Straylight Run
PREPARE TO BE WRONG
2008-01-28
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JOHN NOLAN SEEMS LIKE THE KIND of guy you’d expect to be teaching a course on comparative religion or philosophy at some upstanding university; answering questions with a hesitant but confident tone; obviously thinking before he speaks and, somewhat less obviously, not saying much of what he is thinking. However, higher education’s loss is definitely rock music’s gain as the band that Nolan fronts, Straylight Run—which also includes his sister Michelle, fellow Taking Back Sunday alum Shaun Cooper and ex-Breaking Pangea drummer Will Noon—prepares to release the Prepare to Be Wrong EP, the long-awaited follow-up to their self-titled debut record. On the train into New York, Nolan shed some light on the making of Prepare to Be Wrong and the joys of taking back control.
How different was the songwriting process this time around? Was it more difficult, knowing that people have certain expectations?
I don’t think it affected us too much in the writing process one way or the other. I think that writing this batch of songs was different in that we’re coming into it after two years of being a band together and touring. So I think in a certain way the songwriting process was made easier by that because we’ve learned how to work with each other and how to write with each other better. And as far as anything goes with people expecting anything from us, I think that from the beginning, this band made a pretty conscious effort to not try to let ourselves get pigeonholed into any particular sound and, if anything, the first record was harder because of me and Shaun coming out of the Taking Back Sunday experience, and having people kind of looking for something that might sound similar to that. So I think that would have been a bigger shock to our fans than the way that these songs came out.
So you think with this record you’ve finally shaken that whole association with Taking Back Sunday?
Yeah, I think we’ve really gotten to that point. It’s nice, because, now you know, whenever I read stuff about us—whether it’s on the Internet or in magazines—there was a time when you couldn’t read something about us without reading Taking Back Sunday in it. But now that’s pretty much completely eliminated from anything I read about us. I think, especially with this EP and with a little more history behind the band, there’s just more to talk about than that. I just know that it’s only going to get further and further away until at some point it’ll just be a distant memory.
I’ve read that you weren’t very happy with the way the first record turned out, sonically. Are you happier this time around?
The first album, we were happy with the songs, but the mixing of it all was pretty much taken out of our hands. Whenever you work with someone as a producer, you submit to their judgment and what they think is right. We let go of the control and, I don’t know, I feel like that wasn’t necessarily the right thing for us to do. Sometimes it’s good to let go and give someone else the control and see what happens. But I think that we had a clear idea of what we wanted with that record, and it didn’t come out as we wanted. With this one, we took total control, even working with the producer. The guy we worked with, Mike Sapone, he’s someone we’ve known and worked with a long time. He’s really cool with whatever we want to do and just trying to translate it to actually making it happen in the recording. We were open to his input and took a lot of suggestions from him, but at the same time, he didn’t control the process. So I think at least for this EP, that suited us a lot more.
How different was the songwriting process this time around? Was it more difficult, knowing that people have certain expectations?
I don’t think it affected us too much in the writing process one way or the other. I think that writing this batch of songs was different in that we’re coming into it after two years of being a band together and touring. So I think in a certain way the songwriting process was made easier by that because we’ve learned how to work with each other and how to write with each other better. And as far as anything goes with people expecting anything from us, I think that from the beginning, this band made a pretty conscious effort to not try to let ourselves get pigeonholed into any particular sound and, if anything, the first record was harder because of me and Shaun coming out of the Taking Back Sunday experience, and having people kind of looking for something that might sound similar to that. So I think that would have been a bigger shock to our fans than the way that these songs came out.
So you think with this record you’ve finally shaken that whole association with Taking Back Sunday?
Yeah, I think we’ve really gotten to that point. It’s nice, because, now you know, whenever I read stuff about us—whether it’s on the Internet or in magazines—there was a time when you couldn’t read something about us without reading Taking Back Sunday in it. But now that’s pretty much completely eliminated from anything I read about us. I think, especially with this EP and with a little more history behind the band, there’s just more to talk about than that. I just know that it’s only going to get further and further away until at some point it’ll just be a distant memory.
I’ve read that you weren’t very happy with the way the first record turned out, sonically. Are you happier this time around?
The first album, we were happy with the songs, but the mixing of it all was pretty much taken out of our hands. Whenever you work with someone as a producer, you submit to their judgment and what they think is right. We let go of the control and, I don’t know, I feel like that wasn’t necessarily the right thing for us to do. Sometimes it’s good to let go and give someone else the control and see what happens. But I think that we had a clear idea of what we wanted with that record, and it didn’t come out as we wanted. With this one, we took total control, even working with the producer. The guy we worked with, Mike Sapone, he’s someone we’ve known and worked with a long time. He’s really cool with whatever we want to do and just trying to translate it to actually making it happen in the recording. We were open to his input and took a lot of suggestions from him, but at the same time, he didn’t control the process. So I think at least for this EP, that suited us a lot more.
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