Interview with Meg & Dia
Meg and Dia is (clockwise from bottom): Dia Frampton, Nick Price, Meg Frampton, Carlo Gimenez, Jonathan Snyder
Ever since I first heard Meg & Dia's latest album 'Something Real', it has been a goal of mine to have them on the site. Though being a pop band who's first single "Monster" went Top 40, they embody so much of what Anarchy Music is all about. First of all, they really are a band. This isn't some talentless female duo that a producer slapped together to make millions off of. They are a five-piece band that writes and performs it's own songs. Secondly, it's quite rare to have a pop album that is this well written, even by the aforementioned "hitmakers'. Drawing from many literary influences, they trust their fans to be smart enough to enjoy and interpret songs that aren't completely rolled off the the Top 40 assembly line. The band started off on indie label Doghouse Records, but was picked up by Warner Brothers, who have given the band the platform they need to spread the word. Their success is proof that music that is well written and performed can make an impact in todays pop marketplace. My goal was realized when I sat down with vocalist Dia Frampton and drummer Nick Price, along with bassist Jonathan Snyder and guitarist Carlo Gimenez (guitarist Meg Frampton was taking a shower, which is apparently a rare treat at the Warped Tour) and got the skinny on the band...
Anarchy Music: Great show today!
Dia Frampton: Thanks!
Anarchy: How is Warped Tour treating you guys? This is your second time, right?
Nick Price: Second year, yeah. It’s awesome! It’s great.
Anarchy: Who are the bands not to miss, other than Meg & Dia, of course?
Nick: If I were to pick bands not to miss, I would say Bayside, Anberlin, Coheed is pretty awesome, and I love watching New Found Glory
Anarchy: But I heard that the Hurley stage is the stage to hang out at…
Nick: Really?
Anarchy: I hear there’s a band that nobody wants to miss…
Nick: Probably Bayside, they're on Hurley.
Dia: The Gallows, maybe?
Anarchy: I’m talking about Meg & Dia, you guys are way too humble! (I should point out that the entire band was thinking of which band could be drawing so much attention, and none of them even considered their own band could be the one. In an industry full of egos, there are no egos at all in this band, which makes supporting them that much easier!)
Dia: Oh, I get it!
Nick: We’re normally on the Hurley.com stage, but yesterday and today they bumped us up to the actual Hurley stage, which is a little bt bigger. We wake up in the morning and they have the schedule and it’s like “oh, we’re playing a different stage”. We normally don’t play that stage.
Anarchy: But today we got a treat.
Nick: That’s right.
Anarchy: Dia, I’m interested in how you and your sister Meg got set on the paths to singing and playing guitar, respectively. I know that you got a karaoke machine as a kid, but were you always the one that was commanding attention and putting on a show for people?
Dia: My family has a lot of children, so I guess they learned how to balance it out quite a bit. They have six kids. I started singing a lot. Meg did music but it was more kind of just hanging out, taking piano lessons and playing the piano a lot. I was definitely the one who would put on glitter and shiny boots and shiny vests and sequins dance around. I swear that every dinner party my family would have, they’d dress me up and put my little karaoke machine there. There’d be like three people and I’d be singing there for half an hour. Probably longer than they would have liked.
Anarchy: What were you rocking though?
Dia: A lot of country. A lot of old stuff like Patsy Cline and Aretha Franklin and The Supremes, stuff like that.
Anarchy: Your dad was a DJ, right? Is that what you were pulling from his collection?
Dia: Yeah. He was more into the Beach Boys, the Eagles and Queen. That was his type of stuff. I didn’t really get into that until a little bit later, although I liked it a lot. I listened to country all the time. I think the the person who got me into country was Leann Rhimes. She was fourteen when she started. I was nine but I thought it was cool that someone young was doing it. I started to listen to all country because of her. I didn’t even know what a band is. I never thought about touring or any of the statistics or any of the politics that go into being a band. I wanted to be a superstar and I didn’t know about writing your own music or caring about what you’re singing about lyrically. I ws just a niave little nine year old child that wanted to have the most glittery costume I could have. Finally we started a band. It actually happened on accident because I don’t think I would have had enough initiative tostart a band because I didn’t really know what it was. We were in a mall and my mom signed me up for this little karaoke thing. This guy was eating Mexican food in the food court said that his brother played guitar and that I should go by. When I went by I brought my sister. She had just barely written her first three chord song with the most heesy lyrics ever. I met him and then his friend came and played drums and his other friend came and played bass and they said “let’s run through your song”. So we ran through the song and I was amazing playing with four players behind me. We started our first band and I kind of gave up everything that I thought music was at that point.
