Between promotion for his band's new album, the insanity that is the business behind starting a record company, and trying to get a tour organized, it's surprising that Reported Failure's guitrarist, backing vocalist, and one of the songwriters for the band had time to sit down with us at AP. If you meet him you can tell he's serious about music and wants to find a way to stay relivant in the business for a long time. So check out the interview (OoC: questions are in bold answers are not).

When did you first get interested in music?

Hmm... Well I had always been interested in music. I picked up a guitar when I was probably about 12. I didn't know I wanted to be a musician until probably sometime in highschool though.

What artists would you say have influenced your music the most?

I was really into grunge, back in middle school and early high school. As far as individual artists, I really liked Alice In chains and Pearl Jam. Later I got into some Zeppelin, and then softer stuff, Death Cab For Cutie, and Dashboard.

Let's talk about your band a bit. So your first album was called 'Ive Known You', can you tell us some background on the album?

well, people say you have your whole life to write your first album. Most of the songs were written by me or Billie over the course of high school and the years after. We had about 15 or so songs that we thought were pretty good and just picked out of those. There wasn't any sort of concept behind the album.

So you guys knew each other in high school?

A bit. Matt, and I went to the same highschool. We knew eachother but not too well. We both were interested in music though, and I think it might have been senior year when we both met Billie somehow and he sort of united us into having jam sessions every couple weeks. Eventually we found a drummer and started a band that eventually grew into Reported Failure. The original drummer ended up quitting and going to college. We had met Adam at one of our shows and knew him a little and when we needed a drummer he came in temporaraly. Things worked out though and he's still here.

So, before I've Known You, you guys had a bit of a local fanbase, but when I've Known You sort broke out of local and hit the more mainstream rock charts what was it like going from a little band in Scramento CA to being on jimmy Kimmel and having alot of people know who you are?

It's weird. When the album first broke through we weren't touring at the time. Then we were on some TV shows and it was kind of crazy. It didn't hit us until the tour after that when the number of people coming to shows had quadrupled, at least.

Did you then find it hard to I guess, keep a personal relationship with fans?

At first, we'd be playing local music hubs and we'd hang out, watch the other acts and talk to people. As we got more known locally we couldn’t say that we recognized most of the people at our shows anymore, but we made a point of trying to reply to all our myspace messages, and to this day we still see people in the crowd that we recognize, expecially when we play even large places in the Sac area.

Your new album, called Flux of the Run, is expected to sell at least 2,000,000 copies. It’ a great album, What is behind the name of this album?

The word flux has several meanings. One is a flood of water, and another is a liquid used to promote fusion in metals. We thought about the words flood and fusion a lot. We were in many songs on the album fusing different musical styles together. Then, flood of the run, is sort of about suddenly being famous. Suddenly we’re touring like crazy, and everyone knows who we are, so it was sort of a flood of just everything in our lives.

This will be the last question, but before you were touring with little Sacramento bands, and now you recently played the IMAs with huge names in the music industry today. What’s that like?

It’s crazy. I try to remain a cool guy with everything and not get starstruck at all, but these are people that three years ago I was listening to on the radio and really hoping I could be as good of musicians as they are.

Edited by user 27 April 2010 15:43:54(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified