MONEEN

PETER: …Here let me put the recorder right here.

ANGEL: I thought I’d start by asking you to tell me a little about the new album.

PETER: The album came out a little while ago now. It’s called the Red Tree. It is eleven tracks… I think. No wait. Is there 11 tracks on our record? (asks singer Kenny Bridges) Yeah it’s eleven tracks and one of them is not hidden…

ANGEL: (laughing) One of them is NOT hidden?

PETER: (laughing) Actually ALL of them are NOT hidden!! But yeah the album is The Red Tree. There’s lots of tracks on it. Guitars, base, drums, singing, pianos, strings. All kinds of magical goodness. And ahh, yeah! I like it. Do YOU like it?

ANGEL: Do I like it?

PETER: You don’t like it. Awwwwwww.

ANGEL: No I do. It’s just not my type of music.

PETER: Oh, so you definitely don’t like it. When you say things prefaced with “it’s not my type if music but it’s ‘good’ means you hate it.

ANGEL: I don’t hate it. It’s just not my type of…

PETER: Oh, Oh, Oh, yep, yep, there it is again. (Laughing) You HATE it.

ANGEL: No. If I told you what I liked you’d laugh at me.

PETER: Country music?

ANGEL: Come on! Give me a break.

PETER: What? I wanted to laugh. And Country music would have made me laugh.

ANGEL: I like more mainstream stuff.

PETER: Oh. Like Jessica Simpson…

ANGEL: (laughing) NO! Like 30 Seconds to Mars.

PETER: Oh. Ok well that’s fine. That’s not mainstream.

ANGEL: One of the things I did notice with this new album is that it involves a lot more story telling then the previous one.

PETER: Yes.

ANGEL: Is there a reason for that?

PETER: Well there is always a good story to be told, you know what I’m saying? It can’t all come from personal experience. I don’t know. Maybe Kenny had some personal experience that he didn’t want… he didn’t want to be like ‘These are my personal experiences’. He wanted to take from a different perspective maybe, you know!

ANGEL: Why the 6 mile long song titles on this album?

PETER: uh…well…‘cause I have nothing to do with that. If it was me naming the songs, they’d be like just letters or numbers. I’d be like ‘track A, track B, track C’. It’s just like crazy bad jokes taken to far. We’ve been doing this since our first EP which came out in 1999. Our song titles were always really long. It originally started that it was so funny to us that the song titles were actually that long. But now…yeah. They are still long and we’re still laughing.

ANGEL: I noticed also that you like to keep a connection to old albums referencing them in this new one.

PETER: What we always like to do with our albums is connect them in ways. Like our first EP ends a certain way and then like that sort of is the way the next CD begins. And then there is an instrumental track in the middle of [The Theory of Harmonial Value] which was a song that wasn’t finished for Theory but then that song was finished for the [Are We Really Happy with Who We Are Right Now] record.

ANGEL: There are so many definitions of types of music lately and some of them are just hilarious. But the most recent one I head that made me crack up was Emotal which I assume is Emo/metal.

PETER: Oh yeah! What about cuddle-core? No nevermind. I don’t even know what that is. But I’m sure it exists somewhere.

ANGEL: Where do you guys fit into the whole categorizing thing?

PETER: People say we’re Emo. And that’s fine. But we’re not. We’re like a rock band. But we’re not ‘The Strokes’ (laughs).

ANGEL: (laughing) is that like your definition of rock?

PETER: That’s like a ROCK band. And like… I don’t know. We’re a loud band that has guitars and loud drums and uh… I don’t think we’re Emo.

ANGEL: No I don’t think so.

PETER: Ok good well that makes two of us.

ANGEL: Isn’t Emo like…

PETER: Like Dashboard Confessional?

ANGEL: I can’t even think of anybody I would really…

PETER: Mineral?

ANGEL: Consider…

PETER: The Promise Ring?

ANGEL: (laughing) Emo!

PETER: Emo to me is like ‘I’m crying about my girlfriend’. I don’t know. It’s pretty restrictive that terminology. Yet it’s applied to so many things. People are saying like, Emo is like, bands who like to wear fashionable clothes and dye their hair black and scream and stuff. I don’t know.

ANGEL: Like 30 Seconds to Mars?

PETER: (laughing) yeah. I don’t know. I saw something on TV a couple of years ago and it was like (in deep Radio Voice) ‘The pioneers of Emo Weezer bla bla bla’ and I was like ‘WHAT’? Weezer? People don’t know what the hell they are talking about. If anybody tells you we’re Emo, just tell them to shut up and tell them they don’t know what the hell they are talking about.

ANGEL: CONFRONT is a web based magazine and there are specific reasons for that, one of them being that more and more people are relying on the internet. How do you think the internet has affected the music industry?

PETER: I think it’s opened up the awareness about bands. People can find any band from anywhere. It opened up file sharing and stuff especially in universities and colleges where everybody is on the same server and swapping music ‘cause nobody has money to buy music so they share a lot. That in turn helped out shows. ‘cause you know people go out to shows and support the band that way. It definitely hurt record labels initially I think. But that’s going good now I hear. I read something online in Wired.com about how the music is turning around in the digital age with Itunes and downloading music.

ANGEL: Are you ok with file sharing?

PETER: uh-huh. Yeah.

