So, the other day I wrote a short review about We Came as Romans‘ debut album, “To Plant a Seed“, and today I was fortunate enough to talk on the phone, all the way from Michigan, with Josh from the band! Once again, I really loved the album, and it was nice to find out about the message behind the album and band, and to dig a little deeper in to some song meanings and album production.
Who is We Came As Romans, where did you come from, and where did you get the band name?
Well, we started off like 4 and a half years ago, a lot different than we are right now. Our vocalist Dave and I are actually the only original members left; Dave had originally played guitar, so him and I were the first guitarists. We went to high school together. Dave was in a Christian pop punk band, was just kind of hanging out in the local music scene, and he wanted to start playing heavier music so he got some friends together and one of them was me and we just kind of started playing, went through tons of different member changes, ended up changing our name to We Came As Romans, and that’s just how we got to where we are now. So, it was kind of a long trip of different people in the band and styles of music that we played. All those things in the past 4 years have evolved in to what we are now.
So, you just released “To Plant a Seed” the other day (03/11); were you trying to get any messages or thoughts across when you were recording the album?
Yeah, the whole concept about the album, “To Plant a Seed”, is that when kids listen to us, or if they come to see us live, we try to be a band that’s all about loving each other and respecting each other and try to get kids to the show that, amongst their friends and random people they don’t even know, that’s just the overall message that we try to spread is, to try and love and respect each other. And so, maybe when a kid listens to us or comes to see us at shows, we try and plant that idea or that “seed” in their mind. You know, as I see it, a large majority of anyone who listens to us or sees us at a show, they’re not gonna go home and want to immediately change their lives and start acting differently; but, you know, just loving up to people when they’re not getting any love back or just respecting people they don’t even know. Not everyone, well, very few people, are going to immediately want to change their mind, but hopefully we’ve planted that seed, and hopefully it will grow and hopefully, one day, they’ll realize “Wow, that’s what We Came as Romans was talking about.”, like I should just be loving on everyone and, you know, it is about being friends, being peaceful, getting along, and co-existing. And so hopefully that seed that we plant with our lyrics or at our live show, hopefully it’ll grow. So that’s kinda just what the CD’s about.
So, I would assume that’s partly what the title track is about too?
It’s kind of funny, the actual song, the first track, it’s about the whole message and how we came to attain that message. A lot of that song is about how we started as band. Actually in the, like, second verse is “Four years ago we planted a seed,” and that’s kind of how our band came to be and how that message came to be and, once, our band was just like a seed that was planted and we’ve grown in to this band that’s trying to plant seeds of love, and, well, yeah I guess that would be pretty accurate. I hope that gives you a description. It kind of has two meanings that mean the same thing. I don’t know if I explained that really badly, but I hope it makes sense to you.
The album cover art; Where did that come from?
Well basically, our bass player Andy, he does a lot of graphic design and stuff so he knows a lot of artists. Before we recorded he’s like, “I really want this guy, Paul Romano, to do our album art.” and so he had showed us some of Paul’s work, some the we’d already know; like, he did Mastadon and Chiodos, their album art, and so we told Equal Vision that that’s what we wanted to do, and Equal Vision had already released two of Chiodos two’ CDs so they were already familiar with Paul and we kind of just sent a few snippets of lyrics and told him what the album was about in general, gave him an idea, and he drew up a few sketches and we really liked it. So basically, that was just it.
So, you worked with Joey Sturgis on this album, same as your EPs; did he bring anything new to the table, anything you might not have thought of doing?
