I Think Sometimes A Narrative Can Come

Bands Who Are In Their Early 20s Today, They Are Living In Their Own Time And They Have A Series Of Parameters They Have To Work Around. Ten Years Ago, Our Reality Was Spending A Lot More Time In Obscurity Before Anyone Really Knew Who We Were. I Don't Feel Like I Have Any Real Advice To Give Anybody Who Is Starting A Band Today. As Mike Watt Said, "you Know, Not Everyone Has The Ability To Be Born At The Same Time." We Wanted To Be Like R.e.m., But The Reality Is That 15 Years After R.e.m. Was Putting Out Those Records, The Playing Field Had Changed Drastically As Well.

Between Every Record, We All Split Off In Our Own World And We All End Up Listening To Usually Pretty Different Music On Our Own. We Come Together Not Really Knowing What The Other People Having Been Really Listening To And What's Been Influencing Them.

You Look Back At A Time You Idealize Now And You Only Remember The Good Stuff. You Tell The Stories About The Hard Stuff And Just Laugh About It Now. You Don't Remember How Difficult It Was To Be Stranded In Austin After Driving 52 Hours From Seattle In A Rainstorm And Having Nowhere To Stay For Five Hours. You Remember That Stuff And Laugh About It Now. You Don't Feel It The Way You Did Back Then When You Were So Scared And Nervous And Tired And Hungry. We Always Idealize The Past Because We Don't Feel The Painful Stuff The Way We Used To.

An Ex-girlfriend Once Got Upset When I Told Her That Music Is The Most Important Thing In My Life. It's More Important Than Anyone Else Could Ever Be. I Don't Want To Be Overly Dramatic And Say It's The Only Thing That Gets Me Up And Keeps Me Going. But People In Your Life Come And Go. As You Go Through Your Life, You Make Friendships, You Break Friendships, You Have Relationships. Music Is The One Thing I've Always Been Able To Rely On.

When I Listen To Airplanes Record, It Takes Me Back. I Remember A Lot Of My Thought Processes When I Was 20 Or 21, Writing Those Songs And Recording That Record. I Wonder What I Was Thinking When I Was Trying To Say A Particular Thing. I Hear Some Of The Weird Little Nuances In The Recording; I Can Hear What The Room Sounded Like. I Remember What It Smelled Like. I Can Remember Sitting Up In Guitarist Chris Walla's Bedroom And For The First Time In My Life Having This Realization Like, "maybe I Can Do This. Maybe I Can Make Music That In Some Capacity People Will Enjoy And Come See Me Play."