Posted on: August 9, 2007 Posted by: James McQuiston Comments: 0

The Good Life Interview, Part I
On a cold day, January 19th to be specific, I conducted an interview with emo-rock wunderkinds The Good Life. The resulting interview was so massive, I had to split it up into three seperate parts. Without further adieu, here is The Good Life ! James : Who are you?

Za : I’m Zach, the bass player of the Good Life.

Ja : I’m Jake, I play lead guitar.

Tr : I’m Trevor, I sing.

Jo : I’m John I play guitar.

Wi : I’m Will I play drums.

James : Were any of you in any other bands of other size before joining The Good Life?

Za : Before this, we were in What Next. And that was pretty much everybody, pretty much minus Trevor. So, that is pretty much it.

James : Was there anything important about What Next?

Jo : We had a musical genius in there, Kevin Crafton. He moved along to bigger things.

Ja : You mean, you – we moved along to other things!

Za : I don’t know. The band broke up, cuz of his decision. We moved on, and we didn’t think we would, but we did.

James : Alright, sounds good. Is he helping you in any way?

Za : No, he…

Jo : By not coming to our shows?

Za : He trash talks a lot, but that’s about it.

Jo : He talks to me, he’s actually helped me on guitar.

James : What would you say is a short, terse statement that The Good Life tries to live by, and even more than that, how does it fit specifically into the bands life?

Tr : Have fun. I didn’t hear the rest of that question.

James : How does it fit specifically into the bands life?

Za : I’d say have fun and not try to be like everybody else. But that’s hard to do, but try as hard as you can.

Jo : Play what you like. Recently we have been trying to act more – our songs are getting different and better. We are trying to throw in some trademarks. I don’t know. The Good Life’s style. I don’t even know what that is.

Za : I think our style is getting more succinct. We’re not fitting into one genre, maybe. I mean, we are but then I think our true side of what we really are is coming out in new songs.

Jo : Everybody is basically doing what they want to do, their own part.

James : Do you want to go through some of the originals? I know that in the review, we talked about the one original, “Save Me”, but people aren’t really familiar with the new ones yet.

Wi : Well, we have *Cell phone keeps ringing, no one gets it*

Wi : Well, we have “Looks So Cold”, which is a part of What Next. But I think we are going to keep that, because we have four of the five members. We pretty much wrote it.

Jo : It’s a good song.

Wi : Yea, “Save Me” is a good one.

Za : We kind of play that song, its fun to play a bit. It reminds us of our beginnings, I guess. We have new ones, we have words, but we have been working on the music more.

Jo : We really don’t have names yet.

Za : I think they are more structured.

Jo : Yeah, They are more structured. The one song is really fun and happy and …

Ja : The other one sounds like a movie soundtrack?

Tr : Yeah, like when someone dies.

Za : One of the more poppy type song, it is really different. You’ll just have to guess, and be surprised.

Jo : The one new one sounds like the Ramones, the one I think you are talking about. We have a harder one – a harder one that Jake and I were talking about,

Ja : It reminds me of the Get Up Kids. Its got a good drum beat…

Jo : It does.

Tr : And the one, “Save Me”, we are probably going to add a little piano on it, so another instrument.

Ja : Will has been working on the piano.

Jo : I think our songs are so different now, because I think we listen to so many different types of music. Trevor and Zach keeps us to date on the punk and the emo and I don’t know, Jake listens to a lot of stuff, a lot of different stuff.

Za : Jake is the more diverse one. He likes more of the – Jake and Will are more openminded when it comes to music, and I think that helps.

Ja : John is getting more into it too.

Za : Jake is pretty much, Jake is the lead guitar player and I think that the music that he listens to influences the way that he plays. I think that if you listened to punk the whole time, it would just be power chords, so ….

Wi : Well, our songs now, when we were with What Next?, we didn’t write the songs – it was all Kevin, so the songs were all the same. John wrote one, and that is the one that is different than all the rest. Jake wrote a couple, and my drum beat on the beginning of that one song makes it all different from the others.

Jo : Our old band, it was just Kevin telling us how to play. Play this chord, and this chord, and this chord and we were like “all right”.

Za : And he would grab the microphone the whole time, he really didn’t want to give anybody else a chance, not that I cared.

Will : He was 21 though, he was cool…

Ja : He could drink!

Tr : [We have] more vocal power, now, but we really haven’t shown it yet. Because we haven’t recorded yet with three vocalists and a good arrangement.

Za: I think we have an advantage at that. I mean, when you have a group of three guys that do something well at every different spot, I think it’s a little different than three guys that can go up and sing the exact same thing.

Tr : We are all specialized.

Jo : But we like to just have fun.

Za : To make a statement, live fast, die fun.

Tr : Die fun?

Group laughs…..

Za : Live fast, die hung?

Well, that concludes part one. Parts two and three will be put up in the next week, so keep on the look out. Make sure to check out The Good Life’s website.

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