In the run-up to the September 23rd release of their new album, Real Emotion, Nashville’s Paper Route sat down and talked with QRO. Nick Aranda (guitar), JT Daly (vocals), and Chad Howat (bass) discussed the new album, bringing in Aranda for it, making it sixteen tracks, picking singles, always touring at the wrong time (Phoenix heat waves, Canadian blizzards…), being an electronic band from the home of the Grand Ol’ Opry, playing at 2:00 AM, the video for “Laugh About It”, Daly’s hat, and more…
QRO: Are you itching to get the album out?
JT Daly: Very, very much so.
QRO: How long has it been done? I know that it takes forever to get an album out these days….
Chad Howat: It’s been done since the spring.
Nick Aranda: We mastered at the end of March.
CH: But we were also 90% done with it, about a year ago. That last ten percent is always the final – wrapping it up at the end is always the toughest part. The last ten percent takes as long as the first ninety.
NA: I think the first time that I really felt like we were done with it was when we had shot the cover. That was when I was like, ‘We’re done.’ ‘Cause that day, we found out when our release was, as well, so we did have some closure, and we started on phase two, of like, ‘How do we share this with the world?’
QRO: How did making Real Emotion compare to making prior records, The Peace of Wild Things (QRO review) and Absence (QRO review)?
JD: Some things were similar, in the sense that we tend to write a whole bunch of songs, and then like make a list of the moments or sections that we like, and then we always find another home, a place to get away from everything. Then we escape and really make the album there. So that was the same.
I kinda feel like this was, we felt the most free on this one, since the days when no one even knew who we were. At least that’s how I felt. I felt like, on this one, we could really do just whatever we wanted and it didn’t really matter, in good and bad ways, honestly. We don’t really know how many people are paying attention – this is just for us again, and it kind of made it really special.
I kinda feel like this was, we felt the most free on this one, since the days when no one even knew who we were.
CH: Plus adding Nick into the band role was a huge difference as well. Nick brought a musicality that JT & I craved, probably, and I felt like I could relax a little bit more.
Also, JT and I have been working together for fifteen years, and it’s good to bring somebody in who grew up around different type of music. Because we have so many of the same influences, we grew up musically together in a lot of ways, but Nick, coming in from a different part of the country, and different musical background experiences, influenced a lot of things.
NA: It was partially that I get to bring my own background and experience and playing into it, but it’s also encountering some of those heroes that I gravitated to some different bands in the same era, and so encountering music that was just as epic, and had just as big heroes in it, and trying to translate that – not as an adolescent in love with it, but as an adult, ‘Oh, okay, this was your favorite guitar player back in like 1997. So how do I sound like that now?’
QRO: Why such a big record, at sixteen tracks?
NA: If I had to start off, the main reason we gave ourselves the license to do that, because doing that is more of a statement. Especially in 2016, where normally a record’s 35 or 40 minutes long, nine to twelve tracks or whatever – twelve would even be considered high. You definitely know you’re putting something out there that’s not what everyone else is doing.
But I think we gave ourselves the license, because it had been a while since we’d put out a record. The last record came out 2012. So it was like, our fans, who have stuck with us all this time, they deserve to hear more than just what we edit the list down to. They deserve to hear processes.
JD: There are fewer & fewer people who listen to full albums now. We sort of felt like the people who listen to full albums will appreciate an entire album. Why trim songs that we actually feel like complete this thought, if the majority of people are just gonna listen to singles or songs in sections, anyways? Let’s make the album for album lovers, and the other people can do whatever they want.
There are fewer & fewer people who listen to full albums now. We sort of felt like the people who listen to full albums will appreciate an entire album.
NA: I used to listen to full albums – I think we all did. Those of us who work in music or something, we have nostalgia about that.
It was never, ‘Play – listen all the way to the end.’ It was put it in your CD player for months, start at track one, and just see how far you get. And eventually you’re like, ‘I know the first four songs – I’m gonna start at track five.’ I feel like the way that it ended up in the final sequence, those natural breaks of attention, are almost like ‘Section A, Section B, Section C’…
CH: I also want to add that we reference “classic albums.” What does it mean to be a classic, timeless album?
I feel like you can kind of categorize the classic, amazing albums into two categories. One is an album that puts you in this mood perfectly, maintains it throughout, basically – [Beck’s] Sea Change, for instance.
But then there’s another thing, and these albums I find tend to be a little bit longer, where it’s – for lack of a better phrase – ‘a musical journey.’ When you have a larger track listing, I think you have more of a license to experiment and go further with it, because you’re not clinging so tightly to ‘these nine tracks’. ‘Yeah, the song doesn’t need to be what it’s not – we’re gonna let it be its own thing.’
I think it gives us more creative license – at least on this record. Maybe the next one will be more of a ‘single mood piece,’ but this one just felt like it was a lot of different things we were trying & doing.
