Date: August 11, 2006
Band Members: Bobby Darling

Could you start by saying who you are and what you do for the band?
My name is Bobby and I play guitar for Gatsbys American Dream.

How do you feel about releasing a record a year after the successful Volcano?
I wanted it to come out sooner. The records been done since January. Due to typical label stuff the record had to sit around collecting dust for 8 months. I’m really excited that it’s out now. We moved past Volcano pretty quickly, and we’re ready to do something else. We’re not the usual band that likes to wait a couple years between releases.

Were you afraid that you had set high standards to live up to in such a short amount of time?
No, here’s the thing, this record is so much better than Volcano, and there’s always going to be people that think Volcano was better or even the records before that, like Ribbons and Sugar are better. When we did Volcano there’s a lot of people that were big fans of Ribbons and Sugar that didn’t think it was as good as Ribbons and Sugar and complained about it and stuff. You’re never going to please those people like when a record hits them a certain time they’re going through something or for whatever reason, and the record strikes magic with a certain person or clicks with them, and nothing else is ever going to top that from a certain band very much for me NoFX’s The Decline is a special record to me. I just definitely love it, and nothing they’ve done since then can compare to that. I don’t think anything they will do will compare to it. It’s the same thing with Saves the Day’s Stay What You Are with most people. That record was really, really special to a lot of people, and basically everything Saves the Day has done since then has felt like a disappointment to a lot of people. I don’t happen to sit on that. I really enjoy everything Saves the Day does, and again I’m in a band and I kind of know how the whole thing works on the inside. It’s kind of like you having to make the art for yourself, and people take it however they want to take it. This record for us as artists is so far beyond Volcano. We weren’t really worried at all. If anyone didn’t like it, then that’s too bad for them. We are really proud of this record.

Why did you self title your 5th studio album?
We were kicking around a lot of different names for this record. One was Filthy Beasts. That was the name we were thinking about using. There was one called Songs Mean A Lot When Songs Are Bought and So Are You, which is a line from a Pavement song. They All Hate Music was another name we were kicking around. We just decided self titled was the best way to go. This record we pretty much took the kid gloves off and made the record we’ve always wanted to make, and say the things we’ve always wanted to say. This record really defines very specifically what our band believes, and the things we’ve been struggling against, and the things we’ve been trying to change in this industry for the last 5 years. So it seemed very fitting to call it self titled.

What do you say to the ongoing rumors of the self titled being your final album?
Honestly, that’s totally a possibility that that might be the case. I don’t know what’s going to happen next week, I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, let alone next year. The future of the band is very much in the air. We’re all at home. We dropped off Warped Tour this summer because we were burnt out. Three of us are getting married this fall. We basically have been through the wringer in this industry, and it takes a lot out of you. You pour your heart into something for so long, especially in this industry how the whole thing works. It takes its toll on you. We’re just going to spend some time at home, see how were feeling a few months from now, and we’ll see. There are a lot of tours we turned down this fall because we needed time at home. We might be going to Japan in December and the UK in the New Year. As far as being involved in the scene goes, we want to be pretty far away from it right now.

What are your plans for a video for “Station 5: The Pearl”?
I doubt it. I don’t think the record label has any plans to shoot a video for this record.

I read somewhere that Ryan (Van Wieringen) didn’t take part on the self titled, why is that?
He wasn’t back in the band yet, he was still in school. I was interested in Ryan getting involved in this record, but he was still in school and would tour with us at night and stuff. Ryan and I are definitely going to work together. We’re always making music. We’ve been home for about a month and we’ve been getting together just about every other day and recording music at my home. I don’t even know what it’s going to be for, probably not Gatsbys. Ryan is just a musical genius, he definitely doesn’t realize that. He’s just the quirkiest, most creative person. I love working with him, so I’m excited to do stuff with him in the future.

Do you plan to release another album next year?
I’ll say we’ll see.

A lyric from the song “Badd Beat” says “We’ve Got Plans, Wicked Plans.” What exactly are these plans you speak of?
Here’s the thing that has kind of been frustrating with this record, well not frustrating, but more typical is that people take stuff out of context. That happens with every record we make. The record is satire, a lot of it is a satire of the music industry. That song is actually narrated by a booking agency, it’s not narrated by the band. The booking agency is saying “We have plans, wicked plans” In the lyrics it says very clear what the plans are. Basically they keep the bands in a strangle hold and keep the bands subdued and kind of depending on the booking agents so they can get away with asking for ridiculous marketing plans. :laughs: I don’t know if I’m explaining this well, but the band doesn’t say that lyrics. That song also says, “We don't believe you kids are so naive to think that things could change because nothing ever changes in the real world,” and we’ve had this one prominent web blogger dude that was dissing the record, and saying we were talking shit on kids. I was like, it’s the booking agency talking to bands, saying that we don’t believe that you kids are so naive to think these things like the booking agency is like, you can’t be that stupid to think that you can actually make a change in this world or change how we do business in the music industry, and its supposed to be ironic, but obviously irony is lost on some.

