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VALENCIA

Amanda: For those who may not know, tell us who you are and what you do in the band?
JD: Well I'm JD and I play the guitar in Valencia.

Amanda: So how was your Warped Tour experience this summer? Any crazy or funny stories?
JD: Well it was really hot as usual. We all got really bad sunburns and farmers tans. My skin was boiling and blistering at one point. And uh… I don't know. It was just overall, the whole Warped Tour experience

(George walks up and sits down)

George: So you guys are doing this without me?

Amanda: We are

JD: Yeah, now we are. This is George. He plays bass. Say hello.

Amanda: Hello.

George: How's it going?

Amanda: It's hot.

George: Yeahhh.

JD: We just went over our Warped Tour experience.

George: Oh, nice.

JD: Anything you wanna add?

George: Nah, I'm sure you got it all. It was pretty ridiculous.

Amanda: What are some must haves while being on the road?
JD: A lot of water. For me and uh, possibly George, our weight set. Stay in shape.
George: I can't live without my cell phone. I was thinking that today. Yesterday I went and uh reached my limit for text messages and it's been driving me crazy for the last couple of days kuz I can't really keep in touch with anybody.
JD: Computers are a definite must have.
Amanda: You don't have unlimited texts?
George: No, I'm too cheap for the extra five bucks.

Amanda: Do you have any favorite cities or venues to play?
JD: The Norva's pretty sweet.
George: Yeah, the Norva's like everybody's favorite venue. But my favorite city is probably Chicago. I really like playing the Metro there. The House of Blues is great except when they do catering, there's never any vegan food and even when we try to specifically order it it's always been hit or miss. You either have it or you don't. It's really hard to eat there sometimes.
Amanda: It must be nice to get catering.
JD: It is.
George: It depends. If you're vegan or vegetarian… like tonight I thought there was going to be vegan catering and I'm a little bummed out because someone told me there was but I guess not. I don't know. If you feel like you're gonna get fed and then you're not, it's not always the best. But it's definitely better than being on tour when there's nothing.

Amanda: So when you were in the studio recording for your upcoming album, how did that experience differ from the first time around?
JD: The first time around we kinda… we were in school at the time, we were all completing our freshman year of college and we were going back and forth from class, taking the train from downtown Philly to the suburbs where the studio was and we didn't really … we were just writing the record, recording and we didn't really have any idea what would come out of it. And this time around we put like two years worth of writing into it as opposed to a couple months, and two months of recording and this whole process this time around was just more thought out.
George: This was also the only thing we had to worry about. Like with the first record, like JD said, it was totally school and that but this time around we actually relocated to Los Angeles for a couple months and really just all we thought about was recording.
Amanda: Are you happier with the outcome this time more so than the last time around then?
JD: MUCH happier.

Amanda: So what are your plans for the rest of the year?
George: Well we finish this tour on Monday and then we have a couple weeks off to kind of prepare the new songs for the tours we have coming up. We're doing a headlining tour for three weeks at the end of August throughout September and the rest of the fall we're doing support tours, it'll be cool.

Amanda: We at TragicEndings support causes like Skate 4 Cancer. Are there any causes you want to make people more aware of?
JD: Well we have two vegans and two vegetarians, I don't know if you want to talk about P.E.T.A.
George: Well yeah, when we were out on Warped Tour we did spend a lot of time with P.E.T.A. doing interviews and helping them with a petition that would get pigs the same legal rights as dogs because research shows that pigs are actually smarter than dogs but they're still being, at a very young age, castrated without any anesthesia and it's kind of a pretty brutal thing to do to anything that's living. So we spent a lot of time on Warped working with P.E.T.A. spreading the word and getting the petition signed. It was cool. It's worthwhile.

Amanda: If you were a piñata, what shape would you be and what would you be filled with?
George: What's weird is for some reason immediately as you asked that question I pictured myself as a horse with a sombrero on it.
JD: Yeah I pictured a donkey.
George: Yeah I feel like a kind of horse type.
JD: Just kinda your typical piñata shape and I'd be filled with probably… I'm going to say steak.
Amanda: You'd be filled with steaks?
JD: Yeah. Beef jerky if it's a little bit more sanitary for some.
George: I'd be filled with laffy taffy.
Amanda: I haven't had laffy taffy in a very long time.
George: It's pretty delicious. I ate a bunch of them the other night and felt guilty about it and had a two hour discussion…
JD: Literally a two hour discussion about his guilt for eating the laffy taffy…
George: For eating so much candy my teeth are rotting.

Amanda: Do you like the banana flavored ones?
George: Yeah, it's delicious.
Amanda: I hate it, I can't eat it.
Kristie (intern): I really like the pink.
JD: Pink is not a flavor.
Kristie: I don't know, I just know it's the pink one, whatever flavor it is.
George: Just to set the record straight, laffy taffy is the best candy. Especially the pink flavor.
Amanda: I've got no comment.
George: Well, I'm just saying.

JD: Do you like them better than sour patch kids?
George: Absolutely better than sour patch kids.
Amanda: Sour patch kids are where it's at.
Kristie: I don't like the green, I don't like the yellow.
George: I like the red. Orange.
Kristie: I don't like orange.
Amanda: I wish they had a blue one. I don't care what flavor.
Kristie: Like blue-raspberry… no that'd be a weird sour patch kid.
George: Pink laffy taffy! That's where it is.

Amanda: Yeah, no comment. Suppose you were stranded on a desert island and could only have one album with you for all eternity, what album would you choose?
Geoge: Um… well these kinda questions always take me a long time to think about. There's like a million different records I could choose. But usually the first thing that comes to mind is whatever I've been listening to a lot lately and it's probably the latest Bedouin Soundclash and I'm sure that will change in like a week just because there's always like something new.
JD: I'm gonna have to say Yanni because I feel like it would fit.
George: Boring dentist office music.
JD: Kenny G.
Amanda: Yeah but when that's all you've got to listen to…
JD: Yeah but I feel like I've played out my favorite record like millions of times…… I've never listened to Yanni.
Amanda: I don't even know what it would sound like.
JD: Earth sounds. The wind, the ocean.
Amanda: But then you wouldn't need that since you'll be on a deserted island.
JD: True. I don't know. Terrible answer on my part, I'm sorry.

Amanda: Some of your fans submitted some questions - What kind of dinosaur would you be and why?
JD: Velociraptor.
Amanda: I had a feeling someone would say that.
JD: Yeah, because they're pretty kickass and I was obsessed with Jurassic Park when it came out.
George: Yeah I'd say the same. I'd be ferocious.
JD: He does have claws on his feet.

Amanda: Another one - What's your view on illegal downloading?
JD: I'm for it.
George: Yeah people always ask us this but really … it sucks that everybody does that and feels the need to steal music but they'll still buy records. The biggest thing, like nowadays everybody's kind of remodeling the structure of the music industry to compensate for everybody doing this, so at the end of the day it actually kind of can be a good thing because if these people are spreading the word about your band, as long as they're going to the shows and buy merch … that's fine because that's what keeps this band afloat. It sucks that you can't sell a whole album anymore but at least kids are still there for the music.

Amanda: And then, what's the most a fan has ever done for your band?
George: There are actually some girls on this tour that are coming to every single show. So that's cool. They're just traveling with us pretty much which is interesting because they get to see what it's like to be on tour. It's awesome that somebody likes our band that much.

Amanda: If there's any last words you have, feel free.
JD: We All Need a Reason to Believe out August 26.
George: You can preorder it now at valenciamusic.net.
JD: I have the text message to prove it.

Amanda: Thank you!
JD & George: Thank you!!

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