Interview — Parade Route

Tyler Davidson

Hailing from Sonoma County, California, rock trio The Parade Route have been rocking the Northern half of the Golden State for some time now, sharing the stage with myriad other bands and releasing their BUS STOP EP to much praise. SKRATCH recently conducted a phone interview with the guys to chat about their influences, their songwriting process, and many other things.

The Parade Route is Russ Mains (guitar/vocals), Stephen McWeeney (bass) and Andrew Gabriel (drums/backing vocals).

SKRATCH MAGAZINE: How would you describe the sound of The Parade Route?
RUSS: The sound of The Parade Route...it's definitely something that's kind of punk and metal derived. Originally, our songwriting was a little bit more kind of...what's like Every Time I Die?
ANDREW: ...like post-hardcore, I think?
RUSS: Yeah, [we] kind of toned down, since then, our focus maybe, so it's less frenetic and a little bit more accessible. At least, what I'm writing, I'm trying to think of something where it's definitely kind of punk derived. But yeah, it's definitely punk and metal-inspired, somehow. I don't know if that's coherent. [Laughs]

SKRATCH: How does the songwriting process work for you guys?
ANDREW: Typically, one of us will present a riff or perhaps any amount of a song that that person has been working on guitar, and then the rest of the band will listen to it and then we'll either work on it all together and each person will come up with their own parts with directions from the person who came up with the main riff, or...Russ writes a lot of complete songs, so he'll present that and we still each throw in our own ideas, pretty much, as far as the other instruments go.
STEPHEN: Russ writes all the lyrics, too.
RUSS: Which leads to a lot of songs being delayed. [Laughs]
STEPHEN: If we get like ten songs musically done, then Russ gets all backed up on his lyric work or whatever. But I find that some of our best songs that we've come out with is when just one riff is brought up that we jam on, then someone else comes up with more riffs that work with that one [at the] next practice. Those are some of the best songs.

SKRATCH: What are some of the more prevalent lyrical themes in your music?
RUSS: I just grab a dictionary.com “Word of the Day”. [Laughs] Typically when I'm trying to write lyrics, I'll kind of mumble along to the song, and then every once in a while, words will just kind of fall into place. I try to get the chorus first and once I get the chorus, then I try to figure out what the hell that means, and then kind of reverse engineer it and update the chorus as I go on. I guess a lot of them are kind of politically motivated, slightly.
STEPHEN: But we wouldn't call ourselves a political band, by any means.
RUSS: At least not overtly so, yeah.
STEPHEN: Yeah, you really have to search for that.
RUSS: Thematically, definitely it's in there if you're looking for it. The original song that I brought into the band...it's called "Lucid", and unless you really knew what the story was behind it, you wouldn't be able to tell that it's [about] an Islamic dude walking down the street in New York, and he sees a cop run by and he thinks the cop is going to get him, and then he flashed back to some chick getting burned in the Salem witch hunt. So I doubt anyone would get that. [Laughs] But yeah, with that, I was just trying to draw similarities between [how] post-9/11, the Muslims were all getting targeted, much like in Salem. For me, I saw similarities there, and I tried to "rock 'n' roll"-romanticize it and made it where the girl that's getting taken off to be burned at the stake, she's living her life so she thinks she's free. But other than that, the most recent song I wrote...if you read the lyrics, it reads like a bunch of people that are closing a bar down, and it's late at night, and everyone streams out into the streets and there's a bunch of people, everyone's partying...yeah, that's "Stage Right"...it's kind of vague, but the lyrics talk about how the streets are flashing red and blue, and how someone goes down and the police arrive. It's kind of a commentary on how, in general, I don't know if youth or just our current generation doesn't feel accepted maybe by the political establishment. I don't know, it’s not really that deep. [Laughs] It's really about how I just felt ostracized by the police department.
STEPHEN: It seems like we like to leave our lyrics up to interpretation.
RUSS: I guess I try to make them deep, and maybe they're deeper than I can infer.

SKRATCH: The Bus Stop EP is out now; what would you say were some of the pros and cons of the recording process for the EP?
ANDREW: Some pros, in comparison to the one before it, we were able to spend a lot more time on each song. So the production that went into that was just of a better quality. More care went into that. So the end results were a little more what we had hoped [for them] to be.
STEPHEN: We got a lot more time on this EP as far as getting the songs and getting the exact tone we wanted on our instruments and everything, but as far as the actual songs, personally I feel like they were written still [while we were] a four-piece band, so we kind of had to transcribe those [when we became] a three-piece band, so it was really our first recording as just the three of us without a second guitarist. So it was still a new experience. We're looking forward to the next one, too.
RUSS: I think that this time, it was a little more focused as far as what we wanted to get out of it. The first time, we went in there and we were like, "We need to put a whole bunch of songs out there so people can see what we're like." So we went in and we recorded five songs, and it was really hurly-burly. We were just in there laying down tracks as fast as we could, just going for adequacy as opposed to something that actually was coherent. This time, we went in there, and we knew that we wanted to do two songs, then we wanted to do a stupid little intro to Bus Stop something that just kind of leads you into the EP. So we spent a great deal of time, like Stephen said, on getting the tones and getting the sounds right and getting the performances to where we're satisfied with them.

