Interviews

Smoke Or Fire

Interview with Joe & Jeremy on Feb 19, 2007 by Archive Bot

Smoke or Fire is back after a tour of the world, a lineup change and months spent working on their sophomore full-length, This Sinking Ship. The band has always kept their fans alert over the years, but things are more concrete than ever for Smoke or Fire and their sound remains true.
 
By: Amy Meyer
 
In your own words, what is some basic band background?
 
Joe McMahon: The band started as Jericho. We started about eight years ago. We started off in Boston then we went through line-up changes and ended up moving to Richmond, VA about four years ago. We wrote Above the City there, Fat Wreck Chords picked it up, and then we had to change our name to Smoke or Fire because we were being sued by a Christian rock band. We put out Above the City and toured on it about a year or two and now we all live all over the place and just finished up our second record for Fat.
 
Since you guys all live in different places, how does that work recording? How far are different places?
 
Jeremy Cochran: Joe and our bassist Ken live in Boston, I live in Oakland, and our drummer lives in Portland, OR. Writing was a strange process this time. Joe and I do a majority of the writing so I wrote in Oakland and recorded it and we sent tapes back and forth for a little while. We all met up in Boston about six weeks before we went to record and all hashed it out.
 
How long did it take to record the record?
 
JM: We spent five weeks in Chicago recording and that’s by far the longest we’ve been in the studio. I think the first EP we did was an hour and a half, the second was three days and Above the City I think we did twelve days. This is by far the longest we’ve spent in the studio, but we did it with Matt Alison and that’s just the way he works, he likes to take as much time as he possibly can on the record.
 
What’s more important in the song making process, do you come up with lyrics first or instrumentals?
 
JC: We have always started with music. We think it’s equally important, I mean obviously lyrics are important, but we spend a lot of time on music. Joe usually writes pretty constantly and then as we go along he works on putting lyrics to it, but we always started with the music first.
 
Is there a theme to this record?
 
JM: I think it has a lot to do with the time we spent touring on Above the City. We toured for a long time; I think we spent almost ten months out of that year touring after it came out. We did a fifty state tour, we went over seas for the first time and played like eleven countries, so for us that was a lot to see and take in. I think it broadened our minds a lot about things that we had already been thinking about. Actually going out and meeting people, playing with people, seeing different places broadens your mind about the way that other people live and the things you believe and they believe. It’s kind of addressing not so much what’s wrong with; the country is sort of odd right now obviously with the war and people in power, divided religion, and people’s plans and situations. The subject matter that I think keeps coming up is about how divided everyone is and that it’s not necessarily a matter of who’s right and who’s wrong, but kind of an opinion more of why that’s happening
 
Where did the album title come from?
 
JC: That came basically before we even finished. We completed most of the songs then Joe, Ken, Dave and I all sat down and talked about how there are a lot of issues going on with the country and the world, but also with our personal lives. In-between writing Above the City and this record, a lot of stuff has happened and there have been a lot of ups and downs personally and professionally in everything. There are a lot of holes in the way that things are run around us and that has to do with things that we deal with being in a band and by being people in this country. I think it has something to do with addressing those problems and figuring out first of all what the problem is, and then figuring out the best way to solve that problem. It’s not so much a negative title, but it’s more about realizing that things are fucked up, addressing it, and figuring out the best way to solve it before it gets worse.
 
What was the hardest thing about making the new album?
 
JM: I think the writing process for this was a big change for us, the distance and figuring out how to do it. We’d always kind of lived in houses together. The last record we wrote in Jeremy’s bedroom that was our practice space in this big house, we all lived together. We got up everyday and practiced eight o’ clock in his bedroom. We wrote the same way, but I think not having that process of getting together everyday and hashing stuff out was an adjustment for us. I think that was really the biggest thing, other than that I’d say the amount of time in the studio was tough. Spending five months in the studio was great, to be able to have that much time to work on the record, but at the same time we’d never done that before so it was almost like you find yourself second guessing stuff. You have so much time you’re like, should I do it this way, can I do it better, whereas before you go in and do it because you pay by the day usually. This process we had as much time as we wanted.
 
JC: The amount of time that we spent in Chicago was great, but Joe’s right, at the same time we were all in one room, we stayed in the studio, you know studios, there’s no windows or anything so we kind of had to force ourselves to actually get exercise and do something other than wake up, record, go out and then go to sleep and wake up. It was pretty repetitive.
 
What was your favorite thing about making the new record?
 
JC: Being in Chicago. Doing it in Chicago was awesome; it is an amazing city and Matt Allison, our engineer, was really hospitable, showed us such a good time, really took us in and was so welcoming, made us feel really at home. He knows so many people in the city and he introduced us to so many people in the city.
 
How would you compare this record to the last?
 
JM: I don’t know. I don’t think there’s anyway to compare it. We don’t really setout to do anything specific when we do a record, we just kind of write the way we always write. The songs are longer. We hit over the three minute mark on some songs which is pretty impressive for us.
 
What did you go into making this album wanting to pursue? Was there anything you were striving to accomplish?
 
JC: I think we wanted to show to ourselves and to people that we’ve improved as songwriters and musicians. We played so much that if you’re not improving at your craft over that amount of time, you’re in serious trouble. I think that was the main thing, we just wanted to focus a lot more on each song individually and all the parts. Not to say it was meticulously thought out, but we just wanted to take our time a little bit more because we had it and we wanted to make sure we thought it out and the songs conveyed emotion and a feeling in themselves. It wasn’t just specifically about a certain subject matter, but song structure and the way it was composed made its own point.
 
What do you hope to accomplish through making music?
 
JM: I don’t know. That’s weird, it’s a weird question. I think now, this many years into it, we have different things we want to accomplish because we’ve gotten to where we are, which I don’t know why that is. We’re on Fat Wreck Chords, which is something that I never thought would happen. I never thought we’d get out of the basement when it started, never expected to be able play with the bands we play with. I never had expectations because that just leads to disappointment. Now, the biggest thing is that I would like to make records that are still listened to years down the road. I’d so much rather have a record that kids are listening to ten years from now than a record that’s huge this year and goes away forever. Making records that people want to, five years from now, when somebody’s younger brother starts listening to punk rock, say get this record, how people did to us, did to me. Have it be one of those records that down the road kids that start getting into the kind of music we play people say, check this record out, you might like this
 
Do you think people can get a good idea of what Smoke or Fire is about by listening to an album or would you call Smoke or Fire a live band?
 
JC: I think it’s a little of both because for us it’s two completely separate, separate things. We’ve always been a live band and that’s where I think we thrive as far as enjoyment. I think that’s where we’re strongest and it’s what we love to do and everything that comes along with playing live, the traveling, the people, and the experience of it. Being a live band is definitely very important to us, but at the same time, I think you can get a decent feel of what the band is about by listening to the records just because we do think a lot about what we say. I think they each carry about the same amount of weight.
 
If you could let people know just one thing about your band what would it be?
 
JM: That’s a killer every time, you know it’s coming the whole interview and there’s nothing you can do about it.
 
JC: I just want people to know that we do do it for the right reasons. It doesn’t hold any status for us. I think a lot of people in bands these days use it as a status symbol amongst themselves and peers and people can get carried away with that. We don’t really indulge in that too much, we love to do it and it sure isn’t easy