“There Is Always Darkness” : In The Studio with Anthony Green

Circa Survive frontman Anthony Green can be a difficult person to get a hold of these days. Between recording his new solo album, Young Legs, touring with his “day job,” and taking his two young boys to the playground, it’s easy to understand why the highly revered lead singer can seem so elusive. AP was lucky enough to catch up with Green for a few minutes and pick his brain on his new solo record, fatherhood and how to avoid getting “flabby.”

Interview: TJ Horansky

Where are you calling from today?
Right now I’m home. I took the day off from the studio today. We pretty much have one day left tomorrow, so today we had a little extra time. Today has just been a little bit of regrouping and going over some last minute things I want to do. I have two acoustic songs to do tomorrow, so I’ve been putting off committing to a structure for those songs. Right now, I’m in the process of trying to figure those out.

Young Legs is your first solo album with producer Will Yip. What went in to your decision to record with him?
Will did Violent Waves for Circa, and when we worked together, I noticed how he was with everybody. I really loved his energy. He always came off as the type of dude who was down to try anything and was open to new methods. He takes every band on an individual basis and does what he thinks is necessary. Beautiful Things and Avalon had been fairly written for years before I recorded them. This was the first time I went in with a couple of songs like that, but it was mostly ideas that I wanted to advance on and build in the studio. Will and I would get together and pick the ideas we wanted to jam on. We then spent a week just listening to the ideas. We would sit around a piano to figure out chord structures and vocals. It was building the song around just the piano and the vocals. We would then track it live for a few hours until we were done making our little various changes. When that was done, we would move on and start from scratch on the next song.

Was that a more organic recording process than on Avalon and Beautiful Things?
For those records, I had a pretty clear vision of how I wanted the songs to sound before I went into the studio. With some of the ideas on this new album though, I would only have a chorus idea or a couple notes, but nothing was committed. This is the most off-the-grid album I’ve recorded since I was a little kid. Since Circa and other stuff over the past 10 years, budgets got bigger and time got different in the studio, so we would be more prepared. I have been really dying to just go into the studio with a handful of ideas and work with them on the spot. Mainly, writing vocals and lyrics on the spot. I wanted to let it direct itself and capture it fresh in the studio. I’ve wanted to do that since I was a little kid. We had to do it when we were younger because of time constraint, but now I’m used to going into the studio for months at a time. Will is such an awesome producer, and I think he was pretty scared coming into this process because he didn’t know what it would be like. All the times before, I would get together in a house down the shore or some place that is not a studio to get comfortable and chill. We took this really seriously. We came in and utilized every minute we had together. We really just tapped in to what felt good. We would have those “Oh shit!” moments where [we] would both look at each other and know that it’s right. We started from scratch, and we kept our antennas up for those moments in all of the songs.


You posted a photo on Instagram recently of some strings being recorded for the record. Were there any other different instruments or techniques used that you had never used before?
Pretty much all of the songs on this record are centered around the piano and the vocals. I never really listened to piano music before until about a year ago. I started to become really interested in the sound of the piano. I was on tour with the the Dear Hunter in Buffalo, New York, and there was a little upright piano backstage. Casey [Crescenzo] and I just started to jam to some weird chords he was making up on the spot. I was riffing off what he was doing, and we started singing and writing right there. It sounded so good. Right then, I started thinking that I wanted this record to have that feeling. I think from that realization onward, I started to come up with more of a vision. I wanted the album to be more classical instrument-based, rather than big, distorted guitars and super-trippy delay. I wanted to use violins and violas and piano and lots of percussion.

That sounds much more orchestral than typical acoustic rock.
Yeah. I was sort of over the whole “big drums and giant guitars and screamy vocals” rock thing. You can still be as powerful and moving, if not more. The sound of, like, a timpani and violin playing something degenerative and creepy, with a passionate vocal part can be just as archaic and visceral as any typical rock band atmosphere. I’ve been doing that for a while, and I love it, but I just felt like going further toward the spectrum of musicality and really trying to tap into those powerful moments without the same old tricks.

What sort of outlet does your solo stuff provide you, compared to Circa?
Circa have always been very much a collaboration of everyone in the group. We don’t say things or do things without everybody agreeing. To an extent, that is really awesome and it’s worked for us. I love it. It can also be limiting. I always want to be writing. Circa have time off sometimes, and my solo project was pretty much born out of having time off from Circa and having songs that the band didn’t want to use. I was able to continue playing music and play these songs that still meant something to me, but maybe didn’t get represented by Circa. It’s gone from that to a place where I need it now. At the beginning, I did it because I had songs and I wanted to keep working. I wanted to try and see how it went. Now, I need to do this. I write songs specifically for an Anthony Green album, as opposed to a Circa album. It gives me a feeling that I can directly communicate from myself and not have it be something that four other guys have to be represented in as well. When you have something you can control, and can decide when to give up control, it’s really beneficial. When I take time off, I get boring. When I keep writing, I just write better stuff. That’s one thing I think needs to change with bands. Back in the day, when people bought records, you would write a record, tour on it for two years and then go write a new one. You should be writing all the time. People need to not be focused on writing just 12 songs for an album and putting it out. Tour all the time, write all the time and put music out all the time.

It’s like a muscle—you need to keep at it and keep exercising it to stay strong.
That is a perfect analogy; it literally is a muscle. If you stop writing, it gets weak and flabby. [Laughs.]

