Saosin interview

To be honest, Saosin is one of my more guilty pleasures. No, scratch that. It's not even that guilty. With "In Search Of Solid Ground" they prove once again that they have a solid grasp on writing catchy yet powerful songs without letting them drown in a sea of cheez. Kudos! Here's a short email interview I did with them.

PRT: Ever since the release of your self-titled debut you have done pretty much nothing but tour for three years. How on earth do you keep that up?
Saosin: It's not easy. We laugh a lot, fight a lot, and we try to keep life on re road fun and interresting. Without a good sense of humor it gets really boring very quickly.

PRT: The name Saosin comes from the Chinese meaning that nothing lasts forever. Is that something that you – especially being involved in something as fickle as the music industry – keep in mind?
Saosin: Definitely. We all know that this won't last forever.

PRT: Saosin has already been a band since 2001 but this is only your second full-length. How come it takes you guys so long to get a new album ready?
Saosin: Well as you mentioned before, we toured on the last record for over 2 years. We did 2 world tours, went through the states like every other month. We didn't stop touring. People just kept wanting us to keep playing shows. So we did. And it's really hard to complete a record in a tour bus. We tried to do it, but it's really hard for us.

PRT: For the new album you recorded with different producers and on top of that you produced five of the songs on the album yourselves. How come you chose to go this way rather than just working with one producer for the entire album?
Saosin: We wanted to do something different on this record. We liked the idea of using different producers on different songs to keep a fresh perspective on thongs. It was cool to watch John feldman and butch walker work and see how they approach things. It was a great learning experience.

PRT: Before the actual release of the album, people could already hear songs on iTunes, Last.fm, hurley.com and you also streamed the entire album on your MySpace page while in the old days, a band simply recorded an album and released it. Is this more exciting for you guys or is all that online marketing a necessary evil?
Saosin: I think now, with how many billions of bands there are, a band has to really step up and give the fans something more than the next band.

PRT: Alternative Press revealed the artwork of the album in July, which was met with a negative reaction from your fans. You then decided to change the artwork and said that ‘When you spend a long time on something, its really easy to lose track of where you started’. How hard is it to do that while you’re in the studio recording an album?
Saosin: Well it's part of the process. We really like being very hands on with everything. So unfortunately when it comes down to crunch time handing in a record you start to get spread a little thin when we are handling producing mixing, artwork and the DVD.

PRT: So what’s up next for Saosin? Another three years of touring?
Saosin: Hahaha. I sure hope not!! But I'm sure we will be doing a lot of touring. But hopefully not to the point where we forget what it's like to sleep in our own beds again.

PRT: Any last words for our readers?
Saosin: Go buy the record!! And if you already have, then thank you. And thank you to everyone who has been, and continues to support Saosin.