| On the phone with TAY JARDINE of WE ARE THE IN CROWD. |
| Written by Sarah Mudgway |
| Monday, 08 August 2011 00:59 |
 TAY JARDINE isn’t like every other girl. With a love for Disney, a respect for Pink and a belief in self-respect, Jardine spends most of her life on the road, making up one fifth of the pop-punk band WE ARE THE IN CROWD. Having signed to Hopeless Records in 2009 after being discovered online, the band have gone from strength to strength in their career, playing festivals across the world, winning fans over with their EP ‘Guaranteed To Disagree’ and more recently, the band have finished recording their debut full-length AND are heading to Australia as part of Counter Revolution. Sound busy? They are! Co-vocalist Tay Jardine was kind enough to take some time out from her busy schedule to talk to us here at Coup De Main about the importance of self-respect, important lessons from the road, and all about what fans can expect from their upcoming album 'Best Intentions'... P.S. We Are The In Crowd are set to play COUNTER REVOLUTION in Australia from September 24th to October 3rd! Click HERE for the tour dates and ticketing information. COUP DE MAIN: For anyone who doesn’t know We Are The In Crowd, tell us a little about your band. WE ARE THE IN CROWD - TAY JARDINE: We are a five-piece band, pop-punk music, sort of I guess. All genres are kind of different these days, I feel like everyone perceives things differently but I guess fun music, upbeat for the most part, guy and girl vocals... fun. CDM: You’re heading to Australia in a few months for Counter Revolution, are you excited? TAY JARDINE: We’re beyond excited! It’s going to be our first time in Australia so we’re very excited to see what it’s all about and meet new fans that we’ve never played in front of before, so it should be really really awesome for us. CDM: What other bands on the festival are you most excited to play with? TAY JARDINE: The line-up is really really big but it’s going to be cool to see friends of ours - we’ll just be getting off a tour with All Time Low so it’ll be cool to be back out with them, and I’m actually really excited to see Relient K. I haven’t seen them play ever and they are one of my favourite bands so that’ll be awesome. CDM: What can fans expect from your live show? TAY JARDINE: Lots of energy! Especially at festivals we seem to be really energetic, I don’t know if it's because of the free energy drinks that are usually at festivals or if it’s just because we’re so excited but we have a really good time and we like to get everybody involved in that good time, so definitely a lot of energy. CDM: Do you know if you’re doing any side-shows at this point? TAY JARDINE: Yeah I’m not sure exactly which things we are but I am pretty sure we are. We’re there for about two weeks so I think there will be something but that will all be posted and updated as soon as we know what’s going on. CDM: And of course all your New Zealand fans want to know if you think We Are The In Crowd will ever come here? TAY JARDINE: I hope so! I got a few tweets from some people there and I know a lot of people are going over for Soundwave Revolution, but I really hope so. I mean a goal of our band is to play, well, everywhere in the world so that would be great. Maybe if you guys talk enough about us we’ll be welcome over there! <laughs> CDM: You have been touring on your EP ‘Guaranteed To Disagree’ for over a year now - how excited are you to be releasing a new album shortly? TAY JARDINE: Really excited! With the EP it was so hard because you know, you tour with bands who are making their set-lists every night and then we have the same [set-list each night] as we don’t have any other material <laughs> so it’ll be good to be able to mix things up and play more songs... and play new songs as after awhile you get sick of your own music. I can’t wait and all the songs, I mean, I really like the way everything is coming out so far. CDM: What can you tell us about the album? TAY JARDINE: There are definitely more dynamics in it. With the EP we were limited to the types of songs we had on there so this one we’ve got more dynamics, we have a few ballads on there and the girl and guy vocals are still there obviously, but we tried to make it a little less of a gimmick I guess. As a band we never thought that would be something we would do, we just utilized the fact that we had two singers so it’s going to be cool. Some of the songs are still male and female perspectives on certain situations but I’d say it’s like 60/40 in the sense that we have also have a good amount of songs that are Jordan [Eckes] and I singing about the same thing, or songs where we are accompanying each other so that will be a little different but still us. CDM: I was wondering if you could clear up something that’s confused a lot of fans - you recently dropped off a tour with Taking Back Sunday due to recording, however you had previously stated the album was finished. Have you had to go back and record more? TAY JARDINE: I don’t think that was as clear on the Internet as what actually did