Boy Sets Fire on 07-27-2000 by propheci

Here's an interview I did with Matt of BSF. He's a really nice guy, really easy to talk to. Of course, bold is me and un-bold is Matt.

I guess the first thing I wanted to ask you is how you guys got started and the history of the band.
We got started about 6 years ago. Our two guitarists: Josh and Chad initially formed the band together and they to do something different musically and lyrically that hadn't been done around here in our hometown before. They wanted to start a band that had something to say and that played somewhat aggressive and yet melodic music. At which point, they got Nathan into the band whom they've known from prior bands. And then at that point, our former bass player Darrel got into the band and then myself. So we all knew each other at the time, and we all knew each other beforehand from playing in other bands together, playing the same shows, stuff like that. We were already somewhat familiar with each other's musical taste, musical background, and so forth.

So we started writing songs and playing here in our hometown. We never really did too much within that first year, and at the end of that year, we took our first tour. We took it down South for 2 weeks. This was at a point when we had no clue about the music industry or music business or even what we really wanted to do. All we cared was to..just play. We didn't really have any specific goals in mind. We were very naive and just wanted to rock out, play our songs for people, and share what we had lyrically with other people.

Where did you guys get your name? Boy Sets Fire?
Actually, there's a book by Brucaoski(sp?) and in the back of the book there's a list of other books put out by the same publisher. And one of the books is a book of poetry called "The Boy Who Set The Fire".

What's the book about? Have you read it?
No, I don't know anything about the book. Actually, the name of the band was already established right after I came into the band. The guys were already playing with another drummer for about 4 weeks. So I came into the band, the name was already there, I asked them where it came from, and basically they told me what I just told you. It was just a cool name, and they of course shortened it down to Boy Sets Fire.

I started listening to you guys when The Day The Sun Went Out came out. And obviously, the new record has changed from that. Can you say anything about how you guys went through the change or evolved?
Well, song writing wise, we wrote the album through the course of 3 years. And it was off-and-on. When we're home from touring, we do a lot of weekend shows. So we'd practice once or twice during the weekdays. We never had a specific song-writing process where we would lock ourselves in my basement for a month and write the album. It was something that happened through the course of time; I guess that's probably why there's so many different types of feels or styles on the new album.

Do you guys have tons of songs? Like you have to cut down a lot just to fit them for the record?
Yeah, generally, what happens is if we write a song from start to finish, we generally keep it. But a lot of times, we'll write a song; and maybe pretty much write the whole thing in its completed form. And somebody will say, "Hey, let's try this part with this part instead." And that will take place of that part of the song. We don't really have MASSES of completed songs, but we do have lots of parts and things we've worked with and experimented with before. For instance, we're in the process of writing songs for the next album and future releases; and we have about 4 completed songs and 2 dozen parts that's just kinda floating around.

As far as the different view point we had with this album, we just wanted to have every song be kick ass and have every song be true in its form and not have an album that sounds the same from start to finish. But we don't really go and practice and say, "Hey, let's write a heavy song today or melodic songs today." It's something that just happens unconsciously, or by default if you'd like to call it that. We don't really have a standard process that we follow. When we got into the studio, we just wanted to sound good.

Where did you guys record the album at?
Stanford, Connecticut.

Was that a fun experience?
It was awesome. We were there for about 2 and half weeks tracking, and then we came home for the holidays or couple of weeks. And then went back for another 2 and half weeks to mix. It's a really cool studio, and it's setup really interestingly. Awesome acoustics. State of the art studio with multi-million dollar pieces of equipment and stuff like that. The people in the studio had been in the studio for years and years. Diana Ross frequents that studio pretty regularly. Overkill's record there. Pantera has mixed there. There's been a lot of big-name people in that studio. Going into that, we were kinda taken back just cuz we were nervous cuz it's the first time we've worked in that type of environment where it was "You're here to do an album. You're here to do what you do professionally."

Did you guys feel some stress from the pressure?
It only got stressful because we all wanted each of our own parts in the album to be to the best of our abilities. And have the execution be there as far as our own parts that we wrote. It came down to now you have to play it and play it well and be on and be tight and have no screw-ups. I spent like 3 days doing all my drum parts, doing 12-hour days. If I didn't like one thing, I'd do it over. And everyone else started going in and they probably spent 2 to 3 days each that were 12-hour days. During the mixing process, somedays we'd go 12 hours straight. Somedays we'd got 36 hours straight, through the time and the next day and next afternoon. At times it got stressful, but we were there to focus on our music. It was a very odd experience. Kinda put in time warp. Like you wake up in the morning and all you could do was think about your music. Goto bed at night and same deal.

Victory told me you were gonna do a video for one of the songs. Are you still gonna do that?
We've talked with Victory about doing a video. We haven't really decided on what was gonna happen. We would do one if we got the right people on board to help out as far as directing and doing the storyline for the video. But it can be somewhat expensive, and that's where we're at with Victory is just deciding on how much we both wanna spend on a video and whether or not it would help the band or be just a waste of money.