Do you have plans to re-release your albums some fans haven’t heard, a b-sides album, or maybe even a live album?
The music is all owned by different labels, and labels are very, very difficult to work with, and even more difficult to cooperate with each other. So, in order for us to get songs from all 5 of our different releases put on one CD would be a logistical nightmare, and we’re just not going to go there. If any kids want to email the labels asking them to put something together like that, then go for it, but we’re not going to deal with the headache.

How do you guys come about writing music? Do you just start with a guitar and work off of it?
For Gatsbys it’s always very different, the big reason this record sounds different from our previous records is because I wrote most of the songs on a bass guitar. I would begin on a chord progression that I was putting out on the bass to give it a more rhythmic feel, and finish the song that way, and then start implementing guitar parts and figuring out what the vocals and lyrics and others would do. People often are mistaken that the bass is a guitar with fat strings, but that’s not what it is. The bass is a percussion instrument, the bass is designed to lock in with the drums. That’s what it’s supposed to do, its how music is supposed to work, and people have lost that, especially in punk rock and our scene. We thought it would be an interesting approach to write more bass oriented songs so it would really have an organic moving kind of vibe, and then spin the guitar and lyrics to play around that. Because of this you’ll listen to songs, and notice the bass never plays just the root note of what the guitar plays, it doesn’t just fall into the guitar, playing the same chords as the bass does, that frees the guitar up to play around and get really crazy, which we really, really enjoy this time. Other records we’ve done, I’ll just be goofing around on the guitar, come up with a riff that I really like, and from that key develop a chord progression, that keeps me interested, and start thinking about time and structure and stuff like that. Usually, the lyrics and melodies are the last thing that comes together for the songs, but there’s always exceptions.

What genre would you classify yourselves as to someone who hasn’t heard of you?
I’ve always called us prog-pop or math-pop. People have been picking up on the prog-pop, no one has actually said that about us until this record, and now everyone is calling us progressive pop. I guess maybe prog-pop wasn’t, :laughs: even a genre until this year, like officially. It’s got so many elements of progressive music, but then there is obviously pop and catchy stuff going on. I like math-pop though because we do a lot of the time signature stuff. We’ve tried to shoot for different genres over the years, math has always been there.

Does Kyle plan to return to Surrounded by Lions at all?
No, well Kyle is on a musical journey, he’s been doing lots of different kinds of things. He did Surrounded by Lions, he’s done our band, and he’s working on a project with Kirk right now. Kyle’s actually been coming in and playing with Ryan and I while were tracking stuff. I shouldn’t say no, but those guys are just all around the country, and they probably aren’t going to have a reunion anytime soon. Who knows what Kyle will end up doing. Kyle is definitely one of the most brilliant musicians I’ve worked with. He’s just extremely knowledgeable about theory and stuff. He’s so knowledgeable that his brain just flies all over the place at the speed of sound and I can’t keep up with him. He’s just too talented, I can’t even keep up with him.

Do you enjoy being on Fearless?
They put out Volcano, and they put out this record, they paid for the recording, and we’re very thankful for that. My favorite part of being in a band is being in the recording studio, and if we didn’t have a label, we wouldn’t be able to spend time in the studios. We are very thankful for that.