NA: We liked exploring all the different corners of what it could be.
Maybe the next one will be more of a ‘single mood piece,’ but this one just felt like it was a lot of different things we were trying & doing.
QRO: What did you do for drums?
JD: For drums we used Darren King, majority of the album, the drummer from the band MUTEMATH, he’s worked on some Kanye West stuff.
CH: He’s a longtime friend, and he’s an absolute freak of a musician.
JD: It worked out perfect to bring him in.
QRO: I really like “Laugh About It” and “Chariots” (QRO review) – how did you go about picking them as singles?
JD: “Laugh About It” was kinda just an outlier, where a whole bunch of people kinda gravitated towards it, for being an outlier, honestly. And we kinda just trusted that, and felt it was worth a shot to release that first. It had that big hook in it; we sort of wrote it accidentally.
CH: I think we liked the idea that it was sort of a stripped down rock song, that wasn’t as lush with synths. It had an immediacy to it.
It felt lyrically, too, like it’s a pretty good frontrunner for the first thing you should hear of an album that’s going to have a lot of content to it.
JD: Really big melodies, with very real lyrics to us, which not a lot of people can sing about. We’ve been in a band for a decade, and you see a lot of life at that point. Also, we’ve had a little bit of highs, and a lot of lows. [laughs] And it warrants the right to sing a song like that. So we took that opportunity.
CH: Especially on an album called “Real Emotion”. It’s definitely not missing that.
JD: “Chariots” is just a cornerstone to the album. It’s one of the band’s collective favorite songs.
I think we were surprised when we saw people really like pulling it out as a single contender, rather than just a deep cut that we thought it would be thought of. So that was a no-brainer for us, ‘Definitely make that one a single.’
CH: We knew for sure we could make people like it if we crammed it down their throats, live, because there’s so much energy, but definitely were surprised to hear that it was a stand-out for almost everybody.
Paper Route’s video for “Chariots”:
QRO: Is this upcoming tour your biggest headlining tour to-date?
CH: We’ve done far longer tours. This is like ‘Route One’. We’ll be hitting the West Coast next year, we really want to go to Ohio, we need to go to Boston. And that’s not even including Canada; we really want to get back to the U.K.
NA: We have a lot of U.K. fans that are pretty peeved about the fact that we haven’t been back over there.
JD: We’ve relentlessly let them down…
NA: If anyone who could be complaining about Paper Route hasn’t done for them, it’s them…
QRO: Is it starting in Baton Rouge just because that is relatively close to your hometown of Nashville?
CH: It’s also one of our favorite venues.
NA: Spanish Moon is one of our favorite venues.
JD: They’re one of the first people to really get the Paper Route vision.
QRO: Can it be hard, touring in the South? It seems like the cities/venues are just too far apart.
CH: It’s nothing like the southwest. From Dallas to Phoenix, or Dallas to Albuquerque…
We drove back from Canada, and we went through four blizzards, just to get home. Four blizzards!
JD: Touring in America, in general, is kinda hard.
And it seems like we always go out at the worst time. We have never toured at the right time, ever!
CH: There could be tornados, and blizzards – let’s go out then!
JD: We’ve toured when police have pulled us over and told us, “Get off the road.” That seriously happened – we’re like, “We have to,” and we put chains on our tires.
CH: I’m getting anxiety just thinking about it.
JD: We drove back from Canada, and we went through four blizzards, just to get home. Four blizzards!
CH: Actually, I flew out of that one. I have good flying luck…
JD: We toured during the hottest heat wave of one year in Phoenix, where they almost cancelled the show because of how hot it was.
CH: In New York, in the heat wave, when our A.C. broke, and we were all naked, in the van.
JD: Oh, yeah. That was actually dangerous – I remember that.
CH: Because you don’t wanna trip on anything… [all laughs]
QRO: Did you stick to the seats?
CH: Oh, yeah.
We had a copy of the last album on vinyl, that we always left on the dashboard, just to commemorate how brutally some of those times were, and it was just so mangled at the end…
NA: Turned into a bowl we could have sold for forty dollars that we could have sold at Restoration Hardware.
CH: It looked like one of those you’d see at some cheeseball antique store, where they make bowls out of vinyl.
QRO: You toured earlier this year, opening for MUTEMATH (QRO photos on tour with Paper Route). Is it tricky, when you want to play the new songs, but they’re not out yet (and you’re already the opener)?
JD: Honestly, the main reason why we did that tour was because we’ve known those guys for so long, and they’re really, really good people. The people who listen to our music seem to love them as well, and vice-versa. It seemed like it would just be a great family tour.
But besides that, it was really, really hard. And it was really hard to see people after shows, and be like, “You can’t open up for bands anymore.” Because we’ve done it so much, and they’re just like, “You just have to headline,” and we were like, “We know the band should headline.”
