Madina Lake Interview
Interview with Dan Torelli of Madina Lake
Words by Brendan Monteiro / portrait of Dan Torelli by Imelda Michalczyk
Recently Clink was given the privilege of interviewing Dan Torelli from Madina Lake. On a rooftop patio we sat down and chatted about the bands past and future and soon enough the interview came to an end and it was time to say our thanks and goodbyes to each other. Dan said his final goodbye and followed it with “so are you alright, can I get you anything before I go?”, I declined the offer but couldn’t help but think of my last question to the interview. His final words were so relevant and completely natural to his character and it made it evident to me that Dan and the rest of Madina Lake are quite possibly the most down to earth, modest and sincere people around. Add the fact that they have a long list of staggeringly good songs and a live show that is packed with more energy than a scottish wind farm and you have the formula for a band that is on their way up.
You have a new E.P coming out so if you can please tell us little bit about it and even though it is pretty close to the last release, why you decided to do an E.P instead of a full length?
It is pretty close and that is why we decided to do that, Attics To Eden came out last May so it hasn’t even been a year. We recorded that record a year previous to that and wrote the songs for it the summer before that so for us it’s been quite a while since we have actually had time to write music, which we love to do. Touring and what we are seen to be doing all the time we love but there is another half to being in a band which is writing music, which we love as well. So after the holidays in January we found ourselves with really not much, we had a few charity shows in Chicago and we came to Glasgow to do something for a radio station and other sporadic things here and there. We had pretty much a month off with nothing to do and we haven’t found ourselves in that position and we decided to go to Florida. There was condo that we were able to get for two weeks just to kind of change our atmosphere because it was freezing in Chicago. We set up the studio in the living room and made this house a studio that we could live in. We didn’t know if we were going to come back with one guitar riff or a whole record, we didn’t have an agenda at that point but we came back with 7 songs that we really liked. They are almost finished, there some little things we need to do to touch them up and mixer and master them and we will probably pick about 5 for the E.P. I feel that we probably wont get time until maybe this summer to really start work on our 3rd record and by the time the whole machine gets set into motion and gets released it could be some time. I think this the E.P will be cool because it allows us to creatively put new music out and keep people that are into our band interested which I think is cool too because sometimes it is a long time between records.
You could also possibly see it as a way for the band to also keep interested.
Yeah, new songs to do and we have all kinds of friends that do videos and stuff like that and we could do videos for them, stuff like that which we can do ourselves and keep busy.
There’s comments that this E.P will be heading back into the sound of From Them, Through Us, To You. Can you confirm that and maybe define what is meant by that statement?
I think what that means at least to me, not so much like stylicstic and musically but more the way it was recorded. The way we found the second one came out was a little bit polished or produced a little bit, we are very happy with the way that the songs came out but I think a lot of times now things get produced so much. What we wanted to do was to retain a recording that you could hear the spontaneity and hear the energy in the recording of it. That was what we wanted to get back to and I think we have accomplished that on this release.
The theme to your albums lyrically is said to run through the first 3 albums, is that theme going to be included in the E.P
Very loosely, I think the E.P. is going to bridge the 2nd album and the 3rd one. Like I said this one came about without us really knowing or having an agenda, we didn’t know if we were going to have enough songs or too many songs but luckily we do and were going to put it. I think the name and some of the things in it will loosely tie in to the 3rd album but it’s not going to be released with a big chapter of a story which Matthew wrote like the first 2 did, I think that will be saved for the 3rd album.
And will that theme definetly end on the 3rd album, what will you do for album number 4?
Yeah it will which is quite interesting because everyone is always wondering what is going to happen after that and I don’t know. I think the reason is because when we started was really when we were making our first record and none of knew that this was going to happen. We didn’t know that we would be able to do this for this long and that we would be able to come over to the UK and tour and it seemed like, at least to me, that a 3rd record was forever away. Saying that we were going to do this over 3 records seemed like a lifetime to us and now all of a sudden were making record number 3 and now what.
It’s seems like that is a product of the times we live in, nowadays if a band doesn’t do a record every year or so people loose interest.
Exactly, that’s the thing with the E.P that we are releasing and a lot of bands that we were touring with on Warped Tour and became friends with, a lot of those bands are putting out E.P’s. Everything moves so insanely fast now and you always have to be doing something or like you said people just loose interest it seems.
With regards to your E.P, are there any plans or desires to do something special with the release, possibly a 7” release or something else?
As far as how it’s going to be released I am not entirely sure because were just starting to get into that. Obviously it will be released online first and then there will probably be some sort of special edition, like if you purchase it then it will come with something else. It was supposed to be released as early as May but that’s creeping up pretty quickly for us not knowing exactly how were going to do it. Musically it’s almost finished and then we will get into everything else but we have always been into doing stuff like that, like have different editions and coming with specials things from the band if you order it this way or that way so I am sure it be that kind of thing involved.
You touched a little on the difference between Attics To Eden and your debut, is there any other differences that you can point out?
