BAND: Copeland
INTERVIEWER: Kelly Engle (KellyE@bandvibe.com)
INTERVIEWEE: Aaron Marsh of Copeland
DATE OF INTERVIEW: 11.11.08

BAND MEMBERS:
Aaron Marsh -Lead Vocals/Piano/Guitar
Bryan Laurenson -Guitar
Jonathan Bucklew -Drums
Stephen Laurenson -Guitar

Kelly: Your band creates a lot of versions of your songs such as “Chin Up”, “Sleep”, and “No One Really Wins” to name a few. Do you think this enhances the listener’s perspective on the song and is it difficult to manipulate the original?

Aaron: It is kind of difficult. It depends on how we felt about the first version. With “Sleep” we never felt like any version after the original demo was as good as the first. We kind of got married to the first version of it. We call that “demoitis”. You kind of get attached to the demo. You kind of feel like you knocked it out of the park on the first one. Really nothing you do after that really looks up to it. That’s a good thing and a bad thing. The bad thing is you have like kind of basically a bad recording of a good arrangement of the song and you can’t do anything with it. That’s what wound up on a lot of “Dressed up and In Line” those early versions of stuff that we thought had a particular kind of good vibe about it. The bad thing is you have to do something kind of creative to make the album version up. To some extent we can predict when it’s going to happen. If we go far enough away from the demo then we like it just as much because it’s so far from it. It’s like a new song basically. I think it gives listeners a little clue into how we originally intended for the song to go. We’re pretty open about when we’re making a record. We aren’t super hard like oh, this is how it has to be. We kind of experiment and let a song kind of develop as we record it, kind of a little bit of a free form. If we come up with a cool part we’ll try it out. We are hugely inspired by being in the studio. In the moment of creation a song could totally turn and go a totally different direction. We don’t try to direct it. We kind of just let it do what it’s going to do. To some extent the song like the lyrics, melody, and chords are kind of set and everything after that like a synth line, or guitar line, or some string part, all of that is like up for interpretation. But we kind of do it in the moment.

Kelly: What songs are you most proud of lyrically, instrumentally, and performance wise?

Aaron: Lyrically, it would probably have to be maybe the last track on the “Eat, Sleep, Repeat” record lyrically is probably my favorite, “When You Thought You’d Never Stand Out”. I like that one a lot. The last track on “You Are My Sunshine” is probably my favorite musically. It has a lot of cool stuff in it. And the song “Not Allowed” from the new record is one I enjoy performing. For some reason that one is particularly fun.

Kelly: It seems like your personal relationships with people really effect the directions of your songs. Do you think personal interaction is your best muse?

Aaron: Maybe in my younger days. I think when I was younger I would take relationships; you know my family life and all that, and kind of internalize it and then spit something out. I still do the same thing, but I think I have a little bit broader of view now than just my immediate situations. I could go from talking about society in general to something I saw in a movie. I’ve definitely started to reach out. I think if you don’t search out new things it just gets boring. There’s still stuff that happens in my life with my friends and people who are close to me, but if I just wrote about that I would get bored.

Kelly: Is it ever had sharing such personal experiences with everyone?

Aaron: Yes. I learned a pretty hard lesson on the first record. It was super specific situations and detailing moments of my life in really intimate ways in a way that kind of bit me in the ass just because I think I put a little too much of myself out there. And I think for that to be my first record people expected me to continue to have that kind of intensity with the audience. I just couldn’t bring myself to keep that up. It was so raw. It was kind of like opening up someone’s diary and reading it. I kind of had to curtail that a little bit, not be quite so specific about situations. I still like to relate my feelings and present a moment that kind of thing because I think that’s important in music, but the specifics, I’ve tried to reel those in a little bit.

Kelly: If you could write a song with one musician dead or alive who would it be?

Aaron: It would be pretty fun to write a tune with Paul McCartney.

Kelly: With a new CD out “You Are My Sunshine” and a headlining tour that’s sold out tonight how does it feel to be at your musical peak?

Aaron: Good! I don’t know if it’s my musical peak because I feel like we had kind of a struggle getting back. We’ve had a rough, rough, rough two years. We were so close to breaking up to the point where I had actually started the process of enrolling in a school. I was not going to do Copeland anymore. We had a few songs that we liked enough to do another record. I always feel like I haven’t ever written a record until I write the anchor track, which in my mind is the one that even if the rest of the record is crap it’s worth doing the rest of the record to give this one song a chance. We had two songs that I felt were like anchor songs and I was like well let’s write another record and see what happens. We had two years of just like the lowest of the low, totally in debt, no money, we weren’t on the radar for any press, no tours, nothing, just like nothing happening. We were all burnt out and jaded. We wound up having these two songs and we were like alright lets write some more songs and see if we have something worth doing.

