State of Shock recently released their latest album, Rock N’ Roll Romance, available in stores and on iTunes today. We had the chance to sit down with guitarist Jesse Wainwright and discuss touring, social media, and of course, the new album!
asapmusicblog.ca: Your latest album, ‘Rock N’ Roll Romance,’ came out today, congratulations!
Jesse Wainwright: Thank you very much!
A: Tell us a little about what fans can expect from this CD.
J: You know we haven’t reinvented the wheel, it’s State of Shock. I think we’ve grown, we basically took the last four years and while we were on the road for three years – we all went through a bunch of good times and bad times. We took and wrote a record about it titled, ‘Rock N’ Roll Romance,’ which kind of goes with the last four years of our lives, and here we are now.
A: So it’s been a few years since the last album like you said, what has the progression been like for the past few years musically, and as a band?
J: Well, you know what, we’ve been introduced to so many great acts, so many great bands. We’ve had the opportunity to tour with Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, Nickelback, Papa Roach, Staind, Seether, all these great, great bands, so naturally we’d be sitting at the side of the stage and watching these guys going, “Oh that’s cool, let’s steal that, I want to do that”, and it’s kind of surreal because these are the guys we grew up having posters on our walls of, and now we get to see the insights and steal the tricks.
A: Like you said, you’ve toured with all those big names like Nickelback, Bon Jovi, Aerosmith and others, what are some things that you’ve picked up or learned from them?
J: What not to do. (laughs) No, I’m totally kidding. When we were out with Nickelback, Chad would come over and give us pointers, “Oh you guys should try doing this and that”, you know how to put a show together, running songs back to back. Little things that you don’t really think about until somebody says it, and then you go, “Oh man, that makes sense!” All of a sudden things flow, and it’s awesome.
A: Touring so much in the past few years, what’s it like to be back home and play in front of a home crowd?
J: It’s nice, it’s really nice to get home and sleep in your own bed. But, at the end of the day, I love doing this, so I don’t care if I sleep in a hotel, I just love going out to play.
A: For this album, you guys got to work with Raine Maida (Our Lady Peace) for a couple songs. What was that experience like, working with him?
J: It was cool, we went down to his place in L.A. for a few days. We had a few ideas kicking around and we kind of threw them out there, and it came together pretty quick in respect of writing a song, we were down there for 3 days and ended up with 2 demos out of it. It was good, it was different because we never really sat and co-written with people, we had always just done it ourselves so it was good to see how somebody else approaches things. It’s like watching people on stage that have been doing it for years, you kind of say, “I like this, or I don’t like this,” you just kind of pick and choose.
A: You guys are a Canadian band, from here in Vancouver, it’s always been a small community in the Canadian music scene, what are your thoughts on the scene today? How has it progressed, and is it looking promising?
J: Do you want an honest answer? (laughs) There’s a lot of great talent, but my personal opinion, unfortunately because of the state of the music business, a lot of bands don’t get the opportunity because you really have to really love it and just do it as a hobby, and the odd one will get lucky and be able to do it as a full-time thing. There’s so much talent, especially in Vancouver, there’s so much talent and great artists and bands that never get that opportunity because, well 10 years ago people said the music business was bad and they were saying it was bad then, and it’s just getting sort of progressively worse with the downloading of music. At the same time, I’m not opposed to the downloading of music because so many bands have gotten so much exposure, there’s a lot of indie bands that would have never ever gotten discovered, that have become huge because of the fact that the internet and people share stuff. So my only thing is that it’s a shame that there’s so much talent that doesn’t get the opportunity, but what are you going to do? That’s life.
A: With the internet, you guys seem to be big on Twitter and Facebook. How do you think social media has changed the music industry?
J: Everything is so now. Everybody wants everything now. People could have had the whole record at 9:01 last night here if they wanted it. Social media is great for staying in contact. I can call it ‘Generation Now,’ you know if you want to follow somebody on Twitter, you can find them and find out what they’re doing. I myself, am not on Twitter, because what I do during the day is not really important, but our band is. Me going to the grocery store to get milk is not really a big deal. I’m not really into that, but for the band it is an important aspect.
A: In previous interviews you guys had mentioned that this album is a little more on the pop side, was that a choice, or more of a natural progression?
J: I think it was just a natural progression.
A: Has the song writing changed over the years, like your focus or anything?
J: No, I mean I think we are maturing a little bit. When we first started, we were punks. We just wanted to play loud, sweaty music. As we hopefully grow up and mature, so is our music. We’re all just maturing a little bit, our likes are all changing. What we listen to now, is different to what we were listening to, we still listen to the same basic stuff, but our musical library has grown, so it has influenced the way we write. Everything we listen to, has some sort of influence.
