started writing it and then it kind of, this was another thing
13:17just really quickly.
13:18Meanings of songs changed.
13:20We had written some of these songs before.
13:22And then all of a sudden the lyric that you had written with an intention in your heart
13:26as you go to sing it, after you've been locked away from everybody, all of a sudden you realize
13:30the lyric, even if you haven't changed it, has changed.
13:33So the song transformed beneath our very feet, which was beneath our souls, beneath our hearts
13:40and our ears.
13:41It transformed because of the world.
13:43And so that adds something to it.
13:47It added an attitude to it.
13:49And Alex was coming down.
13:51He wrote this bass line.
13:53Alex has a knack for that.
13:54One of the keys of our band is we figured with rock and roll, we're like, man, you know,
13:59we're talking about a genre that's, you know, now almost 70, 80 years old.
14:04It depends on where you believe it began.
14:06I believe it began in the late 40s, contrary to some beliefs.
14:09If you listen to some recordings from that time, you know, like Wynoni Harris playing
14:14There's Good Rockin' Tonight, 1948.
14:17I mean, that's a rock and roll song.
14:19But anyhow, he came down out of the mountains and there was some guy, he goes on these walks,
14:25he's walking out of Griffith Park, like behind the Hollywood sign.
14:27And he hears this like groove coming out of somebody's like little personal speaker walking
14:32around.
14:33It's just like, and he walked, all of a sudden he got the bass line and he said,
14:37And he, like he said, he sang it into his voice memo.
14:45And then he went home and he recorded it.
14:47He sent Mark and I the bass line.
14:49I was like, oh, brother, you have hit it on this one, man.
14:51I was so stoked when I heard it.
14:53And then we took, we had the melody already.
14:56We just, we had the chords, but we didn't have that, that, that bass line.
14:59And once he wrote that, the rest wrote itself, except for the fact in the chorus, we didn't
15:06get that chorus, that last line of the chorus, which is, it goes, how high, how high do you
15:11want to fly?
15:12Right?
15:12Okay.
15:12We had that.
15:13But it's like, now what do you say after that?
15:16It's like, you can't say that twice.
15:17So to the last day of recording, we didn't have that second line.
15:22And it's so unbelievably difficult to come up with a simple line that doesn't sound like
15:29what you'd expect, that uses simple language, that falls into the melody and tells the story.
15:35The last day on my knees with Dave Sardi and Alex, like Alex and I virtually nearly brought
15:44to tears because we realized this is a huge moment.
15:46This song could be the lead single.
15:48We knew that already.
15:49We're like, we'd been in this long enough to know this is a special one.
15:53And we didn't have that lyric and we're just riffing back and forth.
15:57And then we started talking about dying.
16:00And then I was like, I don't want to talk about dying.
16:02But then I was like, so high, so high, thought I died and came back to life.
16:06That's it.
16:08And I recorded it within two minutes of writing it with Alex and Dave.
16:12I don't know who said the whole thing, which way it doesn't matter.
16:15It happened between the three of us.
16:16And that's how this song was born.
16:18And that's how this song was completed.
16:20This was the last song.
16:22The last thing I sang for the record was this song.
16:25Wow.
16:26I had no idea.
16:28I love that story.
16:29Never told that story, man.
16:30You bring it out of me, man.
16:33Well, thank you.
16:34So then we flash forward to the opening night of the NFL and that song is on television.
16:44I assume you knew that was coming.
16:46But even if you did, that's got to be pretty mind blowing.
16:50I'm not a huge football guy or a sports guy, but television, NFL, that's heavy.
16:57Yeah, man.
16:57That was a cool experience.
17:00And this month, ESPN is using that song as their lead in and lead out.
17:06And I do like sports.
17:07I like football.
17:09My brewers, unfortunately, just got crushed by the Braves last night.
17:13And so maybe that had had something to do with me drinking till 5 a.m. last night on the bus, which I look at as part of my job to find the creative juice.
17:23You know, part of my job, man.
17:25You know, I wanted this job.
17:27And dang it, I'm going to I'm going to do the job.
17:29But the ESPN using it.
17:34So a little quick story.
17:37Years ago, I'm a Packers fan.
17:38OK, now Alex is from Philly.
17:40He's a Philly fan.
17:42Mark's like, I don't know what happened.
17:43Mark, he's a Dolphins fan.
17:44He was born in upstate New York.
17:46He just gluttoned for punishment.
17:47I don't know.
17:48But the I'm watching a Packers game and our song off the ground came on and it was used like really big time.
17:56I had no idea it was coming.
17:57And I'm sitting there with a beer in my hand and I'm watching it with my wife.
