My American Heart Interview

Larry Soliman (Vocals)
Jesse Barrera (Guitar / vocals)
Nick Logan (Guitar / vocals)
Dustin Hook (Bass)
Jake Kalb (Drums)

Headlining their first major tour in the UK, things are looking up for My American Heart, and we manage to catch up with Dustin and Jake at Nottingham's Rescue Rooms!

Steve: This is your first time doing a Headline Tour in UK, so how does it feel?

Dustin: So far, so good. We’re about three shows in and every show has progressively gotten better and the kids are really responsive, I mean, every time we have loyal fans they always know how to show us love and it definitely makes it worthwhile to come over here.

Jake: We’ve been here a few times too so it’s cool that kids are actually coming back out to see the band and showing interest and sticking with us, so we’re just happy to see these kids coming out.

Dustin: Yeah, it’s really wild to see familiar faces in another country, but that’s nice.

James: Do you get that quite a lot? Do you get the same people following you around?

Jake: Yeah, it’s like “We saw you in Maine”, or something!

Dustin: People are particular as to who they are following for the full tour; girls from Sweden flew in, there’s a following of girls from the UK, it’s pretty good, it’s crazy.

Steve: You were here last year supporting Madina Lake. Is it a big step up from supporting a band to headlining yourselves?

Dustin: Yeah, it’s kind of nerve-wracking for us but, you know being with Madina Lake, a huge band, it's a good start. The first time we came over here, the first eight shows we played in UK, there were 13,000 tickets sold, we were playing in front of so many kids, they’d sold out, Carling Academies, that was a really amazing thing, so that was what we needed to do to gain a fanbase and, you know, we came back a few more times with a, so we thought we’d done enough to at least try and do some more headliners, the response has been great, so we’re very happy with it all so far. It’s only a quarter of the way into it so we’ll see how the rest goes.

Steve: Is it very different playing here to playing in the US?

Dustin: A show’s a show. I think kids in the UK though, for some reason, are loyal and a lot more appreciative of the music that they listen to and they take a lot more pride in it, you know, because at this "States" there’s so much to listen to, it’s oversaturated, promotion, this and that; kids just don’t know what to like anymore, they just listen to what they’re told to listen to. Over here, you know, kids actually have a choice, and, it’s neat.

James: More selective

Dustin: Yeah, I guess so. I think that if you come over here and work hard and really push your band, play decent music, you can have a chance at making it out here.

Steve: You played some festival-type shows; you played Taste of Chaos, how different is it doing that kind of thing, an outdoor event, to a tour of club venues?

Dustin: Yeah it's just different venues in different with different audience sizes usually, I mean, a club tour, it’s still the same thing; you play a show, but like I said, festival shows are big, greener tours, usually they’re so hectic; it’s very organised but, when you’re not the headliner, like we’re not close to being the headliner on this tour, so when you do them, you get kinda the shafts since you’re one of the smaller bands, so it’s nice, you know, to headline every once in a while and get, you know, the treatment.

James: I think I read somewhere that you guys were doing a gig outdoors and it just pelted it down, almost a full tornado, and your gear got totally trashed?

Dustin: (laughs) Yeah, it happens.

Steve: Do you have any musical influences that you draw on when you are writing songs, or just as a band in general?

Jake: We listen to a lot of Jimmy Eat World and we’ve been home writing in the last few months, so I’ve been trying to pull out some of the old records and draw some influence from that and I’d say from Jimmy Eat World.

Dustin: We’re all pretty, ah, we all love the most ridiculous different styles of music, I mean, we all like everything, we’re all very open to every type of music, but we all have our preferences and they’re nothing like this; it’s interesting to hear. If you heard iPod Shuffle of all of our favourite music, you going to get a seizure or something. Yeah, we draw some influence from just about everything; in the end we just try to keep the same sound that we feel comfortable with.

Steve: With the writing of the songs, is it a band collaborative effort or do you do?

Dustin: Yeah, it’s like, someone comes up with – typically it’s Jesse in our band, he’s the main songwriter, he actually comes up with the bass and everything and then, from there, it just kind of stems out and the rest of us come up with our parts and we come together, you know.

Jake: Yeah, everybody has a say in it, which is nice, you know. In some bands there’s just one guy who writes everything all the instrumentals, all the melodies, all lyrics.

Dustin: We’re all just open to everyone’s opinions like, you know, if he hears a bass part that sounds good, he might recommend it to me; if I hear a guitar part that might sound good, I’ll recommend it to Jesse and that way

Jake: Yeah, everybody works together.

Dustin: You have to be patient.

Steve: Has the way you write songs progressed over the years that you’ve been together?

Dustin: I think, yeah, when it comes to melodies definitely. We used to just be so overly, worried about the instrumentation, that we kind of put melodies and the actual song on the back-burner while we organised instrumentation. Now we kind of, we love songs, we love catchy songs, good, melodic – that’s taking a little more of a front seat.

James: Have you always wanted to be musicians? When you started out, what made you pick up the guitar, the drumsticks, to start?

Dustin: I think we’re a pretty unique case of a band; all of us, we’re like a big melting pot – there are five of us, all from four different areas of the country that are all completely scattered, so we’ve all come together in the past four years and that’s how it is, but where we’re a little bit different I think, is we all pretty much started committing our lives to touring and by the age of 16 or 17, we pretty much, I think we all just kind of fell into it and just loved it, stuck with it, that’s how it worked out.

Steve: Do you have any advice for aspiring musicians once they get into a band?

Jake: It’s just important to work hard and find people you love being around, love playing music with; tour as much as you can, try to make the right contacts, make friends with other bands, make friends with people in the industry, try to network as much as you can.

