Anberlin

Sophie interviews drummer Nathan Young at the 2008 Vans Warped Tour

Anberlin was the last band of the day that I was interviewing at Vans Warped Tour 2008 in Montreal. I was personally very excited for that meeting as I am a very big fan of their music. Anberlin is a quintet from Florida founded in 2001-2002. After five years with independent label Tooth & Nail records, they have now been signed with Universal Records and will release their new beginning album, ‘New Surrender’, very shortly, on September 30th. It is the alternative rock band’s first major label album, which made me even more anxious to meet up with them and know more about all the new and exciting things coming up for them in the near future. I was introduced to Nate Young, Anberlin’s very own fun, relaxed and very enthusiastic drummer!

CONFRONT: Well I’m with Nate from Anberlin!

Nate: Yes!

CONFRONT: So have you been on Warped Tour from the first date?

Nate: Yeah, first day!

CONFRONT: And you’re doing all the tour?

Nate: We are doing ALL two months!

CONFRONT: Awesome!

Nate: Yeah that’s cool…

CONFRONT: It’s not your first time doing it right?

Nate: We did it last year, we only did half of it though. We dropped off in Detroit last year, there was still a month left so…

CONFRONT: Any new bands you discovered this year so far that you like?

Nate: Yeah! I was just talking about it, Everytime I Die… It’s sooo good! I just watched them, I try to watch them like everyday. They’re just super heavy and put on a great show so yeah, I love that band!

CONFRONT: Great! Any fun tour stories so far? Anything happened?

Nate: Ummm… We got stuck at the border for like thirteen hours!

CONFRONT: Today? Like yesterday?

Nate: Yeah, yesterday. We were the only band that got stuck that long. We were there foreeever! We got there a like twelve at night and we left at like one something?

CONFRONT: Eww!

Nate: Yeah! It was kind of sad but… Actually yesterday was pretty funny because after all that, we got there (in Toronto) and everything seemed to be fine and we’re like: “Oh we made it!” and then it started pouring! And our stage got messed up so we had to play an acoustic set.

CONFRONT: (laughs) Oh but that must’ve been good though?

Nate: No, yeah! It was still cool, it was fun…

CONFRONT: Was a fun night!

Nate: Yeah! It was just kind of funny you know the way things happened…

CONFRONT: What are your plans after Warped?

Nate: Actually we go home for a little bit and then we kind of get ready for the record and then we do a full fall headlining tour. We’re going to go to Europe…

CONFRONT: Coming back to Montreal for the headlining tour?

Nate: I think so…

CONFRONT: Great!

Nate: We’re probably going to try to do everywhere so…

CONFRONT: Awesome! Alright, so the Christian rock thing is disputed…

Nate: Yeah…

CONFRONT: What is your saying in this, does it bother you or…

Nate: No! Not in the slightest, to me, the whole question of “Are you guys a Christian rock band?”, we’re all just Christians, we have faith and what we believe, that doesn’t change anything that we play. Obviously like certain things we wanna do you know, go against our moral beliefs and stuff, but…

CONFRONT: It’s not how you started right….

Nate: Yeah, I mean we just wanna be a band! You know, that gets to play everwhere.

CONFRONT: Yeah, you didn’t start saying: “We’re going to be Christian band!”

Nate: No, because when you do that you put yourself in a mold and you have to play in a certain amount of churches you know and stuff like that. We don’t, we also don’t play churches because then you get stuck in this thing you know and we’d rather go out and play shows you know.

CONFRONT: Sure! So ‘New Surrender’ in September, new producer, new label!

Nate: Yeah! Yeah! It’s crazy!

CONFRONT: How does it feel?

Nate: It’s actually amazing! I mean we love Tooth and Nail (records) I mean they’re great guys, great people and all the records we put out with them are awesome, they’re awesome! But it’s just cool, you know it’s really different because we fon’t know anything else but, it’s just amazing recording with Neil Avron…

CONFRONT: Yes! How was that?

Nate: Amazing! Yeah it was SO much fun, it was different you know, he worked us like crazy! We also spent a lot more time on this record than we have before in the past so that was different. It’s just awesome you know, Universal is putting so much effort and work and just put so much effort into it. So it’s super encouraging and exciting.

CONFRONT: So how different is this record going to sound compared to your previous ones then?

Nate: Um… I think you know it’s like a natural progression of what we’ve done. It’s different though for sure, I think it’s more of a variety than anything we’ve done, there’s slower stuff and just different stuff we’ve never done. Like certain songs that we have, when we were doing the record, we were just “let’s just do it” you know and it ended up flowing and it fits well but, it’s just super diverse hopefully that’s what kids will get out of it you know.

