Get her album ‘The Colorful’ here.

Mavaru: When did you start writing music? How did you music begin to play a major role in your life?

Sydney: Well, my dad is a songwriter, so I grew up sort of always having someone in my household writing. I think I wrote my first song in fourth or fifth grade or something like that, and I’ve sort of been writing pretty consistently since then. Obviously not to the same extent that I am now but I’ve really been writing for as long as I can remember. No one will ever hear the songs that I first wrote, but I did write them. They were not good, but they were written [laughs]. My writing has just developed as I’ve developed and music has become more of a focus, I’d say. It was always a career that I knew I wanted to pursue, but it wasn’t until I left music school that I had the time to fully throw myself into music and writing. So now it’s something I do everyday…

M: Who are some of your biggest influences as a songwriter? Who do you really look up to and admire and whom do you listen to when you’re trying to get inspiration?

Sydney: Serge Gainsbourg…. Rufus Wainwright, Leonard Cohen, Cat Power, Feist, that sort of a thing, I’d say…. And, living in New York is just so inspiring because you’re walking down the street and go into a venue and more often than not there’s a great band playing and so I think I’m inspired by a lot of people I don’t even know, but if I were to say big names that would be who I could listen to.

M: You grew up in LA and spent a lot of time in Paris growing up, and now you’re in New York. You just kind of hinted at it, but how do you feel location affects your creative output as an artist? Do you think it influences you differently to be in a different place?

Sydney: Definitely. I really think it does. Just what you’re surrounded by all the time and the life of a city each day has such a different feel to it, and I think it really affects me. And just like, it’s almost that there are different colors to pick from different cities. And I think each city is just really different. There’s definitely a Brooklyn, New York type of sound, and that’s influenced me. Some of the artists here… New York’s a really inspiring place to be. We have a love-hate relationship. Some days I don’t like it, but some days I take it for what it offers.

M: How do your songs come together? Do you start with a lyric or a melody or a chord progression? What instruments do you use when you’re creating the song initially and how do you build the tune out and the production?

Sydney: I usually write on piano, um, sometimes guitar but mostly piano. I usually write on guitar or ukulele if I’m really stuck. Sometimes just to get a different instrument in your hands is helpful. Also, I don’t really know how to play guitar, so I don’t really over-analyze it I just think of what I like. I’m like, “Oh, this sounds good,” rather than when I’m sitting at the piano and I’m starting to think of the theory and everything so it gets a little too crazy. It’s really different though. Sometimes I write from lyrics… In this process for my next record, Bell Choir Coast, I ended up having a handful of songs I wanted for my record before I had a name for my record, and then I came up with this concept of creating a fictional land which was called Bell Choir Coast, so then in the end I wrote the record based on this concept. So it’s sort of different with writing; sometimes I have a title, sometimes I have words, sometimes I have chords. Then, as far as the production, for this record I was co-producing with my friend. He’s a great producer in New York, and it was sort of him and I in the studio and our friends and some band members in my past band came of over and we just hung out, mainly a group of four or five of us doing everything. It was a really nice sort of organic process. We did each layer one by one and just built it up that way rather than a big live room with all these people in there at the same time. It was very much just Dan and I and maybe three other people.

M: Cool! What stage are you at with the new record?

Sydney: I finally finished! Yeah, it’s been a long process. I’ve been working on it for a year or so, and, like I said, I had a whole record in mind and sort of scrapped it and started over once I came up with the concept of the record. So I just finished it this Wednesday, I finished recording. Now we’re mixing and mastering.

M: Wow! Congratulations!

Sydney: Yeah. We’re looking for like the fall. I think fall is when it’s going to be out to the world. We’ll know more later.

M: Do you feel like your approach to songwriting and instrumentation and things like that has changed since the Silent Parade record up through the most recent record?

Sydney: Definitely. When I wrote Silent Parade, I was still in school actually, I released that record during my last year of school and I was still figuring out what it was, and I definitely felt when I finished the record it was not exactly who I was and wanted to be yet. I released it, but I don’t think it was really who I was, and I felt like The Colorful was a bit more of a self-expression, and I feel like this record, I’ve figured out more what I want to say and how I want to convey that musically and texturally and aesthetically. So that’s sort of how I feel like it’s progressed and my writing has really changed as well. Silent Parade is just kind of sad [laughs]. It’s really melancholic and maybe it was something I was going through or maybe I just felt like that was how I wrote and I feel like I’ve tried to stretch…. I’m not really a sad person. Obviously, everybody gets sad, but I feel like everything I was writing for awhile would come out melancholic when that’s not really who I am or how I felt it was just how I knew how to write. So I think I’ve really been trying to explore how to express what I want to express, how I feel or how to make a good story and tell that through a song rather than just what was easiest to write. It’s like, I can tell you a ballad – easiest thing to write. The fast song that’s fun and exciting and keeps you second guessing and wanting to know what’s coming next – that’s really hard, so I’ve sort of been working on things like that.

M: What are you trying to communicate with your music? How do you want people to feel when they hear it?

