The Official Alexisonfire Thread

[holdfasthope]

helll yeah i cant wait. gonna be sweet. did anyone read that interview with dallas by that retard from ultimate guitar? it was a good interview (apart from the ultimate guitar guy looking like a tool). Dallas talked about one song on the album being there most emotional song yet more than fear of myself and sharks, only he and wade sings. cant wait

[Laces Out Dan!]

Would you be able to post that interview if you could find it?

[holdfasthope]

yew here it is. The title is: Alexisonfire's Dallas Green: 'We'd Love To Be The Biggest Band In The World'

which is a ****ing **** title, as you will see when you read the interview, dallas did not say anything like that, it just shows how retarded the interviewer is, as you'll see.

But its a good interview good insight, makes Dallas even more cooler then he already is.

Enjoy.

EDIT: had i known it was this long i wouldve searched for the link, but i just ahd it on my comp



At the time Alexisonfire guitarist/vocalist Dallas Green called in to Ultimate-Guitar to talk music and unburden his soul, the band's newest album had not yet been released. As of this reading, Crisis may have already hit the streets. Green, however, did talk about the recent addition to the catalog as well as their 2004 album, Watch Out! Dallas proved to be a witty and insightful character, well aware of what the band create musically and how they go about doing it.

Ultimate-Guitar: So were you sort of distilling influences of Canadian bands? Were you a fan of that stuff at all?

Dallas Green: Of course. There are some bands that you may not have heard of. Bands like The Doughboys and Change of Heart. When I was growing up - when I was 11, 12, 13 - grunge was pretty big. There were sort of a bunch of Canadian bands that were kind of trying to do the grunge thing, too. It was punky-grunge or whatever, as much as I love bands like Alice In Chains and stuff like that.

So what was it about that, the grunge thing?

I first started playing guitar when I think I was eight. What made me really get into it was Stevie Ray Vaughan. Jimi Hendrix and stuff like that - just hearing that and seeing what they can do with the guitar. When you're younger, I think right away when you hear that, it immediately shows you the amazing side of the guitar. It's easy to see that those guys are good. You can tell that they're good right away, so that caught my ear, I guess. Then when I started getting a little bit more into songs, there was something about that that just caught me. For me, Alice in Chains, it had a lot to do with the harmonies that they had, their singing. It was something about those two guys singing (Layne Staley/Jerry Cantrell) together that made me go crazy.

Was there ever an interest in becoming that bluesy kind of guitar player?

Of course. That's all I used to do. I would just play the blues, just solo all the time in my room. Have you ever heard of Colin James?

Yes.

I loved Colin James and stuff like that. But then shortly thereafter once I got into high school, I started sort of trying to write my own songs. When I started writing songs, they just came out a lot different. They really didn't come out that bluesy. I guess they came out sadly-tinged, but they didn't come out that way.

Did you find the writing process an easy one?

For me, no. It's always been easy for me to come up with guitar lines, which enabled me to come up with melodies. But as far as lyrics go, it's always been a tough road for me just because I have a problem with confidence. I don't know. It's just hard for me to think that what I'm doing is good.

Then for you, joining a band where a guy had that lyric thing covered and the vocal thing - that was sort of the next step for you?

But I didn't do that. I started a band that was me singing and playing guitar. So I kind of just forced myself into it.

What was the name of that band?

We were called Helicon Blue. That was just a band that played around my city.

[holdfasthope]

How were you as a singer?

I mumbled a lot. See, the thing with me was I sang a lot when I was younger to Alice in Chains and stuff in my room, but I never sang in front of people because I knew I could play guitar. When I sang the songs that I was playing to, it sounded like I was in key, but I didn't know that I was a singer - yet. When I first heard Jeff Buckley, that's when I realized that I wanted to be a singer. So I just started singing to him and midway through high school I sort of sang in front of people. And they said, "Hey, that sounds okay." And I was like, "Yeah?" And I just kind of kept with it and here I am.