Do you see yourselves signing to a major label at all?
Not with Gatsbys, it would be the wrong place for Gatsbys. I think my understanding of the music industry, I don’t think I’m some genius that knows everything or whatever, but I think that it’s developed over the years. I used to take a cue from NoFX, and just kind of be like “screw major labels, major labels suck ya ya ya”, but I don’t think that way anymore because I think that indies work just like major labels, sometimes worse, actually most of the times worse. Its funny because they don’t do business like independent anymore, the indies are just minor league, small versions of the majors, for the most part. There are some exceptions, but most of them do business in very shady ways. They don’t respect the artists, these are the indies I’m talking about, they don’t respect the artists, they don’t pay the artists, and they don’t value the artists. You’re seeing things coming out in the public now where Hawthorne Heights is suing Victory, and the thing is in the underground, we’ve already known about all this stuff for years, everybody knew how Victory treated Thursday and Taking Back Sunday, and this Hawthorne Heights thing isn’t a surprise at all to other bands who already knew. It’s going public now, which I’m glad about, because Victory is non-indie, there’s no DIY involved in it, there’s no kind of ethics, there’s no art before business priorities, it’s just a money game, that’s all it is, what’s the difference between the majors and the indies anymore. There really isn’t anything, except for the indies don’t have a much money as the majors. There are some exceptions like Equal Vision is a fantastic independent label. They are about closeness family relationships with their bands. They support their bands decisions with their art. They don’t pressure a band to do thing they don’t want to do. When they sign a band, they sign them strictly because they love the band, they have bands that don’t sell any records, but the label continues supporting them, because they love the music. They have bands that sell hundreds of thousands of records as well. They’re a very important label in my mind because they represent this kind of standard of how labels should run, and how labels should treat their artists, in turn the artists respect the label, and will stand by the label. This reciprocity that doesn’t happen when the label is basically shaking the bands down for records, and money, and trying to look into the band as an investment rather than someone they can partner with. There are a few indies that do business the right way, I’m not burning them all. For the most part I’ve lost my respect for that side of the business, just record labels in general, and I’m not writing off working with a major label, just not with Gatsbys. I’m just rambling here, but Gatsbys will never go to a major because if you just look at the business side of things, we don’t create something that they can sell. The majors have a market that they can tap into and that market, doesn’t include music like Gatsbys American Dream. The indie scene does, that’s the place where I think pound for pound, person by person, Gatsbys could be the most appreciated. I wouldn’t have Gatsbys sign to a major, put out a record that absolutely nobody understands or likes, and then basically have our band be washed up. There’s no point in it.

Your lyrics and song titles are often titled after science fiction novels or TV shows such as Lost. What are the reasons behind this and whose idea was it?
There’s not really a big story behind that. It’s usually random stuff like books that we’re reading or shows that we’re watching. We’ll just kind of write the lyrics to any song, then just kind of come up with a name. Coming up with names is the most pretentious part of writing the music. If you take it seriously, and write something serious it just sounds so ridiculous. We always have tongue and cheek type of lyrics for our songs. Songs may have references to Lost or something because we all love “Lost,” but we never write songs about Lost. We have a lot of references to the Ender’s Game novels on Volcano in the names, but we don’t sing about Ender’s Game in our songs. That’s a common misconception in our fans.

Do you guys like to promote reading when you reference books in your titles?
Its not really promoting reading, it’s more for me. Gatsbys American Dream was something I wanted to start for a long time. I had that name in my mind for a long time before I met these guys, and I kind of had an idea of what I wanted it to sound like. I grew up in a pretty broken home, my parents were divorced, and there was a lot of drug use and abuse, and crazy stuff like that. My escape, the place that I would go is books. My mom and step dad would be fighting, and I’d just go into my room and read a book. That’s where I would go. It’s always been a special place for me, especially the books I was reading at that time, which were the ones that come up in our songs. It’s not like I’m obsessed with my high school reading list. Those were the books I was reading when I was going through the hardest time in my life, and I kind of retreated back there for a lot of things. That’s where I write from. Somebody that’s like a traveling hippy man hitchhiking on the road would write about that stuff. I was somebody that was into books during my teen years, that’s kind of why we went to those places.

Why is the band named after The Great Gatsby?
That was my favorite book in high school. I really liked Gatsby. I liked that he wasn’t all about acquiring the wealth for the sake of having the wealth. Most of the characters in that book were about acquiring things. The thing was he was acquiring the wealth as the means of an end. I really liked that what he was going for ended up being a shallow, stupid dream anyways, but in the process he was great, and that’s why he’s the great gatsby, :laughs: and that’s pretty much why we named the band that. I don’t even think I understood why we named the band that, I just liked the name. :laughs:

