As announced, yesterday Hayley, Jeremy and Taylor visited KROQ’s ”Kevin and Bean” broadcast. The band was talking about “Warped Tour,” very widely about the beginnings of Paramore, – first concerts, first songs… – and about their new single “Monster”… Click “read more” button to find out more!
click to see more photos!
Despite former band members’ (and media) attempts to peg them as such, Paramore is far from the prefabricated emo pop-punk label that they’ve slowly and gracefully tried to unshackle themselves from–specifically the beautiful and classically-trained lead vocalist Hayley Williams.
Rather, they are band of humble, laid-back music nerds who met as teenagers and did what many youth do to establish friendships–they bonded over their taste in music. It just so happened that the members of Paramore weren’t just music appreciators, but talented, driven, and conveniently located in one of the South’s music capitals in the midst of its burgeoning rock scene–Nashville.
Yesterday with Kevin & Bean, Paramore kept it light-hearted, divulging some endearing tour stories, explaining how they don’t feel cool enough to play at Coachella (but would love to), and a recent concert experience that left Williams teary-eyed with joy.
Despite looking fresh-faced and adorable in a comfortable sweatshirt and with her hair pinned back, Hayley Williams told Kevin & Bean that she “smelled like Warp Tour.”
Paramore, now consisting of lead singer Hayley Williams, guitarist Taylor York, and bass player Jeremy Davis had just played Warped Tour in San Diego the day before, but were not phased by the exceedingly early call time to talk music and life with KROQ. If anything, they are going to miss the dynamic, familiar energy of Warped Tour.
“We’re going to miss it so much…We’re having more fun than we’ve ever had as a band and just enjoying playing music. It’s been incredible. It’s been a good season.”
“I just think we started there. That’s the tour that gave us life as a band. I remember the first show we ever played it…And then thinking about that compared to what we did last night. I don’t know.”
“It’s the same and it’s so different because it’s so innocent. You’re up there; there’s no pressure. It’s not really your show; you’re a small part of something way bigger. It feels good.”
When Paramore first came together in their original incarnation, Williams was only 16-years-old when she was first signed to a record deal and the band was practicing their songwriting skills by covering songs from their favorite artists like Thursday and Deftones.
” Playing at Warp Tour for the first time had special meaning for them because so many of the bands that inspired them were also playing. Williams explained:
“That’s why it’s such a big deal when you’re first starting out and people are actually giving you time. I remember Thrice was the year. Underoath. Starting Line. A lot of big, big bands. And the facts that anyone was giving us the time of day was just…amazing. It felt so good.”
How did a group of Nashville youth first begin to play their unique brand of sugar-soaked, freewheeling emo-pop? Williams explained that they met with little after school play-dates:
“I remember the first time me and Taylor wrote a song together. My mom took me to his house after school and we’re like, ‘We’re going to write today.’ [Taylor] had music.”
ork agreed, saying that is was just refreshing to find another ear so partial to the same kind of “cool” music, never expecting anything to come from it:“I think it was just finding friends that actually liked the same kind of music as each other. That was the thing that just blew our minds. It was like ‘Wow, you like cool music too?’”
“So when we started playing music, it was just so much fun, but we never really thought anything would come of it…We wanted to be, but you never really think it’s going to happen.”
Although all that sounds rather average (minus the whole becoming a teenage rock star thing), Williams and the members of Paramore didn’t necessarily have prototypical suburban lives to begin with, especially in the heavily music-centric city of Nashville.Although known mostly for its country, Nashville has become a mecca for all types of musical scenes in the last decade and Paramore were in the midst of a musical revolution. All while going to high school over the internet. Williams elaborated:
“Living in Nashville, it’s like everyone and their mom works in the music industry, so…anytime we played anywhere there was someone we got to play. It did happen really fast for us, but I remember, Jeremy had just graduated.”
“Taylor was still in school and I was still doing internet school, you know, like online classes. I was in a van doing school. It was tough, but I’m glad I got my diploma. It makes me feel better for not really being that good at math.”
“I think that’s one of the misconceptions of Nashville. Since we started playing shows the scene has grown really quickly and it’s amazing…There’s erally great house shows. The house that we used to go to got shut down. It was called the Gingerbread House. And they were some of the best shows that I’ve ever been to. “
While Paramore had fun playing at Nashville’s infamous house parties, some of their early touring experiences are not so fun, although they makes for great representative stories of the battles this now-popular band had to face in their tentative beginnings:
“We were on tour with this band called I Am The Avalanche. It was one of our first U.S. tours that we were opening up for a band and I know that on at least two accounts that night that I paid people to come in…Dude, I only got five bucks per diem a day…I’m sure the door was five dollars.”
“So I’m like, ‘OK. Here goes my corn nuts for the ride to the next city.’ Here we go…That that there were nine people at the show. It was great.”
Now acquiring enough spending cash for some road trip Corn Nuts is the least of Paramore’s daily preoccupations, although other than their impending studio time at the helm of the new year, there isn’t much that is worrying Paramore these days. And according to York, that freedom is inspiring:
“It’s been a lot of fun, man. None of us really know what we’re doing at this point. We’re just kind of making it up as we go along and I think a lot of really cool stuff has come out of that honestly because we don’t have it all figured out.”One of their desires is playing a big festival like Coachella, Bonnaroo, or Lollapalooza, although Williams thinks they just aren’t a “cool” enough band to play to the sweating, feathered masses on the polo fields of Indio:
“I would really loved to play Bonnaroo especially with it being in Tennessee. I feel like we’re not hip enough for Coachella. I really do. There’s so many bands that we love that play Coachella. I remember when Bjork played and I couldn’t go and it was the saddest day of my life, but I don’t know.”
Not believing they are “cool” enough falls squarely into their “music nerd” sentiments, although is obviously not true with massive musical hits coming out of box-office sensations like Twilight and Transformers.
Although, Williams explains, her dreams of getting a song on Twilight took a lot of tenacity:
“Twilight, I remember I read those books…I enjoyed them. I like vampires. What can I say? I remember being on a plane back from Europe and thinking that this new song we were writing would really fit for the movie and as soon as we all agreed that it would be OK, we started talking to the director.”
“I had like two or three meetings with her and it was like beating someone over the head with bricks to convince somebody that it was going to be the right move…We had written a song that I really believed in so much…Twilight blowing up like that was crazy. Never thought that would happen.”Williams also probably never thought Paramore’s immense, emotion-provoking success in Asia would happen either, but the Asian crowds adore Paramore–so much show that a show in Indonesia brought Williams to tears:
“It’s crazy hearing their accents when they sing. You know, I love that. It makes me teary-eyed. It’s an honor. “
“I remember they had a fireworks show to our song “Careful” and I remember I couldn’t hold back tears…It’s been really emotional and I think when you see stuff like that it sort of makes it all OK. People really care about the songs that we are playing. And that means so much. All the way across the world. The opposite side of it.”
From Iowa City to Indonesia, so much has changed for Paramore, including the pared down line-up, of which they are in no hurry to beef back up according to York:
“I think we are going to focus on the three of us. Who knows what the future holds?”
(credit: Kroq Radio)
part 1:
part 2:
