|
For More on The Swear
visit
www.theswear.com
or
www.myspace.com/theswear
Advertisement:
|
The Swear, hailing from Atlanta, GA,
has a list of accomplishments as long as Paul Bunyan's arm. Their debut
album "Every Trick's a Good One", released November 2005, has already had
several reviews in publication. Their song "The Sleep Inside" graced The
Addiction V6 (available
for purchase at Alternative Addiction). The Swear has risen
quickly to heights that it takes most newly formed bands at least twice
the time to achieve. In part because of media savvy lead singer
Elizabeth Elkins, and in part because Elkins understands the meaning of
fronting a band.
Alternative Addiction: When exactly was
The Swear formed?
Elizabeth: With the 4 members that we have now it was July 2004. It’s
been about a year and a half… everybody but the guitar player. We played
with another guitar player for just a few months before then. He didn’t
work out, and then we found Jeremy. It’s been about a year and a half to
2 years total.
AA: So then, how did everybody in the band meet?
E: How did we all meet… I had a band before for 4 or 5 years here in
Atlanta. The band got a good amount of notoriety and was doing really
well, but the band members just weren’t real committed to trying to take
it all the way. I kind of decided that that band had run its course and
that I needed to look for some new people. I knew I still wanted to do
it, but that sound wasn’t exactly what I wanted. There was, like, one or
two songs that I had written for that band that was the direction I
wanted to go in for new music. I’d started putting some feelers out and
trying to find new people. The first person that a friend recommended to
me was Kent, the drummer. I met and talked with him and he was like,
“Yeah, I’m really into in these songs. Let’s try it.” Very quickly he
had been in a band with the bass player. He said, “Well, I think we need
to get Kevin. I think he’d be a really good match.” So, we got lucky
that those guys have a lot of chemistry and those guys have played
together before, and they were perfect together. Like I said, there was
another guy that had sort of played with me towards the end of the other
band that stayed on as the guitar player. He just wasn’t stylistically
the right thing. He actually plays in Bain Mattox now, so you can see
the difference in the two styles and kind of where he fits in. Then, we
had been looking and looking for the right guitar player and again it
was a friend who said, “Hey, you should talk to my friend Jeremy.” He
came out and auditioned and it just was a match. Very quickly, I think,
as soon as we all started rehearsing together we realized we’d all been
in other bands that just didn’t work for various reasons. I think we
realized that, oh, my gosh, we’ve actually got a band that works. And
even though the influences are really divergent something good come out
of where everybody’s coming from. The chemistry was really good.
Everybody likes each other. You know, we still kind of knock on wood
about that, but it seems like it’s the right group of people.
AA: As a band, then, would you say you’re all on the same page and
you’re all wanting to go in the same direction?
E: Oh, definitely.
AA: Do you butt heads ever?
E: Oh, well, we butt heads, of course. I mean, at practice the 4 of us
sometimes disagree about a part of a song, but in a very superficial
way. Like, “I don’t like that drum fill.” “No, I do.” “I think we could
do this at the end of the song.” “No, I don’t want to do that.” “Should
we play this show?” “No.” I mean, little things like that, but as far as
the long-term goal and how we’re going to get there, everybody’s totally
on the same page. Everyone’s on the same page of what they want stuff to
sound like, so that’s really important, too.
AA: What did you do with music before? Like say, when you were growing
up in school. Were you in choir, or orchestra?
E: Sure. My parents started me on piano really early when I was, like, 5
or 6. I guess that’s not super early, but pretty early. I think got
angry and quit, though. I was like, “I don’t want to do this! I don’t
want to practice.” I played piano, I guess, very early in elementary
school and was always doing musical plays at school, I was in the choir.
