Cobra Starship and The Academy is...
Honda Civic Tour [interviews]
by Robert Frezza
Static Noise
http://www.staticnoise.net

The Academy Is… and Cobra Starship have joined forces with Plus 44, Paul Wall, and Fall Out Boy this summer for what is known as the Honda Civic Tour. I recently sat down with both bands to talk music, their new records, and to talk about the tour itself.

StaticNoise: How has the tour been going so far?
CobraStarship: “Very good. We are being received very well and we are having a lot of fun. It’s great.”

SN: What do you think of the rock music scene right now?? Would you care to be on TRL?
CS: “I wouldn’t call it rock. I’d call AC/DC rock or Soundgarden rock. The music scene is consistently evolving. What I grew up with was a different version of emo music. It’s hard to keep up with all the different styles of music nowadays.
As far as TRL goes, I think it would be fun. Being on TRL now is fine, but when I was younger I’d thought it would have been pretty cool.”

SN: Do you think technology is helping music today??
CS: “All of it is helping. MySpace, downloading, etc. It’s all helping! Napster was huge for bands. It might be hurting the record industry, but as far as the band goes, it is helping.

SN: What’s next for Cobra Starship?
CS: “We are currently recording our next album with none other than Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy. We are recording it as we speak on the tour bus and putting it together. Realistically it will be ready for release sometime next year.”

StaticNoise: Santi is the new album. Tell me about it and how does it differ from the previous one?
William Beckett of The Academy Is…: “The main difference is that it was more of a collaborative effort. Obviously, we are now better musicians and songwriters. It was important to capture the essence of the band, which is a live band.”

SN: Many bands tend to come off a bit more polished than previous records, thus sounding like everything else that is out in mainstream music right now. Is that something that you are trying to stray away from by working with Butch Walker?
WB: We are doing what we like, playing music that we like. It’s art in its truest form. It’s nice to sell records, but we are doing it by our own guidelines and on our own watch. We are very very close friends with Butch Walker and he totally understood what we wanted in our record. He has done some pop music records. He is that versatile where he could do a pop record and he could make a fucking awesome rock record, which is what we did together. What he really taught us was to trust our gut instinct when we are in the studio and it was very natural and quick. There were twenty-three recording days altogether and we remained friends up to this day.”

SN: How is it performing the new material in front of the new crowds?
WB: AMAZING. We love it! We only get a half hour set, so we don’t get to play as many new songs as we like. It’s a lot of fun to play both old and new songs in conjunction with each other. We will be headlining our own tour come this fall with Armor For Sleep so we’ll have more time to play both the old and new material, if not all of it.

Both Cobra Starship and The Academy Is… are on the Honda Civic Tour as we speak and their albums While the City Sleeps, We Rule the Streets and Santi, respectively,are in stores now!