By: Gian Erguiza

The fire still burns deep inside this band and with another record that’s soon to be a classic, AFI is going strong and leaving no stone unturned. Breaking out the early morning coffee, head still buzzing from the the festivities the night before, I got a chance to chat with co-founder Adam Carson about their new record and everything else current with AFI. I was expecting whisky drenched voice, partially awake answers and short unintelligible answers, as is common with touring bands, and since AFI was about 10-12 days into their tour, I figured it would be much the same. Wrong! What I got instead was the voice of a lively, enthusiastic and intellectual Adam. Guess I was the one tuned into the recovery channel, not Adam. After a a 20-30 minute chat, Adam pretty much went into full detail into some of his answers and Adam was sincerely nothing but professionally awesome. Read the my entire chat with Adam below.

Top of the morning Adam! It’s early but what are you up to this morning and what do you have going for the rest of the day?

It’s early here. We’re playing in Richmond, Virginia today and I’m kind of getting myself together. About to head out to the venue for sound check.

Cool, let’s pop right into it, I know you’ve got a busy day ahead of you. Can you hear me alright by the way?

I can hear you just fine, where are you calling from?

Burbank, CA. actually and if you hear baby sounds in the background, I’ve got my baby with me today so hopefully that’s all good with you.

Ohh, that’s alright, no problem!

[both laugh]

Now you guys are a few days into the tour and will going to pretty much be out on the road until March or so supporting this record. How has the first few days been, how have the new songs been received so far and what does the set list look like? How many new songs in the list?

Well, so far so good. We’re just getting back on the road, getting all that muscle memory back, figuring out how we’re doing and I’m happy to report that the first couple of shows went really great and now we’re working on our tenth or twelfth show so it feels like we’ve been at it for a couple of years. That’s how everything comes back really quick. The new stuff has been fun to play. We’ve doing about 4-5 new songs every night. It’s kind of hard cause it’s our eight record so we’ve got a lot of material to choose from and we’ve got fans who want to hear a song from each release. It’s kind of hard to please everybody so we try to put in a pretty good cross-section of all the songs so people feel like they got the full experience.

Thank you, now you guys released “Crash Love” on Sept. 29. Now I read somewhere that you guys didn’t want to go, quote, unquote “Depeche Mode” on this record with an abundance of synth. Did writing guitar-driven songs and stripping down the sound give you guys a new perspective, almost like a fresh start at rock again?

I guess? I heard Davey and Jade mention this after their Blaqk Audio tour that when they started writing, going back to the guitar and vocals was refreshing. Whether there was a renewed interest in writing rock or whether or not it would’ve been there regardless, I don’t’ know. I know the songs were inspired and self-inspired every step of the process from the writing, to working it out with the band, to pre-producing it and taking it into the studio. It just felt like the songs had a life of their own. It was just a matter of recording them the way they were demanding to be recorded. It was just a really inspired process.

Awesome! For this time around, was there a new influence that you didn’t share with the band or where was the common ground for you guys when you guys wrote the songs?

You know I don’t know? It’s really hard to put a finger on that. The band shares a lot of common ground, just as much as we don’t share. I think we have a similar aesthetic that we bring to that table. Everybody’s listening to different things all the time but there’s a lot of bands we can always agree on. It’s one of those things where it’s not really spoken. It’s not like we sit down and say “Let’s go in this direction” or “Let’s do this thing.” It just kind of happens and everybody is free to interpret the songs and parts as they choose. It’s only after we’re done that we start having to really describe it.

Is there ever any pressure to write more hits or were there any pressure to surpass the last record since your last one was your most successful record to date? Any pressure to write more hit songs? A better album?

Well, there’s always pressure to make a better record. The pressure is self-imposed. We put it on ourselves to continually get better. If we weren’t doing that then it’s time to call it quits. Everybody wants to continue doing better. As far as hits are concerned or tangible success, it’s kind of a weird place to get your self into. You don’t really want to focus on that too much. I think that bands that set out to write a hit, generally expose themselves as having tried to do that. I think that there’s an element of pandering that goes into trying to write a hit so for that reason, we try to stay away from doing that. We try to write good songs. We’re fans of melody, big choruses and we’re fans of music. It’s hooky and catchy, so we incorporate that into the music but we don’t really actively sit down and try to write a hit. The pressure that you speak of was definitely there in trying to make a better record but we weren’t racking our brains and trying to figure out how we can write ‘Miss Murder’ again.

I’m glad to hear that because like you said, the bands that do try to write a hit record, most of the times, ends up being their worst record!

Yeah! If you look at this record, there’s some good songs and there’s definitely some songs that could be considered as singles but I don’t think that there’s a real obvious stand out track. There’s six or seven songs that different people have floated the idea of being the possible single but there’s a lot of disagreement there. So that’s a good thing because it shows that the album is well rounded and has a lot of different perspectives.

