I love this album! It’s so awesome to play loudly...

I love this album! It’s so awesome to play loudly with the windows down, singing way out of key, and just having fun with. I bought it when it came out and it has only recently grabbed a hold of me, so reading the band’s insight into each song is getting me pumped for my next car ride to work. :)

valenciarock:

In honor of us gearing up to record our next album, I wanted to incite you all to break out our last album: “We All Need A Reason To Believe.” A while back Shane and I made a track-by-track overview of some stories and anecdotes about the record. We thought it’d be cool to read about some things that we hadn’t really talked about before regarding the writing and recording process.

So Break out your CD’s, Ipods, Zunes, Hard Drives, Cd-R’s, Cassette tapes or whatever you have our album saved on and take a listen though while reading our stories:

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Better Be Prepared –

SHANE - This was one of the first songs written about everything that happened. It is funny how it came about because we were leaving for a show and I picked up a guitar and started playing the chorus chords and the melody just popped in my head.

BRENDAN - We wrote the chorus while leaving for a show. We were just frustrated with writing and i just remember saying “how hard could it be? we’re making this way more difficult than it has to be”. Then Shane just busted into “back door, back door” and It ended up just sticking in our heads all day.

SHANE - From there I drew inspiration from what my mind was going through at the time. It was like I was looking for something that wasn’t there, and I wasn’t allowing myself to come to terms with reality. That’s basically how the imagery came about, and how lyrically it is a song about searching and finding.
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Holiday –

BRENDAN - This was a song that we started working on after hearing JD play the intro riff at practice. We always go back and forth and play random riffs and I remember this riff specifically catching my ear after JD played it and we worked on the song all day until we came up with what you hear on the record. We really didn’t change very much after that initial writing session.

SHANE - Holiday was just a fun and simple song, we wrote it pretty fast and I was thinking about how everything seemed different when I would come home from tour. I drew a lot of inspiration from the weather (wintertime), and reactions of my friends and family about coming home after going through what I have been through. The bridge is basic and to the point, “we all need a reason to believe.” I was looking for hope and something positive to say, and those words were exactly the way I was feeling; so much so that we named the record after it.
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Where Did You Go? –

SHANE - WDYG? started out as a song I had for a side project I was doing called Promise of Redemption. We changed a lot of things around to make it what it is today, and I can recall going through countless versions of this song trying to make it perfect. It is a song I am very proud of, and I feel that it gives the listener a look into my head about what it was like trying to write for this record with everything else going on in life, “It feels like this is the last chance for me to say, that deep down inside I’m hurting but at least I know your worth it.”

BRENDAN - I remember Shane came to practice and wanted to try and work the song out. Immediately the drum beat came and I had Max play it. It took a good while for the pre-chorus and chorus to come into fruition and this final version is probably the 5th or 6th version of the song.
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Head In Hands –

SHANE - This was one of the more aggressive songs on the record. It was nearing the end of our writing sessions before we had to record (one of three songs we finished in California), and I remember feeling pretty angry about what was going on. That’s pretty much how it lead to being as up-tempo and aggressive as it is. This lyrically deals with what was going on in my life feeling like I was confused about where everything was leading, “stuck always catching up.” I was fighting my self when it came to everything and questioning whether or not everything was good enough and if i was really doing the right thing, “Head in hands I find, that I’ve been fighting the words it just isn’t worth my time.” It is truly a song about being stressed out.

BRENDAN - I remember this being specifically the last week before we left and we were getting really frustrated with things. We had been just writing and writing and not really finishing things. So just before this we had decided that things were getting crazy and we needed to focus on the other songs and not write anymore. Not 10 minutes after our talk about not writing new songs I remembered a riff that I had come up with a while back and started playing it. Shane started singing it and we all started jamming and Head In Hands was born.
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Carry On –

BRENDAN- This was the only ballad that we ever finished. I had wanted to write a ballad with Valencia for so long. We have attempted so many times and it always came out contrived and forced. I just remember this song flowing so well. I had the delay guitar riff written and a basic idea for the song and one day at practice it just sort of came together.

A funny anecdote about this was when we were mixing the song we would have to e-mail back and forth with our notes. I remember the only notes that were sent back after hearing the first mix was: “those strings make me want to cream my pants”. In other words: the song had come out perfectly. The lead guitar riff was created using a tube tape echo. It’s sort of an old school version of the guitar pedal but it comes in a big box and it has actual tapes moving around in it and tubes to give it a really unique sound. It was pretty cool and definitely gave the right feel. This is the song I’m most proud of on the record.

SHANE - This is the slowest of all the songs we wrote and to have seen it grow to what it is now with the strings and other production on it is just astounding. The song is about how everyone else seemed to have just forgotten or moved on from the things that were still affecting me in my life. I wrote the lyrics on the back of a receipt during a train ride home from NYC to visit my throat doctor after I had throat surgery. It was like I was just stuck waiting for good news, or something good to happen to me. It also touches on how everyone is always just “waiting for good news,” at some point or another.
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All At Once –

SHANE - This is another of the more aggressive songs on the record. This song was actually written on an acoustic guitar and the verse was a lot slower than it turned out to be. It handles the subject of getting up and moving on from the things that hold you down, even though there is always that feeling there is just not enough time to fix all of the problems that we all deal with on a daily basis.

BRENDAN – We worked on this song while on tour. It was demoed and written in the van for the most part. Once we got home we created the rock! The intro really came together only when we got in as a full band and rocked it out. One specific memory was: when we were being sent mixes of the song we had to walk miles and miles to download the song, it was totally worth it. This is one of my favorite songs sonically. When I went to New York to have the song mastered, Howie Weinberg (the guy who mastered the album) was so excited how this song came out that he sat me down in his special chair (explaining that he did the same with Kurt Cobain, Bono and other huge rockstars unlike myself) and I will never hear that song the same way again.
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Safe to say –

SHANE - I wrote the riff to Safe to Say in the van in Dallas texas, it was a rainy night and I recorded it originally on my phone. This was another song that was written slow and sped up to become what it is now. We played with different intros, one which sounded exactly like U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name.” I was feeling like writing something that told a little more of my story. It mentions my hometown and the days where we would relax and let the sun go up and down leaving us with no worries. It also portrays the feeling like I was living in a dream, “Is it safe to say in the morning you’ll come back, and things will be the same.”

BRENDAN - I remember working on this song in the parking lot of the Chain Reaction with Shane. He had recorded it a few days earlier and a lot slower. We were on the Hit The Lights tour and just inspired by our pop punk roots and this song came out of that. The original version of the record had a huge U2 sounding intro but we ended up cutting it for the final album version.
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Listen Up –

BRENDAN - This song was one that George and I worked on back and forth via instant message late at night. I would send him a version and then he would send me his rebuttal/changes and we would go on until the song became what it is today. We brought it to practice, jammed it out full band and Shane worked his magic making it one of our favorite songs on the album. Another note of this song is the first time I ever played a Rickenbacker guitar was on this song.

SHANE - One of the lightest of all the songs, and one of the ones that came together rather quickly. We were graced with the guest vocals of Kenny Vasoli, a good friend and a very talented musician. This song was a lot of fun to work on, it has a bright and up beat feel to it and just screams different melodies that could be put to it. I had this vision of what it was like every time I left for tour, and lyrically thats what came out. It deals with leaving and coming back constantly. When Kenny came in to sing, I had left the bridge wide open so we could work on it together. We both sat down with guitars, I told him the subject of the song played it for him and with in minutes he had an idea and we went with it. Listen Up always had a counting crows vibe to me so I went with it, and let the melodies flow.
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I Can’t See Myself –

SHANE - Giving some insight into this song is a little difficult because it was written so long ago, it was almost left out of the record. I was really excited to hear the song re-recorded with the production that was done to it. We gave it some life with a lot of different effects and studio type changes. It was fun to take something old and make it new again. If you listen closely to the second verse you can hear my vocal version of a tom hit, and snare hit. Yes you heard me right, I was just kidding around on the mic but Ariel actually liked it in there! I’m not kidding, BEAT BOXING. now go listen!!

BRENDAN – This is oldest song on the album. The idea for this song was born almost immediately after TCBAP came out. We started working on new songs and we had the intro riff. We jammed on the riff for months and months but no songs came. I remember riding in the van (our first van, Ethel, way back in the day) and was playing an acoustic guitar with that riff for a while. Finally the next part came out and the chorus just flowed and we were all singing melodies and throwing out ideas. The song was pretty much all written right then and there on a 5 hour drive to Pittsburgh for the first show of a tour. Obviously once we got some drums and electric guitars it change quite a bit, but the basic idea came together in the van.
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The Good Life –

SHANE - Ah finally, the Good life. My favorite song on the record, and in my opinion some of the best imagery that I have written. I wanted to write about my memories and let everyone know how happy I really am to be able to do what I do. It is all about thinking back to “the good ol’ days.” It is basically my tribute to getting through a stage in my life that I never thought I would have to go through, and also letting everyone know that I will never forget. It is also the song that was written with the exact day that my life was turned upside down in the back of my head, (The bridge touches upon that day lyrically) and how pushing through and remember the good things in life is the only way to handle it.

BRENDAN - This was another van-written song. I was in the back of the van with my computer and a guitar and mapped out the chords and riffs for the song. It was originally a string-laden ballad. Clearly didn’t stay that way. I crawled to the front of the van and collaborated with Shane and the lyrics started flowing and the majority of the song was written while driving through the mountains of Utah.
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Free –

BRENDAN - This was the last song written on the album. I had the riff and the intro recorded on my computer for ages and a bit of a song structure recorded. We even jammed with the original structure but it wasn’t until one specific show at the Palladium that we finished the song that ended up sticking. We were hanging out backstage and just really excited to get working on the song and the chorus, verse and a rough version of the bridge came out right then and there. The bridge actually was the last thing written. We had the idea for the epic build up at the end of the song, but didn’t write the lyrics and the layered parts until the day we actually recorded it. This ended up being most of our favorite single parts on the album. The last chorus with the whispering at the end was Shane reading from a weird book on Shamans and Witches that we reversed and put in the bridge… it’s pretty creepy if you think about it that way.

SHANE - What could be said about this song that the name doesn’t already give away. It is the third of three songs finished in California. What some people don’t know about this is that it is somewhat inspired by the music industry and how fucked up it is that they put a strangle hold on everything from image to even the music. All I wanted to do was be free of it and just be allowed to write and sing these songs in peace with out having this constant weight on my shoulders that I need to look a certain way or be a certain way. This song should be an anthem for anyone trying to stand up and do something new, even when there is someone or thing holding you back. I had been through so much and it was my turn to scream it from wherever I wanted that I was dying to feel free of all judgement and pain from everything that happened in my life. It is a statement to let everyone know that I can live without the spotlight if I have to, the most important thing is the music and the message, this was my middle finger to everyone telling me who I had to be, “do you feel like me? have you been through what I’ve been through?” It closes out the record for a reason, that reason being that through the whole process of writing these songs I found something to believe in, the music, and that alone is what set me Free.

We hope you enjoyed this record to the fullest, and make each song your own.

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OVERALL EXPLANATION BY JD: The record was a two-year writing, recording, and hair-pulling process. We had more than enough time to write the record which was both a blessing and drawback in the same breath.

We recorded in LA for three months, residing in Hollywood. Not the my favorite city in the world but it made for a fun, storytelling experience. We woke up to sidewalk-shows every morning with people dressed as comic book and movie characters. We can just say that the guy dressed as Darth Vader is the inspiration behind the record.

We recorded guitar and vocals in the studio that is behind the Elliot Smith “Figure 8” artwork wall. We used Jon from Eve 6’s Marshall JCM 800 and our producer picked up an old Selmer Combo which was made famous as George Harrison’s signature amp. We also recorded one of the b-sides in the studio that Metallica just finished recording “Death Magnetic” the week prior.

We wrote and re-wrote over 40 songs, probably coming up with 2-3 different ways that each song should sound. As you could imagine we had quite the task ahead of us until we could complete the record. We actually went through four different demo sessions in three different studios until we finally came to a batch of 15 solid songs we were confident in to record.