The Academy Is…

Almost here, what’s the reference in that name?

Well as far as I understand, When William described it to me it’s the feeling of being content with where you’re at but always having a goal and even if you reach a goal, always having another goal and never being content with where you are at, but being content to keep you going but always striving to be somewhere else, you’re always almost where you want to be.

You have a new album coming out; can you tell me about that?

We are finishing the writing right now on this tour and then after that we have another month to continue writing then we go into the studio for about 3 months and then record it. We’re hoping it will come out around February next year, its all tentative still, everything’s still tentative.

Do you know what direction you are trying to move this album towards?

Well there’s a lot of different influences. On the last album we came out with a sound that is ours so now that we understand how we sound we are able to mold that in different ways, but there is a lot of classic rock and bands, not lame bands, good bands.hard rock, ballads, all the different things we’re going to try and incorporate.

Would you say that classic rock is your biggest influence?

Probably, as far as when it was coming out, yeah. We don’t like to muck up a song with a ton of stuff and it seems like a good amount of classic rock bands had the same mentality where they didn’t do a bunch of stuff that they didn’t need to in the song.

Who is going to be the producer of the new album?

Tentatively and most likely, more then most likely, Butch Walker and Chris Sheldon, he’s from the UK, he engineered “The Colour and the Shape” by the Foo Fighters and he’ll be engineering our record if all goes well.

Do you know how many tracks you are aiming for in the new CD?

I think we are going to try and track 15 and then cut 12.

Can you walk me through the process on how you got signed, because now that Fall Out Boy is huge a lot of people are under the impression that they piggy-backed you to getting signed.

From what I understand, Fall out Boy just sold about 1500 copies of their record, which is cool, but they weren’t nothing close to what they are now, their second album wasn’t even out yet. Then Pete said, “you should check this band out” to John, the co-owner of Fueled by Ramen, and they came up to Chicago from Florida and spent 3 days with the guys in their apartment and they talked about music and he watched them practice, and he liked what he saw.

Are you from the Chicago-land area too?

I‘m from Milwaukee ; it’s a train ride away.

After the Warped Tour what are your plans, just working on the new album?

Yeah

Are you going to be touring after that?

We want to try and squeeze out one more tour before the end of the year, but at the same time we have been touring for like two years straight and after we record this record we are debating if we want to throw another tour in there or if we should just go home and see our parents, we’re pretty torn.

You have a new music video you’re working on right now, can you tell me about that?

I think it’s online somewhere, it keeps changing; I keep asking and never get a straight answer. “The phrase that pays” we shot it not too long ago actually and we’re all very proud of it, it’s the best one that we have done, with the videos that are out, we like them but we’ve had some bad luck with other videos that we haven’t released. We have 5 videos and only released three.

Are the other videos online?

Well I think they’’re somewhere. I guess that doesn’t help you because the internet is a pretty big place. The treatment of the new video is this like crazy house thing where we are all inside of it and nothing really makes sense, but it makes sense because nothing has to make sense I guess.A lot of white, a lot of sterility, if you will.

Do you have any ideas for the name of the album or is that still tentative?

We‘ve got a couple of ideas, but we’re still thinking about it.

Are you happy with Fueled by Ramen?

Yes, well this next album will be on Atlantic, but we are still very much happy with Fueled by Ramen, they do great things for bands, they know how to do it, they know how to find the right bands and they know what to do with those bands. It’s different, the way they market is different for every band and it’s great that they don’t just take 5 alike bands and throw them all in there, they have hip-hop bands like “Gym Class Heroes” you can’t market us quite the same. They’re doing well.

A lot of bands out of Chicago are blowing up. What are your thoughts on the Chicago music scene?

It‘s pretty nourishing, it’s great that a lot of bands from the Chicago scene, the Hush Sound, the Audition, Plain White T’s.There are tons of bands from there and everything seems to be blossoming now, and its great to be apart of it and see your friend’s band start to really come out, its like, “wow, this is great”

Anything else you want to talk about?

Um, well we have a new website, nothing that exciting, but I mean if there’s one place to get information about us that would be it, theacademyis.com