Kelly: What have the past eight years, since your band formed, taught you about life and music?

Aaron: I’ve learned so much. Probably the biggest thing about life that I’ve learned is just the value of treating people decently and treating people like they are valuable. It’s super easy in this sort of lifestyle to play a show and get lots of compliments and nice stuff from people. It’s super easy to start taking those comments and those people for granted. The whole road is so much more satisfying when I talk to people like they are the only person who likes our band. I mean we did start off just playing living rooms and BFW halls and garages, wherever we could play. I think over time we got big and I started taking everything for granted. It became a job. It became tedious and I was like I don’t want to be on the road anymore. One day I kind of took a step back and started thinking look what I’m doing I get to play music every night it’s like a dream. Now it’s super cool. We’re super happy. I spend a bunch of time before our shows setting up these lanterns that I bought from Ikea to decorate the stage. These are little things I would have done when I was nineteen, to be like oh let’s put up some lamps around the stage, totally not professional but when I was nineteen I was like dude that’s awesome, we look so sweet right now. Now that I’m twenty-eight years old and have almost lost everything it kind of makes a big difference. I had a really similar progression of like being super enthusiastic about all kinds of music, like being really optimistic about stuff that I heard, to becoming a little bit of a snob, to now I’ve kind of snapped out of that pretty quick. Now I’ve started listening to music in a way that I always listen for the things I like about music before I listen for things that I don’t like. Which is tough because if you hear a not good voice in a band, I’m talking about like new music, if you hear something that kind of rubs you the wrong way it’s hard to dismiss it. But, there could be five other people in the band that are doing cool stuff. So to some extent I think I’ve become a little more optimistic about the music that other people are making. I still love good songs and good song writing. I feel like I’ve become a little bit less pessimistic. I’m not looking for the negative anymore.

Kelly: You’ve done some collaboration projects with bands like Underoath and Lydia. I’ve also noticed a female voice on some of your new songs, like “On the Safest ledge”. Do you think working with other artists allows you to expand on your own style?

Aaron: Yeah, well I learn things every time I work on a record. When I’m home from tour, and we’re not doing Copeland stuff, I do other records. I produce other records at my house in like a home studio. Every time I do a record I learn something new no matter who I’m working with whether I’m working with another bigger producer like Aaron Sprinkle or if I’m helping out a local band. Every time I do stuff I learn something new. I’ve been recording music, mine and other people’s music, since I was thirteen years old. So by now I probably should have learned quite a bit because I’ve worked on a lot of records, but it’s amazing how much I still learn every time I do something. It absolutely effects how I do my own stuff when I work with other artists.

Kelly: What kind of experience are you looking for people to have when they listen to your music?

Aaron: I wouldn’t want to say what kind of experience I’d want them to have because I’d want it to be their own. Our fans are freaking awesome and they’re all like music lovers. They love melody and they love music that moves them. So they’re going into the record listening for something to grab on to, something to push a button inside of them. I’ll just let them take whatever meaning they want to. Whatever moves them is perfectly ok with me. If a kid wants to believe that all the songs are about Candyland it’s fine; if that’s what they like, if that’s what touches them then that’s cool.

Kelly: What is Copeland going to be doing in the future?

Aaron: After this tour we’re just gonna be home for a little while, for the winter, then we’ll tour again in the spring. I’m working on some records at home.

Kelly: Your sound is pretty unique compared to most indie rock bands. How did you adopt such a creative outlook that really focuses on unique instruments and consonance of sounds?

Aaron: I went to a performing arts high school and studied arrangements for strings and horns and stuff so that’s a huge part of my interests and my ability to arrange for large orchestras, larger ensembles outside of the regular rock band type of instrumentation. That was probably the biggest part of it. I just like those sounds and I get pretty bored with just doing guitar, bass, drums, piano. If you’re gonna make records you might as well put some interesting stuff in there if you have the ability.

Kelly: What would you like to say to your fans at Bandvibe?

Aaron: Well we have a new record, the “You Are My Sunshine” record that we made and we like it a lot. We have like three weeks left of the tour so if we’re in town or even on the next tour if we’re in town we’d love to see people.

For more official information on Copeland, please log onto:
http://www.thecopelandsite.com/
http://www.myspace.com/copeland