Anarchy: And you guys meanwhile were in bands, waiting for the perfect singer?
Nick: Jonathan was in a band that was signed to Drive-Thru Records (Madison). This band is the first band that I’ve been in that got a record deal or anything. I was just in a lot of local bands, like a bar band, a cover band.
Carlo Gimenez: I’ve been in mostly cover bands in LA playing shows on Sunset Boulevard until I hooked up with these guys. That’s pretty much it.
Anarchy: You were talking about how when you were young, Meg was writing cheesy lyrics. That has all changed now. I think that ‘Something Real’ is a very well written and performed pop album. This is a genre that typically spoonfeeds the listeners and treats them like idiots. You guys trust in your audience to be smart enough to get what you are saying your songs. Do you ever have people saying that you should play down to the audience or that pop music shouldn’t try to be musically relevant?
Dia: All of us are pretty much how we are onstage. Everything I say on stage is something that I just kind of make up. We’ve never really had anything staged. It’s kind of funny because being on Warped Tour we’ll watch a band every day and they’ll say the exact same thing between songs. It’s kind of normal because of course everyone is going to say their band name and if they have something out, but I’m talking the exact same thing.
Nick: We try to keep it as organic as possible.
Dia: I hope the crowd can get into it themselves and be happy and know what we're singing about. Sometimes I do get really mad when people treat kids like computers or something. It’s kind of weird. They’ll have them chant or scream as loud as they can at the count of three...
Nick: "How you doing out there Charlotte?"
Dia: It's funny, I don't know. Kids seem to get into it though.
Anarchy: That’s part of why I’m glad you have been doing so well because your songs are so well written and your in a genre that tends to dumb itself down to the lowest common denominator. The fact that kids are getting your music tells me that they are capable of grasping intelligent pop music. I know that a lot of your songs are inspired by books, but how much of it is based on your own lives?
Dia: I’d say about half and half.
Nick: Maybe a litle more. There’s 5 songs written about books and 6 aren’t.
Anarchy: Who are the jerk guys that are written about in the songs (casting a jokingly inquisitive look at the guys in the band)?
Nick: None of us, her boyfriends (laughs)
Dia: Meg’s ex boyfriends she wrote a little bit about. We honestly haven’t had a really intense life, like our parents got divorced and we’ve done so much drugs since then. We’ve actually been kind of lucky. A lot of the stuff that’s based on real life is stuff that’s happned to a friend. I kind of believe that every story has been a real story at one time. Nothing’s really fiction. I wrote this one song called “Yellow Butterfly”. I remember seeing on our message boards the other day where people were arguing over whether it was a true story or not. People said that they saw me say at a show that it was a true story that I made up and theywere all bickering about what that meant. It means that it’s something that I did make up but I believe has happened somewhere. We just try to get everyones story so everybody can relate.
Anarchy: One of the things that impressed me so much about your record is the way it allows us to view these stories. Most pop songs give you the characters and situations and then tie it up in a bow at the end. What you do is drop people into the middle of a story, give us a piece of these peoples lives and then leave with threads still dangling. It’s a great approach that really drew me into the worlds you were singing about. Do you have fans approaching you with their takes on how the stories end or anything?
Nick: Definitely. The guy that does a lot of our merch designs, he drew our poster and he drew from the lyrical content in the cd. He listens to the cd and then draws what the lyrics are. He kind of makes up stories and has actually started his own storyboook of pictures based on stories of ours. So yeah, I definitely think that people finish the stories themselves and leave it up to their imagination.
Dia: “Cardigan Weather’ is one of those that people will do that a lot with. Also, I hope that people will go out and find out the end of the stories themselves. It’s stuff that we want to share with people. “Courage, Robert” is written about Robert Schumann, who is a famous piano player. It’s kind of a biography in a song instead of a book. I was hoping that people would research his life because his life was insane. There’s just so much stuff that happened to him and I think it would be cool if people would look into that more.
Anarchy: Are you finding that through the band people are reading more novels and broadening their interests?
Dia: Yeah, definitely! People have actually brought books and had us sign them. They bring the book ‘Indiana’, which is kind of awkward.
Jonathan Snyder: We have the book exchange…
Dia: Yeah, we have a book exchange at our tent right now. It’s kind of like a library, but you get to keep the book. Fans get to write little notes in the books. It’s been really cool, it’s almost like a little community. I’ll open the books and read the notes, just to see what they put and they’ll write “this is my favorite book, this is why I like it. Here’s my email, please write me if you like it”.
