Emery interview with Devin Shelton

by Adam Warner – 2009

 

You guys are in the middle of a US tour, how is that going?
Pretty good, we’ve been doing this Zumiez Couch Tour. Its set up like a skate park and in mall parking lots and we play at the end of the day and it’s awesome. We didn’t really know what to expect but it’s been really cool. Lots of kids turning out, great shows, it’s been awesome. We’ve been playing some in between shows here and there and those have been great too. Actually today is our last day and we have a three week break before we start our summer tour.

Have all the shows on this tour been outdoors?
Yeah, all the Zumiez shows have. The Zumiez shows are about every weekend or so, and then we book a couple shows throughout the week; like regular venue shows.

Do you guys have a preference between playing outdoors in the sunshine versus in doors at a venue?
Probably overall at a venue just because the sound is a little more consistent and you know what you’re dealing with. Outdoors all depends on the weather, of course it’s cool to be outside but most the time it’s just that the sound is more consistent. Overall a cool, nice venue.

The bands that are supporting you on this leg of the tour will be the same after the break?
Oh yeah, this isn’t even the same tour. On the Zumiez thing it’s different every day, every few cities there are different bands. So right now it’s Closure in Moscow, they’re on this with us and they are also going to be on our headliner. So yeah, it has changed all throughout this whole tour and the next tour will be consistently the same thing, it’s Maylene and the Sons of Disaster, Closure in Moscow and a few other bands.

Do you prefer that your bands share your same faith or does that not really matter much?
Oh no, that doesn’t matter to us at all. We probably prefer the other side of it because we enjoy the fellowship and we’re all Christians in the end; and if it works, cool. You can relate to some people and we just like making friends with bands of the same faith. I mean it’s just normal, it’s just like a normal relationship with a person. Once you get close enough you can get more personal and talk about whatever. They can tell us what they believe or what they don’t believe, and we can say the same thing and have a discussion about it, it’s just a lot more real. First impressions are pretty cool, maybe I’ll get to know them a little bit but once you get developed you can talk about anything and everything.

Emery has been together for the better part of a decade, do you find that inter-band relationships really get tested when on the road?
Yeah it can be, we basically have the same lineup the whole time, we’ve had a few changes here and there but it’s been pretty much the same. We’ve definitely had ups and downs like any band, if you get fed up after a while and you get tired of each other; say stupid things to each other just because you’re in a bad mood or something. But our friendship is really strong and it’s not just a business for us, it’s something real. We all get along really well because we have similar personalities and we can never really take each other seriously. It’s cool that we just get to hang out and you don’t have to be that way, you can treat it just like a business but you’ll drive yourself crazy.

The new album “In Shallow Seas We Sail” just hit stores June 2nd and congrats. This is Emery’s 4th full length album and it’s also an introduction to many new fans, is the message the same to the new fans as the fans who have been true to Emery for all these years?
Yeah, I mean we’re not trying to make any real statements with our music. We just write what we write and of course our albums will sound different each time. If during the times that we’re writing and coming up with those songs and where we are in our lives at those different times, the music will come out differently. With this album we just decided to go back to our beginning roots a little bit and make it a little heavier and that’s just what came out. We hope that new fans as well as old can see that Emery, well, we feel that writing the same album over and over again is more of a sellout than changing things up and trying to be different. We always want to be changing ourselves and stretching our music to new boundaries. Hopefully new and old fans can understand that and appreciate that.

Did you guys have the same inspiration for this album as previous albums?
I think our inspiration is always the same; our lives and all the relationships we have with people, our families, our faith or whatever. So our inspiration is the same, like most people in their job if their inspiration is to provide for their family, so our music is the exact same. We write according to what’s going on in our lives, we have an idea for a song that we think is cool than. We’re just like everyone else, we just happen to be musicians that express it creatively. But our inspiration is pretty much our lives and our families and our faith, it all stems from that I would say.