18:02And I look over.
18:03My wife was one of those just one of those only moments in my life where I actually said the right thing at the right time.
18:08I turned to her.
18:09I said, hey, dear, you know what I'm doing right now?
18:10And she goes, what?
18:11I hold my beer up and the song is playing and she's like freaking out.
18:14I'm like, I'm working.
18:20The guy whose dad's a farmer and grew up on a farm.
18:23That's kind of work I can get into.
18:25Yeah, I should say so.
18:26Well, I mean, when you guys covered the O.J.'s love train, O.J.'s Philly, by the way, and then that got used in the Coors commercial, you discovered for a relatively small investment of time and having some fun covering that song, it could be a nice little payday attached to that.
18:42Yeah, and I'm glad I discovered that at the point in life when I did, because if I'd have been 21 and a mailbox and check came, I would have probably thought money was easy to come by.
18:53Luckily, I always had earned my money the hard way.
18:55Well, it's interesting because in the earlier days of rock from the 60s through the mid 80s, I would say it was considered absolutely foreboding.
19:08You just would not, if you were a rock and roll band, have anything to do with selling that song for a commercial.
19:16Nowadays, and somebody even like John Mellencamp used to complain loudly about that when song rock songs were used in that kind of a way.
19:29And then years later, he discovered one of the only ways he could get his new music out was by selling it as a Chevrolet truck commercial.
19:37And that's how a lot of people were hearing it.
19:40So that whole mentality has shifted.
19:42We're good friends with a young band called The Struts.
19:44And I actually cheered when I heard one of their songs in a Mercedes-Benz commercial.
19:50I'm good friends with The Struts, too.
19:52I love those guys.
19:53Yeah, they're just great.
19:54But I mean, it's interesting how that whole psyche has changed and shifted through the years because now it's kind of a sign of success for a young band to get that.
20:05And they've worked hard, and it's an opportunity to make a little go, and there's nothing wrong with that.
20:10Yeah, I think I'd put it this way.
20:14I'm not a car salesman or anything like that.
20:16Not that there's anything wrong with being a car salesman.
20:19You are freaking good for you.
20:20I'm a rock and roll guy.
20:21But let me tell you this.
20:23I want to throw this out to you from my heart.
20:25Dear listeners who think that this is, if anybody thinks it's weird for a band to do that, look, you can have the free streaming.
20:34But if you want a rock and roll band to exist and come to your town, they got to make money somehow.
20:39And that means I'd be more than happy to, if everybody was buying records, to make freer choices.
20:46And then the argument changes.
20:48And I get it from the time that it was, why it was that way.
20:51It might have been looked like taking too big a bite of the apple.
20:54It's like, don't you have enough, man?
20:56You know, when you're making millions of dollars off your record sales.
20:59I get that.
21:00But nowadays, that OJ's cover, that put us on a road.
21:04And believe me, we weren't eating sirloin steaks out there, man.
21:07We were eating ramen noodles and driving around in a minivan.
21:10But that got us out there.
21:11And if you want bands, if you're a rock and roll fan, one thing I would say, A, it's an 80-year-old genre.
21:19So it really annoys me when people start going, oh, this sounds like this.
21:24This sounds like that.
21:25Yo, it's 80 years old.
21:27We owe everything to Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker.
21:31The Stones took from them.
21:32Then Zebra took from the Stones.
21:35Everybody's been taken from everybody.
21:36If you want new rock and roll, cut new rock and roll bands a break and let them make some rock and roll.
21:42It's an 80-year-old genre.
21:43They're playing guitars.
21:44Some things are going to have to be recycled.
21:46But you bring it back into today.
21:48Like our album at the core has those influences.
21:51But we are in 2021.
21:53We're not making an album trying to sound like it's 1967.
21:56But there are elements of it that are from 1967, 1947, 1927.
22:02Because there are things that have existed that create this thing that we all love and has been built.
22:09But that speaks to the great variety that is music.
22:14I mean, you grew up with Motown records in your house, you know, but you also loved everything from, you know, Willie Dixon to Jimi Hendrix to Metallica.
22:23So, I mean, I think you got your first guitar at 11 years old or something and didn't even know how to play it, if I understand correctly.
22:30Right.
22:30But, I mean, got my Nirvana shirt on right now, man.
22:34Oh, sweet.
22:35One of the great heroes of all time, you know.
22:37I mean, yeah.
22:38But I love new stuff.
22:40I love St. Vincent.
22:41I love Tampala.
22:42You know, I love Mastodon.
22:45You know, I love a lot of stuff that's out there right now, you know.
