speed of dark

I had the opportunity to sit down with Corey Warning, lead singer of up and coming band The Graduate before their show at the Roxy in Los Angeles this past weekend. While The Graduate are admittedly the new kids on the block, the band put up a solid albeit short performance before the more raucus and apparently more well-known bands, The New Atlantic, My American Heart, and The Audition. I spoke to the lead singers of both New Atlantic and My American Heart - both bands put on great sets and were very nice and gracious enough to spend a couple of minutes with me. However, alt-gramma and I decided after the show that we had previously had our fill of angry, head-thrashing bands (alt-gramma with Led Zepplin and her assortment of punk bands, me with Guns n Roses and Metallica). Yet The Graduate seemed a little different from the other bands on the bill - not easily defined by a particular genre, the band still has some room to grow and to find their own sound before you'll see them have top billing. Still, if you're planning on attending The Warped Tour, drop by their set and see what I mean. (Click thumbnails for larger pics)

Speed of Dark: How did you know this is what you wanted to do?

Corey Warning: This has been the only thing I've ever been remotely talented at in my entire life. It's a big lifestyle change, being on the road all the time and being away from friends and family, it's a big change. Last March, when we were in Columbus, Ohio, we played with Jack's Mannequin at a sold-out show for 2,000 people and we got on stage and we got everyone in the place's attention and I think that was the single moment where I thought, "I can do this for the rest of my life and be happy." I'll remember that night for the rest of my life.

SOD: What artist or band has been your biggest influence?

CW: I think one of the biggest influences on me has been Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie. As soon as I started getting into Death Cab, I've immediately wanted to start writing music more and open up my senses to everything. I would cite him as one of my greatest influences.

SOD: What is your earliest memory of a song that you liked?

CW: I think the first song I remember really being into was "You Give Love a Bad Name" by Bon Jovi. My parents have this video of me at about age two that they like to show to everyone, dancing around the living room while watching the Bon Jovi video on TV. I don't have the physical memory of this, but I've seen the video and been told about it.

SOD: What would be your dream tour?

CW: I think many of the bands that I'm really moved by, I don't think we'd have a shot at because we're not necessarily in the same genre, but maybe in the future. I've been listening to a lot of Cold War Kids and Silversun Pickups, and I'm really into Radiohead and U2.

On trying to not be labelled:
CW: What I hope to do is move past people trying to put us into a category, not necessarily creating our own genre, but we want to transcend that. This is our first record, and so it's very easy for people to say, you sound like this, you sound like that. We've been called pop rock, we've been called emo, indie rock...there was one review of our CD where we were compared as a cross between Hoobastank and Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, which I think is pretty far off from what we're doing. We've been compared to U2, and I agree about the guitars, but I don't think I hold a candle to Bono. I think it's good that people are having a hard time finding what genre to put us in, because if it were easy, we wouldn't be doing our job, we wouldn't be doing anything different.

On breaking out:
CW: I don't necessarily think that this is the album that's going to break our band, because I think we have to develop our sound more, keep pushing ourselves and not trying to jump on a wave of what other people are doing. It's an easy thing to do and sometimes comfortable, but we don't want to make the same records over and over - we want to grow and evolve. It's hard not to [emulate other bands], you have to take a step back and think, it's cool, but we have to do something different.

On the band and songwriting:
CW: I write the lyrics, but the songwriting process is completely five parts. Everybody puts in an equal part to every song. We couldn't lose a member and be the same band - everyone is so focused and dedicated. We don't have the same method for writing every song, but I think our best songs come out when all five of us are sitting together in a room, throwing out ideas. One of the things we're dealing with right now is not being able to write songs since we've been on tour [for the last six months].

On touring and fans:
CW: We tour with a lot of bands that bring in a young crowd. However, I feel like the people who are seeing our show right now are not our audience yet - they are generally there to see the other bands that we're playing with. We're the new kids on the block and just starting to build a fan base for ourselves. But I think that the people who are coming back to see us are a little older - college-age or senior in high school. But I don't mind the younger people coming to see us - some of the best music I remember is from when I was young, in high school.

On a five-year plan:
CW: Hopefully we'll be releasing our second or third album. We got thrown into Anhedonia head first - it was a little overwhelming, since we had just released The Horror Show EP and three months later, we had a record deal. We had one song for the new album, "Stay the Same", and we had to come up with a whole album really quickly. We felt really dry for a while. I'm really looking forward to our next album, it should be really progressive for us. We're not the band that we want to be right now - if we were to break up right now, this isn't the record that should represent us. We know we have room to grow; we're all really young.

Thanks again to Corey and the rest of the band for taking time out to talk to us, and especially for your impromptu acoustic concert outside after the show. Check out the following show pictures and a couple of tracks from The Graduate's debut album, Anhedonia.

the graduate: anhedonia from Anhedonia [buy]
the graduate: the formula from Horror Show EP [buy]

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other reviews: BC Music | Absolute Punk | Plug in Music | Smother.net
live video of "Anhedonia"