I actually was in the choir up until… My dad was in the ARMY, so I moved
around a lot to different schools. I did choir and band and theatre
stuff in school until eleventh grade when I moved into a school system
that just really had kind of crap for that. It was really bad, so I
didn’t do it. But by that point, by the time I was 15 or 16, and had
moved into that school system I had kind of started… I was playing
saxophone, I was playing piano, I was singing sort of for fun. I had
that going on the side as well, so it’s always been a part of me. My
mom’s side of the family is very, very musical. It’s kind of a funny
combination because my mom’s mom conducted the Richmond Symphony
Orchestra, and everyone on that side of the family has perfect pitch,
they all play violin, or the piano. My dad’s side of the family, my
dad’s pretty much tone deaf, so I guess I’m somewhere in between the
two.
AA: As far as being in a band and performing the way you do, did you
always want to do this, or through what you had been doing growing up
did you just find your way into it?
E: I would say I found my way into it. I don’t think I really… you know,
growing up I listened to… I sort of had 2 main things I was listening
to, and one was the stuff my dad was listening to, which was a lot of
things like Buddy Holly, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, John Denver… I
mean, more of that singer/songwriter school. Then, I got into, very
quickly, in the 80’s growing up, stuff like Duran Duran and Cyndie
Lauper, and that turned into, once I got into college, kind of backing
up and listening to stuff like The Cure, The Smiths, a lot of Brit pop.
The idea that, wait a second, I want to write these songs, I want to be
on stage, sort of came, I guess, the end of high school, right when I
started college. I started… I’m trying to think of what really made me
go, “Okay, I want to be on stage.” Well, I always liked to be on stage
because I was in plays a lot, and I knew I liked being up there. I’d
always written a lot of stuff that was always pretty much just sad
poetry. As I started getting more and more into popular music, in
particular Brit pop, I thought, “I’ve got to learn how to play.” That
was one of those days, and I went, “I’m going to go buy a little
guitar.” I don’t know if it was anything deeper than that other than “I
just want to try this.” So, I kind of taught myself how to play. At that
point I was working at a radio station in the college. So then it kind
of turned into ‘music’s my life’, I’m a deejay, I’m learning to play
guitar, all I do is listen to music all the time, music is what’s
keeping me from going crazy. I also am a writer. I’m an English major,
so I’m going to try to combine these two. So, I think that was sort of
how that happened. Then, I tried to put together little bands at that
point where we’d, you know, throw in an odd Nirvana cover, or something.
They were all just kind of bad. There was nothing serious there. I
played some by myself acoustically, which I just never felt fit the
songs. Then, when I moved to Atlanta to finish school, that’s when I
really got serious about trying to find a band. And that became the band
that didn’t work, then eventually turned into The Swear.
AA: When you started getting involved in all this, did anyone ever try
to talk you out of it?
E: No, because I think I set this up in a way that… I was too lazy to
get a full-time job, so I always had to, even through high school, I
always had to work summer jobs and at night to have spending money. My
parents never gave me money. When I went on to college, again, I kept
working jobs like delivering pizzas, or working in a veterinary clinic,
and stuff like that. I didn’t want to go and sit behind a desk. This is
probably a bad idea. I don’t recommend this to anyone, but the majority
of my living expenses were student loans. I went undergraduate, and then
I went on to graduate school. I ended up with a masters in journalism
and public relations, so they [her parents] were like, “Okay, well, she
did that, so this music thing is on the side. We’re not really worried
about it.” They’ve always just kind of been, “We hope it works out for
you, but we’re glad you went to school.” So, there’s nothing they can
really bitch at me about. Does that make sense?
AA: Yeah, you did things the opposite way that people usually do.
E: Yeah. And other than that, friends-wise, you know, everybody is
basically supportive of it. My dad has a running joke every time I go
home to visit. His joke is, “So, do you have that Lear jet yet?” He’s
still, I think, in that old school that you’re going to get a record
deal and get a million dollars and then you can go buy a private plane.
