Motion City Soundtrack: Work In Progress

It took Motion City Soundtrack six years to become the perfect pop unit they are today. Despite a new album and some members starting new chapters in their personal lives, they’re still trying to shake off some ghosts.

Story: Trevor Kelley

Photos: Nate Abbot

When Motion City Soundtrack walked on to a stage late last summer in a Long Island, New York, dustbowl parking lot as part of the traveling circus that is the Vans Warped Tour, they didn’t look any different than they had over the previous years. As usual, frontman Justin Pierre appeared as if he styled his hair with an entire bottle of Elmer’s Glue, while synth op Jesse Johnson had grown a patchy beard. The remaining members-guitarist Josh Cain, bassist Matt Taylor and drummer Tony Thaxton-looked more or less unchanged. But that summer, no matter how familiar they may have appeared onstage, a lot had changed in MCS’s world.

They were experiencing a surge in popularity that virtually no one could have predicted just a few years prior. Near the turn of the millennium, the band were playing to a couple of bored teenagers on Warped’s Kevin Says stage. That day in Long Island, they were performing in front of well over five thousand people, easily outdrawing nearly every other band on the tour. Most of the screaming masses spent that muggy afternoon singing along to bittersweet anthems like “Everything Is Alright” and “Better Open The Door,” two fan favorites from 2005’s Commit This To Memory-MCS’s sophomore album and a surprise hit for their current label, Epitaph Records.

Once their set was over, the band retired to their twin tour buses. One of the two sprawling coaches they were traveling in that summer was actually serving as a makeshift studio, where they were recording demos for what would be their third album, Even If It Kills Me. These sessions held greater significance for frontman Pierre because it would be the first MCS album he would write completely sober, after having spent the past 10 years battling alcohol and drug addiction.

“The most important thing [now is for] me to be sober,” Pierre says when reached in Florida on tour this summer. “If I’m not sober, there is no band-there’s no nothing. I have to put that first if I want to do anything else.”

That’s not to say Pierre has always followed this creed. In fact, unbeknown to most of MCS’s fans, Pierre began to relapse this past spring while recording in New York City with a trio of big name producers. For all intents and purposes, Even If It Kills Me should be the record capitalizing on the momentum that began building when the band nabbed the MTVu Breaking Woodie (Best Emerging Artist) Award in 2005. When you consider Pierre’s most recent struggles, though, it may also serve as a reminder of how fragile their working arrangement can be. After all, what would happen if MCS became one of the biggest bands in the world? Would Pierre take the initiative he has in recent months and finally straighten himself out-for good? Or would it only be a matter of time before his past once again caught up with him?

Spend some time around the members of MCS and one thing becomes clear: No one is more interested in the answers to the aforementioned questions than Pierre’s bandmates. In a lot of ways, the four of them couldn’t be more unlike their leader: Other than Johnson (a huge fan of energy vodka), the remaining members, for the most part, only drink in moderation. (Though you may occasionally see Taylor or Thaxton at a bar after a show, booze is never allowed on their backstage rider and the two high school friends are admitted lightweights. (“I don’t understand it,” Pierre says, referring to his bandmates. “Matt will drink a beer, feel tipsy and say, ‘Ooh, that’s too much.’ But as soon as I feel tipsy, I’m like, ‘That’s it! I need more!’”

With that in mind, you can only imagine how different their lives have been over the past few months. While Pierre continued to struggle with alcoholism, the rest of the band spent the majority of their downtime settling down with girlfriends. Taylor bought a house in Richmond, Virginia; Johnson and his girlfriend currently live together in a loft that overlooks Manhattan; and by the time you read this, Cain will have walked down the aisle with his fiancée, a violence prevention counselor from Minnesota. Perhaps the biggest change of scenery, though, happened for Thaxton, when he moved to Los Angeles this past April after years of living in Richmond with his parents. One of the reasons the drummer says he headed west was to get involved in more session work.

This move seems like an odd thing for a guy in a successful rock band especially right before the release of what could be the biggest album of his career. But it’s a fairly good indication of what life is like in Motion City’s universe. Who knows what the future holds? Understandably, this is something that Thaxton has given a lot of thought. “For me, it is a worry,” Thaxton admits. “It is always in the back of my head that this problem [with Pierre could] be the end of this band.”