Sydney: Well, this record I wrote because the winter in New York this year was just so gloomy. It was unbearable. And I’m from Los Angeles, so I’m not a winter weather person. But this record was supposed to be this fictional place where you could go, or at least where I could go, and submerse myself when I felt just overwhelmed by the gloominess of New York, and it was like, I hope that when people hear this they think of whatever place they want to go that makes them feel good and makes them wonder about the world and makes them explore. That’s what this record was about. Here I am. I can’t leave, the fact that I’m here, but I can then go inside my head and make a world where I want to be and explore that. It was cool, I like made a map of the place in my head and picked out plants that would be there and the people and what they would do and how they would act and what a day would be like for them. And I don’t have any of that in the songs, but I made this really vivid place for myself, then I wrote from that place, and I hope people take that when they hear it.

M: Very cool. So what do you think, so far in your career, and obviously you have a music business degree, what do you think the most effective steps that you’ve taken to promote your music so far? Do you have any interesting plans coming up with your next record? What do you think an artist needs to do to get their music heard by as many potential fans as possible?

Sydney: I think a good thing is sitting down with yourself and really thinking about what you like. Like, for me, I sat down and I wrote down brands I like and all these different things and then I reached out to the companies and said do you want to do a collaboration? How can we both get involved in a way that helps both parties? There’s a shoe company in France that reached out to me about doing a collaboration where they were giving away some records of mine (The Colorful) and they did a competition in their stores and I had flyers of all my stuff in their stores and people could get a digital download if they bought a pair of shoes or something like that. So I think that cross-promotion is really important, but at the same time you don’t want to just do it with anyone. I think the artist needs to sit down and figure out what they stand for, like if you don’t think there should be fast food then you probably shouldn’t do a sponsorship with McDonald’s. Just think about who you want to be involved with because you shouldn’t be involved with someone you don’t want to be involved with. That’s huge. I think free downloads of one song for an email is amazing because nobody’s really going to give you their email unless they feel like they get something too, and that’s been really helpful. And, I know it’s not fancy but just touring. I that’s really what music is about – it’s about how it makes you feel, and I think people being on the road, whether they’re playing for two people or two thousand people, just going and playing is the best thing to get your name out there. And when you do a tour, don’t just go play the city and leave. Set up stuff, like, try to do local college radio that morning or try to do in-store signings or try to do in-store performances before your show. Really milk the tour because you can do so much on a tour, or you can also just play shows. So I think it’s really important to tap into the potential of a tour. So I’d say that those would be my big ones: touring, cross-promotion and free downloads.

M: That’s great advice. Does giving your music away for free bother you? How do you feel about fans having the opportunity to hear it or stream it or download it online? Obviously it opens you up to be discovered by people who wouldn’t have paid to hear something they haven’t heard before, and how can you turn that new fan relationship into something that will help support you down the line?

Sydney: I think what everyone’s trying to figure out is how to make a connection to the fan, you know, fans get pissed off if they can’t buy your record for less than seventeen dollars. I used to go when I was little to the record store and pay like $18.99 for a record, and I didn’t really second guess it because that’s what we did. But now that you don’t have to do that, fans take it almost as an insult that you would charge them that much. And unless it’s something extra special or a bundle or something or you’re going into a record store and buying a hard copy or you’re buying vinyl. I really like the concept of letting your fans pick how much they want to pay because that’s building the relationship. You’re saying, “Here’s what I’m giving you,” and you’re asking the fan to tell you what they think its worth and I think that that gives it value for them. If they think it’s worth five dollars, then they leave spending five dollars feeling good rather than spending ten and are gypped. You don’t really want your fans to feel like they’re not getting their money’s worth. So, I think we don’t really live in a world where we can reverse what’s happened. People expect to get things for free so when they give you five dollars it’s almost like a nice gesture. It’s kind of unfortunate that it is so difficult for artists to make money because how are they supposed to make music if they don’t have any money to do it, but at the same time it’s really just building a lifelong connection with your fan more than just making a lot of money off of one record. I think if artists look at it that way, in the long run, making a fan and them giving you five dollars on a record is better than pissing them off and losing them and getting eight up front.

M: Absolutely. So once you have a fan that discovers your music what do you do, or what should an artist do, to nurture that fan relationship and turn that person into a lifelong fan?

Sydney: I think, first and foremost, you need to make good music. I think that the artist’s job is to work on their music and make sure they’re making good product, but then at the same time trying to just show that you’re aware of them and if they tweeted you, maybe you should tweet back, “Thanks for listening.” If they write, “Oh, I just heard the new record by so-and-so. I love it.” Just saying, “Thanks,” means a lot. If you say thank you to your fans… Like, I was on Twitter today and someone was tweeting at a fan saying, “Thanks for checking out my download,” or something like that, and the fan was ecstatic and that fan is going to tell all their friends this person reached out to them and it’s just breaking down that barrier of you being this artist and your fan not… like I feel like in the old rock and roll scene it was sort of like, oh, here’s this person and they’re elite and you can’t really talk to them, but now you can. You can talk to all of your favorite artists, so they should talk to you back. They shouldn’t shun you, you know? I think that’s really what you should do. Connect with them. You should send out email blasts, but don’t overwhelm them. Give them free downloads if they do commit to you as a fan and are on your email list, give them free stuff that other people can’t get unless they’re your fan. You know, like free videos, free content. It’s all about content. If you give them great content, then you’re going to keep getting more fans. And they’re going to stay once you have them.

