JK: How did you hook up with Chris, with him in Texas and you living in Boston?
EP: A good friend of ours, she’s from Austin and she goes to BU. We met him through her, just hanging out while he came up to visit. We loved him instantly. Then, after a while, once we started to get this band going, I saw her on the T in Boston and I started talking to her about him: “We’re getting our band going and we really want to get a screamer instead of just doing it all ourselves.” We really like having an energetic live performance and really be able to move around and if you’re playing guitar and you’re pinned to a mic the whole time you don’t really get the full effect. He came down and we practiced with him, and it was amazing, and this was still before Joe. The only problem was that he still lived in Texas . . . But we took Joe as a fill-in until Chris got here and we had him for a while, and Joe was doing pretty good towards the beginning, so we were like, we’ll just keep him. Chris didn’t get too upset, he was really cool about it. He was at all our shows and once he moved out here he was very supportive of us. Everything just worked out. Everything’s been working out for us in these really lucky ways. It almost feels like it’s destiny sort of.

JK: As far as the local Boston scene goes, how have you been accepted, or maybe even not accepted, because of the success that came so suddenly to you?
EP: Towards the beginning I’d say it was kind of strange . . . All the bands in Boston that we play with are awesome people. Who knows if they say anything when we’re not around? All I know is, we trust them. As far as we know, everyone’s great. We do everything we can to help other bands out. We’ve been given this chance and it just opens the door for us to be able to help our fellow friends in other bands from Boston and get them known.

JK: Do you feel a certain amount of pressure to live up to expectations with this new EP and your first tour?
EP: I could say yeah, we definitely do feel a little pressure but we’re very excited and wide-eyed about it. We know that we’re gonna have a blast. We’re very happy with our performances and we’re not overly confident, but we are confident in ourselves.

CHRIS PREECE: More than pressure, it’s like, we have so much fun that it’s hard to feel anything but really good energy and excitement all the time.

JK: You guys have a pretty even-handed blend of melody and aggression, power and pop. Why is that balance important to you?
CP: Honestly, I think it goes back to influences for everyone. Because we love a lot of really heavy mosh bands, but we listen to really melodic stuff like American Football and Motion City Soundtrack, bands with no screaming at all. We like stuff from the heaviest, most trashy Southern rock to really pretty indie rock with pretty harmonies and stuff. I think it’s more or less our influences naturally coming together. We just write what we like and what feels right. We don’t try to plan out that this is going to be a hardcore song and this is going to be a melodic screamo part, we write our stuff. And we kind of realize that all our songs are kind of different but we like that. We don’t want to be this band where every CD we release sounds exactly like this CD because that’s what the kids want. We write what we love and what we enjoy playing and what we can put our heart into live. We hope that people will follow and will enjoy it and will come to the shows and will find their own meaning in the songs.

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