CONFRONT: Yeah! I know you guys are very good friends with Yellowcard.

Nate: Yeah!

CONFRONT: You’ve toured a lot with them. They’re on a hiatus now. What is happening?

Nate: I don’t know! I mean that band is so good! Sean Mackin is one of my best friends probably. It’s just, they’re just taking a little break I guess, they all want to do some other things….

CONFRONT: Yeah…

Nate: They might come back you know, who knows, they just wanna take a break for a while.

CONFRONT: Yeah. I saw you guys playing together, when you toured together it was awesome!

Nate: Yeah! They were an amazing band that’s for sure!

CONFRONT: Hopefully they’ll be back, do you think they are?

Nate: I think so, I think they’ll probably come back eventually for sure so…

CONFRONT: Great. On Wikipedia, there was 3 or 4 different origins of the name Anberlin, but none of them are for sure which one it is! There’s the Radiohead story and then it was because he wanted to name his daughter Anberlin… Which one’s true?

Nate: I think, man! We like made up stuff and…

CONFRONT: Really? (laughing)

Nate: Yeah! Just from the beginning. Because I think it was something pretty basic you know, Stephen accidentally said, he was talking and he said, he was talking about the places he wanted to travel and said: “And Berlin”and then you know just kind of slurred it. So you know, we tried to think of more exciting things because people were just like: “Really? That’s it?” And we’re like: “Oh…”… So we started making up stuff.

CONFRONT: Really? Because the Radiohead thing makes sense though, I was listening to the song (“Everything in its Right Place”) and it makes sense!

Nate: Yeah, yeah it does…

CONFRONT: It really sounds like it!

Nate: Yeah totally!

CONFRONT: Yeah!

Nate: To be honest, I don’t really know the truth anymore. We changed it so many times, we just had so many different random stories that we just kind of make up new ones! (laughing)

CONFRONT: (laughing) Want to make up a new one now? (laughing)

(Nate laughs)

CONFRONT: Collaborations in the future, who do you want to work with, play with?

Nate: Mmm… Like tour or?

CONFRONT: Or record with, anything.

Nate: Man um… I think we’ll probably go back with Neil (Avron). It is so good. We talked about something that could be fun, is do an EP some time. It would be a lot different than Anberlin, we would still put it out as Anberlin, but it would be like our chill side, like moody you know, kind of like Jimmy Eat World did with the ‘Disintegration’ EP. We’ve always wanted to do something like that so, we might do it with a different producer or someone smaller.

CONFRONT: And who would you tour with?

Nate: Who would I tour with? Man, if we could tour with like The Foo Fighters or anything like that would be amazing or Jimmy Eat World, anything major like that would be awesome.

CONFRONT: Yeah Jimmy Eat World were just here, they were great!

Nate: Ah! They’re like one of our favorite bands!

CONFRONT: That would be an amazing tour though!

Nate: Yeah, I think so too! I’d be into it for sure!

CONFRONT: Where do you see yourself in five to ten years?

Nate: Man! I don’t know… I mean obviously we want to do this for as long as we can and you know, especially in the industry, the music industry these days you’re not guaranteed another you know, even another record. It’s so unstable, you put out a record, it could be great or it could fall you know what I mean, you never know so… I’d like to do maybe a couple more records and that would maybe be it. I’ve always thought it would be cool to go out with the fame instead of draw it out, I mean, we’ve been doing this for like seven years now, so we’re all… You know, we’re not burned out on it, but you know I think that, we all want to eventually, you know, I want to live in the woods in Florida and grow old…

(laughing)

Nate: So we’ll see! But we’ll always play music no matter what, you know no matter if it’s with Anberlin or not.

CONFRONT: Awesome! Well thank you!

Nate: Yeah, cool! Same to you!

CONFRONT: And we’ll look forward to the new album seriously!

Nate: Awesome! Thank you very much!

I made sure not to miss Anberlin’s performance on one of the main stages shortly after this interview and sure didn’t regret it! They blew away the audience with all their best songs and also some new material. The crowd was singing along very loudly and put a huge smile on lead singer Stephen Christian’s face who didn’t miss out on every occasion to thank every single one of them as he was obviously very touched by all the love! Anberlin is currently on tour throughout the United States with one stop in Toronto, Canada on October 27th. Touring along with them are Scary Kids Scaring Kids, Straylight Run and There For Tomorrow. They will then head out for Europe in November, so make sure not to miss them!

http://www.myspace.com/anberlin
http://www.anberlin.com

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