M: You kind of hinted at this, but where do you think the music business is going? What are the best opportunities for you to earn a living as an artist, in terms of revenue streams? Are you going to be able to earn your living by creating more fan relationships? Obviously it’s not just one thing, but licensing, partnering with companies, publishing, etc., what kind of mix of revenue streams do you see supporting you in the new music industry?

Sydney: I think it’s a lot of things. I also think that it’s costs. You can’t have the same costs that you used to be able to have. When you signed with a label and you were new, it was like, “Here, here’s $70,000. Make a record.” And now it’s like, “Can you give me five?” I think you should cut costs, and that’s a huge thing. If you’re not expecting to make as much as you would, then you shouldn’t be spending all this money on tour support. If you don’t really need a giant bus, then you probably shouldn’t have the big bus. But as far as revenue, I think a bunch you mentioned. Syncs are important. Collaborative co-promotion is good. I think subscriptions are going to start doing really well. I know they’re already building, but I think they’re going to get better and better and people are going to find platforms they like. I’m on Rhapsody. I like Rhapsody. I still buy records that I really like, but if I want to go check somebody out, Rhapsody is a great place for me to do that. Especially with companies like Sonos, which then you can hook up Rhapsody and all these different platforms to your speakers throughout your house. It’s kind of amazing. I think it’s just subscriptions and things like that. Merch. Tours, obviously tickets, and then the others that we mentioned. And I think that there are actually going to be a bunch of other income streams that we don’t really know about yet. I don’t know exactly what they’re going to be, but just like I didn’t know what subscriptions were all of a sudden they popped up too. Everything’s changing so more people are coming up with different ideas.

Check out their music here!

Mavaru: You guys have been playing together for quite a while. When did you guys get together and what are some of the highlights of your career up to this point?

Geoff: We started in high school – Adam, Raul, and I started the band in ‘99 and then Ryan, our bass player, joined in 2000. The highlights…back in the day, the highlight was playing The Catalyst in Santa Cruz. I could’ve died a happy man back then if I had played The Catalyst.

Mavaru: Right – your big goal, iconic venue?

Geoff: Yea we just wanted to play The Catalyst because there had been huge bands that had played there – we’d go to concerts there all the time. For us it was like a really big deal. Back then in our small sort of minds, The Catalyst was the ‘end all be all’. After that, going on tour with Slightly Stoopid was another really big thing for us. That kind of helped sparked our national career as far as getting into other states outside of California. That kind of was the big the milestone, I think, in our career getting to tour with Stoopid nationally – get a bunch of fans from them.

Mavaru: That’s when you started to realize you had something and you were pulling fans you didn’t expect to, starting to have more of a career than a hobby?

Geoff: Yea, we had played The Catalyst a bunch before that, and we did really good. We had sold the place out a bunch of times before we started doing the Stoopid tour. So that kind of made us realize that we could put a bunch of people in a room and they actually like the words to our songs and know our music. It kind of just never stops, steam always keeps building – we haven’t really gotten smaller since we started, just slowly getting more and more fans and not losing them, I don’t think.

Mavaru: What do you think it is that you guys did to enable that? Obviously you have to write good music, but was it mainly touring and playing shows or having people connect with you live?

Geoff: Yea definitely, back in the day, I’m talking about when we started we definitely had a very hardcore work ethic about getting our flyers out – we would divide up into teams and have a map of the town and one team would have a quadrant of the town and flyer up every telephone poll and hand out hand bills to everybody we could see and we’d do that before every show almost nightly, so I think our drive to get our name out there helped. I didn’t even think we were that good as a band back then, ‘cause we weren’t that good back then! I think it was just being able to hype it up around town – we always played parties and people were getting drunk and having a really good time. I think that kind of just went into the venue – I don’t know…

Mavaru: What about your first couple of shows out of town, when you sold out a venue in a town you’ve never been to?

Geoff: There was one specific show – Florida kind of took us by surprise. We went there once and went back again and we were selling out shows. We were like ‘What the Hell?! This doesn’t happen!’

Mavaru: Well, obviously the music industry is in a state of transition. How do you think that effects you guys as a band, and do you do things differently now to promote your band as opposed to the early days?

Geoff: When we started as a band, Napster was the thing to get music from. It was all free, kind of like the wild west open to get any kind of music you wanted. We had some recordings and we were on Napster and we got thrown around into the early days of having free music – the whole ‘free-for-all’ that happened back then. I think us getting caught in the mix of that definitely helped. When the internet cracked open the music industry, that helped bands like us who wouldn’t have normaly gotten a record deal that would’ve put us on the radio – we got to do it on our computers, very cheap, promotion-wise. As far as MySpace goes, we were able to get a bunch of MySpace friends and that enabled us to get bigger without having to spend any money really.