I don’t have the heart to tell him that nobody gets that kind of money
out of the major labels, and even if they do, it goes towards all
recoupable stuff and making the album. I think they look at it like…
they like to ask me why I’m so angry because off stage I’m a pretty
funny, quiet person, and they hear the music and they go, “Why are you
so angry? Did we do something?”
AA: [laughs] That’s funny. Have you ever been in any other bands with
any other girls?
E: Yes. There was a girl drummer in my other band before. It’s funny, it
came up in a conversation a couple days ago talking about The Swear and
whether we wanted to add another guitar player just to beef up the
sound. Someone suggested a girl and I said no. It was fine, I mean, it
was a short period of time and she was a good drummer, but I really
prefer playing with guys. I just get along with guys better and I think
I interact with them better. The stereotypes with girls and how they
interact I think can be kind of true. I think I always prefer to play
with guys.
AA: [laughs] I just find that to be funny. I think if I was a girl in a
band I would be the same way. I would be the lead singer, and I wouldn’t
have any other girls in the band.
E: Exactly. It’s easy to think, well, that’s about attention, and you
want to be the one that looks awesome, and it’s really not. To me, it’
more about how… I don’t know. All of my friends have always been guys. I
just like guys [laughs]. So, I think just even interacting at the
practice space and working on songs together and how we work as a team,
to me, I just don’t see that working with girls.
AA: Right.
E: If that makes me a misogynist, I’m not really one.
AA: No, I understand. I think that there’s something sometimes, given
the situation, there’s just some sort of cattiness that’s just built in
between females. And you can’t do anything about it.
E: Yeah, and I think there is something to be said about being the only
girl and how that makes the band look, for one. You know, just visually.
I think of them all as like either my older brothers and my younger
brothers, sort of depending on which one. I think it makes it so more
like a family in a way.
AA: The media has called you rock star. Are you out to be a rock star?
E: It’s a good question because I think it brings up the question of
whether you can innately be a rock star, or if you’re trying to be a
rock star, which is always tough. I think in that quote, I know it’s
from Mike Savage, a guy in A&R Worldwide. I’ve heard that before, and I
take it as a huge compliment because when I watch bands around here I
think that you can look at a band and go, “That guy has that quality,
and that person doesn’t.” I think that’s about how they carry themselves
offstage, and how natural they are onstage, and whether they can command
the stage. Sometimes I feel bad for people because there are obviously
guys in bands around here that, yes, they could be a “rock star”; they
just have that intangible quality that makes them a rock star. I can’t
judge myself on whether I’m one, or not. That’s something someone
watching me can tell. I have heard it from people that I am one. To me,
it’s just the way I am on stage. I don’t really have a big choice about
it. I think if I started trying to do big, grandiose things like a rock
star it might come across more forced, but I do feel really natural
onstage. I mean, I feel more at home there than probably anywhere else
in my life, so maybe that has something to do with it. I would like to
be one, yes, of course. I mean, I think that’s the end goal is we all
would like to be able to have careers as musicians where we can do that
full-time, where we can travel, where we can tour, and where we have a
fan base that allows us to keep making music for a very long time. But
whether we want to be like… I don’t know… “rock star” kind of has
negative and positive connotations, I think. I think that’s what we all
want in the end. I feel very good about being onstage and how I am
onstage. I think that’s where that quote comes from.
AA: The Swear has quite a running list of accomplishments for being a
rather new band. How have you accomplished this? Do you think that it’s
luck, or do you have a promotional team, or how have you managed to get
this running list of accomplishments under your belt?
E: Well, there’s where that masters in PR comes in kind of handy. We
actually don’t have a team at all, and that’s a place where we’re kind
of looking right now to get a manager and to get an attorney and to get
a booking agent. You should find all this, and right now we’re doing it
ourselves. Which is good, in some ways it’s good to be self-contained,
and I feel like I’m pretty good at being able to do that as far as
knowing how to get stories, and reviews, and PR for the band. A lot of
those accomplishments, I’m just one of those people that I am always
looking for opportunities for the band, and I will send music to anybody
anywhere as far as industry people. If there’s a contest, I’ll enter it.