Dustin: As simple and as generic as it sounds, it’s work, work, work. People seem to expect to get something for nothing and it just doesn’t work that way – sometimes it takes years, sometimes it takes weeks, sometimes it takes months, but you still have to work extremely hard to get anywhere in this business. That would be my best advice.

James: It’s different from Myles Kennedy with Alter Bridge last week, he said “Get a good lawyer”, that was his advice to people.

Dustin: (He and Jake are chuckling) Well, it doesn’t hurt. There are a lot of things that definitely don’t hurt and a lot of things that do.

Steve: We’ve heard the single “There are More Frightening Things” and that was good but it seems a bit heavier than some of your stuff. Is it a new direction for you? Your first album was quite heavy wasn’t it?

Dustin: Yeah, we’ve definitely gone on a rollercoaster a little bit, I mean, our last album is, sorry to keep using the word, a melting-pot, but it’s kind of a melting-pot of a lot of different styles, you know, we’ve got ballads on there, we’ve got songs that are definitely a lot more radio-friendly and we’ve got songs on like "Frightning Things" a little more aggressive and hard-hitting; just, like, as I said, that’s what we like and, the songs just come, like, the way they do; we really can’t control, you know, what they do; but, I mean, that’s just how it is.

Steve: Jesse was online, on MySpace, earlier today; how useful do you find sites like that to be, for prmoting your band.

Dustin: That goes back to working hard and stuff, I mean, all of us at one point or another have sat at our computers for 10-12 hours straight, just copying/pasting and stuff to friends; back when we were doing it, it was listening to messenger chat rooms and stuff like that.

Jake: It’s a real good way for kids to feel connected to your band which is really important for us. We all have our own personal MySpaces on there, you know, people can write to us and we write them back; try to stay in touch with people that are interested in our band.

Dustin: Yeah, we found, throughout the years, MySpace has made it a way for you to really connect with fans on a more personal level and it’s nice to not only have fans come to the show but you see someone who’s a fan but you kind of feel like a friend you know, because you’ve conversed online a few times, it’s really a neat way to keep connected because sometimes when you’re on the road it can get a little lonesome; so, when you’re in a different city every single night, seeing new people that really aren’t new any more, it’s a lot more comforting.

Steve: You went to the studio last February with the producer, James Paul Wisner. How much did he influence you and how did you come to the decision to have him as your producer?

Dustin: Ah, James is great. Like I said, we all like a great variety of music and that’s kind of how the record came out. James has worked with Dashboard Confessional, New Found Glory professionals, he’s worked with Underoath, and he did great with those kind of records, and he’s worked with everything in between, bands like Paramore, so, someone like him, we thought, who can manage all these different types of styles, he’d be perfect for us. He’s a very creative guy, he’s willing, he’ll listen to any idea, he’s very open-minded and he’s always got something to say. He’s not a producer that’s an engineer, as he calls himself, he’s really a producer; he digs deep into the songs and he makes the best of what they can be – that’s the definition of a good producer.

Steve: On the subject of the album, how did you come up with the name of the album?

Dustin: It’s kind of just a metaphor of a title, the whole album is basically about our experiences touring from, you know, 16, 17, 18 and a few recorded when we were 19; they are just about the 4 years prior to touring, losing friends, making new ones, hard times with families, I mean, hard times touring and stuff like that; it’s not been an easy run, but we’re still going; it’s basically a metaphoric title for the definition of “sun”; you know, whenever there’s a storm, or something terrible is happening, the sun is always shining just behind it, it just takes a little time for it to come out.

Steve: We were reading something about Steve’s antics on top of the world tour bus?(Laughing)

Dustin: I remember that!

James: Any crazy antics following on from that with this tour?

Dustin: Well, that’s something I don’t like about headlining; it’s a lot more busy, it’s a lot more hectic and you have to be a lot more responsible and stuff, not that that’s a bad thing, but we enjoy it.

Steve: You’ve been interviewed by people several times. How do you feel about being interviewed several times by just one group of people?

Dustin: The interviews are fine, as long as, just, you know –

Jake: As long as the questions are fresh; that makes a difference and it’s the change in attitude –

Dustin: Nothing’s worse than someone who is sitting down and saying “How did you get your name?", “How long have you been together?”, “How did you guys meet?”; nothing’s worse than that, it’s just anybody can go online and find that information, you know; people, when they are reading an interview, want to read something that they don’t already know, and that’s why it’s nice to hear questions that we actually have to think about.

James: Question: Barack Obama? Good or bad?

Jake: Good (and give thumbs up!). He’s - something new, something fresh.

Dustin: It’s been a pretty repetitive, negative, bad, last year. It’ll be nice to see what happens, good or bad.

James: Who’s had the biggest influence on your life? Not just musician wise, but friends or family, or someone you looked up to, like Mohammed Ali, or something like that? Who’s given you a kick in the right direction when you needed it?

Dustin: I would say probably, my Dad. My Dad’s the type of guy who’s not going to sit down and say “Son, you’re great, you’re great, you’re great”; he’s very up-front, but he’s just honest with me, and I think a person that can be honest with you, that knows you so well – that’s the most important thing, but he’s supportive of me in more than a million ways so, I mean, to have someone like that in my life really keeps helping me stay balanced, because he’s honest when he needs to be but, like I said, he’s supportive and he loves to keep me going.

Jake: I would say either of my parents, or possibly even Nick who’s the guitar player, the newest guitar player in the band, him and I have been friends since we were, like, 8 years old, and playing in a band since we were 10 or so. We’ve just constantly done so much together and been to so many places around the world together, and round the country, and constantly, you know, keeping each other’s brains stimulated!

Dustin: Yeah, being in a band this long, with the same group of people, we’re like brothers; when someone’s down or something, they tend to try and hide it but nobody fools anybody.

Steve: Ok many thanks for your time!

Dustin: No, thank you!

Jake: Thank you.