Mavaru: How do you feel about fans downloading and streaming your music for free online?

Geoff: I don’t really care if people share it. I would rather people listen to the music than not buy it and not listen to it. I would rather have more people at shows.

Mavaru: What do you think your most effective strategies for marketing as a band are?

Geoff: Our band has viewed it as band members should try to be as personal and accessible to the fans as we can. Most of our tours and shows that we do, after we play all of us go to the merchandise table and hang out and try to mingle, say hello to people, shake hands, take pictures, and say thanks for coming out to our show. I can recognize a bunch of fans that I’ve seen over and over throughout the years so it is really great to be personal. Other than that, doing the twittering, responding to people on Facebook and Twitter is a good idea, just having a presence of our every day lives keeps people interested and following along. I think that’s the marketing that us band members can do on a daily basis to help out. I know that’s what I can do as a band member, just to be personal and accessible to the fans.

Mavaru: It goes a really long way to form a meaningful relationship with a fan. On a different topic, what is your creative process?

Geoff: One guy will come up with an idea, say it is a chorus, or chord progression, or lyrics. We’ll bring it to the band room, play it, everyone kind of writes their own part, kind of just jam it out. Pretty much one guy will bring an idea in and it just blossoms from there.

Mavaru: So you guys are on the Warped Tour this summer? How did that come about?

Geoff: You know, I’m not sure. We submitted and they said yes. We’ve been submitting for a few years now.

Mavaru: After you’re done with that, what’s next for you on the table?

Geoff: We’re looking at doing some stuff with Pepper maybe. We’re considering a tour in the fall and maybe try to get to Europe between now and the end of the year. So we’re going to be busy during the last 6 months of the year.

Mavaru: Have you guys been abroad before?

Geoff: Yea last October we went to a few countries out there, mainly Germany.

Mavaru: Do you find people out there are familiar with your music?

Geoff: No, people don’t know it at all out there. The crowd kind of just stands around. Unless they know your music they don’t rock that hard. Toward the end of our set, they kind of got the idea of what we were about and we’d be able to turn a stale crowd into a rockin’ crowd. Every once in a while they would just stand there – a little awkward but whatever, we got some new fans and it was a great experience. I can’t wait to go back there again. It’s more of a challenge to get these people in Europe into our stuff – hopefully our music will resonate with some of them.

Mavaru: Well thanks for the time – best of luck this summer!

M [Mavaru]: Where are you all originally from? Where do you live now? How has locale impacted your music?

Cooper: We’re all from the DC area except for Dave our keyboardist who grew up in Long Island. Our current band house is in College Park, MD right by the University of Maryland. When we first started playing around a lot locally in 2006 there was a huge pop punk scene with a MILLION bands playing that genre and while that’s all well and good, it definitely motivated us to keep chasing the sound WE were going after even if it made us stick out from the pack at times. It was important that Hotspur be Hotspur and not anyone else.

M: Tell me about your musical backgrounds?

Cooper: Joe’s dad was a bass player back in the day and had a polka band called the Czechmates (yes, Joe is part Czech), so it was fun when his dad came out to a few shows to see what we we’re all about. The rest of us have also been into music for a long time, Dave has played piano his whole life practically, Scott has been producing bands for the past few years, and I was thrown into the local music scene when I started a local music venue in a montgomery county church basement (which is actually how I met up with the guys!)

M: How would you characterize your musical style?

Cooper: This one is always tough. We all love different types of music and I think it comes together in an interesting blend. There’s a great energy and excitement in a lot of the faster tempo songs we play that showcase some hip-hop inspired synthesizers blended together with a lot of piano and a rockin, sometimes dancin rythm section. On a lot of the slower songs like “Heads/Tails” you get a much more stripped down connection with Joe Mach (our singer) with the sincere melodies and much deeper lyrics. Both sides of this are important to us because we want our music to have substance, but of course also be fun.

M: What is does your writing process entail?

Cooper: In the past Joe has always come to us with a couple chords and a vocal idea and we’ve gone from there. With recent writing however, we’ve come up with some music and then Joe has written lyrics overtop. The new method is really cool because all music evokes different emotions, and I feel it’s way more inspirational to have a soundscape to work with while writing down all the thoughts in your head. We’ll probably keep doing both though because we want to keep our sound, but definitely at the same time want to continue to grow as musicians and songwriters.

M: What is the concept for your new album?

Cooper: This question is actually a little premature so I’ll focus on our most recent full length “You Should Know Better By Now”. The whole title came from a joke because as most people in bands know, truly making it in the music business is quite a struggle. It’s way bigger then trying to get a record deal, which a lot of bands think will make their wildest dreams come true. Our album is about the good times, the hard times, the girls we’ve met, the places we’ve been to, housing we’ve been kicked out of, and everything in between. No matter where we end up I don’t think any of us would change what we’ve done because it’s made each us who we are. Living is about enjoying the sugar AND the salt.

