Underoath

  • Bobby Gorman posted
  • Interviews

Underoath - Tim McTague, Chris Dudley

  • September 16th, 2006
  • Edmonton Event Centre - Edmonton, Alberta

It had been exactly 362 days since Underoath passed through Edmonton, and in that year they had blown up immensely. Instead of being the second band on a four band bill, they were now the headlining act as they toured across Canada in support of Define The Great Line. Before their show at the “new” Edmonton Events Centre, I sat down with Chris and Tim of the ever popular band to discuss a wide selection of things. Warped Tour, Fat Mike, rumors, artwork, Jasper and more – read and enjoy. Thanks a lot to Chris and Tim for doing it, and to Anthony for setting it all up for me.


Bobby: First off, you guys have been on this tour with He Is Legend, Silverstein and Moneen for a few days now; how’s that going?

Tim: Real good.

Chris: Super good.

Bobby: Has there been any really memorable moments from it so far, other than the arcade games downstairs?

Chris: Actually yeah. Yesterday we had a day off in Jasper and we went hiking for a little while and found this river. We ended up building a camp fire there and hanging out for a while. It was just me and him [Tim], our merch guy and our tour manager. It was probably one of my favorite days of tour ever. Yeah, it was awesome.

UnderoathBobby: Yeah, Jasper’s so nice to wander around.

Chris: Yeah, really, really nice.

Tim: Yeah, for sure.

Bobby: Is it nice to be back on the road after your little break?

Tim: Very nice.

Chris: Yeah, we were looking forward to it for a while.

Bobby: How different is doing a tour like this compared to the punk rock summer camp known as Warped Tour or the Taste of Chaos tour which you’re doing after this?

Tim: The difference is the bands. Everyone on tour is bands we like, people we like. Indoor is great. I like indoor way better, I think the vibe’s better than outdoors’ big field, crowd wise, everything wise; all in all, I think festival tours have a lot to offer that indoor shows don’t, but I like smaller shows better.

Bobby: Right now you guys are on the cover of Alternative Press magazine for the second time, how does it feel to be on the cover of it for a second time?

Tim: Pretty cool.

Chris: Yeah, I remember the first time that we were on the cover; we were all like freaking out. Then our manager told us we were gonna be on the cover again and I remember thinking “wow, it seems like we were just on the cover,” even though it was like a year and a half ago. But no, it’s awesome. The people at AP are really cool and they’ve always treated us really well, and yeah, it’s cool.

Bobby: You actually have two covers for it, one subscriber only which is pretty rare because AP doesn’t do that all the time. Whose idea was it to do the cover?

Chris: That was AP’s idea. I think that they’re doing that with all their issues now. Because I have a subscription and Head Automatica was on the cover of the one before us, and I got two covers of that too.

Bobby: The article is about why you guys dropped off Warped Tour tens days early. But since I’m no longer a subscriber, I haven’t had the chance to read the article yet. So, for people like me who haven’t read it yet, why did you guys drop off Warped Tour ten days early?

Tim: A lot of things. Through a year’s time, a lot of communication issues just kind of fell through. A bunch of little things that started a big thing, either that or communication and respect for each other. Just weird issues that we all needed to come home and really figure out, to work out. There were a lot of specific instances, but the big picture was that we didn’t love each other and communicate with each other the way we should’ve been and in turn, found ourselves in a lot bigger of a situation then we should’ve ever gotten into.

UnderoathBobby: When you guys dropped off the Warped Tour, there were tons of rumors going around. The biggest of which was about Fat Mike, so much so that Fat Mike actually had to make a statement saying “we’re friends, I was just messing around, I didn’t actually do anything.” Did Fat Mike have anything to do with it? Are you friends? What?

Chris: No, no, I mean he had nothing to do with us leaving. He did give us a hard time on the tour because we were Christians and stuff, but it was never anything that was a big deal. We’d talk to him and hang out and stuff. You know, I kind of felt bad for him when all this stuff was going on, because I felt like all these people were mad at him thinking that he drove us off the tour and stuff. I was just like “ah, that sucks.” Yeah, no, he didn’t have anything to do with it, at all.

Bobby: Like I said, that was one rumor. There were so many other rumors flying around about rehab, breaking up, band members leaving, stuff like that. How bad do you think rumors can get? Do you think people are going too far starting these rumors and then believing them?

Chris: I think, especially with the internet, the way that it is in today’s world, rumors can get just crazy. But I think that you just kind of have to take it with a grain of salt, being someone who goes on the internet and reads that stuff, just be like “okay, this is what somebody says they know is true.” Just because it’s the internet, when I read something, I automatically go “okay, well, that may or may not be true.” They can get pretty crazy, but I just try not to pay much attention to it.

Tim: I mean, if I tell you a story and you tell him, and he tells him and he tells him; five people down the line, if they tell me what they heard, it’ll be a completely different story.

Bobby: Yeah, it’s like when we were kids and we played telephone.