Definitely. Let’s talk about Begin Transmission where you guys had fans come in for backup vocals. Real nice human touch there! Who came up with the idea and is this the first time that outside fans or people been part of your recording process?

It was Davey’s idea actually. It’s not the first time that we had outside fans sing on the record. On “December Underground” we had a group of Despair Faction Kids come in and sing the ‘Hey’s’ on ‘ Miss Murder.’ We thought that was a fun process and we thought that was interesting for us and for our fans and it was a way for us to include them and let them be a part of the recording process. Davey had this idea and we all agreed that it was a great idea to expand on that. We had this selection process being this whole process in itself where kids submitted two-minute videos where they can talk about anything they wanted. The purpose of the video was to sort of let us know who they are and what they were all about. I think there was about a thousand submissions or more and we watched all of them and chose our favorites.

“We try to write good songs. We’re fans of melody, big choruses and we’re fans of music. It’s hooky and catchy, so we incorporate that into the music but we don’t really actively sit down and try to write a hit. The pressure that you speak of was definitely there in trying to make a better record but we weren’t racking our brains and trying to figure out how we can write ‘Miss Murder’ again.”

People who submitted the videos and the people paying attention chose one of their favorites so there was six winners and we flew them all out to L.A. and spent the day in the studio with us. It got us back in touch with the people who were out there and sort of let people look in on the recording process and ultimately; we make music for our fans. The people who were involved in Begin Transmission represent the core of our fan base, the people who care the most or the people who pay attention to us even when we’re not in the middle of the recording cycle so allowing those people to be part of the process; even if sort of just watching the winners on the internet, even just watching that process gave people an insight about the recording process. It was great!

It was great man, their faces were priceless when they first saw you guys when they get out of the van. So I read on you the band’s Twitter account and saw that you guys have been doing covers for rehearsal. First, who updates the band’s Twitter account and second, what songs have you guys been covering in rehearsal?

This faction is relatively new to us so we haven’t set it up yet to where anyone can do it. We’re kind of just doing it while on tour but I’ll be honest, Twitter is relatively new to me and in my personal life, I don’t really care too much for that type of thing. But you know it’s a responsibility that we all share. We’ve always played covers in sound check. Sound check is like a moment for us to play together onstage with the main goal to make sure all the levels are cool, all the gear is working and that we’re ready for the show. But the secondary thing about sound check is just a moment for us to play together and either work on things or kind of just have 20 minutes or half hour to play or mess around. Our rehearsals are kind of a medley of whatever anybody knows how to play at any given moment. I think we got the idea as we travel with the Pro Tools setup now, we might as well record a song or two, put it up for people to hear. It’s kind of risky because you’re offering up material to people that haven’t really been obsessed in the way that we obsess over our albums. We don’t release any music on an album until we’ve really honed it to its most presentable shape or version and this is a little bit more bare bones like the songs we’re just recorded without overdubs and this is just the way we just played it. I think that there’s a vibe to that and I think people might like it. We do Ziggy Stardust, I think people know that we always play Cure songs and we know a lot of early punk stuff like Black Flag, Minor Threat and we always play that stuff. We’ll play some Poison and we were trying to play ‘Hot For Teacher’ by Van Halen the other day.

How’s that coming along?

It’s such a missed opportunity if you; Jade, Hunter and Davey are such great musicians and for us to not mess around and play this stuff is just such a missed opportunity.

I’d love to hear you guys version of Hot For Teacher by the way, that sounds like an awesome cover for you guys.

Yeah, I don’t know if it’s worth listening to but it’s certainly fun to play!

[both laugh]

Cool man, let’s get into your head a bit, I know it’s early but let’s try. So Adam, what originally got you into music in the first place?

I came from a pretty musical family. My father was a drummer. He played until in the mid-60’s, early 70’s and kind of had to stop playing when I was born, kind of just out of incessity I guess, having to face life and selling his drums. We didn’t have a drum set apparently enough but there was always a musicality to my family and there was always instruments lying around, kind of waiting around to be discovered. For some reason, I don’t know, but there was always music playing in the house and the radio was always on. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t aware of music and popular music. It was just something that was really encouraged in my family. It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized that there weren’t families with kids that were interested in music and didn’t care about so that’s were my interests and my fashion came from. There’s always popular music until I got into skateboarding when I was young and with skateboarding came punk rock and sub-culture and I became aware of more sub-culture music.

Any Spinal Tap moments so far where things go haywire or combust onstage?

