The Hot Seat | Indie

Curtis Peoples Curtis Peoples
Hayley Holmes
Katy Baldwin | Staff Writer




Singer-songwriter, Curtis Peoples, just released his third album, The Fight. After writing an album review, I had the opportunity to skype Curtis and talk about his new album. Curtis shared stories about growing up in California with rock sensation, Vic Fuentes, as well as his personal journey overcoming ups and downs of being in the music business.  

Amaris: This past summer you did Warped Tour for the fifth year I believe…

Derek: Yeah I think so, I kinda forgot. We did it in 2007, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, so yeah…

A: and you guys headlined this year, so how was that experience?

D: It was incredible. It was amazing. It was our first time playing the main stage on Warped Tour and that’s something we kinda looked forward to for a long time. We thought it be really sweet to do. The whole vibe of the tour was cool. It was the twenty year anniversary and I feel like we knew a lot more people on this tour than we had before. Warped Tour is one of those tours that gets better every time you do it. It was incredible, I loved it. It was one of my favorite tours that we have done for sure.

A: Have you seen your fan base completely grow and change during the years?
D: Yeah, absolutely. For us its always been, since the very beginning, it’s been just a slow but steady build. From the first tour we did where there were maybe five to ten kids that knew who we were to each time we come back there is more people. So it’s pretty crazy and it’s crazy that it hasn’t plateaued and dropped off so we are still able to keep on going. We are very grateful.

A: That’s awesome. You guys used to tour a lot, a lot of consecutive months at a time, did that take a toll?

D: Not so much. It can be kinda tough being gone for a really long time and missing people at home. We still stay at it pretty hard. I guess we have probably slowed down a little bit compared to what we used to do. We have always tried to stay working hard at it and realizing that’s a huge part of this. That’s kinda why we hit it so hard from the beginning. That was the goal of this band, we just wanted to start a group that was all on the same page and we all wanted to really work hard for this. Just try to make it happen. And now we kinda got to a point where we are able to relax a little bit and we don’t have to necessarily take every tour we get the chance to take. But touring is amazing, it’s so much fun. We all feel like we are most at home when we do this, being on the road.  

A: What has been your favorite tour so far?
D: It’s tough to pick, the one, the ultimate one. But I’d say it was in 2008. The All Time Low, The Maine, Every Avenue Tour. That one always stands out in my mind as one of my favorite tours we have every done. It was just so much fun, from the first day to the last day. But I feel like we have been lucky, so many of the tours we have done have been incredible. This tour is incredible. I really love hanging with the other bands every day and the shows have been great. So no complains.

A: Has there been any major differences from past tours to The Honeymoon Tour that you guys are on right now?
D: There are things that are different on every tour I suppose. This tour has been somewhat of a standard fall tour operation. We are playing a lot of the same markets and rooms we already have. We have some Canada dates on this tour, which we’ve only done one cross country Canada tour, which will be nice to go to some new places and some places we haven’t been in a while.  But for the most part it becomes somewhat of a routine. I feel like we know what to expect with a tour like this but it’s great.

A: You guys announced that you’re working on an album for 2015, how’s that coming along so far?

D: It’s coming along great. We are very early in the whole process; I mean we haven’t started working together a whole lot yet on stuff. Kinda individually we all have a lot of ideas, I know I have fourteen or so new song ideas that I’m really excited about. Kinda once we finish this tour we will start bringing all those ideas together as a band and finishing the songs and what not. It’s a very exciting time. I love it. I love the excitement of getting ready to go into the studio, having a new album to work on, and imagining the possibilities of what it’s going to sound like. It’s a really cool thing.

A: You have your own songs and you do your own writing, how do you come together as a band and figure a concept for an album as a whole?
D: It’s tough to say, we just try to do our best to pick the best songs out of the bunch. We kinda hope that we can put it together so it has a flow like an album should. That’s pretty much it. We don’t ever premeditate too much, like we want the album to sound like this or like this. We just try to write the best songs we can and see how it turns out. That’s all we can do, I suppose.

A: How’s your songwriting process?

D: It varies from song to song. I do a lot of writing while we are out on the road like this. We usually put out an album and then tour for a year and a half or so on that album cycle. Usually during that time everyone comes up with a lot of ideas. Some of it can be basic, like a guitar part with nothing else to it. Some of it might be fully realized song that has lyrics and music and melody for everything and then we just kinda take those ideas, whichever ones we like the most, and as a band play them over and over again and just kinda go for it. Some of the songs probably end up staying very much with the core idea that was for the song and some of the songs go in a completely new direction. It depends on the song.

A: Mayday Parade has been around for almost ten years, do you think your sound is going to evolve a lot more or do you think you have found your niche and you’re going to stick to that?

D: Well I would think so. That’s kinda a goal for us. That each album we do we want to build up upon what we have done before but not just replicate it and do the exact same thing. We want to push ourselves and try out new things and new sounds. I feel like we have. There is a handful of songs, on the newer albums, that I feel like in the past we would have shied away from because they were too different or didn’t sound like Mayday Parade. I feel like we try to embrace any good idea and make it a Mayday Parade song. So hopefully we will continue to evolve and grow, but at the right pace. We can think of a lot of bands that have completely 180 and switched their sound from one album to the next. Sometimes that can be cool and work out but sometimes you alienate your fans that liked you for what you were before and can be too dramatic of a change at one time. We want to always keep what we have done before but just build upon that.

A:  Do you have anyone in mind that you would love to collaborate with?

D: Not really. I’m not huge into that kinda stuff really. There are a bunch of people where, yeah sure, it would be cool to do stuff with. I like to work on ideas on stuff by myself. We did some co-writing for our second album and I really hated that experience of being in a room with somebody and being like “well we gotta make a song”, it just can be very forced. If there was somebody that I would be stoked to work with and they reciprocated then that would be cool. Who knows, it’s tough to say.

A: How about a song to cover for the Pop Goes Punk? Mayday Parade has done awesome covers, like Gotye, so any songs right now that you have in mind?
D: I don’t know. There is not any that come to mind. I’m terrible at keeping up with Top 40, I hardly ever listen to the Top 40 radio stuff. The Gotye song I was really happy with it because the two previous songs we have done I wasn’t really a fan of the original song necessarily. Nothing against it, its just something I wouldn’t really listen to. Like the “When I Grow Up” song and the Jason Derulo song, I wasn’t necessarily a fan of those songs. It was sort of like “we’ll do a cover of that songs and that’s cool”. The Gotye song I was an actual fan of the song so it was a lot more fun you know. Recording a cover of a song where you actually like the original one, as oppose to like “well how am I going to make this cool?” Hopefully I imagine we are going to be doing more of those in the lifetime of the band. We never really think about it in advance, it’s kinda as it gets closer to time we talk about it and figure out what we are going to do.

A: After the drop of the 2015 album, any plans on touring again?
D: Oh yeah for sure. The first half of next year will be writing and recording. Not the first half, but maybe the first quarter. We have a summer tour with Yellowcard in Australia and New Zealand; that might be the first tour we do once we are done in the studio. We will keep on, see what happens from there. I’m sure next fall we will; we usually do a U.S tour in the fall. But we will see. It’s kinda early to say now but we will stay out pretty hard for a while.
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