Was Buckley an influence on you as a songwriter as well?

Of course. I went through a period when I was really into instrumental music like Mogwai and stuff like that. It made me not want to sing at all. I just loved the intensity they brought with their guitars and stuff. But then I heard Jeff Buckley and I was like, "Jesus, what am I doing? I should be singing."

Had you ever heard Tim Buckley?

I've heard him now. I hadn't heard him before I heard Jeff.

You mentioned the instrumental stuff. Did you ever listen to Jeff Beck and his records? Did that interest you at all?

Not when I was in high school and stuff like that. I was kind of getting into hip-hop. I was skateboarding a lot, and I was getting into more like hardcore and punk and when emo started. Bands like Sunny Day Real Estate, I really started getting into stuff like that. Coupled with Jeff Buckley, that just made me gravitate towards sad music. The way that I felt when I listened to sad songs made me feel like I wanted to write those songs.

Do you remember some of these early guitars and amps you were using?

The first kind of better guitar I ever got was a Fender Prodigy. Do you remember those? They only made a couple of them. It was sort of a smaller Strat. I wanted a Strat for some reason - I think it was because Jerry Cantrell used to play it.

And maybe the Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughn thing?

And Stevie. Probably that's why I wanted one. My dad for my birthday got me a Prodigy because I guess the guy at the music store talked him into it. And I was kind of bummed, but then I really liked the way it sounded actually. I used to listen to that band Hum. I remember reading their equipment list and one of their guitar players used Fender Prodigy. So that made me happy. So I had a Fender Prodigy and I used that for a while. It was pretty rad.

I remember when I started playing in my band and we started playing shows, I had a Marshall - like a little 1x12 valve state combo amp and a Fender 1x12 combo amp that I used to play together. I used to take both their foot switches that I taped a piece of wood across the two overdrive channels, so that when I stepped on them, they both would go on. I didn't have a lot of money and I was just a kid. That was my first sort of live getup.

How long after you had that first band together did Alexisonfire happen? Were there elements of Alexisonfire in that first band?

I've always been about melody. In that band, it was more a melodic rock band, kind of a Foo Fighters type. We were a three-piece, so I couldn't do a lot as a guitarist. But I've always been about chords and adding that extra finger to make it a little more melodic. I definitely brought that to Alexis when we started it. That band was when I was 18 through 20, with my cousin and my best friend, and we were just kind of fooling around. I was trying my best, but that was kind of at a stage where I was thinking to myself that I was kind of good at this and I didn't know why. Nothing was happening for me. But then we broke up and I realized that's not the way to think. You have to work hard in this business in order to do stuff. So then we started Alexis and just kind of melded all our influences together.

So when you started Alexis, did you know that you wanted a second guitar player there and somebody else singing?

Me and the other guitar player in the band, Wade, we started the band together. He called me and was like, "I'm going to start jamming with this drummer. Do you want to play?" And I was like, "Definitely." The big thing for us was being able to play with each other. Because he had been in a band with another guitar player but they were young and it was kind of like the other guy just did exactly what he did. I think that was probably why on our first album when we first started I sort of took the back seat as the vocalist and so did he. He sang and played guitar in his other band, too. For us to be able to play guitar together, that took our focus away from vocals. We were more just interested in noodling around each other, which was good and bad at the same time.

You didn't miss not being the lead vocalist?

I never have. I'm a confident vocalist and I'm a confident guitar player, but I sort of just gotten there. We've been in the band for five years now almost. When my other band broke up, I was really hurt and my confidence was really taken away from me. I was in a band with my best friend and my cousin, and when it broke up and when it didn't work, I was devastated. I was like, "If this can't work with my best friend and my cousin, how can I do this?" I just wanted to be in a band where everybody was kind of stoked on it, and I just wanted to sort of sit in the back.

[holdfasthope]

On the new record, how would you describe the way you and Wade come up with your parts, compose your parts, record your parts? How is it that you two are able to work out different parts and voicings?