ANGEL: You are?

PETER: Yeah I definitely share files. Mmm hum! I do.

ANGEL: You’re the first person in the music industry I’ve met that had admitted to file sharing.

PETER: Yeah but I’m not really in the industry per say. And I’m still a music fan. And I like to check out records online before I buy them. I don’t want to have paid money for it and it sucks you know. So I check it out first. And then I buy it if I like it.

ANGEL: How do you feel about instant success shows like American/Canadian Idol and the INXS/Supernova shows etc.?

PETER: I don’t know. When we started out, we were just a band in a basement playing songs and having fun and jumping around and playing shows in local halls and church basements. We grew up in a music scene that was based on DIY punk and kids putting on shows in a small youth community. It was very organic for us that way. And it’s totally diametrically opposed to the instant success stuff that’s going on right now. It’s a totally different mind set for us. For stuff like Canadian Idols it’s about being a star, wanting the fame and the money and all that crap. For us it was just always that we like music a lot and we like bands and we put on shows and it was about the community rather than the industry.

ANGEL: How do you think musical has evolved over the past years?

PETER: I remember the first time that we toured Canada we were the only band that was like ‘Emo’. There were no ‘Emo’ bands in Canada and all the bands we were playing with were ‘crusty punk’ or ‘fast punk’ bands. Like real punk rock bands. Really like Blink 182 influences kind of stuff. And that slowly changed and there were more bands that fit into what ever the ‘Emo’ tag is. And that sort of came and went and now everybody is screaming more. Everything is a lot more metal. Things have kind of segued into metal hardcore. And the hardcore scene itself is more about fashionable hair and tight pants it seems and screaming… rather than being about politics or community and stuff.

ANGEL: How would you define mainstream relative to music today?

PETER: Mainstream is like… well it’s whatever is really popular at the time. Mainstream is like what is being played on the Video channels and on the radio.

ANGEL: Do you think that it’ a specific kind of music that is mainstream?

PETER: Well Pop is popular music which is mainstream. It’s a different word with the same meaning. Like, UnderOath which is kinda like Screamo, and that’s kinda of becoming mainstream. Mainstream to me is people who don’t really listen to music. Like they are driving to work in the morning and they aren’t music appreciators. Like they hear music and it makes them feel a certain way and they go out and buy the record but they don’t go to shows. Or they go to one Jessica Simpson show every three years. That’s mainstream to me.

ANGEL: (laughing) You know I’m gonna have to go out and buy that record now.

PETER: (laughing) Yeah just so you can justify all these Jessica Simpson references.

ANGEL: We have a section called Daily Urges…

PETER: Daily Urges? Like eating and sleeping and…

ANGEL: That and…

PETER: And pooping?

ANGEL: (laughing) NO! Like your musical Daily Urges. Like what you have to listen too.

PETER: Oh! (Laughing). Gill Mantera’s Party Dream. We saw them play on Warped Tour, not even as part of the show. They played at the BBQ like a special kind of thing at night. And it’s this totally flaming like dance-y, redneck, pop dance something. It’s so good and catchy. Go to Partydream.com.

ANGEL: We also have a section called World Kicks where people talk about cultures that inspired them or stuff like that.

PETER: Oh so I get to drop names of bands from other countries?

ANGEL: Yeah if you want.

PETER: I like a Danish band, I think they’re Danish, called Mew and they are playing in Toronto right now and I’m missing it. Their like Sigur Ros meets Jimmy Eat World, meets Mishuga… It’s crazy.

ANGEL: First and last CD bought.

PETER: First CD was Smashing Pumpkins ‘Siamese Dream’… You know that one right?

ANGEL: (laughing) Yes I know that one.

PETER: Ok good. The last CD I bought was Cursive, Sleepy Hollow.

ANGEL: Oh yeah I keep hearing about them.

PETER: Cursive? Yeah! There is a lot of hype. You gotta write a list down of CD’s you have to go get. You have to get the new Jessica Simpson, Cursive, you should get Mutemath…Do you like Radiohead?

ANGEL: I do actually.

PETER: Then you should get Mutemath. They aren’t exactly like Radiohead but they could tour together.

ANGEL: First and last concert?

PETER: First concert attended was Metallica in Molson Park in Barrie Ontario back in 1994. Last concert attended… I don’t even know. Might have been Sigur Ros like last year in Vancouver when we were on tour. It was really good.

ANGEL: You haven’t seen a show in a year?

PETER: Well that’s because I’ve been playing shows every night since then.

ANGEL: You haven’t played at festivals where you could watched a few bands?

PETER: Well we spent a summer on Warped Tour. I would always watch Mutemath, I would always watch Paramour and I would always watch Vox. And we played at the Download Festival in the UK earlier this year and I saw Guns N’ Roses. Saw Metallica again.

ANGEL: You saw Guns N’ Roses? Now I’m jealous.

PETER: It was terrible. It was pathetic and embarrassing.

ANGEL: You are crushing me here. I love Axl Rose.

PETER: You wouldn’t if you saw him live. He sucks.

ANGEL: When I was fourteen he was like the best thing since sliced bread.

PETER: I know I loved him. He was the best thing. But now he just sucks.

ANGEL: Right! Well I’m done actually.

PETER: Sweet. I’m turning this off then… (turned off recorder)