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Intern Frances Schoonveld was given a number of cool interviews at the start of her stint at HM, and she did a good job of getting the guys to talk. Read this Q&A with guitarist Colin Kimble of As Cities Burn, where we learn, among other things, about drummer Aaron Lunsford laying down some joke vocals for a song in the studio...

Colin: Hey, how’s it going?

Frances: I’m good. How are you?
Good, we’re just finished loading in.

Is it okay for an interview now, then?
Yeah, let me run outside, okay?

Okay, sorry.
No, it’s not problem. I’m crazy busy.

I can imagine.
So you can imagine the first three days of the record coming out. It’s just nuts. It’s all good though, exciting stuff.

Yep.
Okay, here we go. I’m in a good spot now.

Okay, well recently you’ve signed with Solid State Records.
We did.

How is it different now than when you didn’t have any label support?
It’s a world of difference. We’ve toured without any label support, so we toured independently for a year and a half. Just totally on our own, booked everything ourselves and so it was always scraping for any shows we could get and jumping on anything we could get and playing for five kids a night. Just small stuff, anything we could get. And immediately when you throw a reputable label name on there everything changes. People start being polite and people start kind of catering to your need and it’s just a world of difference just because…crazy how just the name does that. Nothing really changed, we’re playing the same songs and we’re the same guys but it’s crazy how people kind of pay attention to that. So, it’s been great just having the label behind us, as far as them supporting us and maybe getting…it’s just been a little bit easier as far as booking shows and just, kids hearing about us. Shows have been much better since we’ve been signed, but it’s always been fun.

Your first full length was released just a couple days ago?
Yes.

Describe any struggles in the recording or releasing of your new album.
Actually, the whole process was pretty seamless. I would say that the biggest problem in the beginning was, we…our initial offer from Solid State came in May of 2004 and we didn’t actually sign until March…er, February of 2005. So, that whole time, dragging up a negotiation, negotiating and that whole process was brutal because we were touring on a three song EP and we just wanted the record out so bad. We wanted to record and get something out so we could tour on it and negotiating was taking so long and that was our biggest frustration. It finally came down to, we were like, “Let’s go in the studio while we’re negotiating and if it doesn’t work out that we sign, we’ll pay for it.” And so, it ended up that we signed while we were in the studio and so the actual time in the studio we worked with Matt Goldman and Josh Skogen and it was great. They were so great in the studio and then mixing with Mike Watts was amazing. We didn’t…we thought we were going to have to be very, almost take control of it. Because we’re so hands on with our music and we know how we want it to sound and we kind of have a vision of the final product that we were worried, and worried about needing to be in control and the people we worked with were so great that we were able to kind of just let it go and let them do what they do and it just turned out amazing. So yeah, it was really a very easy process and it was pretty darn enjoyable and it was brutal waiting for three months after the record was done for it to come out but I guess that’s how it happens. Someone’s got to market albums and promote so…it’s out now though and we’re excited about it.

Do you have any funny stories about the production of your album or just with the guys in the band?
It’s so hard to tell stories because it’s like that, it’s like telling inside jokes. As far as, I’m trying to think of good…there’s tour stories. Funny stories with the guys…uh…when we were first in the studio, just it being a new experience, we kept a list of quotes from the studio and there were some pretty dang funny ones. I can’t remember what they were. That’s probably a dead end. We were tracking vocals one day and our drummer always, his secret desire is to be the singer of a hardcore band and he’s horrible, horrible, horrible at singing and screaming and we all think it’s hilarious that he messes around. And we were tracking vocals one day to the heaviest song on the record, it’s called, “Wake, Dead Man, Wake,” and all the lights were off in the vocal booth because that’s how our singer does it. He just does it with the lights off and kinda goes and it was…okay, wrong song, I don’t know what song it was but it was something that was very heavy and our drummer had left to get us all drinks. But it turns out he didn’t leave, he walked in the vocal booth. And so it was the first take on this song and it was the first time TJ, our singer, was going to be singing for the day and our drummer actually sang and we didn’t know it was him and it was the most horrible thing we had all ever heard and we were all just sitting in the booth, in the room where they have the board and everything and we were like, “Oh my gosh, TJ sounds horrible today. We’re not going to be able to get anything done.” So we flipped on the lights and it was Aaron, our drummer, and funny to us but I don’t know if anyone else would think that was funny, but yeah that was a good time. But how the studio works is, the studio we recorded in was so small that it was usually only two of us in the studio at a time so there wasn’t a whole lot of crazy shenanigans that took place inside the studio, which was kind of a bummer. We wish that everyone could have been there the whole time. It probably would have been more stressful, but it was pretty low-key and a lot of just working, working, working. So…good times. Tour’s a whole different story.

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