Not particularly haywire onstage but there’s the general comedy of errors that happen as we’re trying to remember what we’re doing. I can’t really think of any specific moments but things like simply going onstage at the same time is kind of difficult for us. There was one time where we played the show, came offstage and kind of standing around in the dressing room talking about the show and Davey, Hunter and I looked around and wondered where Jade was and he had just kind of walked onstage for the encore but didn’t really look around or give anybody a sign before he did. We suddenly realized he was onstage so we all had to run and get onstage and Jade already started the song and I don’t think he looked around once to make sure that we had followed him. So it was kind of a scramble to get back behind the drums in time to come in but it all worked out.

Awesome man, thanks for sharing that by the way! Adam, how different do you think the music scene would’ve been if social networking was around then when you were growing up, trading tapes and stuff like that?

It’s hard to say. I mean I know that social networking existed pre-internet, it just happened in a different form. It happened slower and in a way it happened more organically. If you think in the way we started and in the way when we first started to tour; this is well before we were in any position to do a tour and play in a real club, four of us in a van, pre-trailer, just driving around playing around people’s garage’s and basements. The way we booked that tour was; this magazine, Maximum Rock N’ Roll, had sort of a supplement that they printed once a year called ‘Book Your Own Fuckin’ Life’ and it was state by state, had a list of bands, promoters, and venues and had all the contact information. You paid like $5 bucks and you sent in your information. So we would plan this tour, flip through the sections, find the promoters and they were all kids like us who maybe they put on shows at local halls and maybe they had a basement that they let people play in or a punk house or something. So all the bands would use it to book tours and sometimes when bands come into towns they would call other bands; this whole network you know? This all revolved around that. I mean that’s social networking! Trading tapes, sending demos in advance to clubs trying to book a show all that stuff happened and that was all pre-internet. I know the internet makes things a lot easier these days and makes it so you don’t need the big machine of a record label as much and you can do a lot of promotion on your own. Things aren’t as insulated though? I think what made a lot of things special, pre-internet, was whole scenes were built up in cities and they were sort of closed off to the rest of the world so they really developed a sound that was really where they were from. Now that people are exposed to absolutely everything, it’s like their exposed to everything in the world but not as much. Things don’t really permiate as much and its harder to have a certain sound when you’re exposed to absolutely everything. I don’t know what’s better? I see what’s good about and I can see how it could help smaller bands but I can also see how the experience has totally changed. I don’t even know if I answered your question. I just talked for a really long time!

[both laugh]

No man, those were some good points and great insight! I feel the same way that you guys feel. I cam from the tape trading era and social networking is really still blurry to me.

Yeah, I mean I’d hate to sound like the old guy like ‘Twitter and Myspace, Fuck That!’ cause I definitely see how it’s changed the landscape and their great tools. However, sometimes there’s the sense of I gotta do this thing and it’s been half a day and we haven’t let our fans know what we had for breakfast and that’s frustrating. It’s like fuck that! I never knew what Stuart Copeland did on a day-to-day basis.

[both laugh]

There was like an element of mystery and wonder and that is almost entirely gone. There are so many people who are prepared to like to want to offer all of that information and that’s strange to me as well. Personally, why would I expect anyone to care? Why is it my responsibility to share that stuff?

Yeah man, I totally hear you. It’s like if somebody wanted to find you they’ll find you right away and why would want that I don’t know.

[both laugh]

Recently, there’s been a resurgence of unruly fans attacking artists/bands like throwing projectiles onstage, like Cradle Of Filth and injuring the players, and as most recently, Leona Lewis getting slapped at a signing session. What are your thoughts on this subject and have you guys experienced anything at that nature before and what did you guys do?

We’ve never really experienced that? We’ve been in a touring van for fifteen years and we’ve played everything from basements to small clubs to big arenas so we’ve had our share of just strange situations. As far as outright attacks, nothing has really happened like that. Does it seem to be recurring these days?

It’s something that’s basically getting worse. From my end, I see a lot of people trying to do things or throw projectiles onstage which is totally wrong. It’s like if you don’t like the band, just turn around have a beer or something.

It doesn’t sound like something new though? It sounds like something the could happen at any given time at any show. Well the world is a crazy place and crazy things happen, look at Dimebag Darrell. That’s probably the most extreme version what can happen.

Definitely. So what’s next for AFI?

We’re going to continue to tour. We have plans through march but I think we have all intentions of touring through the summer. I think we have to kind of gauge; we have so many places we want to play so once we get to the bottom of that list, we’ll take a look at things and see it it’s time to go and do another record or if it’s time to continue touring. We’ll figure it out when we get there.

Awesome! Any shameless promotion, anything you want to get off your chest, throw out there or plug before we cut out?

Shameless promotion? Ain’t no shame in my game! Our record’s out and I hope for anyone that’s interested to check it out. It’s my favorite record we’ve made so far. I think for anyone that’s interested in my band should definitely look into hearing it by any means necessary.

Adam, thank you very much! You’re a gentleman and a scholar for doing this so early and I’ll see you guys out on the road!

Alright man, thank you very much!

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