Tim: Yeah! Exactly! Except for over millions of people, not tens of people. As much as a small room of people can distort a story, when it goes from band to band to kid to friend to mom to whoever’s girlfriend, by the time it gets back to you, it gets all jacked up.

Bobby: You guys just released your new album, “Define The Great Line”, and first of all, I really like the artwork. You have a giant picture from it up there *pointing to the stage* which is pretty sweet. Who came up with the concept for the artwork, who came up with the idea for it?

Chris: A lot of it was Spencer and the guy who designed it, Chandler, talking and we all kind of sat down and all threw our ideas in the pot and when we got it back, I don’t think it was what any of us were really talking about; but Chandler kind of took our ideas and expanded on them in a really abstract way; and it turned out really cool. There was some stuff that was definitely out from left field that turned out to compliment the artwork pretty well.

Bobby: With the release, you also did a limited edition DVD. Why did you do a limited edition DVD instead of giving everyone a DVD or just why put out a DVD with it at all?

Tim: It was gonna be more. It’s like two or three dollars more for the DVD and a lot of people don’t like that. I know a lot of music purists kind of like just the record. They don’t want any weird things; they don’t want anything jacking it up. It also gave us the chance to do two different artwork layouts too with the digipack and stuff. We wanted to do that all the way, but there was just some label things, some financial things that didn’t allow us to do it. It was the only real way we could get everything artistically out without compromising kids buying the record at an extremely high price or kids getting something they might not want.

Bobby: That’s good reasoning. What’s exactly on the DVD? I haven’t seen it yet.

Chris: It’s pretty much just us making the record, in the studio, recording.

Bobby: You also just recently finished recording the video for “In Regards To Myself” in Sweden, how was filming that?

Tim: It was awesome. It was real good.

Chris: Yeah, the people who did it, they’re a company called Popcorn Films and they’re just really, really, really good. They have a really cool vision for things and are able to make it look really, really cool. A lot of it, we didn’t know how it was going to turn out and they were just like “well, trust us, it’ll look really cool.” And it does, yeah, can’t really say much else. It was awesome.

UnderoathBobby: Why did you film it in Sweden?

Chris: Because that’s where they’re from and they have people that they work with that are in Sweden and they have studios in Sweden. It’s a lot easier for them to do their work there and it wasn’t really a big deal for us to just fly over there, so we just selected to go there. And you can do it a lot cheaper there too.

Bobby: Have you guys heard Painted Red: Strung Out On Underoath?

Chris: Yeah.

Bobby: What do you think of that string quartet?

Tim: It’s definitely cool that a bunch of people felt the need to make a CD playing the songs that we did. Overall, for covering a hardcore band with strings, they did a pretty good job, I think so anyway.

Chris: Ditto.

Bobby: Back in July, you guys did a MySpace secret show in Florida, how was that?

Chris: It was awesome. It was really, really good. It was the day our record came out and it was a place called the State Theatre in Florida. It’s a place that we played at a lot over the years, even when we were way younger and it was just really cool to have that show there. The kids there were awesome, it was just really, really good times.

Bobby: How are the MySpace secret shows set up? Like how did they pick you to play the secret show?

Chris: I don’t know. All I know is our manager called us and said “you know, Myspace wants to do a secret show the day your record comes out.” That’s all I know about it.

Bobby: Okay, I love going to concerts, I try to go to as many as I can, but of course, some are more memorable than others. So thinking back, what are some concerts that you went to that were really memorable for you?

Tim: Definitely the first show on our headlining tour in Dallas, Texas – 2005 on Easter Sunday.

Chris: We went and saw Radiohead in Toronto.

Tim: Oh wait, was the question shows we played or shows we went to?

Bobby: Shows you played, shows you went to, either.

Chris: Yeah, definitely, we went and saw Radiohead in Toronto and that was really cool. But we also played a show with Jimmy Eat World in Florida and for me, that’s kind of both my playing show and just going to a concert. Because we played it, but I felt like I was just pretty much just getting paid to watch Jimmy Eat World. So after we finished playing, I just sat and watched them, it was amazing, it was really, really cool.

Bobby: Okay, I guess I’ll end with a pretty easy one, if you guys could have one thing at this moment, anything at all, what would you have and why?

Chris: A campfire, right here. That’s mine.

UnderoathTim: A new pair of pants without having to go in this sea of a mall that we are in to find it.

*Spencer comes in bragging about a rose he got, to which Chris replies “I don’t get one?” The rest of their conversation is blurred out by He Is Legend doing a sound check in the background.*

Bobby: *turning to Tim* Okay, I have to ask you this, how long have you been growing your beard?

Tim: Um… Probably three and a half, four months; May, June, July, August, September, yeah, about four months.

Bobby: It looks really good. I guess that’s about it, thanks a lot, do you have any final thoughts you’d like to add?

Chris: Go buy Norma Jean’s new record, because it’s really good.