Exclusive Interview: Make Do And Mend's Matt Carroll on the band's move to Rise Records
MAKE DO AND MEND are currently preparing their sophomore album and first for Rise Records with producer Matt Bayles. Drummer Matt Carroll told us what’s next for the band as they battle expectations, expenses and brotherly love in this exclusive interview.
Interview: Brian Kraus
Make Do And Mend toured with Hot Water Music and Senses Fail this year, two bands who have been in the game a long time. What were those experiences like? Did they have any wisdom to drop on you?
Yeah, absolutely. Touring with both of those bands was fucking awesome. Touring with Hot Water Music was obviously a dream come true. They’ve been one of my favorite bands for a long, long time and definitely had a heavy influence on myself as a person and as a musician as a young kid. So being able to tour with them right off the bat was already super mind-blowing. They are some of the best people ever. They really kind of took us under their wing and showed us what it was like to be in a career band. They just had a lot of wisdom to shine upon us, and one of the big things that they taught us was that no matter what the show is, no matter what position you’re in, you need to go up [to the stage] and give 100%. No matter if there’s one kid there or if there’s a thousand people there, those people are there, remember that. That was one huge thing they taught us. It was really cool. We all felt like they were our dads.
Senses Fail are also awesome dudes. Buddy is a really knowledgeable dude, a really kindhearted guy, and they also had a lot of good knowledge to share with us. I think we’re a bit wiser at this point after doing a few tours with bands who’ve been doing it for a while. I think we’re in a good position.
You mentioned a career band. Do you see MDAM following in the path of those bands in terms of a decade or more worth of recording and touring? Do you think that far into the future to begin with?
It crosses my mind sometimes, but it’s not something that I personally or we I think sit around and think about. I think if you did it could be a really, really scary thing, in anything in life. If you try to fast forward ten years, you know, it’s a little bit of a scary thing because fuck, I don’t know what I’m doing tomorrow! It’s a strange thing to try and think about your future. I think to stay sane and to stay healthy we just focus on tomorrow instead of six years, and we focus on the record that we’re writing now instead of thinking about what we’re going to be doing the next ten years. It’s crossed my mind, and in theory I would like to keep playing in this band in the foreseeable future. I love doing it and I love what we do and it would be a privilege to be able to keep on doing it, but for me I more think of the immediate future than the long term.
James (Carroll, vocalist and guitarist) has spoken about holding a professional job outside the band before. Do you guys still balance careers or are you too busy with the band to pursue that kind of work right now?
Right now it’s far too busy. It’s been a weird transition, because up until last spring I had always had a job. When I was in school or when I was a kid, I always, always, always had a job. I was working in between tours and it got to the point where I literally could not do it anymore. It was driving me crazy because we would come home from a tour and would have to find a job for three weeks or two weeks just to be able to get by and pay rent. It was driving me over the edge and I basically said to myself “Dude, you gotta do one or the other. It cannot be both anymore because we are doing far too much with the band to be able to healthily do both.”
So we kind of just took a dive into the deep end and then I just kind of went for it. We’re not working regular jobs now, we’ve kind of transitioned to the job being a full time band which is fucking awesome. It lends into some financial woes here and there but you get past it, you figure it out just as anyone would in other situations. It’s become way too busy to be able to balance both. I feel really privileged to be able to somehow get by playing in a band and kind of doing my thing.
We’re going to get into the band now. No more real life shit.
Unfortunately there is no more, other than the band, real life shit for me. [Laughs.] Can’t tell you about my shitty dog-walking job anymore, I can’t tell you about my shitty laundry. Those days are done for now.
You guys just signed to Rise Records. What were you looking for with a new label? Why were they the right one for the job?
We pride ourselves on working really, really hard on everything we do, whether it's a tour, a song, a t-shirt or whatever. We work really hard on everything we do and are really particular about everything we do and have never been a band to kind of sit back and let other people take care of things for us. We wanted to find a label who was going to work side by side with us and be supportive of exactly what we want to do and be able to match our hard work because two is always better than one. But if one is not working as hard or one doesn’t have the same vision it can be a really detrimental thing to a band. We didn’t wanna jump the gun and choose the wrong label and we spoke to a bunch of people and it was hard, but once we met people from Rise, we all sort of looked at each other and were like “Well, this is the one.”
They are the hardest working people. The most focused people I have ever met in my entire life. And they just know what they are doing and they get our band, and they know what we want to do and where we want to go and they’ll fully support us in whatever we want to do. It really was a no-brainer. If everyone on the outside could have taken a look on the inside, I think people would have different opinions than they do. Rise was just really the most solid label that we had spoken with so we decided to go with them.
