THE BRAVERY INTERVIEW WITH JOHN CONWAY MAY 2008 I got the pleasure of interviewing the very talented and best looking member of THE BRAVERY, JOHN CONWAY, prior to their show in Providence, RI. Their show was fantastic and they sounded phenomenal. SAM ENDICOTT did some crazy moves and microphone swings. JOHN rocked the boards and honestly I can’t say a bad thing about the show. Every member filled their part to form the perfect puzzle. I can’t wait to see them again on PROJEKT REVOLTION!! Lena: How is the tour going so far? John: I don’t even know where one starts and ends because we’ve been on the road for a super long time doing THE SUN AND THE MOON. I think it’s already been a year. It just always seems to us that we have been on tour forever. We’ve had a lot of fun recently on tour in Vegas and touring with FICTION PLANE for awhile. It’s just fun to tour the states but we are also looking forward to a short vacation coming up in about a week and then after that we are going to Australia and New Zealand. We haven’t been their in two or maybe three years so it will be fun to head back there. Lena: New Zealand has got to be beautiful? John: Yeah, yeah it’s great! Lena: I’ve never been but I’ve seen pictures. John: I’ve been to New Zealand personally but the band hasn’t been there yet so it should be fun to go rock off. Lena: Who came up with the idea of the different colors of the cd jacket, how one side is blue and the other is the same design in yellow? John: That was something we just thought about doing like the double album that didn’t happen. We were at a bar and we were working on songs that were kind of coming out different ways and we had different versions of them and we thought it would be really cool to release a kind of double album and have one side be a light side and the other side be a dark side. I think it might have freaked our record company out at first so we just ended up putting out one of them but we still wanted to keep the concept of the sun and the moon and the two sides of different things and now THE SON AND THE MOON just released so we got our concept fully realized now. Lena: How long did it take you guys to practice whistling for BAD SUN? John: Ha, ha, whistling is like the tambourine or triangle, you think it’s really easy but it’s not. It’s hard! You just have everybody do it together. Lena: So, it’s a group effort. John: It’s a bit easier in the studio but live it’s tricky. We are pretty good at it now. Lena: Are you going to do that song tonight? John: I’m not too sure so you’ll have to see. It depends on how strong our whistling muscles are. Lena: What band are you compared to the most? John: I don’t know, actually I haven’t heard us compared to anyone in awhile which is good because sometimes it gets sort of annoying but we get bizarre comparisons sometimes which are funny and I think you remember those more. Someone told Sam once that we are the best live band that they have seen since the BARENAKED LADIES. Someone else told us that we were great just like BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN. Just stuff that you are like, what, why would you say that? Yeah, I think you remember those comparisons and then there are the obvious ones which you don’t know whether to take them as compliments or fight somebody. Lena: BARENAKED LADIES, hmm. John: Yeah, thanks I guess. It’s interesting! Lena: Who is the messiest band member on the bus? John: What’s weird with us is I think that the messiest one is also the cleanest. There is Anthony, our drummer, especially if he’s drunk and he’ll make a huge mess and spill beer bottles all over the place. He’ll also pee all over the floor in our bathroom but then he is the only guy who will clean up. He will also vacuum and wipe everything down so it’s kind of he’s THE SUN AND THE MOON right there. Lena: What is the strangest rumor you have ever heard about yourself or anyone in the band? John: Meaning hearing about your wife or fiancé when you don’t have one? There has been a lot of strange stuff now that there is the internet so many crazy people who hack into profiles and spread rumors and that sort of stuff. You hear of that a lot and you can’t believe everything you hear or read. Lena: How was it working with BRENDAN O’BRIEN and do you think your cd sounds better than JACKYL? John: It was really cool. We’ve never worked with a producer before. Our first album we did entirely by ourselves in our apartments with an iMac and stuff. We did the vocals and drums in a studio but we produced the whole thing ourselves and we really didn’t have any other engineers. We had the opportunity to work in the studio and we wanted to take it and it was awesome to work with BRENDAN O’BRIEN because first off he is just an incredible musician. He can play every instrument and just really knows how to get a good performance out of people. He has great ideas with the structure of the songs and such. It was a new experience for us that was very cool. It was really great to do a song that way and for us it was very experimental. It’s how most bands probably do it but we do everything really Lo-Fi and by ourselves so it was fun to go into the studio and use a lot of different acoustic and vintage instruments that we don’t own ourselves or have access to. So that was basically the sun side of THE SUN AND THE MOON and then we did it our old dirty way for the moon side. We did a lot on the bus and used whatever was just super cheap and dirty or more electronic I guess.
