Interview with Dropping Daylight vocalist Sebastian Davin and bassist Rob Burke
Dropping Daylight is serious. Okay, maybe not, but they are seriously one of the best new bands on the scene. It's about damn time a rock band came around that knew how to write a catchy hook, and DD is that band! Hailing from Minneapolis, MN and consisting of vocalist/pianist Sebastian Davin, his younger brother Seth on guitar, bassist Rob Burke and Allen Maier on drums the band released a few EP's before signing with Octone Records and unleashing their full-length debut Brace Yourself. I'm a sucker for catchy hard rock that you can sing along to, and the cds first single Tell Me is possibly my favorite rock song of 2006! I met up with Sebastian and Rob to talk about the band, the song, the current tour, and the undeniable sex appeal of Prince.
Anarchy Music: The first thing that interested me about you is that you’re a piano based hard rock band, which is not very common. How did it come about where you decided to put a band together to kick ass with a piano?
Sebastian: Its kind of exactly like that. The funny thing is, when we were in college, I played a lot of guitar too. I listened to a lot of harder rock, but I was a piano major at the Berkeley College Of Music for a year and when we were out there I realized that there aren't any piano rock bands that kick ass. We decided that I wanted to be in a hard rock kick ass piano band, but it took us a long time to figure out how to do that. The first two years, if you listen to our demos we went into many different kinds of genres that were more piano based with a little bit of guitar, more guitar based with a little bit of piano. we were always trying to get where we are now musically, but finding that balance was really tough and it took us a couple of years to get there.
So the first two EP's show the growth of the band to where you are now?
A little bit, and there's a lot of stuff that never made it to recordings because for two weeks we'd start playing these songs and think that they're awesome and then realize that they were terrible and its not what we want to do.
Rob: well they were always good, it was just not in the direction we wanted to go. We grew up listening to rock music. We grew up listening to the Foo Fighters, the Red hot Chili Peppers, Incubus. Those were the bands that we went to go see. But, the small dilemma of having a very talented pianist, well put him on his best instrument and use the band to be the rock element.
What I think is cool is that usually when a band says they like, for instance, Tool and Nirvana, you can point to parts of their songs and say, "that sounds like Tool, and that part sounds like Nirvana" but going on your influences, there's nothing that sounds like the Foo Fighters in there. I know Sebastian is into Ben Folds, but there's nothing that sounds like Ben Folds in there. Was it difficult to create your own style?
We listen to a lot of music but we never modeled ourselves after a band. We never said we should be like this, or we should be like this. We all just listen to music and let that influence the way that we play, but when we came together we never tried to guide what the sound was going to be other than it needs to be energetic, it needs to be hard rock, and it needs to have piano in it. We never listened to a Foo Fighters song and thought we should write a song like that. I think that’s probably why. We put the work into crafting our sound
You grew up in a strict religious household right?
Strict?
No, you’re parents weren't strict.
They were strict until I was about 14, until Seth was 9. About high school my parents got a lot less strict. It was a pretty standard pastors family for the first 13 years of my life.
So it wasn't a tough thing to say "I'm dropping out of music college and I'm going to put together and rock band and go on tour"?
By that point, no. Although , my mom at that point tried to make me go to college anyway. Come back home and go to college. And i was like, "No, I shouldn't go to school" and she was like "well, you’re going to go to college". I applied and then just didn't go and there was nothing they could do about it. No, it wasn't tough. Actually my brother Seth dropped out of school when he was right after his freshman year and our parents were supporting him. They said "alright, you guys want to do this band and we're going to support it".
Wow, that’s pretty rare. To come from where they were and to be accepting of youre dreams, you've got to hand it to that.
Now, you've done something I haven't seen any band do in about ten years...you got on MTV
We don't even have a video
That's probably why!
It wasn't in video form.
Right, but you did the You Hear It First thing, what kind of impact did that have on you or does anyone even watch it for music anymore?
It's what you would stereotypically expect from MTV. For the week after it aired our Myspace was blowing up, old friends were emailing us. there were people coming to the shows who'd seen us on it. It gave us a good solid week of all of a sudden everyone checked us out, but that passes. Some people stayed interested, but a lot of people who watch MTV are very...they'll be interested in you as long as you're on MTV.
That new Ja Rule video. I love that Ja Rule video!
They'll love it for a week. In the long run, it made us a couple of new fans, people who heard the music and wanted to stick with it. But, I think in order for a band to really blow up they need multiple things going on and they need to make it last longer than one thing here and one thing there.
I guess this kind of plays into that, you've played with the lightest of emo bands, and also metal bands. is that a conscious decision to go out and impress such a wide variety of fans?
I think we just take whatever tours we can get. It's whoever's going to have the most people. We don't consciously do it but its something that works to our advantage. we don't have to think, oh we got offered the Breaking Benjamin tour but we're not heavy enough to play with them. We don't have to think about that. Or we got offered dates with Jason Mraz but we're too heavy. We don't worry, we just play with whoever we can because we always make it work.
There's a lot of different elements musically going on. If they're into heavy music, there’s a heavy side. if they’re into pop music, there’s pop hooks. Whatever a listeners preference is, there's usually something within the context of the show that will turn them on.
Is there a certain genres crowd that’s been the most receptive to you? Like maybe Flyleafs crowd as opposed to Plain White T's?
I think the crowd that likes us the most are the mainstream pop kids who like rock bands. Like an All American Rejects crowd, or Simple Plan or something that's a rock band but they're on the Top 40 charts or whatever. Their audiences tend to just love us because we're something really unique. Its a little left of center, but its also pop. There's pop hooks, there's melody, there's singing.
Rob, you were nominated as sexiest vegetarian in the world...
I bought turkey two days ago.
Should we not tell anyone that?
You can tell them what you want
It's not a secret. He was a vegetarian. It's a choice.
Basically, I don't like eating animals because of the processing. A lot of meat is really good for you. I keep now mostly vegetarian. Here and there if I feel like i need a small piece of meat...
It's a protein
It's a protein thing. It's a health thing
The interesting thing about it to me is that you didn't win, and you were beat by your local boy Prince.
Hey, his ass looks way better in those pants
My thought is, I heard the news that there are riots in Minnesota, brother killing brother, blood filling the streets with purple. So, tell me...are you sexier than Prince?
No, not...not at all. C'mon he is Prince!
I heard you do a good Batdance
I do a number of crazy dances. Multiple. I don't do the ass-less pants, but sometimes there's no pants and just ass.
That's not to say that Rob isn't sexy, but Prince was kind of a sexual idol
An icon!
An icon of sexual stuff in the 80's and 90's
I'm a grubby dude that doesn't like to shave.
But that's kind of its own thing too
Chrissy (my photographer)-You're more manly than he is. Prince wears more make-up than i do.
Yeah, but if you met Prince you'd still go, hey its Prince, what’s up!
Rob is for girls who want a guy
I'm also...well...no...some guys think I'm a guy who wants guys and I don’t know why I get that. I'm just like a dude magnet and its weird.
Congratulations!
You don't have to print any of that.
Oh, that'll be the headline quote "I'm a dude magnet"
Yes, boys love rob.
Breaking Benjamin has kind of taken you under their wing, Sebastian was on their latest album. Tell me about the relationship there.
Basically, the guy who produces their records, David Bendeth, produced our record. When he took us on he played our stuff to Ben to see what he thought and Ben loved it. We never met even for like a year after we made our record. But when it came time to make their new record David Bendeth talked to Ben about what he thought about having a little bit of piano on the record here and there, it’d kind of be creepy and cool. Ben wanted me and **** wanted me and flew up and did it. When I got there Ben and I just kind of hit it off just as friends. He just decided I love having you around so when we go out on tour it’d be great to have you guys. we like each others bands, and we like each other as people and so its rare that that actually happens where you like their band AND them. So, that’s kind of how that came about.