It's been really weird since the beginning. Wade will have a riff, let's say. I'll come to practice, he'll show me the riff, and I'll play something I've been working on. And for some reason, they usually just go together. I remember when that first happened to us when we first starting to jam. We were like, "That's weird." It just kind of works out all the time. It's been very easy for us to write together since the beginning. Even though at the beginning our songs weren't great, they were just whatever. I'm usually more melody-based, so I'm usually trying to add that extra note and play bigger chords. Wade usually takes over the single note type stuff, the sort of the stuff that accentuates what's going on, because I'm usually singing more. On the songs he sings, I kind of take over that role. So there's definitely not a lead guitar player. We're definitely both rhythm guitar players that are able to accentuate each other when we need to. It just works out really well.

I'm going to touch on some of the tracks on the new record and maybe you can tell me what's going on musically? The opening track, 'Accidents…'

Oh, you're talking about that record.

Is there another?

Oh yeah, because we just finished our new record. It's not out yet or anything. It's being mastered today.

That's okay. Obviously I can't speak knowledgeably about that, but we'll certainly talk about that. 'Accidents' - there's kind of that interesting lick on the verse. Is that Wade? Is that his thing?

That's actually me.

That was cool, kind of a driving, rhythmic kind of thing.

We wrote that song sort of with a crowd in mind. It just started coming together - driving, like you said - and we knew as soon as we wrote it that that was going to be the opening track on the record. It's totally like the perfect opening track. That riff that I do at the beginning, the sort of intro. I don't even know where it came from. At first, I thought I was like, "This may be a bit too metal-y." We were trying to get away from that because we definitely aren't good enough guitarists to play metal…In a way that I would like to. If I were in a metal band, I would love to play not just breakdowns like people do today. I listen to Dream Theater and Rhapsody and **** like that, so that's the kind of metal I like.

Actually, listening to your music, a lot of your stuff is really orchestrated in different movements, so to speak. Actually I could hear that - not that you sound like Dream Theater, obviously.

On our first record, we had a couple of metal-y type things. We were young and it was fun to try and do stuff like that, to play as fast as you could. Then we realized that's just not what we wanted to do. We wanted to write good, driving songs that were fun to play.

Tell me the guitars that you use on that track.

Mostly I have an E333. I have a 335, but they have a 333, too. It's sort of a matte finish. I use one of those most of the time.

Do you know what year that is?

It was like a 2000. It was a reissue. I use that and, at the time, I had a white 2001 Gibson Les Paul Studio. I used those two guitars on that record with a Marshall 30th Anniversary I had at the time. I think I just used the full Marshall cab that was at the studio at the time. At that time, I was playing the Marshall through a Mesa 4x12. In the studio, it just didn't work out the way I was hoping it to, so we switched back over to this old Marshall cab. I'm really excited about the new record because I was able to use my different guitars. I have a lot more guitars now, and sort of try out different tones. On that record, we basically found a guitar tone and I kind of went with it and did all my tracks.

So there's no Fender on there?

No, not for me. I don't think Wade used one either. I just went straight, frickin' Humbuckers blazing away on that one.

While we 're there, why don't you talk about some of these new guitars that we'll be hearing on the new record?

I have like a '52 reissue Telecaster with a little '59 pickup in the bridge. I was able to use that on a bunch of songs. I've always been less about gain and more about clarity, trying to find that. So I was able to more explore that because we had more time to record. So I used that a lot, where I used my Tele with an old 100-watt JMP through this custom-built cabinet called the Morris Cabinet. There's a guy out of Welland, Ontario, named Glen Morris, who makes amps and things like that. And I coupled it with my Vox AC30 running through my Orange 4x12. We miked both those and I drew from both of those. Because like I told you before about the chords and stuff, when I'm playing them with crazy distortion they don't really come out as well as I'd like them to. So I was able to get more clarity, which was rad.