That’s great because consistency improves your longevity as a band too. One of the staples that makes Emery unique in the industry is the dual vocals. What is it that made you guys want to do the dual vocals versus one singer?
Ever since we were in college, Toby and myself and Matt our guitar player we were in bands and did some stuff. I was the lead singer of a band and Toby was the lead singer of another band and we were all singers and as we started Emery, we were just like “ok, I have this song and I wrote the lyrics” and Toby had a song that he wrote, so we both write and we both sing. So instead of having all of these songs and giving them to just one singer, we just both sing and it’s not a big deal. So even in the beginning I played drums and sang a few songs from the drums and Toby sang some other ones. It wasn’t really a conscious decision it was just more like ‘this is how we do it’.

Just kind of came together.
Even our label was like “whoa, this is kind of confusing, there’s one person there then there’s another guy there” so we just that this is what we do and we thought it was unique and different. We’re definitely going to do it that way, we’re not going to change the way we perform. It just kind of happened and we’ll always be known for that.

In the track “Dear Death Pt I” there’s a little bit of Spanish that’s mixed into the song, what’s behind using the Spanish lyrics?
Well, we went down to Mexico a few times and we really loved it. It was a really good tour, really good shows and everybody there treated us really good; super nice. So Toby just wrote this little intro part for our set and so when we walk on stage he would just play it and we’d walk out on stage. When we were going through Mexico he wrote the whole part and we just thought it was cool and it wasn’t like a whole song, just the intro part. We all really liked it and thought that we could make it into a full song and that’s what came out; so that’s the reason.

Are any of you guys fluent in any other languages?
Not fluent, I would say a few of us took Spanish for 3-4 years in High School and College.

Enough to get by if you’re lost somewhere.
Yeah, just enough to get around, that’s about it; definitely not fluent.

The track “Churches and Serial Killers”, the name alone is a little intimidating and people might get the wrong impression from it, can you talk about the background of that song?
That song was originally titled a few different things and we were just trying to think of a cool name. We were in Australia playing and we were in one of the cities, I think Adelade, and this guy tells us ‘yeah, Australia has the most churches and most serial killers’ and so we thought that was cool and kind of ironic. There is one organization that is trying to praise God and also the most serial killers, just ironic and strange.

Is Emery living the dream or are you still working towards it?
Oh yeah, we’re always working towards it. You know we have our ups and downs like any band. There’s times where we feel like we’re on an uphill and sometimes we feel like we’re not but not unlike anyone else I would think. We’re always pushing ourselves and you have to be more, you have to get bigger. A bands goal is to make money and be able to do it as a successful career to support our families. But there’s always room to grow for sure. But we’ve obviously been blessed on the other hand, super fortunate to be able to do this and be in a place where a lot of people that would like to be in our shoes and sometimes we take that for granted but I would say that we are always pushing that goal every day.

How much personal feedback do you guys get from fans? Do you get a lot of letters or things like that?
Yeah, we meet a lot of fans while on tour and get to talk to them a little about how our music helped them through difficult times and along the way, that’s always great to hear. We don’t really think about it in that way but our fans are always there to remind us that what we’re doing does make a difference. We get tons of myspace comments and instant messages and all those things. And sometimes it’s hard to keep track of all of them but there’s definitely things that stand out in your mind and makes you step back and say ‘oh yeah, we’re not just a bunch of dudes playing music, the words we’re singing and the songs we’re writing are really making a difference in other people’s lives’. It’s pretty crazy to know that about what we do.

So what’s on the horizon for you guys, a DVD or maybe a live album?
We don’t have any plans at the moment but we’re thinking about getting some people to come out and film us singing and doing different things like that, showing little snippets of some shows and stuff like that. We’re thinking of a DVD possibly later this year, by Winter maybe. We’re talking about maybe doing an acoustic album in the future, I don’t know but it’s all just ideas right now. The only thing for sure on the horizon right now is the Summer headlining tour and obviously we have the new album so we’re just trying to push that.

Get back to running around Devin and thank you for your time.
Aright, thanks a lot.