happen. We recorded the record in Georgia, and the actual ten-song record has been finished but we still have to record acoustic tracks, B-sides and our bonus material. That was all set in our schedule, but it was a really tough decision that none of us wanted to do. I kind of wish it was a little more clear but I understand because it was like "well we’re finished... but we’re not finished" so people got confused but basically... the record is not finished, but the ten songs that will be on the CD are finished so that was that whole mix-up. I felt awful and it’s also something that’s really hard for us to deal with as Taking Back Sunday was a tour that was given to us that we were so stoked on and really excited about and unfortunately it sometimes comes down to a decision, like in this instance we had to worry between this is our first full-length ever: so do we make it everything it can be and not cut corners? Or do we go on a tour that we’re really excited about? So we decided to cut the losses and looking down the road we’ll have a record that’s permanent and we’ll be really happy with what we did. CDM: Exactly, and who knows maybe you’ll get another chance to tour with Taking Back Sunday in the future. TAY JARDINE: Hopefully yeah. CDM: How did We Are The In Crowd approach writing the album? TAY JARDINE: Every song is a little different, but the five of all write everything and we each have our hands in each little part of it. It definitely takes longer that way, we started writing a year ago and just finished writing in May, but for the most part it always starts with a guitar riff or melody and we work off of that. As far as lyrics go, Jordan and I will always have the ultimate yes or no but everybody is welcome to put forward ideas. We never take anyone’s ideas for granted; we try absolutely everything until there is something we like. CDM: You have been working with Zac Odom and Kenneth Mount for your full-length - a duo who you worked with on your EP as well as bands such as All Time Low and Cartel. What was it like working with them? TAY JARDINE: It’s great. We consider them the sixth and seventh band members; they’ve become part of our family and friends. To be in a studio with them is one of the best things you can ask for when you’re recording as if everything is comfortable and there’s good vibes - and they’re also hilarious - if everything is easy going it’s a lot easier to get everything done. CDM: You are part of a new generation of bands who have received their start online - what advice would you give to a band starting out from your experience? TAY JARDINE: It’s really important to embrace that. You need to answer as many questions as possible from fans, comment as much as you can and keep everybody involved. I mean, [on] Twitter you can follow somebody and already feel like you know them, so the more [the fans] feel involved the better. It’s even more important to keep up with it, as your band grows it's obviously harder to tweet or ever reply or something like that, but I still read them all and if something catches my attention I will always mention them or something like that. It’s good to read everything and see what they’re thinking. CDM: Do you ever find it strange having fans come up to you with all this personal information when you haven’t ever met them before? TAY JARDINE: Absolutely! There are some people who remind me of things I tweeted months ago that I can’t for the life of me remember and they’ll try to engage this whole conversation in it and I just kind of nod like 'yeah' as I can't remember it, so that’s definitely kind of weird. It’s ultimately good though, at least they’re paying attention and that one tweet I forgot about they remembered. CDM: We Are The In Crowd have had a lot of positive experiences from the Internet, but as a whole the music industry is struggling with the Internet in terms of music piracy and illegal downloads. How do bands find the balance between the positive and negative aspects of the Internet? TAY JARDINE: It’s hard to find the balance, but I think the balance is when you play a show and everyone is singing back to you, I think that’s when you can say like "you know, however they got this music it's working, which ever way they got it." As long as some people buy some merch and you can make it to the next show, then it’s a job well done. It does bum me out though, I mean we all wish there wasn’t as much piracy but it's nothing that can be stopped, we just have to work with it you know. CDM: Is being open with your fans via Twitter and Tumblr something as a band you decided to do? TAY JARDINE: Yeah, there’s a lot of things that as a band we discuss in situations like that. I mean we obviously censor ourselves a little due to the fact I’m sure there are a lot of younger fans who read our Twitter and stuff like that, but we like to let people know what movie we just watched and things like that. Even when people come up to us and ask us personal questions we try to be as honest as possible, because it's important... if somebody looks up to you it’s important to be honest with them because if you’re not they’re looking up to you for the wrong reasons... they’re not looking up to you, they’re looking up to this person you created. CDM: You recently posted a blog on your Tumblr account about the need for girls (and guys) to have self-respect. Being one of the few female frontwomen in your music scene right now, do you ever feel a sense of duty to be spreading the message of self-respect to your fans? TAY JARDINE: I never looked at it like it was my duty but I have realized that the way I carry myself may not be the way that some other people do in the industry. And it’s not even specifics, when I do write things like that my main purpose is to let people know that these things exist and in my opinion you shouldn’t be like that and that there are easier ways. Like if it is for attention or whatever reasons, there are better ways to carry yourself. I really appreciate even anybody reading things like that and it’s really cool that you would even mention that as sometimes I feel like you don’t get through to a lot of people when you say things like that. So I don’t think it’s my duty but I think it's important for people to realize that it is how I think and how I see things, just being honest. CDM: Are there any particular female musicians you look up to? TAY JARDINE: Totally. From like since I was twelve until today I absolutely love Pink and it is almost embarrassing as lots of people don’t even listen to her anymore <laughs> but morally the way she carries herself I think is hilariously awesome. She’s really humourous but she always shows her true self and I just really like her voice. So yeah, I’ve always looked up to her. CDM: In a blog you said that you’re currently getting a tangible education - what is the best thing you have learned so far? TAY JARDINE: So much, every tour we take something from the road whether it be the equipment that the headliner had that sounded amazing but we’d never heard of it before, so we’ll talk to them about that, or the stage presence of someone I really admired... things like that. And then just you know, living on the road is a whole new world, it is something that’s different for everyone and everyone handles it differently, if they wrote a book on it you could only learn so much. We learn tonnes. CDM: Has there been a particularly hard lesson that you’ve had to learn? TAY JARDINE: I’m sure there has been, even the Taking Back Sunday tour situation was a really difficult decision and it was something that may not happen to every band but it happened to us. We got stuck between a rock and a hard place where we kind of weren’t sure what to do, we wanted both but we couldn’t do both, things like that we learn from. Like, maybe we could have scheduled our record a little earlier so we had more time, but you know we didn’t know how long it was going to take so there are always things you can take from situations like this. That was the big one just recently, just how to figure out how we can avoid that happening again. CDM: I know We Are The In Crowd have worked with the non-profit Keep A Breast, are there any other non-profit organisations you get behind? TAY JARDINE: Keep A Breast is one of the main ones, I remember when our band first started I had done some things with them. I’m sure there are a lot of non-profits that we all kind of like hung around or supported, Skate For Cancer is really cool... CDM: It feels like recently it has become more common for bands to have ties to a non-profit. Do you think it’s important for a band to show support for non-profits? TAY JARDINE: I think it's important if it is something they are really into, then why not? They’re out here just trying to raise awareness so it can’t hurt you, you might as well help them out. Oh, another one is the Dear Jack foundation - we shared a bus with them on Warped and they become some of our best friends so that’s another one we definitely support. I think it’s also a situation unfortunately with the times of change with record sales and making any money off of your music it’s also a decision you need to make financially, like if you’re going to release an album with a non-profit you need to make sure you can afford it too, unfortunately. CDM: When you posted a picture of the recording board from your recording sessions, we noticed your column was full of Disney-themed drawings. Here at Coup De Main we love Disney also, so we were wondering... if you could be any Disney character who would you be? TAY JARDINE: <laughs> That’s amazing! Yeah I’m a huge Disney fan. I would probably be Ariel I think, she is one of my favourites. She was on my bed-sheets as a kid, I think I still have them somewhere. She’s one of my favourites! CDM: Do you have any final words for your New Zealand and Australian fans? TAY JARDINE: I’m excited to see you all! I hope you all come out to our set and I hope to meet everyone that would be awesome. Listen to WE ARE THE IN CROWD's new song 'Rumor Mill' - from their upcoming debut album 'Best Intentions' - below... Watch the 'Best Intentions' album trailer below... |
