BAND: Monty Are I
INTERVIEWER: Evan Harris (evan@bandvibe.com)
INTERVIEWEES: Steve Aiello (Vocals, Guitar)
DATE OF INTERVIEW: 11.05.06

BAND MEMBERS:
Steve Aiello - Lead Vocals, Lead Guitar
Ryan Muir - Vocals, Guitar, Trumpet
Andrew Borstein - Synth Keys, Trombone, Vocals
Mike Matarese - Bass
Justin Muir - Drums, Sampling

BV: What do you think about San Diego?
Steve: Well, this is the second time we've played here. A lot of the places we're playing on this tour we played on previous tours but we were in the smaller rooms and then we've had a chance to move up to the bigger rooms, which is cool. As far as San Diego goes I think it's pretty surprising and it's also rad that we still are able to bring even a handful of people to the show to come back and see us. If you think about it, there are so many bands out there, and people's attention span is so short, I feel kinda rad that people are comin' out and just hangin' and singing the songs and stuff, I think that's so awesome. San Diego is such a beautiful place and having people out there is just cool. I had a great time tonight.

BV: Where did you come up with the name Monty Are I?
Steve: We've been a band for a really long time and actually this is our third band name. We started off with some different members when we were in high school with a different type of music and didn't really take it seriously. The word Monty was in our name; it was called Monty's Fan Club. It was just kinda goofy and not really taking it seriously. In 2001, Andrew joined the band, we made our final line-up changes and we decided we wanted to do something different and we didn't want to play the same stuff that everyone else was doing. We put out music and ended up changing our name to just Monty and we released an EP called The Red Shift and six of the songs from The Red Shift made it to the Wall Of People. When we released Wall of People, we were actually signed before that; we'd only been signed for 8 months or so, and the label was like "We have some bad news for you guys, there's already a band called Monty. But that doesn't even matter. The bigger issue is that they released records before you and they've been around for like ten years. And they're on iTunes." So, we were like, "finally we're signed, finally we can put out a record, but we have to change our band name, awesome." We had to change it in a week and we wanted to keep Monty in it because Monty was our high school band teacher. That's who we named the band after, and we wanted to keep him in there to kinda keep our roots and Are I is a play on words for Rhode Island. Plus it's also an I statement, it's completely grammatically incorrect, but we went with it. Now, there are people on Myspace with names like "Jessica Are I" and it's cool because what started off as something unsure ended up working out okay.

BV: Since I have a degree in English, I'm going to have to scold you for that, but it's still a cool name and I like it.
Steve: Thank you.

BV: What got you into music in the first place?
Steve: Well, my parents were never really into music and I never really had musicians in my family. The one thing that kinda tipped me off was my dad told me he started playing the trumpet and fooling around with the guitar in elementary school but never followed through with that. When he told me that I was like I'm gonna try to do that, and I'm gonna see what I can do with it. So, I picked up the trumpet in fourth grade and I played up until high school. I was the band president in high school. We're all band geeks and we were all in the band in high school, all nerds. My parents got me my first guitar around when I was like nine or ten but I never really got into it until years later. When I was in like sixth or seventh grade I started really playing and me and Mike the bass player, we went to elementary school together. We all went to elementary school together and high school and we started jamming. When CD's came out my parents bought me Kriss Kross and Pearl Jam. Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Metallica and Nirvana were the first four bands that really got to me. I'll never forget being in boy scouts and this kid was listening to Metallica and I was like dude that's awesome. That was when The Black Album came out and it sort of got me into everything like into playing guitar and into rock music.

BV: You play lead guitar and sing lead vocals; is that hard to do at the same time?
Steve: I remember two or three years ago I started writing songs that eventually became songs for Wall of People like "Between the Sheets" and "Metropolis." Those were the first couple songs I started working on. In "Between the Sheets" there's a lead guitar part during the verse, and I while I was writing it and thought it was really cool. Then I would demo it on my computer and write vocals over it and I thought it was rad until I thought, shit! Now I gotta sing it and play it. But what's cool about that is the creative process and when that part was written or when any guitar parts are written and vocals are laid on top of it makes you a better player. It also drives you to be creative and stimulates you. It was cool because I had a guitar part and vocal part separate and when I put them together I had to figure that out. That also drove me to become better at both singing and playing guitar at the same time. It's hard sometimes, but then I think that not many people do that so I'm gonna go with that.

BV: When you're not in Rhode Island, where's your favorite place to be?
Steve: I love Rhode Island, I'm just gonna throw that out there. I fell in love with a couple places though. I really loved California last time we were out here, I had a blast. I can't really remember exactly where but I think we had a couple days off just hanging out. It was sweet. Also Fort Collins, Colorado. It sounds kinda weird, but we were stranded there for a couple days and it was just a really cool town. We went to the Budweiser factory and hung out. That was really cool. It's just a beautiful area, really pretty. I really do like New England though, especially around fall time. This time of year everything's changing and that's really awesome. Oh, and Philadelphia too, Philly is sweet man. I love that place; Philly cheese steaks, good times.