Not especially. A lot of the songs on the CD are almost identical to the demos we recorded before we went to Joey. I mean, Joey made everything sound so much better and of course Joey had added his personal touch on things. It wasn’t, I guess–I’ve seen it on the Internet and whatnot, how, well I guess a lot of people think that being produced by Joey Sturgis is like, that we go in there and he writes our songs for us and, you know, he write all these parts that make us who we are. But, no, Joey helped a ton on everything and we worked really well together, writing, and, I guess, fixing the songs. But, almost everything that’s on this full-length was written before we went in, and Joey just kind of helped us develop it more, like adding little things. Joey added some parts that he had written himself for Seed, and he was super cool about it. He was like, “Hey, dude, it’d be really cool if we put this in.” and I was like “Yeah, let’s put that in, that’s great! Like, I’m all for it. This is going to make album sound better.” The reason that we went back to Joey was because we worked so well together when we recorded our EP with him. We just get on the same track, and the same, I guess, direction of where things need to go with the songs; the whole big picture of the songs, and the whole big picture of the CD. And, so, it was just kind like, I don’t know; just really awesome working with Joey.
In terms of progression, how do you think your sound has evolved since the Demo and “Dreams” EP, or has it at all?
Well, if you take a in to our EPs through and through, a lot of it is just–take a look the song “Shapes” for example, a lot of it is just music, stop, goes in to sample part with strings and a drum machine, then it’s like more music then stop, strong and a drum machine, and music, stop, goes in to another drum machine with synth, and it was like an underdeveloped thing for us when we recorded it, because we didn’t know how we were going to do it live or anything, we were just “Oh, it would be really cool if we could add these parts.” And on the new CD we tried to make it a point that every song was really coherent and it had a really great continuity to it, and so all the strings, or the piano, or the drum machines on the new CD or more so part of a song. There’s never just like, well, I wouldn’t say never, but there’s very rarely just a drum machine playing with some strings. Like, it’s part of the song, a strings, guitar, a brass section. Like, we tried to make, I guess, the orchestra a second band, using strings, or using the brass section as well as using piano and drum machines, we tried to make it a whole part of the song, a whole ‘nother instrument to it, so it’ll still be playing but there’s also guitars and vocals and real drums at the same time. So I guess–aw, man, I’m gonna sound like an idiot, like, “What is this guy talking about?!”, but, I guess that our EP, compared to our full-length, it was really underdeveloped in terms of the song structure, and in terms of the way that we had previously used strings and samples, and I think that our full-length is more, I guess, more developed and more along the way to being a lot more coherent as a whole.
There was one song that stood out for me, and that was “Dreams”. What’s the meaning behind “Dreams”?
“Dreams” is actually the oldest on our full-length; it was on our EP, and was even the first song written for our EP, and back then, I had written the lyrics for “Dreams” myself. Andy and I were room-mates on college, a little precursor to this whole thing, we were room-mates in college in our first year, and we were both like “Man, we gotta drop out if we want to do this band. Like, we can’t do school and then try to tour full time. We can’t make it as real musicians in we gotta stay in college.” And so when Andy had had a talk about it with his dad, his dad had talked to him about how everyone has their dreams that they got to go for and Andy had told me how the talk had went, because I was pretty scared about talking to my parents, and I kind if write the song around how we, as a band, had felt. All of us had kind of taken a break from college. Our drummer could have went to U of M, I guess the best school in Michigan and he took a break from it, and so all of us had felt that music was our deepest dream, it was something that we always wanted to do, something that we were made to do. And so, that song is just kind of about how all of us always dreamed about being musicians and doing what it takes to be that, but at the same time, like, we weren’t just musicians, we were trying to spread a message too. We’re not just trying to go out and rock, and get attention, and get girls and party. We all felt that we need to be doing this, we need to be doing this thing, but for a better reason than all the typical reasons, I guess.
On a final note, where do you hope We Came as Romans is headed in the future?
Everywhere. And by that I mean, we just want to tour a lot, we’re trying to be on tour almost all of 2010. We’ve really tried to just stay on the road, and hang out with dudes ad play shows, like you know. That’s just kind of what we’ve always wanted to do, was be a full time touring band, and now that we’ve finally released a CD that we can finally support on the road and stuff, we’re gonna really try to stay on the road as much as possible.
Thanks a ton, Josh, for taking the time to do this interview! I know it must have been a long day doing all those interviews!
Read also