22:50We don't have too much time left, but I got to ask you a couple more things.
22:53I saw a hysterical Facebook Live posting just a couple of nights ago.
23:00And you're there and you're doing a Facebook Live.
23:04And it's interesting because you're capable of playing one-on-one in a room with someone or in front of thousands of people with the band.
23:12And yet you acknowledged to the audience on Facebook, first of all, that you were nervous doing that.
23:19Oh, yeah.
23:19And then, secondly of all, as we proceed into the story, and you played Today Forever, and I think my favorite song from the album, Live Is One.
23:29But I found it great that you were doing those songs just kind of spontaneously.
23:36And you said, well, my wife is downstairs, and they're doing construction in my neighborhood.
23:41And the only place I can get a good sound is, you want to tell us where the song's from?
23:46Yeah, it was in my bathroom.
23:48It was, and it was, it was.
23:51I love that.
23:52I just love that.
23:53It was a spontaneous moment.
23:55And I was like, I'm like balancing it against one of my, the phone against one of my wife's like, hairspray bottles.
24:02And I'm like, can you see the toilet?
24:04Let's not do that.
24:05I couldn't see the toilet.
24:06No, no, no.
24:07I know you couldn't, because I checked to make sure nobody could see the toilet.
24:10I'm like, I don't think that's a good look.
24:12But I'm like, I've got a litter box in the corner.
24:14I'm like, let's make sure that's not in there.
24:16And, you know, I had found an area that I could have pretended I wasn't in the bathroom.
24:20There's like some nice stuff hanging around as a door.
24:23Who would have known?
24:24But what the hell, man?
24:26It's 2021.
24:27We've just been through hell.
24:29Let's drop the BS and be real, man.
24:31And to be truthful, I didn't grow up like, I've got a Nirvana shirt on.
24:36Man, this is what I grew up with.
24:37I didn't grow up thinking that I had to worry about, hey, am I going to do a Facebook Live?
24:42But you know what?
24:44That's part of the game now.
24:45And if I'm going to play the game, I'm going to play it my way.
24:47And if that's not pretty, well, neither am I.
24:49But my soul is.
24:50So let's just let that shine.
24:51And we'll go any which way we got to go.
24:53We think you're very pretty, by the way.
24:55There's the crap out of me to do those Facebook Lives here.
24:58I hate that.
24:58You hit the button and you're like, I'm going live to who now?
25:02What's this?
25:03Where?
25:03What?
25:04What's going on?
25:05Radio?
25:05No problem.
25:06But those Facebook Lives, man, they freak me out, man.
25:10To close our conversation, I want to play Live As One.
25:12Tell us about that song, because it's I just think it's a beautiful, beautiful song.
25:17Love, man.
25:18Love, love, love.
25:19You know, there's I grew up first.
25:23Some of the first music I loved was hard, heavy, angry music.
25:28Seek and Destroy was the first song I ever learned how to play.
25:32Metallica.
25:33You know, some kid showed up with a Metallica shirt at my little Catholic grade school,
25:38scared the living crap out of everyone.
25:40And I was like, I want to be like this guy, you know?
25:43And but what I'm saying is.
25:46So when I say, you know, sometimes in rock and roll,
25:48the concept of love, it gets tied in with like the whole.
25:51And I love I mean, I'm I'll stand right here and tell you I love the dead.
25:54I love all that stuff.
25:56But it's not a hippie, dippy concept, man.
26:00It's the essential element that brings us all together.
26:03And I think that like the first thing I always want to admit to myself is I'm imperfect.
26:07I make mistakes.
26:09The best thing I can try and do, you know, my parents really drilled that into me.
26:14Now, like, stay humble.
26:15Know that you're an imperfect.
26:17But the other thing about it is unify through love.
26:21You know, I'm not going to wave my finger in your face.
26:24Don't wave it on my face.
26:25Let's talk.
26:26Let's be together, man.
26:28And, you know, we are not pictures on the Internet.
26:32We are people, man.
26:33Let's get together.
26:34Let's be good to each other.
26:36Let's be kind.
26:37Let's be sweet.
26:38And let's be humble in the face of each other and know that, hey, man, you work.
26:43I work.
26:44You got a mom.
26:45I got a mom.
26:45Or maybe your mom's back.
26:46You've got a family.
26:47I got a family.
26:48You got an agenda.
26:49I got an agenda.
26:50But we're all here.
26:51Let's make it better, man.
26:53Let's stop yelling.
26:54Stop screaming.
26:55Stop talking like we all know what the hell we're talking about.
26:58We're all scared to death.
26:59Let's get in it together and find some answers, man.