BV: What kind of stuff do you like to write about in your songs?
Steve: When we worked on the songs on The Red Shift, we had a friend who used to help us out with the sounds and he was busting my balls and saying "you remind me of an 80's dude. All the songs and the verses are like, man I'm down and out and I'm struggling, but then you come in with the chorus that's like I'm triumphing," and I was like you know what, you're right and I was down with that. I love 80's music, I love those themes. I love going against the struggle and overcoming that struggle. I like things like that and I think that's a common theme in some of the songs. Another thing I like to write about is family. We're all really close; we spend holidays with each other's families. Most of us are Italian so it's born in me so I write a lot about family issues too. There's a song called "O Brother" on our record which I wrote for my brother who's in the military. There's a song that we wrote a while ago that's about my grandfather. A lot of the songs on "The Wall of People" I wrote while I was living by myself so I had a chance to chill out and think about shit. I never thought lyrics were that important until that moment and it made me feel like I could get some shit off my chest. Issues like relationships, inner struggle, and family are all issues that I care about. Also, in "Metropolis" and "Island City" I tried coming up with a story. Anytime I work on a song it starts with a visual for the music and I guess what I mean by that is most of the song is a soundtrack and I try to come up with some kind of movie in my mind. In "Metropolis" I tried a different approach to writing a song. Lyrically, instead of doing something I could directly relate to, I went with a story I wanted to tell about a girl in a city who had issues and couldn't get by right away but knew that she wouldn't get her ass kicked. I wanted to go with that and it was also based on a song called "Living On A Prayer" by Bon Jovi because it's the same kind of idea if you listen to the lyrics of that song. People say it's not true unless you write about things that actually happened to you, but I feel you can write about it as along as you can relate to it. I put myself in that position. I had a movie in my head and I thought this is what's happening to this girl. I tried to write from her side of it and tried to think how she feels.

BV: What kinds of music are you listening to now?
Steve: I listen to a lot of R&B. I don't like to listen to a lot of stuff that's too modern as far as rock music goes because I feel like if I listen to it too much I'm going to get influenced by it and I might end up writing like it. That's one of the reasons I didn't listen to Fallout Boy and Panic at the Disco as soon as they broke. Nothing against those bands, I think they're amazing actually, the songs are incredible, but I knew that if I started listening to it that it would kind of seep into my brain. What I usually listen to is a lot of Guns and Roses, a lot of stuff from the 80's, a lot of rock and pop songs from the 80's. I like listening to a lot of 90's R&B. l love Boys to Men and I love Usher, and I think some of those influences actually come out on our record and it will probably be more prominent on the next one. Also, some Celtic music that me and Phil from story of the year have shared. That kind of orchestral and symphonic sound is so cool to me and it's so epic that you can put a visual to it instantly. Dude on a mountain with a friggin' sword. Some metal, some Soil Work, who's a band from Sweden. Pretty much from pop to rock and back and forth. Oh and there's this one song that Rod Stewart and Bryan Adams did together for the Three Musketeers soundtrack called "All for One," that song is sweet.

BV: Who would you say your favorite band is right now?
Steve: I'd have to say Guns and Roses. Slash is one of my biggest inspirations for guitar, I think he's amazing. Them and Metallica. I listen to them every night before I go onstage. Oh and Muse. They are the best thing going on right now, they are doing everything right.

BV: What do you guys spend most of your free time doing?
Steve: Writing music. We play Frisbee which is pretty sweet. And we watch a lot of movies. I love spending time with my family, I love seeing my grandmother and spending time with her. It sounds kind of cheesy but we're into being home and hanging with our families. Justin, our drummer, does a lot of designing for other bands. He does websites and he also does all of our video editing.

BV: How's the tour going?
Steve: This tour is sweet man. We've had really incredible tour experiences and I have to say we've never been on tour with a bunch of assholes. What's so cool about this tour, is not only are the shows great and the bands are incredible, but what makes it so special is that we met Story of the Year three years ago on the warped tour. We were an independent band then, hustling our balls off, changing our sound, evolving our band and Adam the base player just happened to like our cover art work and he was really cool. At that time they were doing crazy amounts of stuff and they were enormous and Adam was such a cool dude. To us it wasn't like he was the dude from Story of the Year, but he was just a dude being cool. I didn't even know who he was at first and the next thing he was like "lemme just wear your shirt on-stage" and I was like okay. He understood. He listened to our songs and he was like "I see where you guys are going and I think you guys are gonna have a pretty cool future," and that was really inspiring. We always kept in contact with them and did some shows with them and when we got signed Adam and the other guys were so stoked for us. Adam even sent us a card. Finally, we're here with them and we can legitimately go on tour and it's so much fun.

