JPG: Back to Ad Explorata, while I don’t want to go to far into the whole background of the album and the discovery of artifacts, as far as that story and the interest in the Mayan culture, is that something where everyone in the band is deeply into it?
JL: I would say that it’s all to varying degrees. It’s not that anybody is disinterested. There is a difference between what one is into personally and what the band is into as a group. There’s a balance. They are all little pieces of our journey together.
JPG: What about yourself?
JL: For me personally, it’s part of the whole package, the overall fulfillment of a vision in the sense of us performing music, us having meaning behind the music, us sharing it with fans and our fans being part of something larger than just the show. It’s what we do with our charity work. You walk through the door of a STS9 show, you’re either part of building a house in New Orleans or helping an after school program or supporting local independent media. Just try to be holistic in our approach to the music. As comfortable as we all are in this country, we need to still realize we are in a war. It’s the job and responsibility of artists to bring attention to that kind of thing, and people forget. So, we do our part.
JPG: How do you see the role of the internet for such activism from STS9?
JL: I think it’s a great tool for bringing about awareness. Obviously, the part that the internet doesn’t fully do is put things into action fully. That’s still the responsibility of the individual. The internet is a great help, for sure, not only for activism, but as well as just younger bands coming up and even older bands like us being able to share your music easily and share your message easily as well as having fans be involved — a forum or somewhere where they can share their ideas, try and make it a community.
We’re still reaching out to individuals. You meet a kid at a show and having those kinds of interactions too are just as important. There’s always going to be degrees of all that stuff together. I don’t think any of those can operate on their own.
JPG: In regards to human interaction, bringing that idea to your charity work, the New Orleans Make It Right Foundation, did you walk around the 9th Ward and that inspired you?
JL: How that whole project started, was myself and Hunter, we were in New Orleans twice before and we’d go down to the 9th ward and check it out to check up on the progress. Obviously, something has been ongoing for years and years. The third time we visited after Katrina, we went down there as a band, we were so open arms welcome there. It wasn’t because we had been doing charity work. It wasn’t because of anything. It was just because we were down there and concerned. We ended up getting invited into people’s houses and hearing stories. A gentleman invited us into his FEMA trailer with his two kids and mother and wife, all living in a little trailer. It was moving, man. It was inspiring. It was heart wrenching.
We walked away from there like, ‘What can we do ‘cause nothing’s changing here? These are people. It’s their homes.’ So, we just set the goal of reaching out to the artists on our label and reaching out to some other artists to do a remix of the Peaceblaster album. Everybody donated their time, from the people doing the artwork to the people producing the tracks to the guy that mastered it. Everybody threw in their energy to it. We sit today at 115, 120 thousand. We’re $30,000 away from building a house. Everybody wants to give us credit for it. I say, ‘Fuck that!’ We just made it available in the sense of our fans. That’s our fans building the house. That’s the people that are supporting, that are buying the music. They’re building a house. It’s a really neat thing. I mean five years from now, I can take my daughter to New Orleans and say, ‘Papa built this house. Papa’s fans built this house.’ Obviously, it’s not fixing the problem, but we’re trying to do our small part.
JPG: As far as 2010 are you still concentrating fully on the Make It Right Foundation?
JL: Until we reach our goal of building a house, we’re going to be behind that 100%. We’ve started selling tickets to our sound checks. All the money goes to the Make It Right Foundation. We invite people in for a sound check. We have a little meet-and-greet. Play a couple songs for ‘em. Take a couple requests for about 30, 45 minutes. It’s been doing some good to raise some more money for the house. As far as our focus for the non-profit, we’re going to follow this one through until the house gets built. Obviously, we want to try to do something for Haiti this year.
JPG: You’ve mentioned your 1320 label a few times. I see that there are about 30 acts on it. How has that evolved and how have you selected the artists?
JL: A lot of it has to do with the music. A lot of it has to do with connections, both musically and personally. It really speaks to the music, and we get submissions a lot. We like the bands to be out there doing shows, to have their foot in the door somehow. It’s a real open thing. It’s really all about the music.
The intention was it’s not created from a label owner’s perspective. It’s created from an artist’s perspective – a quick turn around to payments to a respectable royalty rate to just a different model than a physical CD model. It’s been great for us. It’s a really up-and-coming thing. It’s just starting to take off. Really getting some steam behind it. We’re planning a lot of 1320 events where we’re bringing all the artists and doing a particular night of 1320 showcases. A lot of those things to come.
The next step is a lot of collaborations between the artists on the label. It’s trying to make it a really cool family vibe where artists are interacting with each other, maybe going out on small tours together — this artist is remixing this artist’s track, a real cross-pollination of music. There’s a lot of younger people out there like Steve Nalepa on the label has brought to us a lot of his music students, 18, 19 year old kids, Virtual Boy, St. Andrew.
JPG: As a musician has there been anything that you’ve learned via the label experience, like learning to say, ‘No’ for the betterment of the label whereas as an artist you would want the label chief to always say, ‘Yes.’
JL: We haven’t crossed too many of those bridges yet. Everything that’s come to us has been right. There hasn’t been too much that we wanted to say, ‘Yes’ to that we couldn’t or vice versa. We have our hands on the wheel and are able to direct it and do as we see fit.
JPG: In the end are you hoping that 1320 becomes a label like Sub Pop or 4AD or SST or another indie label where people buy it simply because it’s a 1320 record?
JL: That would be great but I don’t think we work everyday thinking about that. Some of the first intentions are a safe, fair way for kids to put out their music without getting taken advantage of by the record companies or getting advances that they have to pay back that they never will, and never see a dime from their record. We try to have the artist take responsibility for some things that they should and that leaves them with their own investment in their music. The intention is a set up there for the artist and for them to see a fair shake in the market; a tough thing for people today.
No Comments comments associated with this post