Thankfully, when Thaxton and his bandmates arrived in NYC York last February, they had far less reason to worry. At that point, Pierre had kept his promise and was no longer drinking or using drugs. He was also incredibly focused. Many of the songs on Even If It Kills Me are slower, resonant and far more mature than the tracks that turned up on the band’s 2002 debut, I Am The Movie-which was entirely the point. “That is how they seemed to approach it,” recalls Girls Against Boys’ Eli Janney, who worked on the first half of the album alongside Fountains Of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger. “They definitely wanted to grow as a band artistically and wanted to mature. They expressed that.”

But after getting off to a strong start with both Janney and Schlesinger, things grew troublesome a few weeks later when they began sessions with Ric Ocasek-the former Cars frontman primarily known for his work in the ’90s with Weezer and Nada Surf. Upon switching gears, Pierre suffered from a bout of writer’s block that caused him to spend most nights re-writing lyrics at the band’s rented apartment. He was also having trouble recording in the studio, where it was rumored Ocasek and the band didn’t exactly jell. (Reportedly, Ocasek would often leave at night without telling anyone.) “It took a while to figure him out,” Pierre admits. “I still don’t think I [did]. He was definitely a character.”

Any awkward moments the singer may have experienced with Ocasek were the least of his problems. At the time, he was also going through a grueling breakup with his then-girlfriend, an experience inspiring many of the lyrics on Even If It Kills Me. Two weeks before Pierre was scheduled to fly back and see her in Minneapolis, the two called things off for good and Pierre went directly to a restaurant near the band’s apartment in the West Village where he consumed (by his estimation) 10 mixed drinks in the course of a few hours. “Once that happened,” Pierre says, “I was like, ‘Fuck it.’ I went out and got completely destroyed. I’m actually surprised I’m still alive. When I woke up [the next morning], I was covered in vomit.”

In the past, Pierre would often attempt to hide such relapses from his bandmates. This time he went straight to them for help. At first, he feared the worst; one of his previous relapses resulted in Thaxton repeatedly slamming a door against his head. But instead of growing angry, his bandmates simply listened.

“Over the years, I have learned with Justin that getting mad does not help him or me,” says Cain, who was actually sleeping across the hall from Pierre at the time. “So I simply ask him what he thinks he should do about it, then hold him to it. I can’t make him be sober. I can only help him.” Unfortunately, it would be another few weeks before Pierre would actually be interested in getting help from anyone.

When all the recording in New York City had wrapped, the band members began to scatter in different directions. For a while, the only member of the band left in Minneapolis to check up on Pierre was Cain, but he was often too busy planning his wedding. Thus, for the next few weeks, Pierre fell back into his old ways. Though he never returned to drugs, he began drinking by himself on a near-daily basis after the band finished recording. As for the amount of alcohol that he was consuming, well, let’s just say it would make both Lindsay and Paris shudder.

“They say that you pretty much pick up where you left off, and I found that to be true,” Pierre admits. “It was, like, a bottle of scotch every day. I was going out of my mind.” One night, in the midst of a particularly messy binge, Pierre blacked out. His sister had spent the previous evening trying to get a hold of him, and finally discovered him the next day. She, along with Pierre’s father, rushed him to the ER, and after a few days of detox, Pierre checked into a local drug and alcohol rehabilitation center. In the three months since, Pierre has remained clean and sober. He has also become far more honest about this problem than he was in the past.

“The easy way out would have been to act like these last six months didn’t happen,” the singer says. “But I’m trying to be accountable for my actions now. I don’t have all the answers and I’m not perfect. But hopefully, people can read this and say, ‘Hey, if I didn’t get it the first time or the second or the third, maybe I can get it the next time, too.’”

Yet, even as Pierre tries to change things one day at a time, the questions surrounding his band still remain. Really, it’s difficult to imagine what would happen if he slipped up again, especially now that his bandmates are embracing somewhat quiet lives. Would it mean the end for MCS? Would they be able to recover? Not even the band’s members are completely sure.

“That is still a big concern for us,” Thaxton admits, reflecting on the last six months of ups and downs. “Justin really seems to be doing great now and hopefully this will stick. But… ” He pauses tellingly. “You never know.”