Lena: So, do you think it sounds better than JACKYL? John: Ha, ha, I don’t know. Lena: You remember the band with the chainsaw? John: Yeah, I remember a video from a long time ago. Lena: They always made me laugh. John: Do they play a chainsaw live? Lena: Yes, on stage, even. John: Oh, that’s awesome. Lena: Yes, a chainsaw and he even drinks motor oil. John: Oh, that’s pretty badass! Man, I have to work a chainsaw solo into my routine. Lena: Yeah, just don’t let it slip because that could be dangerous. John: Yeah, that would be dangerous. Lena: Does anyone in the band have any pets? John: We don’t have any pets on the road which is probably a good thing. I have family dogs at home that I like to go see whenever I can but I think that’s probably about it. Lena: No one has anything weird? John: No, I know we are supposed to have snakes or tarantulas or something but not yet. Lena: Snakes are bad! I have rodents so they could take out my whole rodent family. Lena: What do you think about how everything is going digital and even the record companies are putting out cds directly on the internet? John: I think in most ways it’s pretty cool just how technology has changed music especially with the internet, computers, home recording and digital distribution. That’s pretty good for music but there are some things that you want to hold onto a bit that younger kids won’t be able to experience like holding a physical album and turning pages of artwork. That’s a neat thing but I think ultimately it’s just cooler to have on your cell phone all the music that you like. We never had that growing up and now everyone is going to have that forever. Lena: Everyone has it easier. Remember when we had to go through books for reports and stuff for school. John: Yes, they don’t even know what the Dewey Decimal system is. Lena: Yeah, that is sad! Lena: What has been your favorite talk show to perform on like JIMMY KIMMEL or CONAN? John: My favorite talk show to perform on was the DAILY HABIT on FUEL TV. I don’t know if you guys know what that is but it’s sort of the surfing and skateboarding channel and that’s what I watch when I’m at home and on our tour bus so I can just keep up with surfing, motocross or whatever. It’s pretty small time but it’s more fun to go on there with my favorite surfers or pro skateboarders or whatever. People probably say the big ones like LENO or LETTERMAN. We are waiting for SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE. That’s the thing that we are waiting for. Lena: How did you get involved in PROJEKT REVOLUTION? John: We got a call for it and it seemed like a cool thing to do because it is kind of different and the bands are different than us. We always try to do that and look to do things that are a little out of the ordinary. You play in front of different people and sort of see what happens. PROJEKT REVOLUTION is a cool opportunity for us to go out and stay in the states and hopefully meet up with some new fans and see other bands. Lena: I think you will fit really well with the other bands there like ASHES DIVIDE and STREET DRUM CORPS. John: It will be fun to play with some really big bands. Lena: What is the one thing that you can not go on tour without? John: My computer broke a little bit ago and that was pretty much torture without having my laptop. You don’t realize how much you use that for. In the summer, for PROJEKT REVOLUTION, I am really trying to bring my motorcycle back on the road again. The bass player and I had our bikes in the back of our trailer when we toured with INCUBUS last summer and that made touring so much fun. We could just go and do anything that we wanted especially when your on tour like we are today at a club right in the middle of the city and you have to spend the day in a parking lot. If you have your own transportation, like a motorcycle, you can go and drive around. It’s pretty hard for me to tour when the weather is nice without my motorcycle. Lena: You ride bikes, surf, skateboard, you do everything! John: Yeah, I know. Being in a band I have all this free time. Lena: Any major injuries? John: Yeah, my leg comes off. Lena: Ah, so if you get bored on stage you can just hit people with it. That’s cool! Lena: What do we have to look forward
to? Lena: Any new cds coming? John: We are starting to work on new stuff and I’m not sure if we are going to release anything until it’s complete. We have a couple weeks off and we will work on new songs and maybe start playing some of them out live. Lena: Who came up with the drums for SPLIT ME WIDE OPEN, they are some of the best drums that I have ever heard. John: Beats are pretty important to us. This really bizarre thing happened to us yesterday in Buffalo. Sam came off the bus and I think he had a bag in his hand and he was walking on the sidewalk and it was hitting his leg and it gave him an idea and he walked up to the lounge where we have a laptop set up for recording with a drum pad. He came up with a cool beat as he was just walking down the sidewalk and he was just inspired by it. Sometimes that is how our beats or musical ideas come up. Lena: You guys must hit each other with things the get new sounds? John: Yeah, we get inspired from all different sources.
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