I have a '91 Les Paul Custom that I used a lot on the record just because it was really beefy sounding to me. I stayed with that JMP 100-watt head a lot because it was modded. The guy who produced our record, he brought it to the studio and it was just ripping.

Who produced the record?

His name is Julius Butty. He did the last record that we did. He's a Canadian producer and he's just sort of getting off the ground.

What's the new album called?

It's going to be called Crisis.

When is that coming out?

I'm going to say late July, but that probably means early August. It always comes out a little later than I'd like it to.

In comparing it to Watch Out!, how could you generalize it?

It's different in a way. I mean that's just the way we are. We don't write the same songs. We just write songs that come to us. Like before we come up with an idea of a song we don't go, "Okay, we want to write a song like this." Like what I said about 'Accidents' being a crowd song, when we started writing it we were like, "This is going to be great." It wasn't like, "Let's write an anthem-atic song to start our record off."

We have a new drummer now. He's not on Watch Out. His name is Jordan Hastings and he rules.

Can you talk briefly about what happened?

I can and I can't, to tell you the truth. It was just a conflict of interests.

So he brings something new to the music?

He's a much more aggressive drummer. He's a harder hitter and he really helped, too, with the songs this time around. I've never air-drummed more to our own stuff than I have on this record, so I'm pretty excited about it. I'm pretty proud of the guitar playing, too. We tried to explore ourselves a little bit more. We didn't want to make it too crazy, where we try out all these crazy things. Because basically we're just a rock band. We wanted to try different stuff and try and make the moods of the songs with the guitar tones.

[holdfasthope]

If I'm reading you correctly, you're trying to shape guitar sounds to sort of emphasize lyrically and melodically what's going on. I've heard other bands talk about that process.

That's sort of what we tried to do. There's a song on the record, it's the last song.

What's it called?

It's called 'Rough Hands.' It's probably the slowest, I don't know if prettiest is the word because there are probably prettier songs, but it's definitely the moodiest song we've ever written. I didn't even use distortion for it. I just used my Fender Twin coupled with my JCM 2000 on clean with a classic gain button that I pushed just a little bit for a little bit of overdrive. I just used that with lots of reverb with my Telly for the whole song. And that's something that I never would have done before.

In some respects is it more difficult playing a part like that than when the gain is cranked?

I think so, because you have to be dead-on. You can't hide behind anything.

You guys don't use a click track?

We do. Now we do. We didn't on Watch Out! because our old drummer couldn't sort of cut it. But our new drummer is like a human metronome, so we did use a click track. That made the recording process a lot better because you know everything is in time.

How would you compare 'Rough Hands' to 'It Was Fear of Myself That Made Me Odd.' That's also kind of a ballad with those types of clean guitars.

I wouldn't say it's similar because 'Fear of Myself' starts out really pretty, but it has that kind of screaming lead riff that comes in. Then it turns into this driving sort of song with the bass drum breakdown in the middle. 'Rough Hands' doesn't have anything like that. It definitely gets loud and it gets big, but it's slow. The riff that I play reminds me more of a U2 song than an Alexisonfire song. When we first started playing it, we were kind of nervous because we didn't know what we were going to do with it. We're an aggressive band and stuff like that. But then we were like, "**** it. We're playing these songs for us and we really like this riff so let's just do it." And it's probably our favorite song as a band. I play the piano the whole way through it. We just didn't want to repeat ourselves, not for fans but mostly for ourselves. As much as this is a job, we still want it to be fun. I think that's what kids sort of like about us, is that we're honest and we play the music that we want to play. It enables us to give them our best performance.

[holdfasthope]

You bring up another interesting point. People may look at Alexis as this louder rock band, so for you to offer up a song like 'Rough Hands'… Some bands may not have done it. The fact that you did do that speaks a lot about the musicality of the band.

