Andy interviewed Say Anything’s Coby Linder last night before their set at Brixton Academy.
PT: First things first, introduce yourself and what you do in say anything.
CL: I’m Coby and I play drums and I sing….and I look real good!
PT: It’s been a while since you’ve been over to the UK. How has the tour been going so far?
CL: It’s been over a year since we were here. Last time was with Brand New and we had a short set and we just tried to rock it. We’ve never done that long over here yet.
PT: Were you surprised to see how popular you are in the UK, despite not having toured here much?
CL: Yeah definitely. I mean most of the time, it’s been playing to HelloGoodbye fans, but there have been some shows where a third of the crowd or so are there for us, and they all know the songs which is really cool. People seem to know the new songs too, which is great because the new record isn’t even out here yet!
PT: You seem to be something of a cult band at the moment – the mainstream haven’t opened their ears to you just yet, but you have a very dedicated fanbase of people who absolutely love your music, especially people in other bands in the scene. Why do you think that is?
CL: I guess we play music that other people respect, more than just quick things people hear on the radio. We play honest music that lasts and I think members of other bands can really attest to that because that what all bands try to do.
PT: Chris Carrabba from dashboard confessional is known to throw in some Say Anything covers into his sets. How did that all come about?
CL: That’s been going on for a while! He took us on our first tour ever outside of California. We opened for him on the Honda Civic Tour like three years ago and I think he just started covering ‘Woe’ in one of his songs for fun, and now he does ‘Wow I can get Sexual…’. It’s crazy we watch videos of it on Youtube now! He’s a really big fan and he’s an awesome guy, one of the nicest down to earth guys in a band. He’s at that level where he can be an asshole but he just isn’t.
PT: It’s not just him either – there seems to be a lot of love coming from all corners of the scene for you guys.
CL: Yeah it’s great – it’s like the scene now has come up from just bands being friends, and then they get big and we all want to help each other out. Every now and then you have some assholes, but usually bands are just keeping it real and want to take out their friends on tour with them. We’ve known HelloGoodbye for a while now too. Forrest recorded our demos for ‘…Is a Real Boy’ and he did a couple of parts on the demos.
PT: ‘Alive with the Glory of Love’ was featured on the last episode of Series 6 of Scrubs. Was that something you knew about before it aired?
CL: No we didn’t know about that at all! I Think Zach Braff is a fan or something, it was a total surprise and we only found out about it a week before. I still haven’t seen it though! Max really loves that show and he went to one of their parties in LA and did a couple of acoustic songs for them too which is really cool.
PT: Ok so the new record – ‘….In defense of the Genre’. It’s a double disc, hour and a half long concept affair. What made you decide to make such an ambitious record?
CL: We pretty much set out to write a double disc. The last record was two discs and we thought anything less would just be cheating our fans. Max just had a bunch of songs that we went and recorded, and we ended up using a whole lot of them! I think it’s a great record though…the music is really tight and real on the new record and all the instruments sound really good together. It’s more band music; music which we can reproduce live easily, as opposed to using crazy guitar effects on ‘…Is a Real Boy’.
PT: When you re-released ‘…Is a real boy’, you added a bonus disc with it. Even though Max has publicly stated before he thinks it’s the worst stuff you’ve done, it contains some of the fan’s favourite tracks. How did ‘…Was a real boy’ come about?
CL: We did ‘Is a Real Boy’ on Doghouse and then two years later we got bought out by J Records. Between those two years we did demos and were going to put out an EP called ‘….Versus AIDS’ as a benefit CD. It was just demos we recorded in our old bass player’s garage. When J Records bought us out, they wanted to re-release the record, but we didn’t want to just redo it the way it was, so we took the demos, re-mixed and re-mastered them and put them together as ‘….Was a Real Boy’.
We only did them for fun to start with, they were literally just demos. ‘…Is a Real Boy was a thought out process whereas these were just songs we did for fun. It’s weird that ‘Wow I can Get Sexual..’ turned out to be our biggest single, and that was literally just a demo. It was great because we didn’t have to sit down and think about it.
PT: Ok, how would you describe a Say Anything live show for people who haven’t seen you before?
CL: I think we’re pretty energetic and you’re definitely going to have a good time. If you don’t know the music there’s a lot to see, because every member is going nuts on stage and we try and get the crowd involved as much as we can. All sweating balls and having fun!
PT: And what about the future? What have you guys got in store for 2008?
CL: Just tours that I can’t really talk about – nothing’s really confirmed. There’s one thing confirmed but I can’t tell you about it yet! We’re going to take a break in the New Year then go out probably in February.
PT: Any chance of seeing you back on these shores soon?
CL: We’d love to – hopefully around this time next year, if not before!