Q ’n’ A: Tonight Alive – The Other Side

Tonight Alive vocalist Jenna McDougall was still in high school while the band were creating their debut album, What Are You So Scared Of?. In the two years between that and the band’s new album, The Other Side, they have toured more and more widely, through Europe and the Americas, and have graduated from a tour van which doubled as a dorm in a car park, to actual beds and hotel rooms.

Speaking about the surreal nature of spending their growing up years in an internationally successful band, their unwavering dedication to their fans which is again undeniable in the new album, and ‘not making a 2013 record’ at all costs, Jenna McDougall and guitarist Whakaio ‘Whak’ Taahi joined us for this interview.

Since the new album The Other Side is fresh off the press, what kind of reception has it had so far?

Whak: It has honestly been so rewarding. When you release something it’s a bit nerve-wracking, but everyone seems to have received it so well. I haven’t seen one negative thing about it yet. I was a bit nervous about it because when we finished it, it was different from our previous stuff. I wondered if it was too different. Then you wait so long and have more nervous thoughts, but everyone seems to love it, and also to love the direction we’re going in.

How would you describe this new direction?

Whak: It’s a more mature version of what we’ve been doing. With the last record, Jenna was still in high school when we were writing the songs. We hadn’t really done much as a band but now we’ve seen the world a bit and we’re touring and have gone through a lot of hardships and growing up, and that’s really reflected in the album both musically and lyric-wise. I think it’s just the next step in growing up for Tonight Alive, this album.

I came across you saying, Jenna, that this is a ‘rockier and more confident’ album. Where did that transformation come from?

Jenna: I think it was a natural progression. Actually most of the album was really spontaneous. It was all written acoustically so we would be in a hallway or a restroom in a venue, even car parks. We’d sit down and write. It wasn’t so much that our influences changed; it was just that our lifestyle changed. And our capability was sort of growing, as musicians. Naturally, as humans, you’ve got a different thinking process as you did even six months ago, let alone two years. It’s just a natural progression from that. I think we’ve really settled into ourselves and into our sound.

And what is new about your sound now?

We really went into this saying, Let’s not make a 2013 record; let’s not overdo anything. We don’t want a high-budget, high-production record. Let’s do something we would have listened to in high school. Let’s do a record like Sum 41, Thrice, Good Charlotte, Blink 182. Let’s go back to those real records, real tones, that aren’t overdone in any sense. I guess we just wanted to do like a cult album for our fans that was going to get them through high school, and be the soundtrack to all those memories of growing up.

It’s interesting that you mention getting your fans through high school because I notice that you have a ‘band message’ described on your website as encouraging ‘self-worth’ and ‘not living in fear of judgement.’ Is this a conscious message in this album?

Whak: I think that was one of the main influences on this album, honestly. We get so many letters and stories and fans coming up and telling us what’s going on for them, and this helped us be more open about what we went through and our own experiences. I guess we wanted to be really relatable with our fans and this is our way of giving back to them.

Jenna: You find that a lot of bands will preach a message, but it’s not really something that they went through, and because of that it’s not as genuine or authentic as it should be. So for us, every time we talk about self-worth, or drive, all the things like getting yourself out of a bad situation and making that your choice, it stems from our personal experiences. I’m constantly talking about those things, not just for fans, but to reassure myself. I’m trying to share that with people but I’m also trying to instil it in myself. There’s a very personal background to the message.

You mention that your lifestyle has changed. Does that have to do with doing bigger and bigger tours over the past two years, or is it something else that has changed?

Whak: This band has been our growing up years. We have grown up and this band has been the only thing that we’ve known, so we’ve really had to grow up as people and find who we want to be as well as what the band is going to be. We’ve had to do that together. That has had a major impact.

When we went to America for the first time, we went in a van. We didn’t have hotels. We were sleeping in carparks and in the van. It was really fun for us because we were only eighteen, but it was also really hard. Then it got to a point in the UK where Jenna was really unhappy because she was so unhealthy, and we were still trying to grow up at the same time and deal with what was going on while the band was getting bigger. Everything happening altogether at that point was such a major, major influence on us.