M: Is there an overall message from your new record that you want people to take home with them?

Cooper: Keep doing what you love. Whether you are a musician, a painter, a teacher, or whatever you do, enjoy it. If you have a mindless job that you despise that pays the bills, then find that thing you love and do it as much as you can with your spare time. Life is too short to be miserable and everyone has their own song to sing, whether or not it’s through a microphone.

M: How would you say your sound and songwriting approach has evolved from your first releases to your most recent one?

Cooper: As I mentioned before, we’re all still growing as musicians and are really into trying new things right now so we can expand what Hotspur is all about. For the fans, expect the new stuff to be a little more upbeat. We have lots of things to write about including but definitely not limited to fun times, love, sex, scandal, and chasing your dreams.

M: How have you gone about releasing the songs for the new album?

Cooper: We’ve only put out one of the new songs, which is titled “Last Call (While the Night Is Young)” – which is only available via YouTube. So far we’ve gotten a great response from fans about this track. It’s definitely one of the lighter hearted songs, but I think people really connect with the uplifting message of “While the Night Is Young”, which basically means to make the most of RIGHT NOW. The song actually just got picked up for a commercial for the Texan soda Big Red. Can’t wait for the haters to call us sell-outs (we’re making no money from the commercial). Should be great exposure for the band though! http://www.youtube.com/hotspurmusic#p/u/0/S0MvaEP2Gz0

M: Specifically, what social media/online platforms have you used?

Cooper: Man we’ve really gone through a million of them. There were the days of myspace which everyone remembers – we used to spend hours upon hours on it sending messages and comments to people and fans, and then everyone started moving over to Facebook (www.facebook.com/hotspurmusic) and Twitter (www.twitter.com/hotspurtweets). One of my favorite sites though which is becoming really popular is Ourstage.com. Ourstage has some great contests which have really helped us out. We’ve won $5,000 from one, and were also in the running with 500 bands and then got selected as one of the top 3 to compete at the New Music Seminar in NYC. We actually went on to win the whole thing, which got us a bunch of gear, allowed us to showcase for some really heavy hitters in the industry, and was best of all just an awesome time!

M: Do you think that, today, it’s harder to be an artist or do you think artists are more empowered because there are more advanced tools at your disposal?

Cooper: This is really a trick question. You definitely have more tools at your disposal so anyone can be heard, but along with that comes a lot of dilution. Back in the day I feel like there were a lot less bad bands that people knew about because the only way you could expand was by word of mouth, but there were probably also some really talented individuals who could have been superstars but got overlooked.

M: Do you think that because of that, you have to treat yourself like a brand?

Cooper: Definitely. Every band does this whether they realize it or not, it’s just really important to make sure that the message your sending is one that you want to be sending. If you believe in what you’re doing and write songs about things that actually matter to you, it doesn’t matter if your name is on a billboard, the radio, TV, or whatever. As long as you’re honest, the people who feel the way you do will appreciate that and love your music. And for the people who despise what you love? Screw ‘em.

M: Make sure you’re everywhere, that you’re consistent, and that there is an idea behind the concept?

Cooper: This is really hard on the unsigned band level. We’ve been together since 2006 and this just started happening in he past couple years. Our management hooked us up with a great video marketing company who got all three of our independent videos on MTVU and into shopping malls, gyms, cruises, and all that stuff. That combined with touring, the Internet, and our other band successes made Hotspur way more recognized. You have to tackle everything and whether or not your independent you definitely need to spend some money, so go hustle at concerts, or do whatever you have to do, and be willing to keep up long nights for a long time!

M: What is your tour schedule looking like? How many cities, what types of venues, favorite venue, etc.? I know you’re not touring much now that you’re in the writing process but what was your last major tour like?

Cooper: We honestly haven’t been touring for awhile now. We’re really set on having the next record flow naturally, have some surprises, and just step up our game, so have been very focused on that. We did a tour with our friends in 2AM Club in the north east which was a lot of fun, and we just played a great show at the Preakness in Baltimore on May 21st opening the main stage for Bruno Mars & Train. We have a show coming up at Six Flags in Maryland with The Downtown Fiction on Sunday, July 3rd. Our plan for the summer is to do a bunch of smaller runs so we can see familiar faces all while still buckling down in the studio. We also may be doing some exciting things on the west coast in August so stay tuned for that!

M: What’s the best part about being on tour? Any good stories?