Many bands are influenced by you, what bands influenced you?
This is an important question, I’ve always wanted to share these bands with people. I think it’s important to not be influenced by your peers, you need to be influenced by the people who came before you. If we were listening to bands we toured with, and we were influenced by them, we’d all sound the same, we’d sound homogenized. My favorite thing ever is Elliot Smith. Elliot Smith is the greatest song writer of this generation, amazing musician, his songs are just unbelievable. There’s nothing being made at that level right now. It’s a shame that he’s dead. My favorite current band is Coldplay. I love Coldplay. I think that that band is just fantastic. As far as Gatsbys goes, our sound was very much inspired by a few different bands one would be Propaghandi. They were a Fat Wreck band, they still are, and they’re from Canada, super political, crazy technical punk band. People made a big deal about us not having choruses in our songs, a lot of people thought it was very creative and artistic and stuff. Propaghandi was doing this years before I learned how to play guitar. This record, Less Pop More Rock, I used to listen to that record, and there are almost no choruses on that entire record. The record is just insane, it’s amazing. They really inspired me and got my head in that kind of direction. One other band is Mock Orange. They were a Lobster Record band, and I forget what label they’re on now. Their The Record Play definitely inspired our math side. There are 5’s, and 6’s, and 7’s, and 9’s, and 11’s all over that record. It’s just such a treat to just listen to. I just listen to that record, and I smile. It’s an amazing sounding record, it’s recorded by Mark Trombino. It is one of my favorite recordings ever. Another band that influenced me lyrically is NoFX, music wise too, but more lyrically, especially on this new record. NoFX really had an interesting way of getting points across. They’ll slap you in the face with an idea, and they don’t care as they come across as rude or whatever. Sometimes they say some pretty offensive things, but for the most part they really drive a point home, and I really like that about them. I feel like in most music, the more vague you are, the more people are going to like it, and I like that NoFX are actually trying to communicate something in their songs. I don’t think most people see that anymore. I’d say everyone needs to go check out those bands, it’s really important.

Many fans were let down that you guys left Warped. What do you have to say to them?
I’d say I’m really sorry. We really wanted to be there, I really wanted to be there. We were going to be on a tour bus for the first time. It was a really exciting time, and we were really excited. We got to the point where we basically just kind of melt down in San Antonio, and were just like “We need to go home, or the band is going to break up right now.” We needed to go home and catch our breath and think about our future and what we’re going to do. Otherwise there is no future for this band. I’m really sorry we couldn’t be there. We had such a great time on Warped last year, and we really wanted to see all the kids again. If we can, we’d love to come back and see all of them some time. We hope that’s going to be the case for the future. We’re really sorry.

Would you like to be on Warped next year?
I doubt it. I think we kind of burned some bridges by canceling this year. I don’t think that their very happy with the whole situation.

Do you guys have plans for any upcoming tours at all?
Like I said, we got the tour in Japan, we got offered a lot of big tours this fall. We’re just not doing it. We are very, very much burned out on the scene here, the industry here, everything. I think that were thinking about taking the Japan tour and doing the UK tour as kind of fun things to get a breath of fresh air, get a different perspective on things. We might do those, we might not, we’re not going to be touring America for awhile, and I’d say if we tour again, it won’t be until 2007

What bands do you like hanging out with?
There are a lot of good people you meet on the road. Some of our best friends are Waking Ashland who is really nice guys, Down To Earth Approach those guys are really cool, The Starting Line guys are amazing, they’re so cool, and they were so good to us. The guys in Matchbook Romance are unbelievably good to us. Starting Line and Matchbook Romance are two very, very cool examples of bands that treat the whole music thing as a community. They’re friends with bands they’re on tour with and they’re trying to help out younger bands. We were a little, dinky band, and those bands were big bands. For them to just say, “Hey Gatsbys, want to come on tour with us?” is pretty cool because they weren’t getting anything out of it, we weren’t going to bring in a whole lot of kids like that, and they just did it because they like our music and want to help out younger up and coming bands. I really respect that, we’ve always tried to return that favor to younger bands in Seattle, and try and help them get on their feet. The Seattle scene, we have a lot of really good friends here, like Forgive Durden and Providence, and those guys are all really cool. We’ve been friends with them since they were 15 or 16 years old and popping zits and going to prom and stuff. :laughs: Those guys are just amazing. The guys in Acceptance, we’ve been great friends with those guys for 7 or 8 years, and we’re going to be friends with them for life. You go on tours, and you’re away from your family and friends at home, and it’s kind of one of the things that keeps you going, the friendships that you make with the bands, and you kind of help each other get through the hard times. Fear Before The March Of Flames are like our best friend band. We were touring with them back before Sugar came out. We were playing to 5 kids every night at a YMCA, and just scraping by, trying to survive. Those are hard times, and both of our bands have grown since then, but we’ve always remained close, and always will.