BV: What do you think you would be doing if you weren't playing music?
Steve: I think I'd be producing bands for sure, because I do that on the side back in Rhode Island. Also I'd want to do song writing like pop, dance, and R&B song writing. Also, maybe I'd like to be a teacher. Both of my parents are teachers and I think it's such a rad job.

BV: There are quite a few instruments in the band's repertoire. Can you say anything about how that came about?
Steve: Yea, like I said before we're all band geeks. One thing we never want to be limited by is not being able to play an instrument or not pushing ourselves to be able to learn something. It's not just all about entertaining a crowd and I think that gets lost some times. When we went on tour with the Rx Bandits that was something that was really refreshing. They don't give a shit about anything, they just want to play music and that's cool, you don't see that a lot. My mom bought me a cello for Christmas and I started learning that and I'm gonna buy a mandolin this Christmas coming up. What we try to do and what I try to do and hopefully lead by example in the band is to push ourselves to learn more instruments and not be limited by what we have. We definitely pushed ourselves for this last record, I mean I can't write a song anymore without putting a string section in it and that's what I want to do with every song that we write. That adds so much to the music, we can pull it off live, and it makes everything sound epic. Andrew started off just playing trombone, then he moved to the keyboard and he does some auxiliary stuff like big boom 808 hits that rumble the room, and he also sings back-up. Ryan started doing rhythm and back up guitar for some of the songs and he also does some vocals and plays trumpet. What's cool is all this stuff is going on and we like showing the crowd that we can pull that off live. Even on the record Andrew played tuba and I did a bunch of other shit. Hopefully on the next record, we can each do more, like I'll do cello parts. We don't want to be limited by anything. Our producers hated us because we had a hundred tracks on our songs. There's a point where it's excess, but doing the multi instrumentation is really intriguing to us. Hopefully, in a couple years we'll be headlining shows where all of us will be switching off on multiple things, like I'll have a keyboard and Andrew will have a couple more instruments.

BV: Do you have any advice for the kids out there who are aspiring to be musicians or rock stars?
Steve: Well I think one thing that always worked for us, and I always bring this up, is do what you want to do and what I mean by that is don't write for anyone else, write the songs that you think are cool. You might get into thinking that you have to write for other people, but when you do that it's gonna suck and you're gonna lose a lot of stuff. You see bands doing that all the time and they end up having a really shitty career. Another thing that's always worked for us is never compromising absolutely anything. We've never compromised stuff, we've never done something just because someone else wanted us to do it. Even aside from the music, like if it's being promoted on specific website or something. If we don't want to do it, we're not going to do it if we think it's not right for our band. I think that's important. I mean obviously there's some give and pull for some of that stuff but I feel like as far as the songs go, don't just do what someone else wants you to do. That's one of the reasons we went with Stolen Transmission which is our label now. Some of the labels that we met with were like "you guys are cool man" and the next thing out of their mouth was "I don't know about the horns though," fuck that, dude. With Stolen Transmission they were like "I don't care what you guys are doing, it's incredible. I feel like if we try to change it, we're gonna fuck it up. So, what we want to do is get you guys out there and expose you to more people," and that was really awesome. That's exactly what we wanted. If any bands out there get to that point, go with the people that you trust even if they don't have all the power in the world. The thing that matters most is that they're good people and they're gonna work their ass off and they'll die for you. Get on the road, tour as much as you can. Don't wait for anyone to do anything for you, just do it all yourself because it will totally be worth while in the end. You'll feel much more self accomplishment and it will feel great. Just go and get it, don't wait for anyone.

BV: What kind of food is in a rock-star diet?
Steve: Dude, the worst food: Beer, water, hamburgers, pizza and French fries; it sucks. I'm a big food guy. We're from Rhode Island and the food is incredible. All of our families make really good food and it sucks being on the road without that. All the stuff that's really bad for you is in the rock-star diet.

BV: Is there anything you want to say to all the Monty Are I fans out there?
Steve: For sure man. We are definitely not a big band, we haven't even hit the tip of the iceberg, but we're really proud of what we've done and we're really grateful for everyone that's brought us here. Honestly, we're just five dudes from the small state and we wouldn't be anywhere if it wasn't for the people who helped us out. Having people behind us is great and we appreciate every person. We don't want people to feel like we take it for granted because we are really so excited about where we are and it's a dream come true. We don't make money, we're poor. We don't give a shit, we love doing this and it's all from the help of these people and family and friends. Spread the word because we're gonna take over the world some day and some day you're going to see us play with an orchestra behind us while a play is going on at the same time. I'm just excited for the future and I want everyone to listen to our record Wall of People. Check out our Myspace: myspace.com/montyarei. Spread the love.

For more official information on Monty Are I, please log onto:
www.montyarei.com
www.myspace.com/montyarei

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