Recently, while on tour with Owl City and Lights, Paper Route stopped by the SerialBox studio in downtown Houston to record a quick SerialBox session. Despite the cramped schedule, Paper Route managed to track four songs that day and now we begin the process of releasing them to you here...
Ryan Booth managed to catch up with Paper Route's JT Daly to ask him a few questions about their infamous "trailer shows," the craft and significance of music, and a bit about how songs have lives of their own.
R: Why music? What is it about music that drew you in? Or, if you'd rather take a different angle, what do you view the role of the musician in the larger landscape of making things for people?
JT: Why music? It really is my first love. It was just there. It was everything to me. I feel like there are a lot of perfect mediums, but I just love the way that music sits with people when they are a wreck. I don't know how else to explain it...I love the way that medium heals. I feel like, especially in your youth, that it is THE medium. What you gravitate towards. That's what you love and you just have no excuse for it. At some point a lot of people who still follow music start to get defensive about what they like. I just love the fact that there are these sort of grey years in everyone's life where they really do listen to whatever they want to. It heals and it's their heartbeat and I think that's why music is the foundation of everything that I'm a part of.
R: Talk to me about the trailer shows. I know that sometimes after concerts, you guys perform what is essentially an acoustic set as you are packing up the trailer. The SerialBox session that we recorded was essentially a "trailer show" arrangement of the songs. Could you talk a little about that?
JT: This band started as a complete accident. We never planned on it being anything past just something to kind of survive. It was a band born in a studio. And I think when we started releasing the music people started to connect with it alot more than we thought. This band was just a way for us to deal with life. It was therapy. And we were writing just because we love to write. So we started to go out and play shows and it forced us to evlolve and become a different type of a band. Genre-wise we had sort of fallen out of love with "rock music." We'd moved to Nashville and we'd seen these artists, these folk artists or Americana artists playing, and the attention was on what these artists were saying. So much attention is put on the lyric and it's such an intimate setting. You can hear everything. We fell in love with that. We had so much respect for that because we have always felt that artists should be judged on whether or not they have something to say. So it became this new sort of thing for us. We were falling in love with that and at the same time we were falling in love with this daydream type of music...this electronic music where you're essentially trying to say something without saying anything at all. You know, no lyric. So it was all of these worlds colliding. When we took Paper Route out on to the road, we were able to flirt again with the idea of energy and the idea of it being just this loud bombastic show. I guess the reason why the trailer shows, that whole scene happened, is because we felt like, in a lot of ways, that we had abandoned alot of what this band was born out of. And that is just stripped down songs where it just comes down to what the artist is telling you. It's a very intimate setting. Paper Route has a lot to do with a specific sound and has a lot to do with us just getting on stage and breaking things every night. But also there's something very specifc we are trying to say and let's bring everyone together like a community in this one spot and let's share this together.
R: It's your Americana moment.
JT: yeah, exactly, in a lot of ways...
R: Has that been something that the average concert goer really has responded to? What has that sense of community been like?
JT: Everyone can go to a concert and see it, but not everyone can have a conversation with the band after the show. Cause that's what it is, you know, we're singing it together. We all grew up in the church so the idea of people coming together and singing something as one is something we are very familiar with. In a lot of ways we've kind of slayed that and tried to make our own paths as artists and as men just trying to figure out what we believe in. You know, it kind of gave us our sense of wonder back a little bit just to see that not everyone is art snobs. Some people really still just want to feel and they don't care if they cry at the show, if they sing off key loud with the band...they just want to feel and that's why we fell in love with music.
Are We All Forgotten:
R: What is it like to play a song like Are We All Forgotten in a concert setting, the "breaking stuff" setting, and then to walk outside and play it in the "community" setting? What's it like to watch songs live in these different ways and different places?
JT: Honestly I feel like they say two completely different things. I feel like the live show version is almost a panic. It's a panic and it's fast and it's raucus. I feel like the emphasis on that version of the song is the "what are you waiting for" moment. There is this line that is said over and over again almost to the point that it's annoying. That's why we kept it, because it's an Americana type melody put in a fast electronic setting. We kept pushing that song in the studio to make sure it was as fast as it could be without ruining the cadence of the melody. That's what the song is about. It's so fast and then it breaks down to nothing . Then all of the attention in that moment is on the line "what are you waiting for." Whereas when we go out to the trailer and sing that song, it's a completely different feeling. It's very hyper-sensitive and it's very melancholy. I feel like the emphasis of the song is on the line "don't you break my heart." I feel like that's what people are really latching onto because when that moment comes in, everyone starts singing. Even if they only heard that song for the first time that night. They catch on because I feel like everyone can relate to that. When they sing "don't you break my heart" in the first chorus and then we get to the second verse it's quiet and you can hear every line. Then you hear "I still believe change can happen, though it's hard and it happens slowly..." It becomes a different song. It's not as much of a panic anymore. It's real.
The SerialBox Presents: PAPER ROUTE from The Serial Box on Vimeo.
R: I know that you said that art should be judged on what you have to say. Do you feel that that is an intentional process on the part of the artist? Do you have something very specific that you are trying to say or is the making the music and going through that creation process the place that you discover it? Or is a post creation thing...you only discover later what you were trying to say?
JT: I think that everyone is very different, incredibly different, on their approach to that, even in the band. Me personally? It's kind of hard to explain and maybe that's kind of the point. I just kind of know when when I'm ready to sit down and write again and I kind of know when I'm ready to paint again. It's almost a hunger, you know? At that point it's just about being available and being ready because you really have no idea what's going to happen. I'm just there and I'm available. And the art just kind of, in a way, starts presenting itself. In Paper Route, in the songwriting process, nothing is sacred. The verse could become the chorus and vice versa. The best line of the song could get taken out of the song tomorrow because it's just headed in a new direction. I don't really know how to explain it, but I think at that point it's really up to people to decide whether or not they connect with it, whether or not their opinion finds it "good," and whether or not they think that we have anything to say. I guess the short answer is that I don't know if i have anything to say. I don't know if I'm good or I'm the worst artist that exists, I'm just trying.
R: What do you guys hope to contribute through you guys' efforts with this particular band?
JT: You know, obviously everyone wants this, but we would just love to be a band that has a career in which we can constantly evolve. We just want to be viewed as a band that is painfully honest. That would be the biggest compliment that we could ever get as a band. And whether or not that is depressing to some people, that's fine. Whether that's giving people a sense of hope, that would definitely be our goal...we know we aren't for everyone.
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*Check back here soon for more interviews, photos, and the release of three more songs (including Carousel and Last Time). Additionally, we will be making details available for how you can get copies of both the audio and video from this session...
CREDITS:
Paper Route is:
Chad Howat
JT Daly
Gavin McDonald
Andy Smith
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VISUALS:
Cameras:
Cody Bess
Micah Bickham
Ryan Booth
Trae Stanley
Scott Brignac
Edited by: Ryan Booth
Graded by: Cody Bess
Titles by: Micah Bickham
Photos by: Cody Bess
AUDIO:
Engineered by: Chase Jenkins
Mixed by: Harold Rubens at Red Tree Recording Studio
Production Assistants:
Neil Sandoz
Brian Yarbrough
Illustration by: Andrew Shepherd