Transcending emo molds and evolving steadily through three solid albums, Taking Back Sunday are rapidly becoming an undeniable force in rock music. The Long Island quintet released their first major-label album, Louder Now, last April on Warner Bros. Records. Louder Now, a more cohesive, confident and polished album than 2004’s Where You Want To Be, peaked at #2 on the Billboard Top 200 list and has received critical praise.

Taking Back Sunday are currently in the midst of a marathon touring schedule through the United States, Canada and Europe. We caught up with bassist Matt Rubano to discuss the tour, working with production wizard Eric Valentine, and more.

How’s the tour coming along?

It’s going great. We’re not even two weeks into it yet, but most of the shows have been crazy, sold out and a lot of fun. First and foremost, the audiences have just been amazing for us. It’s been really energetic and they seem really excited to see us so we’ve been having a great time.

You’re playing some older songs this time around that aren’t usually part of your set.
 
We’ve been changing our setlists up a bit and playing a bunch of older material, and some songs off our new record that we haven’t played live yet.
We’ve been playing the material from Louder Now from upwards of a year at this point. Back when we initially played it live, it overwhelmed us how people already knew the material and were so psyched to hear it. It was kind of effortless as a result, playing this stuff live.

What’s more fun to play right now, the older songs or those off Louder Now?

You know, it’s really great when you realize that you’ve got three albums’ worth of material to pull from now. It’s good for us…it refreshes the show for us. It’s cool to be able to change it up from night to night, but we’d certainly prefer to play the songs off Louder Now than most.

You guys keep a tight touring schedule.

Yeah, we’re doing about six or seven days on, one day off for the whole tour, so there’s no time to get bored, no time to get tired. It’s what we came out here for. We don’t come out to chill and be on vacation, we came out here to play so a bunch of shows in a row for us is great.  It all just goes by really fast.

Kinda hard to live the rock n’ roll excess lifestyle when you’re playing every single day.

Everybody stays pretty health conscious. We have a totally organic rider backstage and everybody just takes care of themselves. I know Mark and I have been working out a lot, but everybody tries to exercise a bit and stay healthy.

It’s gotta tire you out at some point.

Sometimes right up until the moment when you’re walking onstage you’re saying to yourself man, I’m beat, I don’t want to do this, I have no energy. But as soon as the lights go down and you feel the energy coming off the audience, it’s like you go into autopilot, and halfway through the show your heart’s racing and you’re covered in sweat and you’re having the best time. A lot of times the audience pulls it out of us. 

What was the studio atmosphere like while you were recording Louder Now?

We had a really clear idea of what we wanted to accomplish musically on this album. When Fred and I joined the band in 2003, we started recording Where You Want To Be six months later, so we were still very new and fresh to each other, all of us working together. And at this point, when we started to write and record Louder Now we had a whole lot more experience with each other personally and musically so it was a lot less of a challenge to work together. The challenge became what we wanted to accomplish.
We wanted to make an over the time, timeless, huge sounding rock record, with songwriting being the first and foremost focus, and then the sound and production being right next to it.

What made you choose to work with  (producer) Eric Valentine?

And of all the things that we wanted to accomplish when we were looking for producers, Eric was the guy who was the most laid back; he’s super intelligent, we love all the records he’s done in the past from Third Eye Blind to Queens of the Stone Age and the Doors and stuff like that, and he was just the perfect sixth member of the band while we were making the record. We had an idea of what we wanted to accomplish, and he certainly was the catalyst to helping us do that.

Are you happy with your move to a major label? You’ve been known as a band to turn down a lot of big-name offers in the past…what was different this time around?

I think we did it at the exact right time for ourselves. There were opportunities to do it in the past, and we didn’t hop on it. And I think that that served us very well. I think that a lot of bands are just real anxious to do that, to get on a major label and feel big-time. But we were definitely ready at this point to do so and it’s been nothing but a positive change for us. We’ve had a lot more support and a great team of people to work with, and they really stayed out of our way and let us do our thing. It was an all around positive change for us.

Would you rather be playing small clubs or arenas at this point?

The chance to be able to do both is what keeps everything exciting for us. We’ve made the jump to larger venues in some places, and then in others we still play theaters and clubs and stuff like that. Being able to do both is really great. I think if we were doing massive arenas all the time it would start to be a little desensitizing. It’s good to be down there on the floor and see the people’s faces and see the back of the room and see that everybody’s having a good time.

Describe the writing process of Taking Back Sunday.

There’s no set process. I think our writing style is really varied. It used to be democratic to a fault, where everybody was contributing to everything. I think a certain degree of that lends your band its actual sound, the fact that everyone’s involved in writing, but it’s hard to do things when there’s no clear direction or five directions going on because we all have different tastes in music.

Who are you writing the songs for? Do you strive for universal appeal?
 
We don’t really look at it from the perspective of the listener. We really just make it all about what we want to accomplish, what we’re into at the time or what we want our band to sound like. As for the level of complexity or universal appeal or anything like that, that’s all incidental. We don’t sit around discussing what’s gonna sound awesome on the radio, because at this point who cares? Most people don’t even have radios anymore.
It’s nice when you write a record for yourself that people do grab on to and are into. I think if you set out to make a record that appeals to everyone, you’re gonna end up with a pile of junk. You’ve got to write for yourself first and foremost, and the trick is to then have that sort of work for listeners. The lucky place we find ourselves in is that what we naturally do, our listeners are into.

How do you feel about the whole internet piracy/filesharing ordeal?

For artists it’s like a give and take thing. When Lars from Metallica was being really vocal about his thoughts on it… it’s a weird thing for an artist to speak about it cause he sounds really silly, talking about how he’s being stolen from, a guy who’s got hundreds of millions of dollars. And that doesn’t mean that stealing isn’t wrong, but I think we’re at an interesting crossroads in the music industry.

Filesharing is like walking into a bookstore and just taking a book, but at the same time, people don’t go to author’s live performances or buy an author’s tshirt, things like that. So I think the spread of the music only does so much damage to the artist because a lot of people still want to have the record. They still want to have the cd booklet and whatever else is included.
There are certainly people that have heard our music through a burned cd, and then have come ands seen us live, and in that case it’s like full circle to me. They’re into it enough to pursue it further. Our band has been growing steadily over the years so to get real caught up in that or be worried about it isn’t where we’re at. We’re gonna keep putting out records on cd’s or online, or whatever the format ends up being. We’re still going to write more records and put them out. We’re still gonna tour, we’re still gonna do all the the things that we do and the business end of things will sort itself out.

What have you been listening to lately?

Last couple days I listened to Death From Above 1979. I love that record. I’m a little late to the party on that one, but I’ve been listening to it like crazy. It’s an amazing, amazing band and it’s a shame that they are no longer. I listen to Queens of the Stone Age a lot, I listened to M.Ward this morning while I was in the shower. I’ve been listening to a great band from New York called the Dub Trio, which is like an instrumental dub reggae kind of group, but they’re also kind of like an avant-metal band. They’re really hard to describe but they have incredibly unique music and they also have some tracks on their most recent album with Mike Patton doing some guest vocals. They’re a great band to keep an eye on. Another great band from Brooklyn is called the English Department that just put an album out recently. They’re fairly unheard of but I don’t think for very much longer. This album that they just put out is incredible.

You’re known for being actively involved with your Myspace and official site.

I keep a close eye on our website and have been on top of updating our tour journal lately, and I think those kinds of mediums are great ways to keep in touch with your fans and make things more accessible for them. When I was in high school listening to bands, you could buy the album and you could go to the show, and you could maybe join some kind of fanclub where if you mailed, like, $1.25 and a self-addressed stamped envelope you’d maybe get a sticker back in a year and a half. And now, with Youtube and Mypace and all these other things, you can watch a dozen videos and live concert footage and interviews and blogs and all this stuff. You can really get into an artist that you like. There’s so much information, so much content out there. It’s cool for listeners and for artists, because it gives you that many more ways to define yourself.


You can catch Taking Back Sunday on the following dates:


03.08.07     Denver, CO     The Fillmore Auditorium    
03.09.07     Salt Lake City, UT     Salt Air    
03.10.07     Las Vegas, NV     House of Blues
03.10.07     Las Vegas, NV     House of Blues ** 2nd show added!
03.11.07     San Bernadino, CA     Orange Pavilion    
03.12.07     NO SHOW, DAY OFF        
03.13.07     Irvine, CA     UCI Bren Events Center    
03.14.07     San Francisco, CA     The Concourse    
03.15.07     San Luis Obispo, CA     SLO University Rec Center    
03.16.07     Reno, NV     Lawlor Events Center @ Univ. of Nevada    
03.17.07     Boise, ID     Theatre @ Taco Bell Arena    
03.18.07     Vancouver, BC     PNE Forum    
03.19.07     NO SHOW, DAY OFF        
03.20.07     Edmonton, AB     Agricom (Northlands) Arena    
03.21.07     Calgary, AB     Calgary Corral    
03.22.07     Saskatoon, SK     Prairieland Park    
03.23.07     Winnipeg, MB     Burton Cummings Theater
03.24.07     Winnepeg, MB (2nd Show)     Burton Cummings Theater    
03.25.07     Thunder Bay, ON     Community Auditorium
03.26.07     NO SHOW, DAY OFF        
03.27.07     Ottawa, ON     Congress Centre    
03.28.07     London, ON     Centennial Hall
03.29.07     Toronto, ON     Arrow Hall    
03.30.07     Montreal, QC     Theatre Olympia    
03.31.07     Moon Township, PA     Sewall Center @ Robert Morris U.    
04.01.07     Albany, NY     Armory    
04.02.07     NO SHOW, DAY OFF        
04.03.07     PRIVATE SHOW        
04.04.07     Wilkes-Barre, PA    
04.05.07     Amherst, MA    
04.06.07     Lowell, MA    
04.07.07     Atlantic City, NJ     House of Blues
04.18.07     Glasgow, Scotland     Glasgow SECC    
04.19.07     Manchester, UK     Manchester M.E.N. Arena    
04.20.07     Birmingham, UK     Birmingham N.I.A.    
04.22.07     London, UK     London Wembley Arena