Going off that work ethic you just mentioned, will this whole Rise release process be a more formal process in terms of the structure and planning? Or is it similar to the End Measured Mile process?
It’s gonna be way more planned out then End Measured Mile, for sure, just because of where we’re both at. We all know a lot more now than we did when we were putting out that record. Obviously, Rise is a way more full-time label.
The last album was a learning process, to some extent?
Everything we do is a learning process. Every morning when I walk out of the door is a learning process. Every show we play is a learning process. I think the cool thing about being in a band is you’re always growing, you’re always learning shit and there’s always something that can be done better or done differently. End Measured Mile was a learning process. This record will be a learning process. If we’re around for a long time, ten records from now will be a learning process. I kind of see it like that.
Did the band feel any different after you released your first full-length?
Yeah, for sure, putting out a full length was a really nerve-racking thing because I’ve been playing in bands since I was like, 14 years old and no band I’ve ever been in has put out a full-length for many reasons. For financial reasons, for lack of taking it seriously, so when we came to a point in MDAM where we logically kind of had to put one out we were kind of like “Fuck, we’ve never done this before.” We put out two EPs and a split, we’re used to writing songs in quick spurts. This could be weird. So putting out a full-length record and actually having it be well-received was a huge accomplishment for us and it was kind of like, ”Okay, we did it.” We were able to write a full-length recording and it’s a pretty cool thing. Hopefully we’ll be able to move on and improve upon it and use that as a base.
Is the stress factor lower the second time around?
Actually, you know what, no it’s not. Because going into End Measured Mile we were nervous about being able to write a full-length but at the same time we didn’t have nearly as much pressure on us as we do now. We hadn’t toured that much. We were a very unknown band at that point. There just really wasn’t that much pressure. We wanted to make a good record for ourselves so we didn’t have that many people to try and appease. Now it’s a thing where people like our band and as much as you want to write a record that you personally love and think is music that naturally comes out, you also don’t want to bum people out who like your band. I appreciate everyone who supports us, comes to a show, and listens to our records; I would never wanna bum them out in any way. That’s a tough thing to let get inside your head, but you really can’t. You gotta keep just doing your thing and hope that people like you for who you are and like you for the band you are and respect any musical choices that you might wanna make for a record. We’ll see—I think the people that like our band are really open-minded music fans so I’m hoping that whatever record we can make people will be open to listen to.
Are you done writing the new record or is it something that you’ll be working on until the studio? With End Measured Mile you were working on the songs pretty much right until you were recording them.
Yeah, for sure. We’re the kind of band where nothing is ever certain until it’s absolutely recorded and it can’t be changed. Our songs are a work in progress until they get recorded. We have a ton of songs that we think are done, but they’re gonna get changed. I know that the songs will be different than what we have. They won’t be certain until the record button is pressed and they’re on tape.
How do the new songs differ from older material? Are there any new influences that maybe weren’t prevalent on the older songs? More of a natural progression?
Yeah, I’ve been listening to a lot of different music lately and I think it’s had a silent influence on me. When we’re writing songs we never talk about like, “Oh, let’s write a song like Jimmy Eat World, let’s write a song like the National.” We write songs. I think a lot of our musical taste has changed over the past year and I think it will silently reflect on the new record. We’re just writing songs. We’re writing MDAM songs. I don’t know if they’ll be End Measured Mile style, I don’t know if they’ll be Bodies Of Water style, I don’t know if it’ll be something completely different. At the end of the day, they will be MDAM songs. It won’t be anyone else but us.
What environment do you guys write music best in?
We write really well together. Our thing has always been everyone independently writes. Everyone writes riffs, melodies, lyrics. And we always send everything to each other. Once there’s something that someone writes we just send it out to everyone and then what we’ll do is we go to practice, and we come together like “Hey, I like this one. Let’s try it. Let’s do this. Let’s do that.” We all just kind of mash heads together and write songs. We never at any point have had someone written a full, complete song that has been used on a record. It’s always been people write parts and we come in and work on them together and make a final product together.
Right down to the vocals?
James and I work on vocals together sometimes. He writes all the lyrics, but we work on melodies together sometimes. He’s really good at that stuff. We usually kind of just let him do his thing when it comes to that, unless he’s having doubts or troubles with anything then we’ll bash heads together and try and come up with something.
