Believe You Me lets have the basic 411, how did you guys meet and form?
"All of Believe You Me except our singer, Taylor grew up together in Indiana since we were little kids. Ryan (guitarist) and Taylor started Believe You Me while going to school together in Florida. Everyone from the original Florida-based Believe You Me graduated school and went their separate ways while Ryan and Taylor both moved back north. Alex, Michael, and I were familiar with what the guys had been working on in Florida and we decided to join and start writing together."
Â
Where did the origin of the name stem from?
"Believe You Me is an emphatic form of "Believe Me". We liked the idea of having a phrase as our band name and felt it was different enough from other bands in our genre."
Chicago has had many famous sons, how are you guys going to stand out from the crowd?
"It's hard to compete with such classic bands like Smashing Pumpkins, Fall Out Boy, and Rise Against, but I think we're just going to continue being ourselves. Writing music we're proud of and being passionate has to count for something."
Â
Did you all grow up around Chicago? What were your childhoods like?
"We all grew up South Bend, Indiana (one hour from Chicago) and Grand Rapids, Michigan (two-and-a-half hours from Chicago) and later moved to the big city. Growing up we would always drive to the city to see concerts, go shopping, and to create new experiences. Our childhoods were pretty typical in the sense that we went to school everyday and worked shitty jobs, but we have such an awesome and unique group of friends that have made our teenage days unforgettable. We've traveled a lot and have had opportunities to live anywhere we want and we're still happy to say that Chicago is our home and favorite city of all."
Â
Was there anything in particular that drew you guys towards pop punk? I understand you all played in previous bands um previously?
"Alex, Michael, and I have been in a death metal band for the last 6 years. We're all creative musicians and didn't want to pigeon-hole ourselves into any single genre because we felt the need to express ourselves in different ways. Pop-punk music has created such a fun and inviting lifestyle for people. It takes us back to the days when we were skateboarding around town, making nasty faces at grown-ups, and trying to have house parties like SUM41. It's our true passion."
You guys are currently recording your latest EP, how is that working out and are you stoked on the new songs?
"This new album writing process is very interesting. Our debut album, "For The Record" was pretty straight-forward pop-punk from start to finish. With our new EP we've been working on, we want to experiment a lot more. We wrote poppier songs, we wrote darker songs, and it was all just because we had to get it out of our system. We don't have any record labels urging us to do anything in particular and we are taking advantage of that. Every song on the EP in different from the others and we're stoked to get everyone's feedback on what their favorite tracks are. Furthermore, A.J. from The Dangerous Summer worked with us one of the songs from the album and it's flattering that other musicians want to get their hands in on what we're doing. This will be a solid release for everyone."
Do you feel you guys constantly evolve as a band?
"Oh, absolutely. The best part of Believe You Me is that we have more ideas than we can manufacture. We haven't even released this EP yet and we're already writing our next full-length. Our band's constant progression comes from each of us drawing influence from other different places in our lives."
What is the most curious animal in the animal kingdom?
"The Cannibalistic Ewok. This creature is black and red, mostly dead, only eats hand fed scraps of it's fellow species, and lives under beds. It has three fingers on one paw and four fingers on the other, plastic spoons for teeth, and writes backwards in cursive. We actually just made all that up."
Â
How do you like kids to react to your live show? Have you ever seen anyone back flip out of sheer joy?
"Kids should just act however they feel. Whether they want to sing-a-long at the top of their lungs or throw dirty diapers at us, just let it happen (please don't actually throw shit at us). Obviously shows are a lot more fun for everyone when the crowd is rowdy so we encourage all of the pile-ons, crowd surfs, headwalls, etc. that we can get."
What is your happiest memory of?
"We had just finished recording our first album "For The Record" with Kory Gable in Baltimore, MD. Kory had been working on mixing the album for a couple weeks and he sent us final mixes to preview before we sent the album off to get mastered. We all met up one afternoon to listen to the album together. I remember all of us looking at each other like, "Really? This is us?". We had only known our songs in a live setting hearing the songs at rehearsals. It was the first time in our career when we realized that we had something special to offer and we were all jumping around and hugging. We'll always be so proud of that album."
The last really good book you read and why?
"A couple of the guys in the band have been reading Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk. The book is a collection of 23 very twisted, demented, and boundary-pushing short stories. It's a great read if you're into that sort of thing."
So when you're playing stadium crowds, the world is at your feet and when Mr Obama stands for re-election, being another Chicago native, do you guys accept his request to play his party (like FOB) or turn the old boy down?
"We'd play for gas money and free food. We can only assume that a presidential party would have some AWESOME catering."
On another political subject, America seems to have realized there is somewhat of a worldwide economic downturn and decided to slash its military budget by a healthy trillion dollars, what would ya’ll do with a trillion dollars? (See you thought I'd ask something pertinent and relevant!)
"A trillion dollars!?!? Besides obviously paying off our personal debt and buying our families new houses, Believe You Me as a whole would fly every last one of our fans and friends to Chicago for a week of hanging out and jamming."
How would you like your story to end (that sounded slightly doom-ridden) and what are your hopes and dreams?
"In all honestly, we hope that wearing our hearts on our sleeves, working hard, and writing good music will earn us the ability to make Believe You Me our life-long careers. If we record a few albums, everyone hates us, and then we break up - we still had fun together and it'll just add to our never ending collection of awesome memories together."
www.straightedgelifestyle.co.uk
snowghoul
theartofmadeline
kaledo-art
turnnoffyourmind
titsay
gummygunk
prguitarman
dededos
blakekathryn