An Interview With Between The Buried and Me [08/2007]

Between the Buried and Me’s highly-anticipated new album, Colors hits stores on September 18th. I had the chance to catch up with bassist Dan Briggs as the band prepares for the official release and their upcoming tour — as well as talk about their unique approach to promoting the album with song-a-day visual interpretations.

pixie: So, with the album still two weeks off, are you at all worried about it leaking?

Dan: It actually leaked about oh, maybe two weeks ago… so. Eh. I think people at the label are more worried about it leaking than us. I kind of think of it as an early way for people to get a heads up on the material before we start playing it live and it’s something that we’re really excited about. We stand 100% behind this record and think it’s the best thing that we’ve done, no doubt. So for people to hear it a little bit early, it’s alright. I’m not too worried about it.

pixie: Most bands seem pretty casual about the whole leaking thing….

Dan: I think if you’re a modern band you have to accept it and embrace it. Not only that, but I mean… we all download music. If it’s a band that I like enough or a record that I like enough, I’m going to go out and buy the CD because I like owning CDs. So I’m not worried about that with ours. If someone really likes it, they’re going to go out and get it anyway. …And it’s not like you can really do anything. It’s out there, either way. So just accept it and move on.

pixie: Okay, well, moving on - you have a really crazy tour coming up: how do you get ready for that sort of thing?

Dan: Well, it’s funny you should ask because today, I was rehearsing and going over stuff that’s on the record, and later, I am going to meet some of the guys at the practice space to go over stuff and make sure we’re all refreshed on our parts. There’s a lot of work going into it this time around because we have a really different set planned and we’ll be playing a long time. There’s a lot of endurance things that have to happen, like playing all day. I don’t do that when I’m at home. I hang out and I watch baseball and I eat some food here and there and I sleep… so right now, I’m back in that mode, trying to play all day every day.

It doesn’t really matter how much you prepare, though. It almost always takes two or three shows to really feel comfortable. This time around, our first two shows are in North Carolina and are our big CD release shows, so I’m trying to make sure that doesn’t happen. I’m trying to really be prepared and ready for those shows. We’re all working hard on that.

pixie: You still have time, though - a few weeks, so… no stress, right?

Dan: Well, you know, we’ve had a lot of time off, we were only gone for about two weeks in July and August… and the rest of the time, I think we all took some time off after recording, and not really touch our instruments so much. And then we did, to get ready for that tour, and then cane home and I took a couple weeks to take some time off. I didn’t play bass so much… I played guitar, and I relaxed, and I saw my friends and family. And now I’m kicking up into high gear. It’s cool because it’s a good time for it because Victory started showing the trailers for the album yesterday with the videos, and to see that, it’s a big reminder, like, ‘oh my God, the album is coming out! And oh my God, we’re heading out on tour!’ and I have to be really ready.

pixie: The “song a day” online, with the video interpretations is actually a really great idea; I think people are responding well to them. Who came up with that idea?
Dan: Over at Victory Records, they staff a lot of people there. And we went out there probably late June, just to touch base with them, as we hadn’t been there in a while. And everyone there is young and excited and they had a lot of good ideas. They were really excited about our record. And we had always thought there’s no one concept or theme that runs through the album, but there actually are a lot of themes and ideas that do work their way through it. It’s not a concept record or anything, but we still thought it would be cool if there were visuals to go along with it. And it’s just something cool for everyone to look forward to this week and it helps me pass the time a bit better until the CD comes out. And it will allow people who haven’t downloaded the CD to hear the songs for the first time. So that’s cool.

[Note: you can watch the album trailers here.]

pixie: You guys defy the word “genre.” You can’t be stuffed into a box, but people love to make bands fit into specific genre boxes… so how do you deal with that, straddling so many styles?

Dan: You know what? By not thinking in that box at all. When we did this record, after doing Ozzfest, we were tired of our songs on Alaska, we were tired of where we were being clumped in, and we wanted to up everything ten times more than we had before by writing an album that has a lot of different parts, better songwriting, better songs in general, better everything. That’s what we were focused on at first, but then we let it happen naturally. We got into a groove. Paul and I were writing really well together, and arranging things well with everyone else, and it came together. Hearing this record, you can’t clump us in where we before. I don’t know what people are going to say… I don’t know. We’re a forward-thinking progressive metal band. I guess. That’s the best I can do.

pixie: Wikipedia likes to say “disputed genre…”

Dan: Yeah, that’ll confuse some people. But we’re not worried about that. We write what we write and everything has a purpose. We’re just having fun.

pixie: What’s the greatest compliment you’ve ever been paid as a band?

Dan: As a band? Actually, while we were writing Colors and feeling good about it, we were two songs into it and working on a third when we got into contact with the drummer of Dream Theater who we’re all huge fans of and they’re a really big influence on our band. I think they’re one of the most important bands of our generation…

pixie: I think a lot of people would agree with that….

Dan: Yeah! Well, he got in touch and said he was a big fan and has been a fan for a while… it was about possibly going on tour with them last summer because they had some bands and one band dropped off, and they wanted to see if we were interested - which of course, we were. It ended up not working out, but it was cool just touching base and hearing that. It was pretty awesome.

pixie: That’s actually a great story. I mean, how often does Dream Theater just call people up?

Dan: Well, just to know that those people are listening… you never quite know who hears what you’re doing… so when we were writing stuff, we were like, “well, you know, the guys from Dream Theater are going to listen to this….”

pixie: No pressure!

Dan: [Laughs] No, no pressure at all! But no, seriously, we had fun and that was extremely flattering.

pixie: So, do you have any words for people who will be checking out the tour or the new album?

Dan: I would like to say that as far as the tour goes, it’s going to be really special and different than anything we have done over the past 5-6 years, and nice long sets every night… a bunch of surprises. It’s the tour that our fans have been waiting for. And we’re going out with bands that are our good friends, so it’s going to be a lot of fun every night and a big celebration, I think, for all the hard work we put in and getting to finally play the new stuff live.

And the record? I hope everybody checks out the video interpretations this week and gets excited for the album, which comes out on the 18th. Visually, the album looks amazing - the artwork is awesome. We’re excited because it’s a good package all around. I hope they like it.

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