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 As
rare as it is for a band to get signed to a major label, it's
even rarer to have a hit record on your first outing. The lucky
few, however, find the largest hurdle yet waiting for them quietly
around success' corner — the ability to beat the sophomore
jinx and repeat past success. Save Ferris is ready. The Orange County, Calif. ska-pop-swing band has returned with the aptly titled Modified. The 11-track disc mixes the classic elements of the band's debut It Means Everything — peppy horns, masses of energy and a sense of humor — with new instruments, tempo changes and a little introspection about growing up. Guitarist and head songwriter Brian Mashburn took a moment at the beginning of Save Ferris' current tour to talk about the new album and the pressures of repeating success. OV: You toured pretty relentlessly behind It Means Everything. Did you have a hard time readjusting to normal lives?BM: At first, a little bit. I was a little leery because my whole life cycle was based on six weeks out, a week and a half home, back out on the road again. Once I adjusted though, it was like aw, I'm actually liking this right now.OV: Were you reluctant to do the new record and head back out on the road?BM: We did everything as fast as we possibly could. We still took a whole year, but we had to take some time off. I had mixed feelings about it. I really wanted to play again, but I was kind of like, “Oh my God, back on the road again!” But it comes with the territory.OV: Did you approach the recording of Modified differently from It Means Everything?BM: Yeah, totally differently. `Cause when we used to do our old songs that basically went on It Means Everything, we used to just jam together. I would come with a song idea and bring it to the band and show it to them, and we learned it, and then we'd work on it overtime playing live shows.But this record — it was like we had to write the whole record basically in one sitting. I had come up with a few scratch ideas on the road, so I walked in with about four or five songs in hand. Basically the rest was me just kind of jamming out some music and trying to come up with a lump sum of songs so we'd have some stuff to pick through, and actually we only ended up coming up with a little bit more than what we put on the record. It was pretty tight, and it was pretty strange because instead of working one song to death and getting it perfected we had to try to work on fifteen songs in one sitting. OV: How are the new songs going over live?BM: Pretty good. It's always kind of strange when you pull out a new song. That's the thing for us this tour is learning how people react to you on your second record. We're doing a little bit more of the old songs than the new ones just because it is the first [leg of the] tour, and that's what people want to hear. It's cool, the really energetic new songs go through real well because you can dance to them. But the new record has a couple mid-tempo songs which we never really used to do in the past. They're really great songs, and I think people like them, but it's weird for us because everything else we used to play was like a 120 miles an hour, and so you knew instantly if people liked it because they were going crazy. Then you play a song that's mid-tempo and they can't really go too crazy. So you're like, “Do they like it? Do they like it? I don't know.” So we're a little sketchy about that.OV: What was it like working with [producer] John Travis?BM: It was like working with a friend almost in a way. It wasn't like working with the scholarly old school producer sitting behind the board smoking cigars; it wasn't that vibe at all. He enginereed and mixed the record, as well as produced it. We were bound to a lot of our own ideas as well. When he came in we had already demoed everything in a home studio, so we had put a lot of the pre-production in ourselves. When he came in, he just tinkered with the problem areas he thought he found with the songs. We had a good time; it was pretty different.OV: Was there any reason you didn't want to work with Peter Collins again?BM: Peter's a great guy, and I learned a lot from him as far as how records are made and arranging, but when we worked with Peter last time, we had all the songs done. We knew they were good songs. It was sort of like we already knew what we were doing, we didn't really need someone to tell us a vision. So his whole thing was helped on one or two of the new songs we hadn't really gotten done. He was really good at working with Monique on the vocals and stuff. His type of producing wasn't the type of thing we felt we wanted for this record. We wanted something where we were working more hands on ourselves with a producer rather than somebody telling the engineer what to do and then telling us.OV: Is it hard to get seven people to agree on anything?BM: It is kind of hard at times, but for the most part everyone's pretty chill. A lot of what made this record was people learning where they fit in as far as how the band works. When we did the first record I'd written a bunch of songs, we started the band, we did the EP, we toured and everything started happening. We wrote a couple songs, and then we went in and basically just cut what we had. When it came time to do this record, it was like “Well, is Brian going to write all the songs?” “Is Mo going to write all the words?” “Who's going to do what where?” We had to identify a lot of people's roles within the band, and once that was sort of set up it was pretty easy. It wasn't that bad to make decisions.OV: Was there any tension in deciding those roles?BM: Not really, I mean everybody in this band is pretty easygoing. We have to be. Mo's the superstar; she keeps things going. She's sort of the active, and the guys, we're sort of the passive. And it has to be that way because that's the way we work; it's our relationship. It works good. Everyone's just sort of like whatever's better for the greater cause of the band than their individual selves. But everybody has their little thing that they did, so it's cool.
OV: I heard that the video for “Mistaken” is going to have Adam Corolla and Dr.Drew from Loveline in it.BM: We're just waiting for the label to do it because the label's really busy with all these bands in the fourth quarter. They were like “We want to wait and see how you guys do the first couple weeks.” Mo came up with this idea kind of and she sent it in to this guy at the label who sent it to one of the video directors we really liked. It's a cool concept. There's basically this part where we needed two people, and our bass player said it'd be kind of cool if we got those guys because we've been on Loveline before and they're pretty funny. So we asked them, and we didn't really think they'd say yes, but they were actually pretty stoked.OV: What are they going to be doing?BM: I don't want to give away the secret or anything. Let's just say one of them is really friendly with Mo, and the other one's not so friendly with her, if that makes any sense at all.OV: Were you worried at all about alienating any of your fans with the new sounds and mid-tempo songs on Modified?BM: The thing about it is when we came home, not only did we have to deal with the whole “making of your second record,” which is always a big stress, we had to deal with the whole “You're sort of a scene band,” and there was a buzz. Now everyone's moved on something else, and people tried to pigeonhole us into that thing.I think one of the things that made Save Ferris the band that is the fact that we are able to write really good pop songs. `Cause if the ska thing was the only thing we had going for us then we'd still be there with 50 million other ska bands that didn't get signed. We knew we had something more than that. So we just sat down and said let's write a record that we are really pleased with ourselves because no matter what happens we want to be able to look back and appreciate what we did. So we went in with that kind of attitude. The people who really like Save Ferris are going to like these songs because they're good songs. A couple people who are just into us because of the ska thing might get a little bummed because there's not as much ska, but with this type of album we might actually be able to reach more people, and as a musician that's ultimately what you want to do is to be able to reach as many people as you can. That's your job, to be able to communicate your ideas and thoughts through music. |