Paul: Hi! Please introduce yourself and your role in the band…
Buddy: Hi, my name is Buddy Nielsen and I sing for Senses Fail.
Paul:
Have you been surprised by the reaction to ‘Life Is Not A Waiting Room’? Both press and public seemed to have welcomed the record and proclaimed it as your best yet. Do you agree?
Buddy:
I have a hard time judging if one record is better than the other because they become so personal and each represent a different significant period in my life. Id say I am very proud of the record and am thankful that people enjoy it.
Paul:
Do you get nervous about what people – and the media – may think about your band? Do you take criticism (whether it be constructive or simply nasty stuff) personally?
Buddy: I do sometimes get nervous about how people will feel about the music we make because you always take a risk when you release honest music because you are putting your personalty out there for people to see and judge. We really work hard and sometimes when you work really hard you get worried you will fail. That failure is sometimes hard to take. I think it is like anything you do in life, it’s hard to accept the truth be it good or bad. I think most bands will lie and say, “fuck the press, media, we make music for ourselves”, but I believe every band and musician is insecure about what they do, if they aren’t then they aren’t making very good music.
Paul:
Which bands influenced you during the recording of the new album? I personally feel there’s a bit of Thrice/Gallows in there…
Buddy:
I think there will always be a part of Thrice in our songs because when we started we were all really into them, same goes for Thursday and Saves the Day. I think now a days, especially this record, all of our influences have melded into their own style but we still go back and say, “that Refused song is really awesome. That Snapcase riff would be cool to try like this”, and so on. We try our best to make music not just for ourselves but also for the people that like our band because ultimately it is a give and take relationship.
Paul: The music industry is a changing beast…do you think having ‘Can’t Be saved’ appear on a computer game helped raise your profile significantly? As a band are you actively looking for new ways to promote yourselves?
Buddy:
I have no idea what to do anymore. The music industry has been ripped open, fucked and left on the side of the road. I don’t believe labels know what to do either. I actually think bands have a better idea of what is really going on but it is hard for us/them to come to the realization that bands can take the power back. It is a very exciting and scary time to be in a band. We don’t have the road paved and marked like it used to be, sign to a label with a built in fan base, record, release. A kind of build it and they will come motif. I think now it is so easy to start a band that the music industry has been overpopulated and instead of 500 kids in any given city split between 5 bands, there are 500 kids split between 25 bands. What I mean is that there are so many bands doing the exact same thing that 2 kids like one band and 5 kids like this other band, when 10 years ago only one of the bands would have been signed because one could do it better than
the other. Now all bands are getting signed regardless of they originality, work ethic, integrity or authenticity. I believe it will eventually eat itself, the industry cannot support the amount of bands that are in it and by support I mean, it will be impossible for most bands to continue on because there isn’t enough revenue to keep a lot of the new bands afloat and let them grow from baby bands into more mature acts. Im pretty positive that this will cause the bands that aren’t into it purely because they love and need to make music to break up and the bands that need to create to be happy will find a way to sustain out of necessity because they need it and love it. We are always looking for new ways to reach people because we have been a band for 7 years and a lot of our original fans have grown up and might not support us as strongly as they used to. I have done the same thing to bands I grew up loving, the passion I had for them faded as I grew
older. So we are always struggling to stay current and have new ears hear us. I think while it is awesome to be a part of Guitar Hero and other video games, it is something that has hurt the idea of music being special. The digital age has caused music to become disposable.
Paul:
As a band you’ve always been quite outspoken about bands who reply on image to shift records and recently had a public spat with Brokencyde. Do you think bands have a responsibility to not just fob kids off with marketing ploys, but also to try and spread a positive image and way of thinking? Is it irresponsible for a band like Brokencyde and their management to sing about and glorify violence, rape and treating women so badly?
