Roughly two and a half weeks ago, Candy Hearts commenced on their first ever run of the UK joining Only Rivals, State Champs, The Story So Far and New Found Glory on the Pop Punk's Not Dead Tour. The band recently released their second record 'All The Ways You Let Me Down' which was produced by New Found Glory's very own Chad Gilbert. We sat down with vocalist/ guitarist Mariel Loveland to talk about her time in the UK, the new album and being one of the only girls on tour...
PPUK: HOW'S THE POP PUNK'S NOT DEAD TOUR BEEN GOING SO FAR?
Mariel: The tour's been really great. It's really exciting to see people from a different country singing our songs and liking our band, it's really cool.
PPUK: IS THIS YOUR FIRST TIME IN THE UK?
Mariel: Yeah.
PPUK: HOW HAVE YOU BEEN FINDING IT?
Mariel: It's been great. I'm really glad it's not too different from America. There are still things that are familiar and a lot of cities remind me of New England.
PPUK: ARE THERE ANY WEIRD DIFFERENCES THAT YOU'VE NOTICED BETWEEN THE UK AND THE US?
Mariel: There are! There's one thing I've noticed that is really different that I was surprised by. I really love cheese fries so I ordered them and they we're like 'what are you talking about?' so I said 'can I have chips and cheese' and they gave me french fries with shredded cheese melted on it. In America we melt it on instead of letting the hot chips melt it. We melt it on already we just put it in the microwave or put nacho cheese over them. And also, I noticed that your Chinese food in Ireland comes with french fries instead of rice. Ours never comes with french fries. You just never get Chinese food with french fries.
PPUK: WHAT DID YOU MAKE OF YOUR TIME IN IRELAND, WAS IT NICE?
Mariel: Yeah, it's really pretty, it seems very similar to here.
PPUK: HOW HAVE PEOPLE BEEN REACTING TO ALL THE WAYS YOU LET ME DOWN ON THE TOUR?
Mariel: People have been really awesome about it, there are those original fans that we've had for years and then there are always those people who are always like 'Oh they're a little bit pop in this record', but we went in a new direction we wanted to go and the reception has been really incredible.
PPUK: WHAT'S YOUR FAVOURITE SONG FROM ALL THE WAYS YOU LET ME DOWN?
Mariel: My favourite song I think is Something's Missing. It was a song that I've written for our EP actually and it just didn't feel right for the EP and we reworked it and put it on our record. It's like a slow song and Jordan from New Found Glory sings on it.
PPUK: WHAT'S IT LIKE SHARING A TOUR BUS? ARE YOU SHARING WITH THE STORY SO FAR AND STATE CHAMPS?
Mariel: Actually, two of us are with The Story So Far and State Champs ad two of us are with New Found Glory. They were all kind enough to let us ride with them because we couldn't afford to do it otherwise. It's been really fun! It's like summer camp, I never really went to summer camp, but like you all lay in bed and gossip about girly things. I guess for some reason we bring out that girliness (laughs). I don't know, we just gossip and watch movies. I don't know what it's like for the boys though. There's like a full boy bus, there are no girls on that bus.
PPUK: ABOUT THREE YEARS AGO YOU WROTE A PIECE ABOUT SEXISM IN THE PUNK/ ALTERNATIVE SCENE. DO YOU THINK ANYTHING HAS GOTTEN BETTER?
Mariel: I've noticed the more we stray away from the DIY scene that we where in when I wrote that, that actually the worse it is and I don't think it's because it's getting worse in general. I think that it's just worse in the mainstream than it is in like a smaller scene were everyone's just like friends and working together, you know? And like, [in] the big world it's really brutal and really disappointing and annoying.
PPUK: HAS ANYTHING HAPPENED ON THIS TOUR THAT YOU WEREN'T COOL WITH?
Mariel: Umm, not really. Every once in a while someone will make a comment that bums me out but they don't mean anything by it. It's just like, you know, you're making that comment but you don't know what it feels like to be a different person than everybody else on the tour. You come here, you're a white man and you're like everybody else here and I come here and I'm different and people can sometimes treat me weird. You know, there's always something where people have like, they don't know how to live with a girl. Everybody's like a man with a girlfriend, a wife or something and it's like you know finding out how to live with a girl and be nice to them. It's just a little strange.
PPUK: NOW THAT A LOT OF CELEBRITIES AND PEOPLE IN THE MEDIA ARE COMING OUT AS FEMINISTS AND REMINDING US ABOUT GENDER EQUALITY, DO YOU THINK THE ISSUE OF SEXISM WILL GET BETTER?
Mariel: I do, it was similar in the 90s. A lot of punk bands and actors and famous people were talking about feminism. The Spice Girls were the biggest example. They were all about girl power and that really inspired me when I was a child and I think now it's the same thing. The 90s are coming back and I think there are a lot of people who are kind of realising that not that much has changed since then. Things have changed but not as much as they should have and I think a lot of people are noticing it and really working towards that.
PPUK: HOW OLD WERE YOU WHEN YOU LEARNT TO PLAY THE GUITAR AND SING?
Mariel: I was between 15 and 16 years old when I started playing guitar but I started writing songs before I knew how. I was in a band with my friends and they wouldn't let me play guitar and it was when I'd just picked it up, and no one really knew how. We were just pretending we knew how to play instruments and kind of figuring it out. I was the only one who actually learnt how to play.
PPUK: DO BANDS HAVE THEIR OWN MUSIC ON THEIR IPODS OR PHONES ?
Mariel: I do because sometimes I nervously listen to it like 'is this still good?', 'do I still like this or do we suck?', you know?. So yeah especially when we first get it in and it's our record for the first time. I want to test it in a few ways to make sure that it's the record I wanted to make. I listen to it when I'm driving or on the subway to make sure it's the kind of record I thought it would be.
PPUK: SO YOU HAVE ANY FUNNY, EMBARRASSING OR WEIRD TOUR STORIES?
Mariel: We're a very quiet band, nothing really too crazy happens. There was something where we accidently left somebody behind when we took the ferry we had to go back and get them. Just from Ireland to here. That was pretty funny, not for who we left behind.
All The Ways You Let Me Down is out now. Get it here.
Candy Heart's Facebook | Twitter | Youtube | Bandcamp
No comments:
Post a Comment