Anarchy: That’s awesome!
Nick: It is very cool
Dia: It’s been really fun.
Nick: We didn’t know how it was going to go over but on the first day of the Warped Tour we had people bringing books and asking where the book exchange was and we were so unprepared we just found an empty box and put them in there. Meg and Dia brought a bunch of book sthat they had read to swap out with people. Now we have a whole cooler and a whole box full of books, so definitely people are into it.
Anarchy: Obviously people focus is on Meg and Dia, since the band is named after them. Give us the scoop on how the other guys got involved. It all started with you, right Nick?
Nick: Meg hates when I tell this story because it emphasizes how bad of a driver she is. She wrecked her car in a parking lot. She brought itin to me because my family owned a body shop. I did an estimate on it and we got to talking. I knew who they were so I asked them for a cd and we started the band there. These two came in at the same time in January. Jonathan knew people at Doghouse, our label, and they put us in touch via Myspace. We had actually never talked to each other on the phone, just through Myspace messages. “Hey, you want to be a part of the band? Alright, ship your stuff out here from New York to Salt Lake and then fly out here”. Carlo had a couple videos on Youtube of him playing guitar along with our songs. I was like ”this guy rules, let’s get him”. I sent him a message and he said that he was a big fan and he’d love to be a part of it.
Anarchy: This band would not exist without the internet, thank you Al Gore!
Nick: Without wrecking cars and interwebness.
Anarchy: Dia, you and your sister had your entire lives to grow together as musicians. How long did it take these guys to synch up with you, mentally?
Dia: It actually really didn’t take very long at all. That was one thing that we were talking about was that we needed some solid members because It was so awkward playing with random people who come in and out of the picture.
Nick: Like hired guns... We definitely went through two lead guitarists and four bassists before we found these two. Not that any of them were bad players, they just didn’t have the same vision, the same mindset.
Jonathan: Four bassists? That’s why I’m special!
Nick: These two came in and meshed with us perfectly right off the bat.
Dia: Nick and Meg and I actually clicked right off the spot. Meg and I just knew.
Nick: We’re all really, really sexually attracted to each another.
Carlo: He told me that one night. He said “I loved Meg that day they went to the shop” and that’s why he went to the practice space.
Nick: They went to my practice space!
Anarchy: They were fighting over you!
Nick: I don’t know, were you?
Dia: Maaaybeee… It was really good. Meg had that song “New Jersey”, which is kind of a funky song. That was one of the first songs that we had him play with. He was just so creative on that song. He pulled out a cowbell and all this stuff and started jamming. It ws so awesome. We started it with that and then Meg’s boyfriend at the time said “I play bass”and that of course was a really bad idea. That’s kind of where it took it’s downfall later on.
Nick: On the road all the time, and then they broke up, and you can’t live together in a vehicle and be on the road being broken up.
Anarchy: Since this record is doing so well, will the earlier stuff get wider distribution?
Dia: We actually have an EP out that is a Warped Tour exclusive. That has two of our older songs on it that we recorded live and a couple of songs from our cd that are remade. That is our latest thing to get our older stuff out there, but we’re going to start writing and recording early next year for a new album. We’re excited about new stuff.
Anarchy: Is there going to be a third single from ‘Something Real’? This record is really deep with potential singles…
Dia: We have no idea.
Nick: We don’t know yet. After Warped Tour we’ll see how the “Roses” video goes and then, possibly. We probably won’t start recording the album until midway through next year, so there’s plenty of time for there to be another single from this album.
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Thanks so much to the band for taking time out of a busy Warped Tour schedule to speak with us, and thanks again to our buddy Nikki for hooking us up! For more info on Meg &Dia, and to hear some songs, check out Meg & Dia on Myspace and MegandDia.com.
WIN AN AUTOGRAPHED COPY OF 'SOMETHING REAL'
This is a cd that I hope everyone will give a listen. In fact, I think so highly of it that I bought an extra copy and had the entire band (icluding Meg, who was finished getting ready and looked stunning by the time we wrapped up the interview) sign it so that one of you can win it! In the interview, the band talked about how their fans are bringing books to their shows. We want to know what YOUR favorite books are. You can either post about your favorite book in our Creativity Forum or shoot me an email at anarchy@anarchymusic.net or at Anarchy Music's Myspace page
This contest will run through August 2nd!