This tour with Crossfade, not to say anything bad about them, but it's basically 3 post grunge bands and then you have your own style. When you play these shows are fans coming up and saying "Wow, you guys really blew me away and separated yourselves from the other bands".
This tour in particularly seems like people are more interested in drinking their beer than watching the bands. The bands are all kickin ass and the crowd is into it but I don’t see, at least on this tour, the die-hard music fans, who are here to see a rock show these are people who come to get wasted and rock out to a song that they know. For us, it doesn’t work as well because in order to like our band you have to enjoy rock shows. If you don't like being at rock shows or if you’re not paying attention...we still make fans but we definitely connected more on other tours.
Tell me what its like when people do come out and see you, other than the bare ass on stage.
Rob is not above showing his ass.
Definitely not. I've noticed that when people are coming out to see us, they DRIVE. Our fans are out there, the fans that we have, and we're not a big blow-up band at this point. we don't have droves and droves of fans. we have our hardcore niche of fans. When someone comes up you know they have the record and they listened to it for a week straight. I get a lot of comments like "oh, ever since I got your record i haven’t put it down."
A lot of people on this tour drive like 5 hours to come see us. thats the biggest compliment.
Your single "Tell Me' is such a catchy song and I guess its starting to filter into radio now. It's a great, great song. tell us what that song is about and we definitely want people to request it at their local radio stations right?
Yeah, that song i wrote on election day 2004. I was at a party full of really die-hard rich Republicans. I wasn't expecting George Bush to win again and I'm a Democrat. When he did win and everyone was celebrating around me. I felt so frustrated because i didn't think that our country was going to be headed in a good direction at that point. but I didn't know what to do about it.
Two years later and BOY were you wrong! Things are going great!
Yeah. So, I went home and wrote a song about I felt like a lot of people, especially at that party, specifically just the people that i was with are kind of ignorant to a lot of the problems that other people have. So, part of that song is just about ignorance and ignorance in leadership. People who are leading our country but arent in touch with all the people in the country, if that makes sense. It came from a political origin but it doesn’t necessarily even have to be a political song, its just about ignorance.
Which is why i identify with it so much, because I'm ignorant.
After this is the Breaking Benjamin tour...any plans after that on how we're going to take piano based hard rock and make it the biggest selling band in the country.
It looks like we're going to be making a video this fall. So we're excited to do that
For Tell Me?
Yeah, Tell Me. So I think in our near future I think thats what the band is probably really looking forward to the most. it's something we've never done. Its like the first time we did a big record and put a lot of time into it. we were stoked about that because we'd never done it. we wanted to see what it was like and see what we can create. So we're pumped for a video and continue to be on the road of course.
Are you going over ideas for what you want in the video or is someone else handling that?
Well, its a collaboration between us, the label and whatever director we choose. I dont want to decide what the video is going to be and try to make a director do taht. now, we have directors give us ideas and we guide them and change them into something that everybodys cool with. once we have the director, plus the idea that we like and wer'e all into the idea then we're just going to go ahead with it.
My advice would be hot chicks.
Actually, we've been thinking about this.
We've been talking about that
We've decided that regardless of the theme of the video, we're going to take a day just to shoot the make-out scene with the band and the girls. If it gets edited then we're fine with that.
Its fine, take it out.
At least we got to make out with some girls. We're in a band here!
So, we're in a bigtime rock band, touring the world, and we're filming videos to get some action...so, all this and more can be yours kids if you follow the dream...is that what the point is here?
Essentially
Send your demo to your local record label and then you can get a girl
...in a video
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I want to to let everyone know that Dropping Daylight was quite possibly the coolest band I have ever dealt with. Everyone was cool, they were ALMOST as dorky as I am, and we had a great time hanging out. When you buy their cd, not only are you going to get a killed record, but you'll be supporting some of the nicest guys in rock! However, one of you isn't going to have to buy the cd, because the band has hooked us up with an amazing prize package...