You guys don’t really seem dysfunctional like the Gallagher brothers (of Oasis), for example. Is playing music with James always harmonious?
Uh, no. [Laughs.] We’re not the Gallagher brothers, but we fight. I think all brothers for some reason just fight with each other. But we’re always the type where we’ll fight and yell at each other and tell each other to fuck off and then five minutes later we’ll be hugging and chatting and laughing and it’ll be fine. Me and him are definitely at each other’s throats more than anyone else in the band. It’s just for some reason natural. It’s nature that makes brothers fight, I don’t know what it is. And it’s not just music, it’s everything.
Matt Bayles is going to produce the new record; what made your decision to go with him?
The main factor was we’re all just huge fans of him and his work and his studio. He’s recorded some of the greatest sounding records of our time, in my humble opinion. He’s recorded Minus The Bear and Botch and Mastodon and a lot of really great, natural sounding records. We’ve always been huge fans of his, and we were lucky enough for him to mix End Measured Mile. We were touring and we were in Seattle while he was mixing, so we’d get there and kind of just hung out and for some reason he likes our band. I don’t know why, but we vibed out super hard and just kind of kept in contact. He came out to a few of our shows and when it came down to deciding who we wanted to produce and record our new record he was really at the top of the list. I called him and I was like “Hey dude, we’ve been talking about it and you’re the number one on our list for our new record, are you into it?” And we kind of had this awesome phone conversation and kind of just found it out right after that. I think we’ll make a really good pair, because we’re very like-minded when it comes to music and when it comes to sounds and recording in general. So I think it’ll be a really good partnership.
How does your hometown of West Hartford and your Connecticut upbringing play into the identity of the band?
I don’t know if it does, to be honest with you. I think the Connecticut scene in general does, West Hartford never has. We grew up going to shows in Hartford and Wallingford, like to hardcore shows in the small halls. The Connecticut music scene in general had more of an influence on the band than our hometown did. The whole atmosphere of the community and the music, the gathering of friends and people at shows was a huge influence for us and Connecticut hardcore and punk and whatever. It was a really important thing to me when I was a kid and had a huge influence on us as a band, because when we started playing we were just playing to the legion halls and hardcore shows. Those are the kids that first latched onto our band and started supporting us. So in that regard, our base is in that. It is and was and will always be really important to us.
With the last record, you were able to put out music videos for the first time. The first one for “Oak Square” was fairly traditional, but for “Transparent Seas” you threw everyone for a loop and went animated. Where did the idea to do that come about?
We all like being creative. That’s one part about being in a band that’s really gratifying. You get to be creative. You get to do whatever the fuck you want. It’s cool, it’s like being in art class and instead of being assigned a certain painting that you have to make, the teacher says “Well, you can just paint or sculpt and do whatever the hell you want.” And those were the projects in school I know I always loved. I’m sure most people are on the same page and so we did the traditional video for our first song, “Oak Square,” and then we wanted to do another one and we met this dude Matt Frodsham just through mutual friends. I was a huge fan of his work, he’s this brilliant animator and he’s done a ton of stuff for MTV and Cartoon Network and he’s a really, really talented dude. We were lucky enough for him to be a fan of the band and really support us.
So we told him, “Hey dude, we wanna do an animated video. We wanna get weird with it and do something different, something that a lot of people amongst our peers don’t really do or even think about doing. Would you be up for the job?” He was totally into it, wanted to do it, so we kind of just collaborated on the theme and came up with the storyboard and kind of just went from there and just created something that I think is pretty cool and unique.
You guys will be joining Thursday this weekend for their holiday shows, which are also their last ones planned in the US. Are they another band you grew up on?
To an extent. I remember buying Full Collapse and War All The Time on CD and playing them all the time in my bedroom. I really liked them, and I know Mike (O’Toole, guitarist) really likes them a lot. I always really respected their ethics and the way they went about their band. It was always just very real and very tangible. I always connected with that, not just the music but them in general. Their live show is out of this world passionate. In that regard, I was really influenced a lot by them and to be able to play these shows is—I can’t even describe it. It’s such an honor and such a privilege and it should be fucking tight.
What does the next year hold for MDAM, aside from a new album?
Well, we’re recording in February and March. Right after that, we’re gonna do some international touring. Then, as soon as we get home from that we have a summer tour planned. After that is wide open. We have up through the summer figured out. Kind of after we record we’ll put out the record at the beginning of summer and kind of just tour. Tour, tour, tour nonstop and write another record.
And do it all over again, hopefully. alt