Cooper: Touring is honestly my favorite part about being in a band. You can’t really compare it with writing because they both satisfy different needs of a musician, but we have the best time when we’re on the road. Being able to hop into a van with 5 or 6 of your best friends, and having no idea what will happen is really freeing. My favorite tour story is when we were doing a couple acoustic dates between two tours and show up at the venue, where there is a small line of kids, and a locked door. We finally get a hold of the promoter who then tells us that the owner of the venue has the only key and is unavailable??? We play unplugged outside for the kids under a covering (because it started down pouring), and then get another phone call. “Hey guys, well I used to work at this bar and they’ve said we can move the concert there!”. None of the kids there could go cause it was a bar, but after having played for them, given out some free stuff, and considering we’d just driven from North Carolina all the way to the boonies of Pennsylvania, we decided we better go and at least get our gas money. We show up at this place and there are, no joke, more people then teeth in the bar. First to the stage is this guy they literally have to drag off at every open mic night because he’ll just keep going forever. We were amused. Then we go on and there’s this drunken Australian guy who yells “you suck” and moons us. Then the promoter starts playing acoustic (because his band bailed when they heard he moved it to this bar), and the Australian guy comes back for some more. He comes up to us and says “man this guy REALLY sucks, moon him with me!” We give the guy the dirtiest look and then he offers to buy each of us a beer if we join the mooning parade. We decline. He then offers a shot and a beer to each of us who moon. Pennsylvania had a lot of moons that night.

M: Who are some artists who have influenced you? Why?

Cooper: We have a term we use called the Black Eyed Muse – combining the dance and fun elements of the Black Eyed Peas with the more theatrical and dramatic aspects of Muse, so both of those bands are definitely very influential, as well as Maroon 5, The Killers (Hot Fuss era), and countless others. These bands all have a really great energy to their music, are talented musicians, and have a sizzlin live show!

M: What advice would you give to new bands trying to make it in the industry?

Cooper: First, know yourself. Know your band mates, and write things that matter to you. If you can’t get behind your message, everything else is pretty stupid. Once you have that figured out, be ready to work really hard. I’ve been in lots of bands over the years and this is the first one where every single person works really hard and is super committed. I’m not saying that you will fail unless this happens, but these bands exist, so if you have some members who are less committed, you need to work twice as hard to fill that void. Bands need to get out more. They have to find the bands that they look up to with a similar sound, go to their concerts with ipods and headphones having everyone in line listen to them. It’s really important to be friendly though and to not shove your CD down people’s throats. Have them add you on Facebook on their phone or follow you on Twitter. You can definitely ask if someone if they’d be interested in getting a copy of your CD, but be open to negotiation, and most importantly, do NOT turn it into a sales pitch. If bands keep on doing this over and over again, they will make fans who will eventually come to a show!

M: Which three tracks off your albums should fans listen to in order to get a sense of who you are as a band and why?

Cooper:

- BETA: Her Majesty, Criminal, Get Me Outta Here.
These all have a great groove and are just feel good songs!

- YOU SHOULD KNOW BETTER BY NOW: “If These Walls Could Talk”, “Chandelier”, “Head/Tails”
These tracks showcase some of the more meaningful lyrics of Hotspur and came straight form our hearts.

Expect the new album to have a combination both of these elements!

Mavaru: So where are you guys right now?

Dan: We’re in Seattle right now with Gold Motel and Hellogoodbye.

M: That’s a lot of mileage since the last time we talked.

Dan: Yeah totally.

M: Okay first, how did you start playing music and then how did that go to playing with the other guys in the group?

Dan: Um, well I started when I was young… everyone in the band did. I’ve been playing with the guys since high school pretty much. I can’t remember exactly why I started or what made me want to pick up a guitar and start messing around, but it’s been hard to do anything else since.

M: Cool, so you started on guitar?

Dan: Yea.

M: Awesome, and then how did you meet the other guys?

Dan: Hmm… let’s see the piano player, I met in middle school in a science class. And I met Matt, the bass player in high school, freshman year. Had a homeroom with him. And Adam joined the band a couple years later. We met him through a friend.

M: How would you say your sound and songwriting approach has evolved from that release to the most recent one?

Dan: I think the songwriting is kinda the same, a natural thing, we all come up with ideas and hash ’em out. This album was just a little different since we recorded it ourselves—the last time we had a friend do it we were learning how to do it along the way.

M: So are you guys engineers?

Dan: Yeah, I do the engineering.

M: So you guys had somebody else do it the first time and you guys did it yourself for this one. Who did you do the first one with?

Dan: Sean O’Keefe. He did the first Fall Out Boy record and stuff like that that we were into at the time (we were in high school then). I ended up working with him on some stuff later and he was in the band for a little while. He taught me a lot about recording. He also mixed the new record using my engineered tracks.

M: And you said you guys are on tour right now with Gold Motel? What’s the connection there?

Dan: Yeah. Gold Motel is Greta from the Hush Sound, myself, Matt, the TIMS bass player, and Adam, the TIMS drummer. The Hush Sound is another band from Chicago. We toured with them a few years ago and we both were taking breaks from the scene at the same time and we started up a new thing. We’ve been touring now for a little while. It’s been a lot of fun.

M: Where else have you guys been so far?

Dan: We started in L.A. and we are doing a counter clockwise circle around the country; we’re gonna end up back in L.A. in the next few days.

M: Is there an overall message from your project that you think you want people to take home from them?

Dan: A message from the new record?

M: Yea.

Dan: I guess overall I’d like it to be an optimistic thing. It’s about feeling sort of stuck in what you’re doing and trying to forget the complaints and try to appreciate things and get perspective and you know, just keep on doing whatever you’re doing that makes you happy. Success is a relative thing.