Musically there was definitely a difference too and I’m sure that will be the difference with the 3rd one too. I think what happened with the first one was, we always got into the routine of saying this and I will say it again because it’s true. The first record was more rock and almost has a punk element which is pretty strange because none of us are fans of punk music or punk rock or pop punk or anything like that. We were listening to Blink 182’s self-titled record at the time but aside from that we were not really into that type of music however maybe it was just the energy that we had at the time because we were a new band and that’s the way the record came out. So we got lumped into this category of like “new pop punk emo band out of Chicago” and we were reading magazines thinking “what?” because that is not the music we listen to and that’s not us. It was cool but after a while it got a bit too much and so we made the second record it wasn’t like we were trying to specifically write or force something out but we tried to think of what really makes Madina Lake. We think that there are so many different aspects, like darker elements to our music that we like to do and electronic stuff too and we thought we should take the things that we feel makes Madina Lake and embellish them on the record. There is still definitely some fast rock or hard rock, some of that stuff is still there, but I feel like it’s more Madina Lake than the first one if that makes sense, more to the point of what we can do differently or more uniquely to be ourselves.
You had two big name producers on each record, who would be your dream producer for the 3rd Madina Lake album?
We have been really lucky and both those producers are really amazing and I still can’t believe that we were able to make records with both of them.
I was having a look at Mark Trombino’s list of albums and he has almost done all of the Jimmy Eat World albums which really impressed me.
He did our first record and he was the very first producer on our list because we are all very big Jimmy Eat World fans, he did a Blink record too. It’s a funny story because Roadrunner at the time said make a list of all the producer’s that you would want to work with and don’t think about budget yet because this doesn’t mean who we are going to look for but it will let us know what style your looking for. So number one on our list was Mark Trombino and we made a list of twelve other producers. Anyway Roadrunner ended up sending it to Mark and he really liked it, of course he has done some big budget things and we were a band that didn’t have a the budget. He came back with a price and they were like “just kidding, never mind” and he was like “okay what are we working with” and I think it was way below what he was used to but he was really into the band and we did it with him and that was really cool. The same thing with David Bendeth too, I feel like we work on more of a budget than a lot of other bands at our level at least anyway but those producers are used to doing a lot bigger things. Between doing our record David does Breaking Benjamin albums all the time, he’s done all those and those are like really big bands in the states. Anyway, talking about who to do it in the future and I think Brendan O’brien would be awesome because everything he has ever done is cool and he really knows how to get the rawness out of a band. Before you were asking where we are going in the future and I think we want to make record that sounds like the way we feel when we play it. If you listen to a lot of songs off our 2nd record that we play live, it’s the same songs and we love the songs but they definitely feel different live and it’s definitely a different attitude. We don’t want something that’s going to be too compressed and too flattened out so somebody like Brendan O’brien, somebody who takes the rock band and makes them do what they do better.
With regards to charts the band has done well in the UK, does that make it feel like home when playing live here?
It does, not only because of the charts but also because this was the first place that really embraced us. It’s really hard to tour in the states as apposed to here because it’s so massive. We will come over here for a few weeks to tour and it’s awesome whereas at home we would be on the road for 2 months literally to get all around and by the time you get back to where you started it’s almost like you have got to hit the other side of the country really fast. We toured for about a year and a half straight and it was a lot of work and when we came over here we were lucky enough to open up for Paramore, we were still doing the Barfly in Cardiff to 80 people because they hadn’t blown up either, but there were people there and it had a certain feel to it where it just felt right, we felt a connection with the audience here right away. Then we came back with Gym Class Heroes a few months later and then we did Give It A Name Festival and just those 3 in a row within a few months of each other is really what I think did it and got the ball rolling for us here.
You have toured with some big commercial names like LInkin Park and Papa Roach, how has that shaped Madina Lake? Did you learn anything from those bands?
I think the biggest influence it has was learning how cool those guys were, we were actually surprised with how cool they were and I think it gave us a lesson on how to be and how to be humble and nice and genuine with people. What I have noticed seriously is that the biggest bands that we have toured with, like Linkin Park and My Chemical Romance and Papa Roach, these really successful bands are all really really cool guys. They are making sure the tours going well and that all the bands on the tour are happy and checking if the bands need anything and ironically enough a lot of tours we have done with bands of a much lower success are more the ones that are super cocky and acting like the rock stars and trying to run the whole venue. It makes you think that maybe that’s part of the reason’s why some of these bands are successful or maybe they have done it for so long and they realise, I don’t know what the reason is. That is something that we have take away from that and it seems like all these amazing bands that do really well, they’re not just good bands musically, they’re good dude as well and I think that is really cool.
I must admit that I don’t think I have met a more down to earth rock star than Jacoby, I couldn’t believe how much time he takes out to be with the fans.
Exactly and that is awesome, on the Project Revolution tour there are so many big bands on the tour and we were the only band in a van, there was something like 25 buses on that tour, I mean even the crews had buses. We were the only band in a van and we were driving ourselves because it was like the first big tour we had ever did. After the first show which I think was in Seattle and everyone is packing up and were sitting in the parking lot drinking because there’s nothing else to do. So this golf cart pulls up and we were like “oh no, who’s this” and as it pulls up it’s Brad Delson and so we immediately thought we had f***** up because there were bottles everywhere. He came out and got out of the golf cart and we were so nervous because he’s huge and he came up and asked “are you guys OK, do you need anything else, is there anything we can do to help, are you guys having a good time?”. We were just like are you kidding me, like you said about Jacoby, these people don’t need to be like that but they are just so genuine and down to earth and cool and that is the way you want to be and that is the inspiration.