Buddy: First off, Im not here to say that we are any better than any band or any person that listen to any genre of music. We are not here to tell you what to listen to, how to dress or how to act. I know that every band no matter how hard they try to not have a marketing ploy has one. Fugazi had a marketing ploy by trying their hardest to not have a marketing ploy, it is something you can’t escape but what you can do is control what kind of image you portray to the public. The weird thing about Senses Fail and me personally is that we grew up in this band. When we started touring I was 18, Garrett was 16 and Dan was 15, so we’ve made a lot of mistakes, just like anyone does between their adolescents and adulthood. My dispute with Brokencyde is very personal because I just can’t for the life of me understand why they exist and also more importantly why are they a “scene” band. It almost hurts me to believe that there are people out there that would group our
band with their band and for various reasons I’m insulted by that. We went into this tour knowing what we were getting into but I really wouldn’t have had as big of a problem with them if they were good people. I would never back or respect their music but I would not have made it a point to get up on stage every night and attack them. Im not going to go into depth on them personally because it’s not my place to air that publicly but I can elaborate on their music. It is void of any substance whatsoever. They are in no way in a band because they love to make music, they openly talk about doing it for the money and fame. Their lyrical content is disgusting and on top of being abhorrent, it isn’t even witty. They admit that they don’t even write their beats but buy them from a producer, which goes against everything I think is holy about being an independent band. This whole new lifestyle of white suburban kids picking up macbooks, uploading pro-tools and
attacking myspace with puke is something that hopefully dies very soon but the fact is a lot of younger kids are into it. Be it the bright shirts that look like a candy machine vomited or the house style music and edgy lyrics about degrading young girls, it’s popular. I think that is what upsets me the most. The fact that the kids in the music scene today are buying into this garbage and openly saying I back these lyrics about nonsense, that’s the rub. I don’t believe I have anymore right to speak out about this than anyone else but I can’t hold my tongue because I still care about where this music came from and what it meant to me when I was younger to find a community of people that believed in the same thing I did, that we were all different and could come together under one umbrella to get away from society. I know that when I was younger I didn’t write the most intelligent or poetic lyrics but I don’t want people to judge me for what I have done
but rather judge me for what I am doing and what I will do in the future because Im sure if most people look back at their past their are things they regret and would like to change. I don’t intend to change anyones mind about Brokencyde but I would like to show people that acts like them in no way shape or form should represent anything that Senses Fail is a part of.
Paul:
On a similar note, do you feel people have unfairly tagged Senses Fail based on the music (the very first EP on ECA/Drive Thru) you played as young kids and got moderately successful from, when in truth you’ve grown up A LOT as a band and as musicians in the last couple of years?
Buddy:
I do think people judge Senses Fail on what we did when we were younger but I don’t blame them for it and I don’t think it’s unfair. AS I said before we grew up in this band and growing up can be a painful and embarrassing experience especially when you do it in a microscope. All I really want for people to think about Senses Fail is that we do this for the right reasons. You can like us or hates us but at least give us the respect that we care about what we do and we have never been anything but honest with ourselves and honest to the people the listen to us. Think what you want about our older records but we were young when we wrote them. I don’t regret anything I wrote but I look back and think, “wow I was pretty young then and really hadn’t lived much,”. I guess what I mean is that I didn’t have much life to pull from because I was only 18 but what I can say is I was honest. The song Stephen still holds a lot of weight for me and while I think I
could write it better now, I would never want to change it because it reminds me of where I was in life when it happened.
Paul:
Which song off the new album is your favourite to play live and why?
Buddy: I would have to say Lungs Like Gallows because it’s fast and uptempo the whole song.
Paul:
Have you started writing any new material for the next record yet?
Buddy:
Yes we have, we have about 5 song ideas right now.
Paul:
What’s the plan for the rest of the year? Can we expect to see you in the UK again at any point during 2009? Any festival appearances planned?
Buddy: We wold love to come back to the UK for Redding and Leeds. We will be doing Warped Tour in the US and trying to plan some late summer stuff in Europe.
Paul:
Do you have any regrets about your time in the band? If you could go back and change anything, would you?
Buddy:
While I don’t have regrets because I try to force myself not to believe in such things. There are things we have done and decisions that we made that I do sometimes wonder what would have happened if we have chosen a different path. I think out of curiosity I ponder, what if we had stayed on a major label and not told them to drop us, would we even sill be a band? I think we would have most certainly been destroyed by Geffen records because we aren’t a band that wants to make music to please a radio person or cater to what label reps deem catchy enough for the masses. I know in my heart we made the right decision going to Vagrant but sometimes look back and wonder what if, not out of regret but out of happiness.