Well, it came out last week so we're really excited and ready to tour it.  We did it here in America this time rather than in England, which was a lot better for us.  It's a lot more "us" this time, we knew what we were getting into ... a lot more than we did on the first record.  We're from a small town, and signed with Atlantic Records ... it was just a big production ... you just don't know what you're getting into.  Then we got to tour the country about five or six times, you find out a lot about yourself ... what relates about you and who you want to be.  So I think that really meant a lot on this new record.  And we co-produced the whole thing, there's four of the tracks that we produced our self.  I just feel like it's more "us".  So starting off there, that's a major difference from the first record.  Right now we're just excited to play new songs.

 

 

A good bit, about five or six... eight?  I'm not sure, I don't know exactly.  We played a couple of them on our last tour, kind of a preview of the new record.  We tried to hold out... these days if you play a new song it's on youtube the next day.  Before the record came out we tried to not play too many new songs live.  It's like wearing new clothes, it feels weird when you first step out live for the first time.  So we're just figuring out how they work.

 

 

For me it's "Washed By The Water".  It's a gospel song that I wrote about my dad.  We put a gospel choir on there.  I started to write more songs on the piano, I think we started to write some southern songs with a style of their own ... and that was a big step forward for us, and that was one of the songs that's represented by that. 

 

 

Yes, he did four of the tracks.  He produced four of the tracks.  He actually was just a fan of the first record.

 

 

Right, yep.  The same guy who signed him also signed us.  We toured together some, and he really liked our first record.  When we played Atlanta he's show up, sing the songs and stuff... it's really weird.  We think his stuff is great, obviously... so we wanted as many different kinds of people to work on this record as possible, I think mainly because we have our own studio and we didn't want to get one guy ... that's not what we wanted at all.  We used a bunch of different studios, and a bunch of different people.  We had a horn section that we recorded in Chicago, the gospel choir that we recorded ourselves, we used several studios in Atlanta, home studio stuff, we used pump organs from the 1800's, any instrument we could find ... we just wanted to use a lot of different textures.  We just wanted to learn a little something from everybody, we thought our guitars could have been a little better on the first record ... so Ed was great because he plays in Collective Soul.  So that's kind of how we approached it. 

 

 

We'll try to gradually get into it.  I've been playing the piano live, I go back and forth from guitar to piano.  And we do a song where the bass player will play the piano, and we're playing acoustics ... that kind of stuff.  The bigger we get, the more able we are to put stuff out there ... and we'll put that stuff on stage.  We want to be more musical.  I think the "big band" idea appeals to us, that entices us.  We're biting off a lot more than we can chew, but that's the fun part of it.  I hope people appreciate it. 

 

 

We actually started four days ago.  My voice is getting horse.

 

 

We did a lot of festival shows over the summer, so it was really easy.  We'd play festivals with half-hour sets.  We did a tour with Jars Of Clay before the summer, for about two and a half months.  We kind of took time off over the summer, because we haven't had time off for over a week in the last two years.  So we did spot dates here and there.  So now we started back, and I'm sure we'll be on the road with this record for another two years.  But we love it, that's what we want to do.  There's a certain excitement with this record that we never felt before.  We've been a band for seven years, there's certain things that have happened... even in the last three nights ... we never had a record that is this much our "thing" ... when you get a major label I never thought you could get this much ownership to do it.  It seems that the shows have been better than we've ever had, we played in Orlando two nights ago and there were people from Orlando to see us play the next night in Atlanta. 

 

 

We want to be in complete control of everything, and I think for us that means that we can put our own records out on our own time frame and being able to put out any kind of music that we want ... at any rate we want.  (laughs)  And having a fan base that loves that and anticipates it.

 

 

Um... well, we've recorded songs since it came out, we write constantly.  There were a hundred songs for the first record, there were tons of songs for this record.  So we're talking about doing some EP's after this record gets buried in a little bit, four or five months.  So we'll release those only live or online, 'cause we have a lot of songs that don't fit the theme of our record.  Songs that sound almost Rock-a-billy, not completely weird ... they're still sort of like our Pop.  We'd like to put those out. 

 

 

A lot of stuff.  As the record plays out there's TV appearances, there's already a couple movies coming out that have our songs in them, some TV shows.  We have several different singles that will go to radio.  We're going to Triple A Radio with "Washed By The Water", that starts here pretty soon.  This time we really want to take a long time because this time we feel that this record is more pass aroundable, if that means something... (laughs)  We don't want to force it on people, we want people to get the record who like it enough to go: "I want somebody to hear this".  We really want our fans to get it, and if they like it ... give it to your friends.  Tell people they live with or work with: "You've got to hear this song, it killed me when I heard it".  That's the way we want it to grow, because I feel that makes such a stronger base.  For us, that's what we want to see ... so we're being patient with it.