I think that's what we're trying to do. We're not trying to change the world with our music, definitely not. I'm not saying that we're reinventing the wheel, because I leave that to Dream Theater. We just really love playing and we just want to keep writing songs that make us excited to play our instruments and shows. If we had not put 'Rough Hands' on the record because we were worried, then I don't think we'd be able to sort of call ourselves "us" anymore. Because when we started, we just wanted to play. I hope that's still why we're doing it.

Jumping back to 'Fear of Myself' for a moment, you talk about that lick coming in at a minute and a half, where it kind of gets loud and that breakdown with the drums and the bass. It sounds almost like it was improvised at the moment?

You know what? It almost was. That's Wade playing that riff. When we wrote that one, that was another one of those ones that we were iffy on because our first record was so immature, for lack of a better word. Just because that was our first eleven songs that we wrote as a band, so we really didn't have that point where we could write a batch of songs and go, "Okay, this is a good path we're going into."

There's a song on that record, the next song 'Side Walk When She Walks' that George doesn't sing on. Basically that was his decision because he said, "I'm just going to mess it up. It's good the way it is." He helped me write the lyrics, but he didn't feel like it was his place. So 'Fear of Myself' was like that sort of thing. I thought it was going to be pretty the whole way through, but like I said before, Wade had this riff. And I was like, "Dude, try that riff with this chord progression." And it worked perfectly. It was just one of the instances where he had been working on something and I had been working on something and it just kind of fit together.

'Side Walk,' it starts off with that clean delay guitar and then it goes into what I call the big lick. Then it ends with that low-fi section - it's almost as if you're strumming on an electric acoustically.

That was me in Julius' house, where he has his studio. His wife also has a salon down the hallway and that's me standing the salon. He put a mic at the end of the hallway and it's me just strumming my E333 not plugged in. It's me actually singing it in there, too. I was in this big, echo-y salon and it just worked out really, really cool.

You're singing this?

I do all the singing.

I thought there was a singer in the band. That's my stupidity.

No, there's a guy who screams.

When I thought it was the same person doing the screaming and the singing, I couldn't quite grasp the concept. When that singer was singing in the clean voice, it made the track pop - this heavy guitar band with the vocal over the top. The screaming takes away from the punch of the music. Help me understand this.

I'm the singer and the guitarist. Wade also sings a little bit, but then there's George and he's the screamer, and what we call, the professional hype man. If you saw us live, you would totally understand it. For us and for a lot of people, their favorite part is the way George and I sort of work off each other. It's sort of like I'm the calm before the storm. There are a lot of bands that do it, but most of the time they have that guy who does the screaming and the singing. He'll sing the verse and scream into the chorus.

[holdfasthope]

Help me understand why the vocal needs to take on that kind of a screaming, over-the-top quality.

Musically, when we started the band, Wade and I didn't want to sing. We were more concentrated on guitar playing and singing a little bit. We asked George to sing for us and he was like, "I can't sing." We were like, "That's okay, just come and yell over it." We wanted to just have this vocal overload, amazingly energetic feeling to the music.

So he's more an instrument than a voice.

Yeah. The problem there lies that George's lyrics are really great. The fact that you can't understand them as well as we'd like to sometimes is a bummer because he's a really good storyteller.

If the lyrics weren't on the CD, it would be pretty impossible to understand them.

Exactly. But we worked with that on our new record because George's screaming is a lot more audible. We want people to hear what he's saying. And it's not all the time, but when you hear it you'll definitely hear the difference in his screams. I think without George we wouldn't be as interesting.

Fair enough. You really do have a great voice.

Have you heard my solo record? It's just me and an acoustic guitar.

Tell me a little about that.

It's called City in Color. It's not out in the States or anything.

Is it you doing your Jeff Buckley, so to speak?

You could say that. I wouldn't say it's like Jeff Buckley because it's hard for me to say. He's such an influence on me. It's just me on acoustic guitar. Basically if you take all the melody from Alexis and take everything else away, that's what it sounds like. It's more so about my voice than it is about anything.

What about a song like 'Hey, It's Your Funeral Mama?'

