AltPress Exclusive: A conversation with ex-Cute Is What We Aim For bassist Dave Melillo

Cute It What We Aim For recently announced they were breaking up and embarking on new, individual musical journeys. Laila Hanson checks in with bassist DAVE MELILLO to get his side of the story and find out what’s next for the musician.

There are obviously going to be a lot of rumors circling around as to why Cute Is What We Aim For broke up. But we’re not interested in rumors; we’re interested in the real deal. Do you want to tell us what the past few months have been like as a band and what built up to this?


Dave Melillo: There’s definitely been a lead up to it. We left the Take Action! Tour in March, and there was nothing booked after that. And you know how bands are: If there’s nothing on the books, that’s just the first red flag in anyone’s mind. It’s just the type of people we all are. To sit at home is lonely; it’s just really painful. So not having anything on the books, not having anything to look forward to really kind of [brought] the situation to where it is now. But the story pretty much is we got off Take Action!, and the idea was to write a record. We didn’t have any type of management, we didn’t have anyone that we were really working with, so we didn’t have a direction, we didn’t have any type of game plan. But we were really trying. I moved up to Buffalo, New York, for a couple months, tried to write a record.




The blame can be put on one person, but I’d like to put some on myself, because I came into this band from being a solo artist and that always kind of loomed over my inclusion in the band. People were always like, ‘Well, Dave, when are you going to do your own thing? When are you going to do this and this and this?’ And for the last two years, I’ve been very content just being a part of this band, just kind of following it where it went. Because when I was doing my solo stuff, I didn’t have any of these opportunities. I didn’t really have the opportunity to go on tours like Warped Tour; I didn’t really have the opportunity to tour with bands like Fall Out Boy and Simple Plan. So in that regard, I am one of the luckiest people to be able to work with this band and to go that way.




In another sense, these past few years have kind of been like college for me. You know, like my freshman and sophomore years, where I’m kind of like, ‘I just want to party. I just want to get down, and I don’t care what else is going on.’ And I really attribute a lot of that to why this ended so quickly, because after we tried to write the CD, we all had a talk about the future of the band, and we sort of threw out things that needed to change for everyone to stay and still be interested. I started realizing that I’ve been feeling very creatively stifled over the past two years, and it’s just not my place to be a bass player and backup singer in a band. I hope that doesn’t sound conceited or anything like that, it’s just that at one point, I started being very honest with myself and it was hard for me to see that honesty, because I was partying every night. I was more worried about where I was going every night, who I was seeing, girlfriends, just social aspects of my life. Sometime in July I really kind of buckled down and stopped drinking as much as I usually did, and put my head on a little bit straighter and saw that I was on a path that I really wasn’t supposed to be on in the first place, or at least not this long.




I never was like that with my own stuff. I would never drink before I got onstage. I would never smoke, because I didn’t want to hurt my voice. I [took] very good care of myself, because performing was the most important thing to me. If I didn’t have a good show, I was fucking upset. It was just very different in this band, because it didn’t rest on me. I could be very loose with this band, because the fans are very accepting of that. That’s just how the music is. And that’s not saying anything mean [or] derogatory about the music. It’s pop-punk. You can kind of get up there, and after you’ve played the set months in a row, you can do it automatically with a blindfold on. So it wasn’t like I had to be prepared. I wasn’t singing like I usually do, so I wasn’t keeping good care of my voice and my body. I have a whole regimen, I work out every day, and I do that whole thing. I just got really far off base with myself and my old principles. As much as people can push you to a decision, at the end of the day I have to take a little bit of blame myself.




Is everyone in the band taking a break from contact, or are you all still on good terms and just realized that this was for the best?


I think we all realized that it’s for the best. It’s gonna be hard, because wherever there’s business involved with personal relationships, it gets really complicated and weird. So there’s still that business aspect: There’s still money to be made, there’s still money to be split and there are still assets to be dealt with. Everyone’s going to be a little bit standoffish, [because] they want to protect themselves and make sure they get what they deserve in the situation. But I know that when all that’s over, [the bottom line is] we have known each other since 2005. And maybe that’s not the longest time, but in the music industry, I feel like that may as well be 20 years. We did our first tours together. When I was doing my solo stuff, Cute Is What We Aim For opened for me on the first tour that I’ve ever done. So those roots run really deep, and I’ll always have a connection with anyone involved in that band. If that summer didn’t happen back in ’05, none of us would be where we are right now, so we kind of owe each other gratitude and respect. I’ll always have respect for the other people in this band, no matter what’s happened over the past two years.




Is there anything the band were working on that you don’t know what’s going to happen to now? Any songs written or tours planned?


We’re kind of finishing up the college shows that were on the books. We’re in El Paso, Texas, now, we have a show in New Mexico tomorrow and [in] Arizona the day after that, and a show in October in Pittsburgh. Those are going to be the last few things that happen with the band. But I’ve appealed to Shaant [Hacikyan] to kind of keep going with the Cute thing, because there’s a brand there. When I lived in Buffalo, between myself, Mikey [Lasaponara], who’s the drummer, and Jeff [Czum, guitar], we wrote about 15 songs in anticipation of doing a full-length. So there’s material there for Cute Is What We Aim For, I’m just really not sure… The whole issue this whole time was that no one seemed to want to make this band their baby. No one seemed interested to the point to take this and make this what defined them. When I want to follow something and be a part of something, [it needs to be] more than just, ‘Hey, we’re doing this as our job.’ If I wanted a job, I would go to school and I would become a lawyer and get a really high-paying job. I think we all do music because there’s something else that you get from it, the creative thing. Hearing [my] own music and being able to create something, that’s always been my thing. I’ve always wanted to create and have something to leave behind as a legacy. Maybe that sounds a little conceited, but that means a lot more to me than making a day-to-day life. But it gets lost. You get girlfriends, you start thinking about building a life with them. It’s all crazy-ass shit. Then one day you wake up and you’re like, ‘Yo. I have to take advantage of the fact that I have a career in front of me.’ And you either make the choice to go with it or to go to the opposite life and try to live a personal life. Because honestly, if there’s anything I’ve learned from this experience, it’s that you can’t have both. You gotta choose. You can have anything you want–you just can’t have everything.




That being said, do you think everyone will continue to pursue music, even if it is in a different format than Cute?


I have no doubt. I’ve been working with Jeff and Mike, the other two members of the band, to make some music. We found out that we work really well together, and it would be really futile for us to part ways just because this is over. I’ve never met anyone like Mikey [Lasaponara], the drummer, who lives an instrument. I’ve never met anyone like Jeff [Czum] who’s inspired all the time and is always writing. I don’t want to lose that. You don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, we’re trying to keep the good things. I’ve always believed that we’re all going to keep pursuing music, because it’s something that drives us.




Is there anything else you want to put out there for people to know?


I just want people to know that with anything, you have to almost take your personal feelings out of it. No one is doing anything in spite of anyone else; sometimes you just wake up and realize you’re in the wrong situation, or you’re in something that doesn’t make sense for you, and you have to make the best decision for you. We obviously love all the fans. This is my thing, I’m that much more motivated now that there are all these people that might be sad about the breakup, I’m motivated to give them something now so that they won’t be disappointed. I want to give them music so they can have a new favorite band, or at least so they can have something out of the situation that is positive. ALT