QRO: How many people are in the band, or is it a fluid kind of thing?

Mirza Ramic: There's four of us.  On this tour we've got a guy who's never really toured with us, who's singing live, who sang on our last record...

QRO: Who's that?

MR: His name's Ben; he plays in Uzi & Ari, another band, and he's opening every show... [except for tonight]

QRO: And the other members?

MR: Oh, there's Max... Max and I do all the music; Kyle plays drums and trumpets for us live; and Ben takes care of the vocals and some keyboards.

QRO: Where are you guys out of?  I thought I saw someone from Maine....

MR: I live in Portland, Maine now.  Kyle lives in Boston, so does Max.

[Ben ambles into the interview]

QRO: So how's everything been so far on the tour?  Any major catastrophes?  Pleasant surprises?

Max Lewis: Things have been solid so far.  This is maybe the seventh or eighth show, so we're like a week in.  We played two shows, a show in Luxembourg, in Belgium, four dates in the UK, last night in France, and tonight we're here [in Karlsruhe, Germany].  There've been some good shows, some not so good shows, kind of a mix...

QRO: Yeah, what's been a good show, what's been a not so good one?

QRO: Where was that?

MR: In Lille; that was really good, Luxembourg, London, were all really good.  Some of the other cities though, the smaller ones in the U.K. were tough for shows.

QRO: Whereabouts in the U.K.?

MR: We went to Hull in northern England, which is kind of way up there.  It was okay, people were really nice, people were excited, but there wasn't really a big crowd...

QRO: It's tough right now; it's like the holiday season right now... everyone's relocated from the university places at the moment.

MR: Yep, that's the tough part about the U.K. shows.

QRO: So, did I see that you guys have been through Europe?  I think I saw that you've done European tours before?

MR: Yeah, we've done two before...

QRO: Been through Germany before?

MR: Our label is based out of Germany, so we've got a bunch of German shows.

QRO: I covered a show in Stuttgart by Caspian (QRO review), who you guys have also played with...

MR: And we're touring with them in the U.S. in a few months.

QRO: Germany has got this weird thing where there are these "youth organization centers"... [Jubez] is kind of like one of those.

MR: It feels like that.

ML: An all-ages kind of thing...

QRO: Yeah, but it's like state-sponsored...  So have you guys played in those types of places before?  Because they tend to be kind of a weirder crowd - the one in Stuttgart, whole families would go...  Have you ever seen anything like that?

Kyle: Not sure.  Maybe once.

MR: We've played in places kind of like [Jubez].  Sort of youth centers.

QRO: I don't see any parents here.

ML: Not yet. [laughter] You never know...

MR: But it's nice that they have places like this where they can bring in bands from abroad, pay them, give us dinner and all that....

QRO: Was it some spaetzle?  Some good hearty German food?

K: I think it was more like an eggplant-potato curry served over rice kind of thing.

QRO: Sort of world cuisine.

K: We had some pretzels though, so that counts for maybe the German thing.

QRO: Pretzels!  That's pretty good - they love them here, they just walk around the streets eating their pretzels.  So let's talk about the album Matador: how did it come together and all that?  I heard there was a lot of collaboration, within the band, outside the band.

ML: Sure - as we were writing the songs we realized we needed some vocals.  And we prefer them to be good vocals, but neither of us (Max and Mirza) can sing...  So naturally we had to go find some real singers...

[laughter]

ML: Yeah, it's true. (We try, but we can't sing) So we had to find some singers.  We contacted Ben, who's with us now, and he said yes.  Also we wanted some guitar in a style we don't normally play, so we contacted Philip Caspian and asked him...

MR: We kind of wanted to involve more people because we generally like collaboration.  We're happy with the record having different people with different ideas that we wouldn't necessarily have ourselves, so that makes it exciting for us too, to see that difference.

QRO: When was Matador released?

MR: It was released in Europe at the end of November [2009].

QRO: Cool, so where are you guys headed next after Karlsruhe?

MR: Tomorrow's Frankfurt, then Austria, Switzerland, then back to Germany for a few shows, then we're also doing Poland and the Czech Republic.

ML: Three weeks to go.

QRO: Alright, good luck guys!