To me it’s just like let’s do whatever we can to send this stuff out.
That’s really where most of that comes from. I try to make sure that
we’re involved in anything that we can be. I think that the music is
good enough that people are going to pay attention to it at this point.
True, there is a degree of luck, like the John Lennon songwriting
contest that I won about a year before this band, well that’s a few
months before this band really came together, and I think that’s a lot
of luck. I think there are a lot of great songs that get submitted to
that, and I think that it’s about the subjectivity of the judges at the
time. So, some of it is just luck, but then you get the ball rolling
with a couple things and people start paying attention. They think, oh
wait, here’s an entry from The Swear, they’ve done this, this, and this,
let’s take a closer look. And we have been lucky.
AA: Tell me about your music. What do you call it?
E: [chuckles] We’ve debated that, too. I think the only thing we can
agree on is that we’re a rock band. I think there are elements of what
people call alternative rock. I did an interview yesterday with someone
who thought one of the songs had a more metal edge to it, which, that
was the first time I’ve heard that. And then I also hear that there’s
sort of a gothy side to it, and gothy in that AFI, My Chemical Romance,
Evanescence sort of way because the lyrics tend to be dark. I’m always
telling my bass player, “Can you make that bass line kind of creepy?” I
like darkness a lot in music. I’m a big Concrete Blonde fan, I’m a big
AFI fan, I’m a big My Chemical Romance fan. I like the darker stuff. My
guitar player comes from a much happier place. He’s very much a
co-writer in the music on a lot of the songs. He doesn’t have anything
to do with the lyrics, but he writes a lot of the riffs. Even songs that
I write completely at home and I bring in he’s setting up the hooks on
the guitar. He’s a big Guns ‘n’ Roses fan… of course Guns ‘n’ Roses is
kind of dark… but Guns ‘n’ Roses, and Green Day, he likes Jaw Box. He
likes a lot happier sounding stuff. A lot of times it turns into the
bass player and I really like the dark, kind of gothy stuff, that’s a
little heavier, like Social Distortion, and stuff like that. Then, my
drummer and my guitar player tend to like the happier sounding stuff.
So, I guess it’s what happens when those two things kind of hit each
other. I don’t think I feel comfortable with [calling it] anything other
than rock because that’s just what it is. It’s obviously a rock band.
I’ve heard people say “goth pop” and I’ve seen the guys in my band
cringe when they hear that just because they don’t feel comfortable with
it. I don’t know, I just think it’s a rock band. It’s got very dark
elements, thematically, but it’s also got a lot of kind of ironically
poppy – poppy in a Green Day pop, not like Mariah Carey pop – feel to it
as well.
AA: Speaking of Mariah Carey, I mostly listen, myself, to male singers,
or bands that have a frontman in them. I don’t have very much music at
all, aside from a few Janet Jackson and Alicia Keys albums, anything
with female singers in it. And they’re not bands, they’re R&B singers,
so it’s a little bit different. As far as bands go, I’ve got nothing
with a female singer. The reason is, to me, I find that they don’t have
the same… I think maybe because they are a female they don’t have the
same cock & balls that a guy has when he gets up there. That’s what I
like. That’s what I like to hear. I don’t want to hear female singers
that get up there and they’re all emotional and whiney.
E: Whiney. Yeah.
AA: But when I listen to The Swear, it’s not like that. I’m like, “Oh,
this is pretty cool.” So, being a female singer, and being the front of
the band, how do you feel about other females singers and how you would
compare or contrast yourself to them?
