Sonia Karas sat down with Go Radio frontman, Jason Lancaster to do a follow up interview.
Sonia Karas: What do you love most about music, and what lead it to be such a big part of your life?
Jason Lancaster: Music is a preservation for memory. You know, I’ve always looked at music like a way to tell a story more than anything. It’s all about kind of, replaying home movies in your head and you’re just singing about them as they happen. You’re trying to tell that story, and I think that’s probably my favorite, is that I can just sing about something and immediately go back to exactly how I felt right then and there, whether it be happy or sad or pissed off or whatever it is. You know, just get right back into it and I think that’s probably my favorite thing about music.
As far as getting into music, my dad was key in that. He was a touring musician, I was conceived while he was on tour, I was on stage by the time I was 2 and playing guitar by the time I was 9, I was touring on breaks by the time I was 16, you know, I was playing in front of people by the time I was 13. It’s always been the biggest part of my life.
Is this where you had always imagined yourself being in life? Were there doubts about whether this was something you could really do?
It’s not even that I had always imagined doing this, it was that I could never imagine doing something else. You know, I look at any time that I haven’t spent on the road or writing music or producing music was just kind of wasting a lot of time until I got here.
What words would you give to young aspiring musicians?
Just don’t give up. For every one person that gives you a pat on the back ,there’s gonna be 100,000 that tell you you’re a dumbass for trying it, you know. You can ask ask any musician how many times when they were growing up, I was telling the last [interviewer], she was like “Well what did you want to be when you were growing up?”, well I was like I always wanted to be a rockstar. Everybody else wanted to be an astronaut or a cowboy, and to every teacher I ever had, cowboy was a lot more feasible than rockstar. It’s something that if you want it and you love it enough, then giving up isn’t an option. If it ever hits your head, if you’re ever like “No, I’m gonna quit”, and you can honestly imagine yourself doing anything else, this is not for you.
When you’re writing, do you have to be sad to write a sad song, or in love to write a love song?
Absolutely. I don’t write about anything that I’m not going through. If I’m writing a sad song it’s because I’m miserable and depressed, if I’m writing a really happy song it’s because I’m in a fantastic mood and I can’t stop smiling. You know, I’m writing a song talking about fighting someone it’s because 9 times out of 10 it’s because I wanted to just punch someone in the face.
So then would you say you’re songs are really about the moment?
Absolutely. Music in general is about the moment. You know, there’s never anything done musically that isn’t about right then. You know, like, even telling stories; one of the best song crafters of all time, Bob Dylan, he tells stories, but he doesn’t tell stories like “I once had this dog that died” he’s like, “My dog just fucking died”. You know, it’s all about right then, its all about capturing how you feel and being able to portray that.
Most of the songs on “Lucky Street” were written before you got to the studio. How did this effect the creation of “Lucky Street”? Would you say it added an aspect of a journey to the record?
I think this album especially we had…I don’t think the songwriting had so much to do with it because we’ve always written outside the studio. But I think this album is a lot more honest, it’s a lot more of “this is what we’re thinking right now so we’re gonna sing about it. We’re not gonna caption it for anybody, we’re not gonna censor it for anyone. Like, this is how we feel about stuff, and if you don’t like it then Go Radio isn’t the band for you. But it’s all about being completely honest with yourself and you listeners and with your band, with everyone you love.
I think any good album already has the journey already there. If you’re writing it in the studio then those songs should be telling the story of you in the studio, because like I said, any good song to me is capturing the moment that you’re in. It’s not “man, I remember when this happened”, it’s “holy shit this is happening!”, that’s what it’s about. We’ve written songs about just being stressed out in the studio, just wanting to punch the person next to you because you’ve been tracking the same guitar part for sixty minutes and it’s only a 30 second part, you know, we’ve been there. It’s something that i think can only be done beforehand. If you’re going to tell a journey about where you are on tour, you can’t tell that in the studio, because you’re not on tour. You’re someplace different making new memories that; you can write about those if you want to, but it’s like you’re doing something completely different, why would you try to lie to everyone? To me, if I was sitting right here writing a song about what a great time I’m having with my girlfriend back home, well, I don’t have a girlfriend back home, but if I did and I was writing a song about that, that’s like being on the phone with someone and being like “I’m at the movies”, when you’re at the fair. It’s fake, and it’s not what we’re about.
After reading some of the comments on your track by track piece with Alternative Press, it’s very obvious that fans had extremely emotional, yet positive responses. It’s gotta be crazy to know you have that much of an emotional impact on people.
It’s something every artist strives for, you know, not even musicians, but artists in general. If you’re painting, or making furniture, or you’re making a building, you know, like being an architect. It’s something that everyone strives for, is to connect to the people who appreciate that at an emotional level, and for them to know what you’re thinking when you’re building it. You know, I don’t know anything about architecture but I mean, that person who built that (points to building across the street) was going “wow, I hope that this is pleasing to the eye for people, I hope that it hits the skyline in the right way, I hope it adds to the beauty of this city rather than take away from it”. When I’m writing a song, I hope that I can portray this emotion, I hope that I can get out through my words and voice that I’m upset about something or I’m really happy about something. I hope that whoever is listening to it can identify with it, hear it, and go, “this song makes me a little bit sad right now because I’m either going through something similar or I can hear how sad he is doing it. And I know that that’s helping, and to know that that’s actually working, and to know that people are attaching themselves to Go Radio and myself in that manner is awe inspiring, it makes you want to work harder, and it makes you want to keep going and never give up.
What influenced the incorporation different instruments, like the horns on Fight, Fight?
We’ve all been musicians for the better part of our lives. I’ve only recently picked up piano, I’ve played different horns and things like that. It’s always been something that’s been a big part of everybody. You know, usually it’s just set off in the background and done with a computer, and we went into this record and wanted everything to be real, we don’t want to auto-tune our vocals, we don’t want to make guitar tones in a computer box, we don’t want to have a synthesized piano, we want all this stuff to be real. So we went in and anything we found that sounded cool we tried to find a place for it. And actually, for the horns sections like in “Fight, Fight”, we sent them down to our friend in Texas, his name is Matt Agrella, an amazing musician, and he laid horns for us, so it’s actually real horns. We had a four piece quartet come in and do all the string parts, there are no synthesized strings on there. I learned to play, it’s like a crazy piano, it’s called a Hammond b3, it’s like an organ, and I learned to play that. It’s like the hardest instrument I’ve ever played in my entire life, but I had to learn to play it good enough to do a decent solo on it, you know, because we were that committed to it. It’s something that was never really an option to us, because everything was going to be real on this record.
Is there ever a sense of emotional relief when you finish recording, like “oh my god I’m so happy I got that off my back”?
It’s not even to get it off my back, I have a, it’s weird how we do stuff. When we’re writing it, it’s when that thought gets into me. Like I have a problem, if I write a song, and I don’t write it with the band, I’ll write the song to its completion and bring the band in and then we’ll write it again together and kind of go over everything. But when something’s not working like that, like we’re on the road or something, I have this horrible tendency to just keep re-writing that song over and over and over again. You know, anytime I get back in that mood like, if I write a sad song one day and don’t immediately go in and put it down with the band and get everything together on it, then if I’m sad the next day I’ll go straight back to that song and just add stuff and take stuff away and just keep re-writing. So it’s really whenever the band and everyone goes “these are my parts”, then that’s when the weight is lifted, and I just go “I can move on now! Oh god yes, I can finally do something different with my time!”
There was definitely a lot of hype surrounding “Lucky Street”. Did you ever feel pressured to create something that would live up to everyone’s expectations?