We’re all playing music and we love what we do; we’re not wildly successful, money-wise or fame-wise, but we enjoy the whole process. We love writing and playing and we’re just gonna continue to do that. If the band never “gets big” it doesn’t matter.

M: Yeah, I feel like that kinda goes into the title right?

Dan: Yeah.

M: As a musician it’s like there are so many uphill battles you have to face…

Dan: Yeah totally man. We’ve never been very good at the business side of things. Making art and then selling art are two different things. Salesmanship has always been something that we’re not too…. you know… I think it’s something you have to do but it’s never been something that we’re really great at doing. Ultimately we want find a way to play music and not have to have other jobs so we can devote all of our time to it, and that would be my definition of success… I’m not really looking for anything else.

M: Do you think that today it’s harder to be an artist per say or do you think artists are more empowered because there are more tools at your disposal?

Dan: I think it ups the bar a little bit because everybody has access to it now so there’s gonna be a lot more stuff that’s mediocre that gets out there. On the same hand, if you make good music I always believe that it’ll get to where it needs to go. On the other hand, think about famous artists who struggled and made some beautiful art and then they died before people ever found out about it. There’s a lot of luck involved I think, as far getting breaks or things like that are concerned.

I mean I love that we can just make a record and do it all ourselves and then we just hand it out for free and see what happens. To me that’s exciting, cuz we did the whole major label thing and it got our name out there a little bit more but it really didn’t help us that much. Now we can write, record, and release our own stuff and see what happens… I like that.

M: So what was the thought process that made you guys just want to get Only Uphill out there and let people pay whatever they want for it? How’d you get there?

Dan: Radiohead obviously did it first, but since Napster I’ve been stealing most of my records and I have hard a hard time justifying selling digital music. It seems fair to let people have digital music for free and offer vinyl, shirts, etc. – a tangible product – to make up for it.

M: In terms of This Is Me Smiling as a band, do you treat it like a brand? Do you think it has to be treated like that?

Dan: Yeah I guess theoretically that is the case although I don’t really have a formulated vision for what that brand is. I think for us it’s self-defining as we go on. In terms of merchandise, at some point I think we want to make vinyl and offer it to our fans, and maybe make a shirt to sell on the website. I guess as far as an image or what we stand for or anything like that, I mean we’re all just a bunch of confused dudes.

M: So do you think that music, if it still does, will continue to exist as any sort of product or do you think that product is kinda becoming many other things?

Dan: Well I mean I guess it’s up to each artist individually. I think that people are just finding different ways to sell it. To reference them again, Radiohead just put out a new record. They were basically like “we got a record coming out in 5 days, here’s our amazing art package if you wanna buy it.”

The current state of the industry makes bands have to get a little bit more creative about the kind of product that they’re attaching to the music. I always love if there’s a nice vinyl or nice artwork, posters, anything like that. That’s always cool. People will always go to shows and pay the bands to see them play, so there will be money to be made with good music.

M: At a certain point it becomes generational… you know kids today they’ve never bought a CD…

Dan: Yeah exactly, nothing wrong with that though. Everybody’s getting a free education with music and that’s cool.

M: So you guys are from Chicago… what do you think a Chicago band sounds like?

Dan: The best band I could reference from Chicago now is probably Wilco and I mean they have their own thing, the mature alt-country sound. There’s a couple different scenes in Chicago. There’s a pretty big DJ scene/electronic and then there’s some pop stuff… I guess This Is Me Smiling would fit in there a little bit. There’s not really one defining sound for Chicago—which I think is actually a cool thing cuz you can see all this great jazz, blues… there’s all kinds of stuff.

M: Forgive me for this nerdy question, but on your first album, how did you guys write Alive In The Chase?

Dan: Let’s see, I wrote that um on guitar and then we laid it down… I was about 19 when I wrote it, so I’m trying to think back 6-7 years ago. I remember with the lyrics I was trying to vaguely describe the plot of a Spiderman movie… I probably just wrecked the song for you haha… I can’t remember. It sort of just came together and then we added in all the strings and extra stuff at the end. It’s probably one of my favorite songs from that record.

M: Any further tour plans for this stuff once you’re done with Gold Motel?

Dan: I think we may not tour at all for a bit. The record was really hard to make- we almost broke up and blah blah blah, all that stuff. It’s hard to still play some of the songs even though we just put them out. We have a whole new record that’s pretty much written, so I think we’re gonna go back and make another record and try and to get it out by the end of the year or early next year.

At some point if there’s a demand for us to tour, maybe our music becomes popular on the Internet or something, then I think we would collect our thoughts and maybe plan a tour. We don’t intend on touring unless we know we can at least break even financially.

M: So you guys have a lot of unreleased stuff then.

Dan: Yeah, we have a lot of it. We’re going in a couple different directions with it, it’s gonna maybe be a little more folky but I don’t want that to mean it’s gonna be wimpy—it’s still gonna rock.

The following is an excerpt from an interview by Mavaru with Kent Odessa of Peephole.

