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Mock Orange: New Album, New Sound
Lily Noga
After year of underground goers wringing their hands, Mock Orange’s new album Captain Love was finally released in the United States a mere week ago. Once a small town band, Mock Orange has found success and a steady fan base—receiving national acclaim with music appearing on MTV2, CSI Miami, Real World and ESPN. Coming as a shock to their devotees, the band’s members, Ryan Grisham (vocals, guitar), Joe Asher (guitar), Zach Grace (bass) and Heath Metzger (drums), have made a big musical step in their latest release. Moving from fast-paced foot pumping tunes to complicated melodies, Mock Orange’s new sound has hit big with their Japanese audience. It can only promise a well-attended tour. Soon to visit Japan again, Mock Orange is swinging through the Midwest, stopping by in Lansing’s very own Mac’s Bar at 8 p.m., Friday Sept. 19. Guitarist Joe Asher obliged me with an interview from very stormy Indiana to tell me about their new album and sound.
Spartan Edge: So you guys just put out a new album, how’s that going?
JA: “It’s going well! It actually came out in Japan last year, and it’s just now coming out in North America and Europe. The one thing I would have said is it was taking a long time to release in the States, but now that it’s out everything is going really well. We’re really looking forward to the tour that we started on Wednesday. The album keeps being received very well, so we’re excited.”
SE: It’s quite different than your previous work. What brought on the change?
“I think it’s because we’ve been a band for a long time. I mean our first album came out in 1998, and now it’s 2008. We really can’t help but change; it’s a long time—10 years. We’re just sounding different because we’re different people. When I was 21 years old I wanted to be a more aggressive band and play really fast stuff, and now that I’m older I’m more interested in song structure and melody and sort of the vibe and mood of the music. We’re just different people than we were when we were younger. A lot of people that are fans of our older material are like ‘Why are you changing your style?’ and what they don’t understand is that the older material was faster, but it doesn’t mean that it was actually harder to play. This new album is just played a little more tastefully— it’s down tempo, that doesn’t really mean it’s easier.”
What was the music scene like back in your hometown, Evansville, Ind.?
“It’s changed over the years, too—like right now there’s a really big sort of hardcore, like screamo kind of scene, a lot of the younger kids are into that. That’s like absolutely not like what we’re doing, you know? But there are also people into indie-rock like us. We haven’t had a bad show in Evansville in 10 years. It’s not a big city at all, but we’re lucky to be here because the city really supports us.”
Who inspires your music most? New artists, or is it the usual compilation of ‘the Beatles, Bob Dylan, my church’s choir, my mom…’?
“I don’t know! You know, there are four or five members of the band, and we all listen to really different stuff. It’s hard to say a lot of where our influence comes from. I would sort of like to suggest that it comes from a combination of influences that different members share— we all bring a little different bit to the writing process. Ryan (the singer), who’s the principle songwriter, sort of has his way of doing things. Then the way that every individual member sort of tweaks what they add to Ryan’s song sort of becomes a whole new song.”
Your music is, to say the least, very complex and intricate. How do you tackle actually composing the music? Does it start off barren and then build, or do you start head on?
“Actually, we usually start from Ryan—who has a really basic idea, or more, a really complete idea. A lot of times we’ll really have to subtract parts because there’s just too much there. I don’t know why, it’s hard for us write a basic kind of song. It’s weird like, we’ll be writing and we’ll say, ‘lets keep it simple’ and then no one knows what to do! Basically Ryan starts with a song, and then by the time it’s done it’s really complicated. I don’t know if it’s just our nature or if it’s a subconscious thing, or maybe we want to write busy arrangements. I’m not really sure why things turn out that way.”
Well it’s a good sound, so you’re not doing anything wrong! [Laughter] Thank you! It’s funny that you bring that up because it’s true, there have been times recently—like at practice when we’re like this song’s just too complicated, let’s just make it simpler you know? And it’s just really hard to do that, because like, we just don’t know how!
I’ve heard you guys are a big hit in Japan, and that you tour there often with a brother band of sorts, the Band Apart. What spurred the movement towards the Japanese audience?
“We’ve been to Japan five times now, and the first time we went by ourselves, and it was a really strange couple of shows. We opened for Super Drag, it was a really weird build but—while we were there, we played this one show in a record store in a mall. Some of the people in the crowd were guys from the Band Apart. The next year they put out a CD that just exploded, and then the next thing they were like, ‘Hey we saw you at that show, would you like to come tour with us at the end of this year?’ At first we were really skeptical; it didn’t seem like a professional type of situation and we could have gotten into a lot of trouble, flying to Japan just because someone asked us to. But then they actually sent us plane tickets, and we were like ‘f**k it.’ After that, we just hit it off with those guys personality-wise, perfectly. Every year since then we’ve gone, usually in the fall. Last year, we were able to bring them over for the first time, and I’m really hoping they can come over again in the spring. It was really a matter of right place and right time—those guys happened to see us, their band happened to get big... it was just a really fortunate situation.”
How is the music received in Japan?
“There is a huge language barrier, but the people that we meet, are people at our shows, who are already our fans... So I mean, it seems like we’re received excellently… although I really only get to see the positive side of the thing. But all of our shows are really big, and they’re really nothing but fun. This is the first year that we didn’t go, and that’s because of the delay to get our album out. Last year when we went, when Captain Love came out in Japan, it was the best tour I’ve ever been on; America, Japan and Europe. I can’t wait to go back.”
I’ve heard in Europe you had some traveling mishaps with your van?
“That trip was really… well, it was an awesome trip—we got to see so much stuff and a lot of the shows went really well. But in February, it was really bitter cold and everybody got really sick and that kind of thing. Then we were in Spain and after the show somebody broke into the van-- smashed the windows and stole everything. They didn’t take our guitars because those were at the venue with us, but they got our suitcases. It was a five-week tour so we had packed a lot of stuff. I lost all of it! I lost all my clothes—I lost my jacket and it was the wintertime. I even lost my passport. We lost everything! Luckily it was near the end of the tour anyway, but we couldn’t go on because we didn’t have anything. We went back to Paris because we knew some people there, and I got a new passport, and we went home like a week later. It was a bad way to end the tour, but up until that point it was awesome.”
Now that you’re internationally known, you’re going to have to let me indulge and ask what your first real ‘rock star’ purchase was.
“Well I don’t know. I mean... [Laugh] I don’t know if we’re internationally known. We have gotten to travel a lot so I don’t know if that really means that we’re the big stuff just yet. My first rock star purchase? That’s a good question. I may have to get back to you on that one. I don’t know if I’ve really made my first rock star purchase yet! How about a new engine for our van last year in Florida? That was pretty rock star.”
So, I’m sure you get asked this question a lot, but why ‘Mock Orange’?
“You know, we do… And I still don’t know the answer. When we were trying to come up with a band name we literally had a dictionary and we were just trying to find the right word or phrase. We came up with Mock Orange. Never really been in love with it, but it’s cool. We’ve been thinking about changing our band name though, because we do know that we sound a lot different now. So we were thinking about changing it, but the Japanese label was not down with that idea because we’re doing well over there, so it would kind of be confusing.”
Have you played here in Michigan before?
“Not at Mac’s Pub, but we’ve played in Lansing. We used to play in Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids and Detroit a lot; we had a large fan base before. We’ll see what happens. It’s been a while but usually Michigan treats us well.”
For further details on Mock Orange’s show this coming Friday or their new album, check out their website at www.mockorange.net.
Questions? Comments? Contact Lily Noga at nogalill@msu.edu
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