You’ve mentioned that you know your instruments better now and this album has given you a chance to come into your own as musicians. Can you tell us more about your musicianship on this album?

Jenna: I think it was a natural learning experience, playing every day for two years. I think the Warped tour was a massive learning experience. This year, it was forty shows in fifty days. I think it might have been even more than that last year. Doing that is really like self-teaching.

Whak: You can’t practice the things you learn on stage, and it took us a long time to realise that. You can get as tight as you can in practice space, but then you get on stage … There’s something different about being on stage every day. It makes you grow and become tighter and better as musicians. And we’ve toured with so many bands now that we really look up to, and we want to be as good as them, if not better. The drive to be a better band and a tighter band and always move forward is important.

With this record, for me, there was a lot of stuff on guitar that I couldn’t play, and I had to practice it like every single day so I could get it. I think it is so important that you write a record that is not the last record you did, and that it makes you better as a musician. You’re never going to get better if you don’t do that. The thing on the road is, you’re playing the same thing every single day. It kind of becomes muscle memory. But when you write a record it’s your real chance to become better.

Jenna: To get a one-up on yourself.

Whak: Yeah, and push yourself. I remember ‘Wasting Away’ from our first EP. Jenna couldn’t sing the chorus, and she practised and practised, she recorded it, and we played it so many times. It’s still not the easiest but it’s an easier song for her now. That’s something that we try to do.

I’m interested in what you say about not wanting to make a 2013 record. What is it about that idea that makes you want to do something different?

Whak: For us, we haven’t had a record that we’ve fallen in love with and can listen to every day for a year, like I did. Those records that we love from the early 2000s, late ’90s, that we love so much … We wanted to do that with this record. We wanted it to mean something and be so that fans could listen to it every day and it could get them through what music got us through. We don’t want to put $100,000 into this record and get the best compressors and all that stuff and the songs not be there. We just wanted to get real tones, a real rock feel to it, that people could really latch on too. That’s what we tried to do. It’s what we said to the guy who mixed this record, because this first couple of mixes were super modern. We said, We don’t want this to be 2013, we want this to sound like an early 2000s record, like those records that we love.

What do you think was so good about the late ’90s/early 2000s?

Whak: They wrote songs that matter to people, and that matter to me so much.

Jenna: There was less motive to get radio play and stuff like that. It was such a different time in the industry, where it was really based around touring and there was a lot of TV and not a lot of radio. There wasn’t a culture about punk music.

Whak: Yeah, the industry wasn’t big and there weren’t YouTube sensations and it wasn’t like bands just popped up out of nowhere. It was kind of still analogue as well, so it was these bands that could actually play their instruments and knew how to write a song instead of going to a producer who could do everything. It was more real than it is now. Anyone can be in a band these days. You get a couple of photos, and you record something on ProTools that you bought, make a Facebook page and you’re a band. That’s kind of what we were influenced by.

Finally, what do you think have been the reasons for your success over the past couple of years?

Jenna: It’s tricky to answer because a lot of people would think that we came out of nowhere, and on paper it looks like this band changed quite fast, but I think it’s because it was a full-time thing for us from the beginning. We were literally a band for a year before we dropped everything. I left school and the guys quit their jobs. We made it our first priority and we always have. There was a point where we were quite stubborn and we didn’t want to take advice, but we became more open-minded. It wasn’t that we had more opportunity than other bands. I think we just went about them the right way.

Whak: We were ready when they presented themselves. A lot of bands get opportunities, but then they have a guitarist that says, ‘Oh, I can’t, I have to work that weekend.’ We were always ready for everything so that when something came through, we were able to jump on it, and we did it, no matter how shitty it was for us. We seriously did everything that we could. We were always there and prepared to do it. I think it’s such an important thing that every person in a band has the same goal, and they all know how hard it is to get there. I’m not saying we’re there at all, but since the start, all five of us have wanted this so bad. We’ve gone to every extreme to get it.