How has being on such a big label (Victory) changed your view of the industry?
It's more serious now. It's more almost career oriented. In the past, when we got started, we were putting out our own records. We were stuffing our 7"s in my bedroom. We would be dubbing tapes in our van on our 2-week tour. Selling demo tapes for a couple of bucks. Back then, we didn't have any worries. Like I said, we're pretty naive. We just jumped into the van, played shows, and we didn't care. We didn't care if we came home short a couple hundred bucks, a couple hundred bucks out of our own personal pockets. But now through the 5 or 6 years, we've grown up a lot, we've matured a lot. We've been able to tour with a lot of bands that we look up to or that we respect that have been able to show us a lot of ways to treat your band and treat touring and take what you do seriously and that it is possible that you could be doing this as your job. And right now, we are very fortunate that we are doing this as our job. In that sense, you take everything much more seriously when it's your career. Before it was just....I used to get picked up at school and we'd go out on an weekend worth of shows. And I'd go back and it was "oh, yeah, it was cool. Now it's going back to school. Dumdumdumdoo. Victory's a big label, but it's definitely a lot more bureaucratic. The business is just more political and bureaucratic, and that could be a good thing. They know how to do their job.

They have a lot of influences.
Yeah, we mainly wanted to work with them because they were the one label that we talked to that could get the most records out there for us. That's what we want out of a label, that's what a label's for. It's to get your records out there and hopefully sell the record and help the band. They have a good track history. A lot of the other labels we talked to we didn't feel as confident. But that compared to Warner Brothers, it's like little dog, big dog. So...I dunno. We take everything at stages. It's working out pretty well so far. We're happy to be there.

Yeah, I think a lot of people hear you through the label. That's the one thing about big labels, they get the word out.
Yeah, it's kinda funny. "Yeah, yeah, we've never heard you guys before. You guys are the buzz right now." You know, we've been around for 6 years. We've doing state tours. It just goes to show how many people that are unfamiliar with bands. There's a helluva lot more people who haven't heard your music than the people that have or even of the name.

So, yeah. Definitely just judging from the tour we came off of. We did a 7-week tour of the states. And there's a lot more diverse crowd on this tour. You can just a look across the room and get a feel for where everyone's coming from and what they're into. This tour, there was kids with Strife t-shirts and Sunny Day Real Estate t-shirts on. Kids there with Slipknot t-shirts and Korn t-shirts. So you had a lot of these different type of kids at the show, which was awesome. Something that we really enjoy.

Yeah, cuz I think your music reaches across the hardcore and the emo people listen to you, a big range of people.
I think I read somewhere that you guys are vegans? The whole band was?
Actually, none of us are. We're all vegetarian.

Yeah, I guess how do you guys feel about that? Do you promote it?
You know, we don't really have any songs being vegetarian or animal rights. Only because it's been done soooo many times by other bands that we'd just be another band that's repeating what was done before. And we don't really like to do that. We like to sing about things that haven't been done before. And we kinda like to lay our own track instead of following track that's already there for us. So, in a sense, we like being the black sheep, but we definitely believe in the vegetarian lifestyle and hold it as a very important decision to each of us personally. But we've never really come out as a band...We've never really made that big of a statement to put it on our record or in our songs.

Now you have a European tour in September. How long is that gonna be?
That's gonna be a 7-week tour.

Have you been looking forward to that?
Yeah, we were there in the winter of 98. And it was great. It was cold as all hell, but it was a lot of fun. This time around, it's a lot less stressful, because we all know what to expect. We had no idea what to expect when we went there. We had no idea what the shows were gonna be like. We had no idea what our equipment was gonna be like since we had to rent equipment there. We had no idea what our van was gonna be like or even our driver. None of us had been to Europe before. Food, currency, and all these other things. And now we are all familiar with it so we're gonna be a lot better prepared for it this time around. So all of us are a lot more confident this time around.

Do you see a difference between the European fans and the US fans?
Well, I definitely think there is a difference in the reactions. For instance, a lot of places in Europe were like...I dunno if it's because it was first time for the fans..but a lot of people just stood there and watched. Some people were singing along. And some people at some shows would be like chaos. Kids would just freaking out and jumping and stage diving and dancing all over the place. There was a big variation in how people responded to the show and the music over there.

But, people seem to be a lot more honest about why they're there and at least more respectful as far as how they treat the band or the people. I don't think there was any fights at any of the shows. There actually wasn't any trouble at the shows we did in the States, which was awesome this time. There was not one problem. But there's a lot of differences as far as what comes into a show, because people in Europe don't come into a show to make a fashion statement like a lot places here in the States. It just seems like people go to make their fashion statement or to see who's cooler than who. And it just becomes this highschool type of click-ish type of thing. Where over there it seems a lot more true. People don't care what others are into. They respect each other. They don't try to prove themselves in any way. They seem a lot more secure. The economy over there is a lot different as well. So you don't have tons of kids swamping the merchant table over there like you do here. Just cuz the consumerism is a lot different.

Do you guys have any plans to tour the US again?
We've gotta a couple of ideas. Nothing that's substantial right now. We're kinda talking about maybe going out November when we get back from Europe.

Any bands you've talked about?
There's a couple. But it's really too early to tell. We've toured with Avail and Snapcase before, and we'd love to go back out with those guys at some point. So maybe something will happen with that, but both those bands are very busy and we're very busy, too. So it's kinda hard to match our schedules. But it also helps that all 3 of us have the same booking agent. So that would help. But as far as what we know what we wanna do, we'll be coming back from Europe the 8th of November. We'll probably tour if not then just stay home and write. Our guitarist Chad is expecting his first child with his wife in Febuary. So we'll probably want to take January, Febuary, March off all together aside from writing. And starting in April, we'll probably start playing and touring again in the states.

Well, I guess any closing statements you wanna make?

Right here, Matt's "possessed" fax machine cuts in for about 15-seconds. It was pretty funny.

Well, if people wanna write us. They can do so at:

Boy Sets Fire
PO Box 303
Newark, DE 19711