Copeland

Eric, TO: So how’s it going?

Aaron Marsh, Copeland: Great. We’ve been on tour for four days now…

E: Four days?

A: Four days. We took like a year off from everything in our lives. Well, we made a record, but other than that, we were just like home. I was working on some other records and stuff, so we haven’t tour for like eleven months before four days ago, so we’re still kinda getting back into the swing of things.

E: Working on other records, like producing?

A: Mmhmm, yeah. I have a home studio, so I do stuff there when I’m home.

E: Your new album I noticed has a lot of new themes, like lyrically, directionally, that kind of stuff.

A: Yeah!

E: What was your inspiration with that?

A: Well, I’ve always really been a fan of the surreal and kind of incorporating surreal things along with like, really real things like feelings and like life situations. I really got into the Twilight Zone, so there’s a lot of Twilight Zone references in some of the lyrics. So yeah, a lot of it is kind of like fantastic and surreal like that.

E: Yeah, cool. And musically there’s like a lot more electronic experimentation.

A: Yeah, we’ve always had a little bit of electronic stuff here and there, but we got more into it this time around.

E: And you also recorded as a three-piece for the first time, right?

A: Yeah.

E: Did that change anything, or how did that work out compared to previous albums?

A: Um, it didn’t really change much. The person that was missing was James, and he played bass for us, but he wasn’t a really big musically contributing member. He was more like the visuals guy. He did all the album artwork and merch and websites and all that. So from a visual standpoint for the record it was super different, cause it was a completely different set of people that we were working with. From a musically standpoint, it wasn’t really that much different, cause James wasn’t a huge contributing member. It was always more me and Brian, and then Jon somewhat for the rhythm section. But no, it wasn’t super different this time without James.

E: Is touring different?

A: Oh yeah, for sure. James started this band with me, so it’s been… you know, he was in the band for seven years, I think, so yeah that’s a huge difference for sure.

E: And you signed with Tooth & Nail now. I was kind of surprised by that. What made you choose them?

A: It was mostly the fact that… we actually talked to them before we even signed with The Militia Group. That was our first record deal that really went anywhere for us, but we talked with Tooth & Nail before that. We wound up signing with Militia, but we kept in touch [with Tooth & Nail]. We were friends with lots of bands on the label, and we were friends with lots of people at the label, the staff, and we really felt like they had a good grasp of where our band had been and where we wanted to be. And they felt really confident that they could help us get where we wanted to be. And we’ve always had the utmost confidence that they are just a really hard working bunch of people, and really smart about their hard work too. They spend money in the right places, and they’ve always just made a lot of sense to me.

E: One of things that surprised me about it was that in the past I’ve seen Copeland at Christian music festivals, and Tooth & Nail has always been…

A: Sure, yeah.

E: always been a big, big, big player in that, but I thought that Copeland had been sort of moving away from that direction.

A: That was probably the only…

E: Moving away market-wise anyway.

A: Well, yeah. That was literally the only hesitation about the whole thing. We were always saying, “No, we’re not a ministry band. We’re not a Christian anything. There’s nothing Christian in the lyrics.” You know? We were constantly saying that, but then it doesn’t seem very smart [starts laughing] to sign to Tooth & Nail Records if we’ve been going over that and over it and over it. So yeah, no, for sure, it was a… that was the obvious only drawback, but it was such a minute drawback compared to, to…

E: The quality of the label?

A: Yeah, the quality of the label, and just how smart they are, and how like really into the music, you know… We really felt going into that situation that we were the absolute number two priority [laughs], second to Underoath. But no, it was just a really cool situation there. I really felt like we made the right move, despite the obvious Christian stigma. Which, whatever. I can deal with it.

E: My friend Rob owns a Christian bookstore, so I try to support him because we’re friends, you know? So I went in there to try to buy the record on Tuesday. And he said he didn’t have it just because Tooth & Nail wasn’t releasing it to the Christian market.

A: Yeah, and that was one thing that we were like, you know, we don’t want… we’ve been trying to separate ourselves from that. And they’ve had a bunch of releases actually, that they’ve like, “Alright, we’re gonna skip the Christian bookstores and stuff with this, just because we don’t want to put out the wrong ideas about the band or anything like that.” And really, the fact that everyone calls them a Christian label is really flawed, because they aren’t. They have made a lot of Christian releases, and they’re a huge presence there, but not all the bands on their label are Christian bands. It’s not something that they like, you know, make you tell about how much you love God before you sign a record deal. They don’t care. They are super cool and accepting of others. I mean, I’m sure they could sell a lot more records if we said we were a Christian band, but we don’t want to put the wrong idea in people’s heads.

E: So if you’re not, where did that association come from then?