There's a part of us that really likes to just have fun with what we're doing. We don't like to take ourselves too seriously and that song is a perfect indication of it. George had a nightmare about this place around our town called Prudhommes Wet & Wild, it was sort of like a tiny water park/amusement park. There were these really awful go-karts and George one night had a nightmare about the go-karts at Prudhommes. So he wrote a song about it.

That solo section has a pretty cool section, with kind of like a figured guitar lick. And then there's that other guitar doing that three-note thing.

That song probably has the most recognizable riff on the record.

And then the outro is also very cool. How does a part like that get built?

That outro was from a completely different song that we had been trying to write for like a year. There was a bunch of other stuff to that riff for that big crashy part that just didn't work in anything. We wrote that song without our drummer actually at practice. I was playing the beat on a phonebook with some drumsticks. I don't even remember writing that riff, to tell you the truth. It just kind of came to me.

Are you using pedals and effects?

I use the pedals more live than I do in the studio because I like to add little things here and there. Especially when you've been on the road for two years playing the same songs, I start to think of different stuff I could have done in the song. So I use a lot of delay. I use a DL 4. The Line 6 delay model. I also use the Boss RV5, was it? It was the digital delay/reverb pedal that they don't make anymore. I have two of them, basically because I'm afraid if one breaks I won't be able to find another one anywhere. But you can set them to this crazy, swelling reverb sound. On the outro of 'Hey It's Your Funeral,' do you mean that really instrumental type thing?

Yeah, it sounds like there are these little feedback guitars.

Oh, I'm sorry you meant something else in the song. That was sort of like an interlude in between the two. That was originally supposed to be an intro for 'No Transitory,' but we put it at the end to goof people around. That little interlude, I used the RV5 on this setting where you just put everything to 11, so to speak. You get this crazy, swelling sort of reverb sound.

Does it take some practice learning how to use delays and things like that in terms of timing it?

Yeah. I've always been interested in delay pedals since I was young, so I've been using them for a really long time. I like to think I'm getting a little better at it. I'm definitely the kind of guitar player that steps on it for a second just to make that one note go a little bit farther than I'd like, and then I turn it off.

What about 'Sharks and Danger,' with those clean guitars in the beginning? With the timing of that song, it sounds like you were dropping a beat or turning a beat around?

That song is definitely an interesting one. We didn't really know what we were going to do with it because it starts off in such a weird way. I remember coming up with that chord progression and just kind of going, "I don't know what we're going to do with this." The older stuff, we were kind of trying to do interesting stuff and maybe not worrying about a chorus. I really enjoy the buildup section of that song. I think that's probably the instrumental guy in me. I really like when a song builds and builds, and then it just explodes. That was a really happy moment for me that we were able to do a song like that. We were kind of worried because of George's screaming and stuff. That's sort of the sound we sort of developed. We didn't know if we should go that way and then we just kind of did it because we thought, "Whatever."
That's one of the songs that appears on the Switcheroo album that Moneen covers. Can you give me 25 words on that record and how that came about?

That's just us and Moneen being really good friends. We were each able to put a new song out because we were both working on new records. Then we thought, "Instead of us each doing our own little EP, why not add something a little fun to it and cover each other's songs to see what we could do with them?" It was a great little thing. It's funny because some people that review it are bummed about it because we have a similar sound. They're like, "Why did these two bands cover each other's songs. There's no difference!" We did it because it was just really fun and we're best friends.

[holdfasthope]

When you heard their versions did it enlighten you in any way or bring new elements to your music?

I can't sing the chorus of 'Accidents' without singing it in the way that Kenny sings it. It's like embedded in my head.

In 'White Devil' you guys write, "Maybe music isn't dead/Maybe we just forgot what it ****ing sounded like."

That's from 'Get Fighted,' the next track.

I'm sorry, I can't read my own notes. Was that your take on where you were at the moment? Maybe the scene was a little dry?