27:02And I know we can.
27:03I believe in the inherent goodness of humankind and individuals.
27:07And I will never not because I refuse to go down.
27:10I believe light is stronger than dark, even though I like my music good and dark.
27:16I love that.
27:17I love that.
27:17And we're going to see you in just a few weeks at the TLA.
27:21And you just started this tour.
27:25Last thing I guess I would ask you is speaking of fear,
27:28you've been in such a, you know, a young band.
27:32And, you know, you've been together a while,
27:34but I would still classify you as a young band.
27:36You get, particularly if you have success,
27:39which you've had on these first two albums and now a third record,
27:41you get into that cycle, that life cycle of album, tour, album, tour, album, tour.
27:49And the more successful you become,
27:50the more the record company or the management or both want to work you harder and harder and harder.
27:56So you don't get a lot of breaks in that.
27:59Now, all of a sudden you've gotten a break.
28:03And even if you didn't want it, you had, you had a break of time,
28:09which gave you a perspective, which most bands don't have the luxury of,
28:13but now you're back in that cycle and you've just begun starting to play again.
28:18And I'm wondering, speaking again of fear, what the first time you took the stage,
28:25I don't know if it was just a couple of nights ago in Milwaukee,
28:28you did our friends at XPN, the Exponential Festival.
28:32Yep, we did that.
28:32But I don't know what the first date back was,
28:36but what was the collective feeling among the three of you as you took the stage?
28:42Was it nerves or was it just joy to be back when you stepped on that stage
28:46and you heard a live crowd responding to you?
28:49What's that like?
28:50What was that like for you?
28:53Another great question, man.
28:55Um, it's like getting, it was for me, it was getting a very essential missing piece
29:02of my heart and soul back, which could only erupt into bliss and joy, you know, inside.
29:12There's a person that you are on stage is that is you, but it's kind of like if you've ever
29:18like played sports or you do your dance or whatever you you're into run, whatever you do,
29:24play cards, you're just in a different state of mind.
29:29And you can't be that person unless you're in that activity.
29:34And it was great to re-meet that person again, uh, because he's always in there and he's me
29:42and I'm not talking about me like I'm split personality, but it was great to feel that that
29:45rest of me be there again and, and, and see people with joy and smiles and to see that they
29:53were also reconnecting with something because this was very early.
29:57This was like right at that point where they're like, you don't have to wear a mask.
30:00They'll go out there and have one, you know, that little moment before the Delta variant.
30:04So it was really like, really hopeful at that minute where we're like, oh yes, we've done
30:10it.
30:11And now obviously we've got a little more work to do.
30:13Fine.
30:13We'll do the work.
30:13But it was beautiful, man.
30:16It was, it was soul reconnection, love and, and, and, and it, it washed me clean, man.
30:25And that's what, and so, but I was so worried though, after doing all the work that we did
30:32and then finding new ways to process emotion because I had to, because I was away from the
30:37thing testifying, which is how I always came to connect back to myself.
30:41So it was great to know that all that work didn't harm the experience.
30:47It elevated it.
30:49So right now I feel like I'm, uh, re-baptized into something I love, man.
30:56Uh, uh, and it's an energy that is really, it's flying high.
31:01And we've got two new guys up there with us, Wesley Flowers and Johnny Elkins, because we
31:04made such a bigger sound on the record.
31:06We couldn't pull it off.
31:07We're a rock and roll band.
31:08We're not going to go up there with tracks and like, you're like, oh, here's some voices
31:10that were recorded earlier.
31:11No, you're going to see what you get.
31:13They're two cantankerous, happy, rock and roll, dirty monsters.
31:19Yeah.
31:20They're monsters.
31:21They're cantankerous.
31:22And they, they, they're, they're loose in all the right places and tight in all right
31:26places.
31:26And they, they're, they're not studio aces.
31:29They're rock and rollers.
31:30And, and, uh, you know, so it's, it's a lot of fun.
31:33We're having the town of our lives right now and we're going to keep doing it.
31:37Excellent.
31:38Chris, congratulations on the new record play loud.
31:41We love it.
31:41And, uh, we're thrilled.
31:42It's already getting such rave reviews.
31:44We look forward to seeing you October 27th here, uh, where we last saw you officially
31:49here at the TLA on new year's Eve of 2019.
31:53And, uh, we'll see you in a few weeks, uh, from all of us at MMR Godspeed to you and the
31:57lads.
31:58And, uh, we'll see you soon.
32:01Thank you, Philly.
32:01Thank you, MMR.
32:02Thank you, Pierre.
32:03We love you.
32:03We love you, right?