I hope so, you know, the fans are all really into it. We don’t get negative feedback, you know, we see people singing it, like tonight, we haven;t played New York City in three months probably, since the Fearless Friends Tour, you know, and that was before the record came out. That was a tour that was pretty much ideal for our genre and we had fans there that were singing along, but tonight we had people singing the new songs we were playing. It’s like, “You guys know these, this is incredible I’m so stoked on this, this is amazing I can’t believe this is actually happening right now!” because you know everyone has their favorites, you know like everyone will sing “Goodnight Moon” at the top of their lungs forever, but tonight people were singing “Singing With The King” louder than I was. It’s so amazing, it’s breathtaking.
What parallels would you say run between the album and the title track?
Lucky Street was, absolutely, it was the first song that we wrote that made it into this record. It was actually written for the EP but we wrote it and we got our parts together and we listened to it and we demoed it out and we go, “we’re not ready for this song yet”, you know. It’s about a dream I had, I was sleeping at a hotel in North Carolina somewhere, and I was in the same bed with Alex and he actually had to move to the floor because in this dream I was running in my sleep, punching him in the face and just screaming at the top of my lungs. He had to get on the floor and put in earplugs just to be able to sleep that night. I was in New York City, I don’t even know if there’s a Lucky Street in New York City, but I was in the city and I was on Lucky Street and everything was black and white and I was watching the world end. You know things were like, crashing down all around me just going crazy, just everything is super insane. And at the end of it, I’m like everyone is running this way, and I’m running back that way, you know against the flow or whatever. Just watching everything end and everyone’s dying and everyone’s screaming and at the end of it it was just, you look up in the sky and there are just millions and millions and millions of bright red balloons and they’re the only color in the entire dream, but they’re so vivid and they’re so there. And I got up and just started writing and just started putting it down, and we felt like it was kind of like saying “even in the worst of everything, you know, as bad as it gets, the word is literally ending and you can still look up and see beauty. You know, like there’s still something fucking awesome right there, you just gotta keep your eye focused on it long enough to forget the bullshit around you. We didn’t feel like we were ready as a band to portray that message. We didn’t feel like our fans were ready to hear that yet coming from us and we didn’t feel like we could do it justice. So we decided what we were going to do with this record and we go, “we’re doing Lucky Street, god damnit it’s gonna happen. We’re making an honest record, this is how we feel about shit and this is what it’s gonna be”. So we started reworking it and we started putting it together and I feel like it does encompass a lot of the record itself. There’s beauty in everything, but also there’s disgust in everything; there’s a little but of good and a little bit of bad in everything good or bad, and I feel that’s what the record is about. Like, finding the good in everything no matter how bad it is.
So did you feel like it was a good decision to wait on that one?
Absolutely. It’s not one of the most popular songs on the record, but I feel like it does a lot for people. It’s one of those things that people come back to and listen to later and get it a little bit more, and go, “oh, I get it now! There we go, this all makes perfect sense, hooray!”.
Do you find that lyrically you pull a lot of you influence from other bands or literature?
I honestly just kind of write stuff. Even right now, we’re sitting here talking and I got something in my head going doo doo doo doo(as he continues to sing this rhythm to me). I don’t think that hard about lyrics when I’m writing them. For stuff like the EP I actually did the opposite, like I went in and kind of had to rework stuff. Like I was sitting there writing and I was like “no one’s gonna like this. I have to make this poppier, I have to make this catchier, I have to make this less offensive to some people. You know, because we’ve got songs like, one of my favorite songs on the record called “Redemption In The Verse” and it starts off it’s just straight up just like, “I don’t know if there’s a god”. It says, “Today a daughter will hug her father and ask ‘When’s Jesus coming back?’ He wonders, should he even bother with the words?”, and it’s about going “what the fuck is happening, I don’t know what to believe because everyone is telling me different shit, and there’s thirteen thousand books that say the same god damn thing but use different words and then people start wars over them!”, you know, so like what the fuck? So if you’re up there, fucking stop it! You know like it hits the chorus and it says, “but let’s all keep singing the same song”, you know, even if you’re wrong keep singing the same song. It’s like, who gives a shit you know? Like we’re sitting in New York fucking City, you know 9/11 happened here because someone thinks a little bit differently about what is essentially the same book, you know? You get into something like that and a lot of people aren’t ready for that, a lot of people don’t want to hear that song. They wanna hear, “I miss some girl back home”, and that’s oil and water, those things don’t go together. So I did consciously try to like, I don’t want to say dumb down because dumb down isn’t the word for it, but kind of like write more towards those people, and on this record we didn’t do that at all. We were like “fuck it”(laughs). I don’t know if that really answers your question, I kind of went off on a tangent there.
I know you chose to have Tim O’Heir produce your album. What were you looking for in a producer, and how did you come to choose Tim?
We were looking for someone who loved the songs as much as we did. We didn’t care about the sound as much as we did about someone who just got it. You know, there’s so many people who would’ve picked up the project and done it, and maybe even done it cheaper, but at the end of the day if we went with someone else they might not have appreciated the songs, they might not have gotten the image we were going for, they might not have gotten the meanings behind it. That’s something that you really can’t replace in a record. If I’m singing about “what the fuck are you doing God”, and this guy is interpreting it as “I’m missing this girl back home”, then we’re getting the “missing this girl back home” record. So it was really important to find someone that wasn’t afraid to kind of go outside of the box on this one.
What has life been like after the release of “Lucky Street”?
Busy(laughs). We’ve just been touring and moving and just trying to hit as many areas as possible. You know, we had a great first week, like we’re looking at by the end of this month, we’ll have cleared 10,000 units and that’s incredible for us, like we’re super stoked on it. We’ve just been working, working working working. We shot a video for “Any Other Heart” last week, I’m super excited about it. I’m just really excited about everything right now.
Typically, horseshoes are shown upside down as a good luck charm, to represent the shoe holding all the good luck. Is there any symbolism behind the horseshoe on the artwork for “Lucky Street”?
Yeah, absolutely, it’s definitely symbolism. On the record, on the back of it there’s the house, it’s the red door and the upside down horseshoe. And what we kind of wanted to symbolize was, everything around if fucking beautiful, you know, like the house itself is ragged but it’s kind of like rustic and just a great looking thing, and it looks like everything is perfect there, you know? And then you look into it deeper and it’s about, you know there’s the red door, which usually red is a symbol for passion, but also hate. And the upside down horseshoe is symbolism for there’s something fucked up in there. Like everything looks great but something’s not right with it, and that’s kind of what we wanted to portray with it.
You guys just came off a tour with Chiodos, Emarosa and Decoder. What is the change in dynamics like going in tour with bands like A Rocket To the Moon and Anarbor?
We don’t ever really switch gears. That’s the thing that I think is setting Go Radio apart right now, is that we play the same set, not the exact same set, but we play the same way to everybody. You know, like we’re not trying to get Chiodos fans to think we’re Chiodos, we’re not trying to make Rocket fans think we’re A Rocket To The Moon. We’re trying to let them both hear, “Hey, we’re Go Radio”.
Do you enjoy the studio process of creating music more, or the performance aspect of playing concerts?
It varies. I love, I’m always creating music. I bring a protools rig with me everywhere I go, you know? There’s something releasing about recording that is like you write and record and create all this stuff and it’s therapeutic, it makes things better. That’s awesome, but then at the same time, you know, like, coming to New York on the other side of the country from where I’m from, and seeing people sing songs that mean so much to me and that obviously mean so much to them , that’s amazing. It’s awe-inspiring and it’s apples and oranges when you try and compare the two.
Do you have any guilty pleasures to help pass the time on the road?
No, I mean like, we play X-Box a lot, I’m a huge Call of Duty fan, Red Dead Redemption, all that kind of stuff, that’s my jam. I spend a lot of time with friends, I spend a lot of time with our fans, and we drink considerable amounts of alcohol. But yeah, we like to have fun and we like to be here and we like to be everywhere that we can be, and wee like to have fun while we’re there. That’s kind of what we go for.
Sonia Karas