E: That’s a really good question. I actually kind of stand on the side
of the fence that you do in that the majority of the people I like are
male singers. Until the last few years I thought, this is really weird,
I’m a girl singer and I can’t stand girl singers. There’s so many that
have that certain kind of whininess to their voice that I really can’t
listen to them. There are basically only two female singers that I like,
and you’re probably going to hate me for one of them. Most people, when
they hear it, they go, “No way! You like her?” One, I like Johnette
Napolitano from Concrete Blonde. I think she and I have similar
qualities. I’ve been compared to her before, which I always take as a
compliment. She just really does have a voice that some people might
even say, “Is that a guy singing?” I get that sometimes, especially with
all the emo on the radio now where the guy sings so high that people go,
“Wait…” When they hear the album and they don’t know I’m in the band
they’ll even comment sometimes on Garage Band, or something, “Man, your
lead singer can really sing! He’s awesome!” To me, hey, that’s a
compliment. I’ll take that. To me, one, that makes me even more
marketable, and two, that means it’s probably more in that rock & roll
type of singing that I like myself. I actually also really like Tori
Amos, and I used to absolutely hate her. I remember when her first album
came out my friends were like, “Oh, you should listen to this!” I just
was like, “This is the most horrendous whining I’ve ever heard. I can’t
stand it.” But the reason I like her so much is I like her as a
lyricist. I like her third album… It’s real cryptic, it’s real literary,
it’s real dark for the most part. I really like her as a lyricist and I
like some of the classical influence that she puts in melodies. To me,
obviously, she’s like a child prodigy, and musically she’s very
inspirational as far as her approach to things. Would I want to sound
like her? No. But I really do get a lot out of her writing, I think,
more than her sound. If that makes sense. But no, I want to come across
as just a balls-to-the-wall singer. I don’t think anyone ever accused me
of being girly, though, I can if someone goes, “Sing this part really
light and airy.” Like, in the studio a part will call for that, but I
always wanted to sound like a rock & roll singer. If people mistake me
for a guy from only hearing it, like I said, to me, hey, that’s great. I
don’t have a problem with that at all. But most of the singers that I
like are guys, that I try to be like.
AA: Yeah, me too.
E: Yeah, but it’s still sad to me that when I turn on the radio you just
don’t hear any girls… but then I think, “Who do I want to hear that’s a
girl?” I don’t know. There’s the girl from the Distillers, and she’s
okay. I mean, I’m not a big Distillers fan. And then there’s Courtney
Love, who I guess is less girly sounding than a lot of bands. And the
girl from Evanescence, but she sounds like a girl… So, I don’t know. I
think there’s kind of, right now, a big chasm in there being girl
rockers. I mean, I really… can you think of, besides Evanescence, can
you think of a successful rock band in the last five years that are
girls?
AA: Five years, no. I think that there’s been a huge lack since Joan
Jett and Lita Ford. It’s like, well, what’s happened? Nothing. It’s all
gone the way of pop singers and R&B singers, and that’s where you find
your females.
E: Yeah. I mean, I’m hopeful, but I see, like, on our myspace page, I
see that there’s so many teenage girls that will write and go, “Man, I
love this. This is great. When are you playing again? When are you
coming to California? You’re my new favorite band.” I see that there are
a lot of people who like that and they’re looking for a girl that really
can rock. I mean, there are some underground bands that do it, I guess,
but most of them are kind of older bands, I guess, aren’t they? Like L7
or Bikini Kill? I don’t know if there’s anyone that’s really current.
Biff Naked, maybe?
AA: There’s nobody that’s up and coming that’s going to be something
that, say, Atlantic Records is going to put out there to be on MTV and
do that world tour and be a huge name.
E: I guess there’s Avril. I guess they try to push her kind of as a
rocker even though she’s really more pop. I guess that could be good or
bad for us. Either that means labels are going to go, “No, that doesn’t
work. We don’t want to try it again”, or “It’s about time something
worked.”
Keep your eyes on The Swear as they make the kind
of headway that isn't soon forgotten. You can keep tabs on it by
visiting their official website at
http://www.theswear.com.
--------------------------------------------
Special thanks to Elizabeth Elkins and Angela
Wright. |