A: Probably just the fact that we’ve toured in that circuit. The first bands that we toured with were Beloved and Underoath, and I think me singing on that Underoath record really put that in a lot of people’s heads. The fact that we played Cornerstone. I think just like the people that we surrounded ourselves with early on, which were who are friends were, and its where we came from, but we never wanted to be like a ministry band, we just wanted to be a band. It’s just who we knew, it’s the bands that we knew, so that’s who we toured with. But we’ve never made a Christian record. We never said we were a Christian band. It’s just the association that everyone grabbed on to. Everyone likes to compartmentalize things, so when they see a couple bands touring together, you know, they just lump them together. Whatever. It’s not like a huge issue for us. We just don’t want to put the wrong idea in people’s heads and make them think that we’re some kind of spiritual leaders or something, cause we never really wanted to be anything like that.

E: The new CD came out in a special edition too, with a DVD. Where did the idea for the DVD come from, and what’s on it?

A: Well this is actually a big deal for us. Basically, we went into Tooth & Nail with a bunch of hare-brained ideas about how we wanted to present the record, and the first idea we had was like, “We don’t want to do a $20,000 music video. None of our music videos have ever been successful.” We were on Columbia Records before Tooth & Nail, and they spent $50,000 on a music video and did nothing with it. They put it up on Yahoo. They didn’t even put it up on YouTube. It was like the biggest waste of money. And it’s not like that’s label money, that’s our money. So we were like, “We don’t want to do that. We don’t care about having a slick sweet music video for the single. We don’t care.” So we were like, “What we want to do is make something that our fans will actually like and will have so repeat value,” you know? Something that will enhance the listening experience and not just try to rope people in. It’s like rolling the dice with these big expensive music videos. They spend $50,000 on a video and then just cross their fingers that it gets played somewhere. And it’s really dumb, and the music industry is going down the tubes, and record labels are still spending silly money on frivolous things, and then they’re wondering why they’re not able to pay royalties or make a cut back, you know? So basically what we wanted to do was make something that had some repeat value to it. So the deluxe edition idea came up, and it was like, “Well, we’ve got a video budget, so let’s make some videos.” Our initial idea was to have a video for every song on the record and some extra songs as a surprise and videos for those. But what it ended up being was eleven songs and a video for each of those.

E: Each song has a video?

A: Well, there are two songs on the record that aren’t in the filmtrack (that’s what we call it), but then there’s two b-sides in there as well. So there’s eleven songs on the filmtrack in total, two of which were not on the CD.

E: Video meaning like a regular music video for each song, or like it’s a visual component to the songs?

A: We didn’t want to say music video, because it’s not like us playing in an alley or whatever the typical, it’s like, only a few of them even have us in it. It’s just like an art film, or you could call it a music video, whatever. It’s just like some visual representation of the song. We had a bunch of our friends who did video stuff pick a song or get assigned a song and just do something, do a video or some kind of visual. And it came out cool. It came out really good.

E: What’s on the documentary?

A: It’s just like a bunch of studio footage. I kind of like narrated what’s going on to some extent, but it’s just a bunch of like…

E: The making of the record?

A: Yeah, yeah, just a total making of.

E: For the pre-orders there was a mug. I’ve never seen anyone do that before. I love the idea.

A: It wasn’t our idea. That was a Tooth & Nail… actually, I was just as surprised as you were. Cause I didn’t even know they were doing it until the pre-order bundles went up. I was like “A mug? That’s kind of stupid. Oh wait, we have a song called ‘Coffee’ in our catalog. That’s actually pretty clever.” So yeah. It was cool. They freakin’ ran out of mugs so quick, so I’m glad they did it. It became kind of a hot item. I saw on our message board, people were like “Aw, I didn’t get a mug! They ran out before I ordered!” So yeah, it’s cool. I guess people liked them. My girlfriend got one. And actually, my mom bought it, because they ran out before my girlfriend got to order. So my mom surprised my girlfriend with a mug. She was stoked.

E: Do you prefer singing or writing?

A: Do you mean like performing, going on tour and singing?

E: I don’t really know what I meant. I just sort of…

A: Okay. Singing or writing. Probably singing. But I prefer recording the most. Being in the studio. [Bandmate walks by] You know what I mean! You know what I’m talking about. Anyway, I prefer being in the studio, creating. The process of creating the art. The performance is a necessary evil for me. It’s just necessary to keep us going. We can’t make records unless we go on tour.

E: Okay, well that’s about it. Anything else you want to add?

A: Uh, no. No. Well, could you come do that on the recorder? [Said to a man across the room that had been banging a bag of ice on a table for the past minute or two] Just like slam it on the recorder.

Man: Oh, you’re doing an interview. I’m sorry.

A: No, no, it’s alright. No, it’s alright. We’re done. We’re done. Uh, yeah, no other information. I think we’re just gonna be on tour, so if this is posted before we’re done just check out our band on tour for the next couple days.