That song for us was more towards the kids in the scene…Around that time, it was all about fashion and it was all about who had the better haircut. And going to shows and kids maybe not dancing because they were afraid of who was going to be looking at them while they were doing it. That was a really big thing for us because we're just a bunch of goofs who like playing our guitars and stuff. We're not really worried too much about what our hair looks like. We're more about the song. That song was more written toward that, just hoping that kids would have an open mind and listen to everything. And no, it's not about your haircut. No, it's not about the pants you're wearing. It's more so about feeling the music.

What are your feelings in 2006? Is the world of music in a healthy place? Are there a lot of interesting bands out there?

I think so. I don't think popular music will ever be the interesting music because I don't think that's what people want. I believe there's a good percentage of people who strive to find that interesting music and challenge themselves. But I think most of the world is not a super-music fan. They're more so song fans where and are, "I really love that song." That's the way it is. I think that's the way it's always been. The catchier, watered-down songs are the more popular songs because it's easier to listen to. It doesn't take a lot to listen to it. It can just be on at work in the background and you're like, "Oh, that's a catchy tune. I'll buy the record."

In a perfect world, would Crisis go out and sell five million records, and would you guys become the next Coldplay?

I would like our band to reach as many people as possible. I don't really see us becoming the next Coldplay. Even you said yourself, the screaming you don't understand it. And that's not an insult. I really appreciate that.

I'm so intrigued by your choices. That you see it and you're willing to explain it to me. The fact that you make that choice and you feel it brings this element to the music. The Coldplay success might come easier to you if there George wasn't doing it.

It definitely would. And when you hear my solo record, you'll be like, "Why don't you just do this?" That's what everybody asks me. I just put the record out in November and it's gotten a lot of attention in Canada. I know it's because it's easier to listen to it and it basically proves my point of what I was just telling you.

So you guys are touring at the moment?

We're just about to go on tour. I just did a tour for my solo stuff because we were kind of limbo with trying to finish the record. We toured for about almost two years for Watch Out! We recorded it in February of 2004 and went right out on tour right after it. We toured for a really long time, so when we took time off to do this new record we didn't want to start touring until the record was about to come out. We've been around the world twice playing the same songs, so we want to be able to go back and start showcasing some of our newer songs. We're doing a week in the States in the first little bit of May. And then we go over to Europe for a couple of weeks to do a bunch of festivals and stuff over there. Come fall, we'll be on tour for the rest of our lives.

I see that you guys are playing at the Castle Donington Festival. That must feel pretty cool.

Pretty excited. Basically because we love playing in the U.K., first of all. And second of all, Guns N' Roses are reuniting apparently. So that should be interesting. Also, I heard that Alice in Chains is playing.

The Europeans get you - they get Alexis, that kind of offbeat, quirky, a-melodic…They embrace what you guys do.

Yeah. I don't know, our response over there has just been amazing. It really makes us happy. It's good to go somewhere so far away have people…Same with Australia. We've got to Australia twice and it's been unbelievable. It just makes you feel really good, that fact that you go across the world and you're music is relevant to people. That's all I've really tried to do, is sort of affect people.

[holdfasthope]

Do you take this role of guitar player in this modern rock band seriously? It's a full-time job for you? The mantle has been passed to you, so to speak?

It's definitely a full-time job. This is definitely what we do. It's hard to answer that, I guess. I don't know if anything has been passed to us. We'd love to be the biggest band in the world. I think a good handful of the people that play in bands would love that, but at the same time, I don't know if I'd like to be in the biggest band in the world. I think certain bands are meant for that. As long as can just keep writing the songs that we want to write, and they're still relevant to people and they're affecting people the way they're affecting us. That's all we can really ask for in this day and age. Nowadays the most popular music is performed by people that don't write their own songs. For us to hope to be like that, I don't really think it's in the cards - which is fine. I'm not pissed about it or anything. That's the way it goes. It's more about the entertainment than it is about the music these days. That's cool, but that's just not the way I'm going to do it