What music are you listening to right now?
I listen to Coldplay every single day. I’ve actually been listening to the Sunny Day Real Estate record, The Rising Tide, which is amazing. I listened to Further Seems Forever’s Hide Nothing. I’d never heard it before, because everyone said it sucked, and I listened to it and it is the best Further Seems Forever record, and I really like it. As far as that Further record, I don’t listen to a lot of scene music. I listen to Elliot Smith a lot, I listen to Fiona Apple a lot, Ben Fold, Ben Fold is one of my favorites. I spend a lot of time listening to band’s demos. I’ve got my singers in the younger bands’ community. I’m always looking at these bands, and trying to get involved, see what I can do to help out. There are several bands I’m working with right now. They’re kind of demoing and sending me their stuff and then I respond back to them and kind of give them notes on things I think they can improve on or work on, areas of opportunity. That’s a lot of my music listening time, that’s fun, that’s really exciting to me, and I really like doing that.

Why do you choose to play the music that you do?
I guess it’s just the thing of fighting for the underdog, we’re doing things right. I like to have that Philips to believe in everything that I do, not just about music, it’s my life. I think that we live in a world where you get rewarded for conforming, and you get rewarded for playing ball, and if you don’t get in line, they’ll crush you, and while I still can, and while I have breathe in my body, I’ll fight for that, and that’s why we make the music that we make, and that’s what this new record is about. I think it’s ridiculous that you get rewarded for looking the same and sounding the same as another band and you get rewarded for falling in line and you get rewarded for following everyone else and you get rewarded for playing stupid games when we all know what music is supposed to be. That’s what Gatsbys fights for, that’s what we’ve been fighting for. We’re going to lose, :laughs: I know it. It’s like Braveheart. The guy dies at the end, you know its coming and stuff. We can’t change the world, we can’t change the way people are about music, how it’s about money, and it’s not about art. We’re going to try to do things in a different way, and try to influence younger bands to fall in our footsteps, and try to turn the scene into something else. The shame of it is that when I was growing up there was this whole independent, punk rock community, that everyone stood united against big business and major labels and all that garbage. Everything’s different now, there’s no political statement being made, no one is saying anything, nobody has anything to say. These bands just want to make music for a living, it’s not difficult. Its not that they want to influence how people think, they don’t want to change the world. That’s just a shame, because there was these guys being an underground, punk rock scene, and its not the same, not at all, no one is saying anything. There are a handful of bands that actually have something to say, that are trying to affect some sort of change. That’s a shame because a good portion of the bands that are trying to affect some kind of change are the Christian bands. They are the only ones that are actually trying to speak their beliefs and try to influence how people think. There was so many great punk bands not too long ago changing the world and were the biggest bands around, and it’s all changed now, it’s really too bad. At the end of the day, that’s why we make the music we make. We’re stubborn about it, that’s why we don’t play ball.

I’ve got some random questions for you now:

What would your ideal super power be?
I would just like to fly. I dream that I can fly all the time. It would just be so awesome.

If you were stranded on an island what three things would you bring?
I’d bring my fiancée Heidi, an acoustic guitar, and my Macintosh

What do you think about Snakes on a Plane?
SNAKES ON A MUTHA FUCKIN PLANE! I can’t wait to see it, it’s going to be awesome.

Is there anything else you would like to add for the readers of For The Sound [dot] com?
Ya, I really would. I’d like to say think for yourself, don’t be a fucking robot, don’t be a sheep. Don’t let anyone tell you how to think, or what you should believe or what kind of music you should listen to. Figure it out for yourself, there’s nothing wrong with thinking about things exploring things that challenge what you believe and challenge what you think, and it’s important to do that. You need to challenge yourself, you need to explore, you need to figure things out, or you’re going to feel like shit when you’re grown up. You’re just going to be like, “Oh my fucking gosh, who am I?” That stuff is really important, the records that challenged my thinking and challenged my convention, really made me unpack on my life, and records like Propaghandi’s Less Pop More Rock and NoFX’s The Decline and specific songs like NoFX’s “Dinosaurs Will Die” or even NoFX’s “MedioCore” those songs really challenged the way I thought about stuff, and made me rethink my philosophy. Go out and seek out things that are going to challenge the way you live, the way that you think, and after you’ve been challenged, you decide you’re in the right place, that’s fine, great, that’s awesome, you’re going to be stronger because of it. Maybe, just maybe you’re going to go, man maybe I should rethink the way that I’m doing things, and that’s a beautiful thing too. Sorry about getting all mushy on you at the end. :laughs: