Among Legends - Sound In The Signals Interview
First off, thanks for the interview.
Thanks for letting us speak with you!
Can you tell me a little about your band, how you got started, and what got you interested in music?
Among Legends is a pop-punk band from the Kitchener-Waterloo area of Ontario. When we started, it was Mitchell on drums and vocals, with Mackenzie on guitar. We started just doing covers of blink-182, State Champs, Coheed & Cambria - stuff we liked and wanted to use as a jumping-off point. Over the summer of 2015, we pulled Anthony in on bass, and Cameron joined us on lead guitar in December, about 5-6 weeks before we recorded the Charles St EP. Mackenzie’s work schedule was too hectic for our band plans, so we’re trying our hand at operating as a trio for now. Mackenzie’s like our competitive intelligence / market research guy.
We’ve all always loved playing and listening to music. It’s amazing watching bands do what they love onstage, and that live energy is infectious. We started off just doing covers of songs we liked, practicing technical parts and using it as an outlet to play for the sake of playing. But it became pretty serious pretty quickly in the fall of 2015.
You talk about wanting to change the narrative and the perception of pop/punk. As a band how have you been doing that?
Pop-punk gets a bad rap. People think it’s immature, that it’s mostly guys singing about how all the women in their lives are horrible, heart-breaking, evil people, that it glamorizes sadness and depression and despair. A lot of pop-punk bands fit this mold - a lot of bands break it, too - but that’s the stereotype of the genre right now, especially for people who might not know a lot about pop-punk.
We want to change that stereotype, inside the scene and outside of it. We want to write songs that inspire people, song that make people feel good about themselves, songs that encourage and energize. If we sing about life struggles - heartbreak, losing someone close, addiction, whatever it is - we’ll always include a message that goes beyond the in-the-moment feelings. It might feel good to hear a song that reflects exactly what you feel at any given time, but we don’t want to encourage someone in a low spot to stay in that low spot. We want to make music that feels real and relatable - but also moves listeners somewhere new. And we’ll never write songs that blame women for all of the world’s problems. It’s unfair, inaccurate, and wildly naive to blame women for everything, and equally so to absolve men of blame in every life struggle.
The Charles St. EP is your debut EP. What went into the writing process of the EP and what was the recording process like?
The songs were written over the summer of 2015. We each brought in lyrics or music that we liked from our own personal collections, and we tried to identify what we liked about it and how to translate those elements into pop-punk songs. I pull from punk rock and ska, Mackenzie is on the more technical side of pop-punk, and Anthony pulls from classic rock and funk. Cameron is the world’s biggest pop-punk fan, so he brought a real focused pop-punk sound to his lead guitar parts. For this EP, Mitchell did most of the lyrics and music, but it’s now more evenly split between Mitchell and Cameron. I think you can hear each of our influences throughout the EP - it’s sort of like a tribute album to each of our favourite genres and bands, without any cover songs.
We recorded over 2 weekends at 4-Q Studios in Kitchener. Mike, who runs 4-Q, was friendly and knowledgeable - and most importantly, he was really patient with us. We did a lot of tweaking, a lot of re-recording, and a lot of learning while we made the EP. It was an awesome experience, and it really helped us figure out how we wanted to move forward as a band.
"Always On My Mind" is the first track on the EP and I really like how it starts the EP. Can you tell me a little about the writing process of that song specifically?
Mitchell here: Firstly, thank you! I’m glad you like the song. AOMM was my first attempt at a ballad-style song. It was originally almost 5 minutes long but the guys argued that it would have to be pared down significantly if we didn’t want to scare off potential listeners. They were right and I owe them my life.
The lyrics basically describe the first date I ever went on with my girlfriend, when we were in high school. We met over the summer but lived in different cities, so we didn’t get to see each other again until the fall. I took a number of writing courses in university and thought I’d try my hand at writing a ballad with some more illustrative lyrics. I can remember that day so vividly; it seemed like a good jumping-off point for a new lyrical challenge.
For anyone who hasn't heard your band what track off the EP would you recommend they check out and why?
Electric is sort of like our lead single, probably the most “balanced.” You can go a few different directions from Electric - more punk, more pop, more “rock” - so it’s a good starting point. Electric is like the Arc de Triomphe and all our other songs are the streets that branch away from it, assuming you don’t get offended by the idea of comparing independent Canadian pop-punk to iconic French infrastructure.
I guess that about wraps it up. Thanks for taking the time to answer the questions. Do you have anything else you would like to add?
Thank you so much for chatting with us! We just want to say that the EP is pay-what-you-want (including “I want to pay nothing”) on Bandcamp, so if you like it, please spread the word! Free music for everyone!
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