M [Mavaru]: How long have you been playing music, how long has Peephole been a project, what’s the deal?

K: Well I started playing bass when I was about 12 years old, played in different bands in high school, that sort of thing, and I basically formed Peephole with a producer friend of mine back in 2007. Peephole became the first project where I was writing all the songs and singing and all that. I started to look for other ways to get my music out there, and a friend sent me Trent Reznor’s music blog which was inspiring.

M: Yeah yeah, he’s great …

K: He’s giving advice to young musicians and everything, and the first thing he says is to give your music away for free, at a low cost at least, to build up a mailing list and a fan base that way. That was the first thing I started to do once I had a couple albums under my belt.

In early 2010 I released another EP – Crime Drama for free, and the mailing list has been pretty helpful, show up dates, etc. keeping people on their toes. It’s been awesome to get people motivated about the full length I’m working on – Silverdome. Peephole has been through a lot of different incarnations on the way. Michael Pontiac is still in the band working sampler and synthesize, Dave Rosner on drums, and another friend of mine Sky Riggs is currently playing live bass and synth bass.

M: What about your influences?

There’s very few electronic bands that can pull off a huge live sound without live drums … one of my main inspirations for that is late 90s band Mouse on Mars. There’s a certain intensity you can only have from having those elements … we have electronic drums and samples with live drums, which is what LCD Soundsystem does.

M: Overall your experience releasing everything for free has been positive, right?

K: Well it expanded my fan base to people I wouldn’t ordinarily have reached, and definitely not on my budget. Its interesting to see who is coming off and seeing the music, half the people who downloaded the albums were in France or Germany and I still can’t figure out why that is. Obviously if I hadn’t had the albums up for free, I don’t know how else they would have gotten it. Blog support is also basically the most important thing for up and coming musicians nowadays…. There are a few blogs that really helped, all of those were really helpful in bringing people to the music.

M: Do you think its more challenging today to be an artist, or easier because there are more tools?

K: Generally I think it is harder because you definitely have the labels less willing to take risks, in terms of really promoting new bands etc. it seems like things change very very quickly for young artists. It can be frustrating because sometimes it seems like all the blogs are writing about the same 4 or 5 bands at any given time when there’s a lot of different music out there.

I think everyone knows that its harder to make a living at making music and I think people are still figuring out how to have a sustainable career while still doing what they love. The main difference is that every musician out there has to handle every different angle – songwriting to creating the music, to being their own manager and promoter, it’s a full time gig, and you have to sort of master every different element of it.

M: Do you think that because of that, you have to treat yourself like a brand? Make sure you’re everywhere, that you’re consistent, that there is an idea behind the concept?

K: I think you have to you know be really good at basically marketing a very specific sound, and one of the things that suffered because of that, is because there is such a huge mass of music out there, anyone can tap into at any given time, people look for what kind of sound is the most precise vs. maybe the music that has fantastic songwriting and that sort of thing, for example, and you do have to be conscious of it as a brand because that’s the way music is reviewed nowadays, people have to boil it down to “Depeche Mode meets Patsy Klein.” Every review boils things down to a really precise genre and now we’re seeing genres that never would have a name before …

M: Such as?

K: It’s like a shit gaze, shoewave, everything has a name nowadays and that’s really taken the place nowadays of a multifaceted sound … My favorite performers have really been people that grab from every direction, people where its impossible to boil it down to shitgaze, you know, or whatever genre it is, but I think that musicians nowadays are ultra conscious with where they fit in, and what their sound is going to be branded as.

M: So you think that the brand of an artist today is very heavily linked to the sound and not necessarily to the songwriting or other components of the music, almost as a trend…

K: Well I think there’s a lot of encouragement for bands to make albums where the entire album has one distinct sound where every song falls into that particular category. You know, if you here The XX for example right now, or even the new Black Keyes album… I thought the XX album was great, but as far as variety of influences and sounds and dynamics, you know, I would say in general a lot of albums nowadays even the ones I love every song usually has the same atmosphere to it. There’s definitely a huge shift towards making albums where the sound is instantly definable and you can point to any track on the album and it fits that archetype.

M: Where do you think that encouragement comes from?

K: I don’t know, I guess it comes from the way that people buy music nowadays and the wave of music journalism, definitely the way that Pitchfork reviews music, other people out there review things in a way where it pays a lot more attention to the genre and the influences than the actual power of the music itself. I think that the encouragement also comes from musicians themselves who are really doing anything they can right now to stick out from the millions of bands out there on the internet. It’s twofold – the way the music is reviewed, and also what’s happened to the nature of musicians’ ambitions themselves. To have a lasting career in music now you have to have a different mentality.

M: One last question for you… Define shoegaze for me?

K: I have no idea haha… it’s just one of those words that gets thrown out there… I think I describe people as being shitgazed sometimes without knowing what it means… there’s a couple of random bands described as that but I can’t even remember which ones are supposed to fall under that moniker. But music nowadays you get these genres that are there for five minutes and no one can remember what it’s supposed to mean.

Download Peephole’s music atwww.mavaru.com/peephole