SKRATCH: Are there any tracks on the EP that are especially significant to you for whatever reason?
RUSS: I would say "Bus Stop" was kind of a personal song to me; I kind of wrote that before The Parade Route, and fortunately, it just kind of fit in. Like I had this whole vision for the song, and like the cover actually came out to where it fit what I was thinking about, and then lyrically...it was one of the first songs, lyrically, where I thought it went out to say something and actually did it in a way where it was accessible. I mean, it's kind of cliché, but it's about suicide, and I really struggled with, "Do I want to write a suicide song? It's so typical rock 'n' roll." But, I tried to take it from a different perspective, where the protagonist is really the person committing suicide, but the focus is really on the friends and family. It's about how it really affects them, and I thought it came out cool.

SKRATCH: As far as punk, rock, or even just music in general goes, what do you think it could definitely do without?
RUSS: I'll answer that the opposite of your question; I think that definitely it's nice to have solos back in songs. [Laughs] And a little bit more musicality, so maybe if you take it from that [perspective], you can say that a little bit less of the "garage band" sound. I think that's pretty done, where you go out with your three chords and it sounds like you recorded it in a garage with a four-track, and then you put it out and it's got a catchy hook so that's cool. And there's something to be said that, yeah, the songs are cool, but I'm just kind of over that whole image.
STEPHEN: Basing it off of what Russ was saying, he was sort of touching on what I really don't like about music right now: bands get lumped into genres and therefore are popular because they're [part of] a genre that's popular right now, and not because the band itself is actually a really solid, good band, but they play okay for what genre they're in, whether it's Indie rock or punk or whatever's popular at the time. They kind of ride the coattails of other bands and whatnot, and I really feel like a band just needs to be themselves and play music that they are into and they like and just sound unique as much as possible.

SKRATCH: What is the significance behind the name The Parade Route?
RUSS: So Stephen mentioned we used to be a four-piece, and unfortunately, a decision was made to ask that person to leave the band. Basically, the second guitar player—and he was one of the primary songwriters starting off the band, him and Andrew—I guess he was just in a bad emotional place or something, like he was out of a job for a while and he'd lost his girlfriend; it was this whole big cascading turn of events, and it lead to him coming to practice and he would make statements like, "I just hate all of our songs, we need to start all over," and this is after we've got a set and we're out gigging. Just a lot of negativity, and one of the big pieces of contention in the band was the name, and we'd come up with all of these cool names, and all three [of us] would be happy about it and he would just kind of poo-poo the whole idea, and it went on. And we were like, "Well, it's going to come to the point where someone's going to have to compromise," and he agreed to that, but then couldn't actually walk the walk, I guess.
STEPHEN: I honestly felt like us three compromised for him. We all settled on a name that we all thought was okay, just to appease everybody.
RUSS: Yeah, it came down to...he had a list of band names, and we chose the one that we could live with out of that list.
ANDREW: I've read a lot of articles from bands about their band name, and surprisingly, a lot of bands don't really care for their name, so I don't feel too bad about it, but it is kind of strange once in a while to think, "Huh...we have kind of an interesting name."
RUSS: I actually like it now. For a while, I thought, "Ah well, this is the best of the bad lot," but I actually think that, I don't know how it happened, but somehow it fits us.
STEPHEN: I was probably the least for it at the time, but like I rolled with it and [figured] it would grow on me or whatever, and then it didn't really grow on me right away, and I kind of determined that it's more the music that defines the name than the name defining the music. That's what I go with anyway. People will associate "The Parade Route" with rocking music rather than a name decided by a band member who is no longer here.

SKRATCH: You guys mentioned that you're not overtly political; without trying to get too personal here, what are your thoughts on the upcoming election?
RUSS: I'm thoroughly convinced that the only appropriate president for the United States collectively, seeing as how we are effectively split 50-50 Democrat/Republican, the only person that could be an adequate president for both sides of that is somebody who is thoroughly centric, whether that is a Republican or a Democrat, it doesn't really matter too much, but they've got to be straight down the middle, otherwise they can't represent the country as a whole. I don't know if Obama or McCain is that person; I think that they are closer towards the middle than we've had in a while, but I don't think either one of them is where they should be to adequately represent the entire nation.
ANDREW: To touch on what Russ said, and it's funny because I don't think any of us have talked about this with each other...
STEPHEN: ...yeah, we usually just drink beer...
ANDREW: ...yeah, and play music. But actually, this year is the most difficult election year for me so far. I actually have no idea how I feel about both of the guys, because I agree with Russ in that they have to come more to the middle. I guess I'm more liberal than conservative, but there are [elements] of the liberal side that I don't really care for. So it's difficult this year. I don't know, it's just been set up so often to one side fighting another side; it's always a big fight and a tear between sides, and I don't know when it will ever change to where elections will be any different. Then you're supposed to unite after a year and a half of fighting [over] who's going to become president, you're all supposed to be friends and want America again. So I sort of feel the same way.

For more information on The Parade Route, visit their official MySpace page at www.myspace.com/theparaderoute, or their official website at www.theparaderoute.com.

To comment on this or any other piece you see in SKRATCH, feel free to e-mail us at speakup@skratchmagazine.com.

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