It’s been amazing to see the happiness that marriage and the birth of your two boys has given you. Has that stability in your personal life affected you as an artist in the creative process?
I was just talking to my wife about this the other day. Before we had children, a lot of things were different in our lives. You can do whatever you want when you don’t have kids. You can be out the door for a party in two minutes. When you have kids, their lives are dependent on you. You can’t do that stuff. I’ve always been the type of person that just works whenever I feel like it. I could lie around and be lazy. Now that I don’t have that option, I have to manage my time. Like today, I’m going to work from nine until three, and then I’m going to take the kids to the playground. In that time, from nine until three, because I budgeted it out, I am mega-focused. I enjoy the time. There are also all these things constantly happening that are inspiring to write about that I don’t think I noticed before. I have notebooks from when I was 25 and 26 that are outlines of things to write songs about. I was brainstorming things that I thought would be cool to write about. Now, I don’t have to think about that. It’s definitely changed the way I manage my time, which in turn changes the way that I write. There is always darkness. Sometimes it’s darker than others, but you don’t always have to dwell in that. I’m battling the same demons that everybody is. Being happy and having all this amazing shit happen in my life has made it a lot easier for me to focus on making music and doing new things. The old feeling of “Oh, I’m going through this terrible break up right now, but it’s fine because it will be great for the songs” is fine, but how many fucking songs can you write about being pissed off or being lonely or being sad? You can’t do that forever.

You need a spectrum, an ebb and flow of emotions. It seems like that makes better records.
Yeah! And I think it makes better people. For me, this is my job and I love doing it, but writing an album and putting it out is not like writing a status update and posting it. When you do this for a living, you have this incredible opportunity to express yourself in one of the most primal and purest ways in existence. You can share that with people and get feedback from it. It’s this incredible gift, and I feel so lucky to be able to do it. Every day I worked on the record, I thought if everybody had this in their lives and had a way to build something beautiful and meaningful and possibly dark or hopeful, whatever represents them, people would be way less stressed out. They would be clear. There is so much stuff in my life that I understand from writing about it. Listening to other people and being inspired by it; it’s just this wonderful cycle. For a long time when I was really conflicted and only drawing from that, I felt like I was just constantly kicking myself in the foot. It’s painful to write about that stuff. When I sing songs about painful memories, I’m reliving those memories. I see guys on stage all the time that go up and just do their thing. You can tell there’s a lack of heart and you don’t connect with it as much. When I’m in that moment, I’m feeling all that stuff 100%. It hurts just as much as the moment I wrote it. It’s elating, too. It’s intoxicating. It makes you feel good at the same exact time, which is weird and confusing. When I was younger and had all this time to fuck around with, I don’t think I realized how lucky I was. This record was very much a therapeutic thing for me. I got to go in with a song that had nothing to it and write it in the studio that day. It’s the epitome of organic. I know people throw that word around a lot, like what really makes something “organic?” There are songs on the radio that you would think are the most organic things ever that were written by dudes in suits trying to figure out how [they were going to sell the song.]ß

You seem to be at a point where you are okay writing about these painful things, but it wasn’t always that way. There is a feeling of isolation in some of your older songs from writing about painful experiences. “Your Friends Are Gone” from 2007’s On Letting Go specifically comes to mind.
It’s weird because when I sing “Your Friends Are Gone,”I think about something completely different then what that song was probably intended for. When I wrote the song, I was processing something else. Songs grow. Their meaning and their words change to you over time. Going into the studio with a pretty idea that you’ve been humming along to for a while, and letting it just happen, it was such an exciting and new feeling for me. I can remember having that as a kid. It wasn’t that I was lazy, I just didn’t do it. I was just waiting until I had to commit to it before I would. I don’t know what these songs will represent to me in 10 years. A lot of these songs were written for specific people. None of them really have names, but there is a song I wrote for my mother-in-law. There is a song I wrote for Colin [Frangicetto, Circa Survive guitarist]. There is a song I wrote for [my wife] Meredith. I wrote a lot of these songs as notes to people.

It’s often easier to communicate a feeling or sentiment through a song than try to describe that feeling to them.
Yeah, absolutely! You know how when you’re talking to your mom and you say a specific word in a specific way, it gives a completely different connotation? When you write a song, you really play with words and change their meaning. The feeling of the song can be completely affected by just the melody, and the words can be almost opposite. You can do anything with communicating through music. You don’t even need words. Everything gets more colorful; everything takes on more life and more meaning. It’s always been easier for me to say things to people in a song. You can tell somebody to get the fuck over something in a song in a way that is still pretty and hopeful, as opposed to just saying “get the fuck over it,” which can be cold.

Do you have any solo tour plans coming up?
Yeah, I’m hoping to put out the album and go on tour shortly after Uproar. I want to do a full U.S. tour for as long as I can, and then try to get overseas. I want to try to play some small shows in the U.K. or Europe or Australia, which I’ve never done with my solo stuff.

The Rockstar Uproar Festival with Alice In Chains, Jane’s Addiction and Coheed And Cambria starts in August. Congratulations on that.
This is the first tour Circa have done in three or four years where people are congratulating us. [Laughs.]My aunts and uncles, who don’t even pay attention to our band, are like, “Oh wow, you’re going out with Alice In Chains, that’s great.”

When the old folks start congratulating you, that’s how you know it’s real.
[Laughs.]That’s right.