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Taking Back Sunday - Matt Rubano Interview

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Interview with Taking Back Sunday's Matt Rubano

Avalon and DD spoke with Matt Rubano in December 2008 about Taking Back Sunday's December mini-tour, the upcoming Taking Back Sunday album New Again, new Taking Back Sunday guitarist Matt Fazzi, and the bands tour plans for 2009 and beyond.

Avalon: What should we expect from the new album?

Matt Rubano: The new album! You can expect some really big steps forward and some new territories covered by the band. Certainly with the addition of Matt Fazzi the guitar playing has taken a tremendous step toward the atypical and very original sounding sort of stuff which in turn gives me a lot of space move around and try different things as well. As we've always kept really important: We try to write the best songs we possibly can and make it sound like an awesome rock record. I think you're gonna hear some really new things like our first time we've tried three-part harmonies and some odd time signatures and some really different arrangement ideas. I think it's gonna be our best yet.

Avalon: How is the new lineup working?

Matt Rubano: Great! Matt has not only has more than ability and creativity to be a great contributor to the band but as a dude, he's one of my favorite people. He's standing right here next to me now and smiling his ass off. He's a great dude. He's really become a great friend of mine and a musician I admire and I love playing with. And he's really had a tremendous effect on the dynamics between five of us where we're all a lot more focused and friendly and in love with one another again, which is a really important thing when you're in a band and going to be living together in a bus for eternity. Know that people who have attended the shows on this tour so far and any of the shows we have played with Matt have commented that it looks like we're having more fun than ever. And there's just kind of like a new really intense energy in the band which I felt like we had lost a little while ago so it's nice to have that back.

DD: How many songs have you written and are we gonna get to hear the album [at the December shows]?

Matt Rubano: The record should be coming out the end of March or beginning of April – ideally in the springtime at some point. I don't have an exact date yet. We wrote nearly 20 songs for the record. [Editor's Note: New Again was released June 9, 2009.] We ended up recording 14 of them and probably only about ten or 11 of them will go on the album. In the meantime, the first sort of sneak peek at something from New Again is going to be featured on our annual holiday cancer charity benefit, which is we sell these packs of holiday cards and this year the cards. Should you choose to send one to a friend, your friend is going to get a scratch-off, downloadable code to hear a song called "Carpathia," which is the first music that will be, not the first single, but it is the first music we're unveiling from the new record and is a really good indicator of what to expect from the rest of the album. It's a very unique song. It features our first attempts at three-part harmonies. It features a lot of really great guitar playing. It features a bass solo, some of Adam's [singer Adam Lazarre] really brilliant lyrics, I feel like it's very solid, very indicative of what's to come from the rest of the album.

Avalon: Where do we get the card?

Matt Rubano: You can buy them from our website. You just have to find the link and click on it. They're fairly inexpensive, considering all the proceeds go to charity. and that you'll be able to get the song. So yeah go to TakingBackSunday.com and click on the link.

Avalon: Do you play it live?

Matt Rubano: The song "Carpathia"? We have not. We are playing songs off the new record live right now. That is not one of them. We've been playing the title track, "New Again." We've been playing a song called "Catholic Means," and another song called "Everything Must Go." So anyone coming out on this tour is going to get to hear those three songs live.

Avalon: What's your favorite song off the album?

Matt Rubano: At this point in the process of making and finalizing the record where they're all my "babies" right now. They're all super special and important. It's hard to say. We're all excited about this one particular song called "Sink Into Me," which is a very approach to song form and an energy that we haven't tried before. It's a really unique song. It's very very catchy and fun to play. I couldn't really say [which song is my favorite]. It really changes daily.

Avalon: How is the tour going?

Matt Rubano: The tour is great. The purpose of this tour was to kinda get out to some cities that we either have never been to or haven't been to in a long time and also to kinda for our own purposes, give ourselves a bunch of shows in a row to keep playing with Matt and kinda breaking him in a little bit more and get the stage vibe going between the five of us – which has been going great! Audiences have been unbelievable on this tour. There's really something to be said for going to a place that you haven't been to in awhile and giving them the best show you possibly can. Sounds weird but people are really kind of appreciative and grateful that you come to their town instead of just major cities. There's not one technically "major city" on this whole tour. And the audiences have been great. We've been spending a lot of time out in the audience or at our merchandise table kind of just hanging out and meeting people. And it's certainly a nice way to start out the touring for this record, just kinda, getting out and meeting people and playing these smaller kind of shows.

DD: It sounds like looking around your websites and blogs that people are worried that they are not going to get to see you. But it sounds like from what I'm hearing from you guys that are going to play a lot of show next year.

Matt Rubano: Oh we haven't even started yet. This is 2008. The record's not even out. People are all uppity that "how come there's no?..." I answered a entire thread of MySpace comments from a bunch of people asking how come we're not going to their city. Do we not love them? Did we forget about them? People gotta realize there are 365 days in a year of which this 2009 we'll probably play shows on about 200 or so of them. And there's thousands of cities in the U.S. so we have to do the best we can. But our efforts will certainly be put towards trying to hit the major cities that we usually do and filling in some of the cracks in between and we've found, particularly on this tour, that that's where the real fun stuff is. We'd never turn down a big fat sold out New York city show, or L.A. show, or Chicago, or Dallas or whatever. But these shows are really getting up in people's faces and meeting people and seeing who's out there and who really loves your band. The major city shows tend to be a little less intimate and what they lack in intimacy they make up for in sheer magnitude. Playing in an arena filled with fans is a high unlike any other as is playing for a thousand people in a small room where you can see everyone of their faces. There's something to be said for both of them. But rest assured all over the world for the next two years, we're coming to your town so just hold tight.

DD: Do you know when you possibly might be announcing those dates?

Matt Rubano: Probably at the turn of the new year. In the next few weeks you'll hear about a release date for sure. In the next few weeks you'll hear about a lot more touring plans for the spring and summer and upcoming year. I can't say it with enough certainty whether you live in Indonesia, Mexico, South America, Hawaii, Germany, England, Japan, we're coming. Certainly North America as well. Canada. We're coming. We're aiming to do as much touring on this record as we possibly can.

DD: Sounds like you've got a great year coming up.

Matt Rubano: I'm excited for it. I'm ready to go to some places I've never been. That's one of my favorite things about being in a band and touring in particular is going to places that I've never been before and you get this fortunate kind of feeling when you get there like "man, there are people here that love our band and I've never even been here!" It's a very exciting thing for us.