It took us awhile to make this album, and to find the right team. We had to start again.
Let’s say this: we’re really, really trying to headline as much as possible these days. Is that safe to say?
CH: Sorry, U2. It’s a hard “no” from us…
JD: Bo-No… [laughs and fist-bumps]
If we were just considered ‘normal,’ and just liked doing whatever everyone else has done, that would be far more difficult for us to handle, I think.
QRO: What’s it like being an electronic band in Nashville? Is it tough being anything other than country there, or does Nashville have a big indigenous non-country scene?
CH: It seemed like we were one of the first bands that were like, “We make music with laptops…”
JD: We play sometimes with our friends, and they’re like, “Oh, you guys gotta bring your huge set-up…” We kinda like, ‘Well, that’s just our genre.’ If we asked you to open up, we wouldn’t be like, ‘Where’s your banjo and acoustic?’ That’s what you bring – this is our show.
CH: All of our friends who tour, most of them, are like, ‘Oh, I gotta pack up the Subaru Outback with our two guitars.’ That takes like 30 seconds – we take forty minutes to pack our trailer every night.
JD: There’s a scene, there, now. It’s a great place to live. It’s not weird.
CH: It’s not difficult.
NA: It’s way more normal now.
CH: Honestly, people like us would feel like it’s difficult if we didn’t stand out. If we were just considered ‘normal,’ and just liked doing whatever everyone else has done, that would be far more difficult for us to handle, I think. It’s just our personality – we’re very exploratory in our artistic choices, it seems like. Always trying to find something.
NA: Totally.
QRO: I guess it just seems, from an outsider, ‘Nashville, it must be country music…’
Also, having a music industry base, you break a guitar string, you can get that pretty easily than you could in other cities…
NA: There’s kind of a dark side to it, there being so many music people there, breeds that weird ‘anti-music’ stuff. “I’m really not getting it,” it’s all sarcastic about the business.
QRO: I first saw you at South-by-Southwest (QRO recap) – what do you think of ‘industry festivals’ like that?
JD: They’re cool; you just really need to know what you’re getting into. It’s a plug-in-and-play, you know?
I don’t really think it’s fair, sometimes, to the people that are coming to see their favorite band play. A lot of them are using rented gear, there’s no soundcheck – it’s not really the band’s best color, sometimes.
NA: And that band is usually playing three times in one day.
JD: It’s an excuse for a whole bunch of art lovers to get together and drink free alcohol and talk art, so in that sense, it’s cool.
CH: The less serious you take those, the better. I think in the early days, we would get anxiety, ‘This set could change your lives…’
JD: That’s what sucks – you’re put in those positions. We had so many record label people that would be like, ‘The president’s coming, tonight at 2:00 AM, at the American Spirit show.’ That happened to us one time, and we were like, ‘2:00 AM?!? We’ve played four times today!’
CH: And they still signed us! We survived…
Paper Route’s video for “Laugh About It”:
QRO: How was making the video for “Laugh About It”?
JD: It’s awesome – Israel Anthem is very, very talented.
QRO: Is that his real name? ‘Cause that sounds like a fake name…
CH: It does…
QRO: But it also sounds like that could be a real name.
JD: It’s very much his name, and there are a lot of things about him, and I say this as a compliment, you would ask yourself, “Is that real?” And it is very much real.
He is a very idiosyncratic human being, and he’s really, really awesome guy.
CH: He’s a good director, too. He really runs his set really well. Everybody likes him, but fears him. [laughs]
JD: For the amount of money that we made that music video on, he killed himself to make it look that good.
QRO: You probably shot your stuff separate from the other part of the video, but did you at least get to meet the Slender Man-like guy?
CH: He’s the drummer…
QRO: Is that why the drummer in the video is always wearing masks?
CH: It was sort of a fun way to keep that visual. I can’t think of the right word right now, but that ‘mysteriousness’ to it? That quirky, little off-balance, Tim Burton-esque kinda visual aesthetic. ‘He’s gonna wear a mask, and then he’s gonna be wearing this crazy suit…’
QRO: Did he already know how to walk on stilts?
CH: Ish…
NA: He learned that day, that week, I think.
CH: Or he said he had painted on stilts, once. But who knew he could dance like that?
And then they would ice his calves down, between takes, because he would get pretty worn out by that…
I think the video, in a lot of ways, kinda sealed the deal on “Laugh About It”.
QRO: I really liked when you did the ‘smiling guitar players.’ It’s really creepy, because it wasn’t the first – it wasn’t like you started that way, that would be the thing, but it was second, ‘Why are they doing that now?’ Also coming off the Slender Man…
CH: There’s a darkness to it. I think it’s kinda like the lyrics, it sounds happy and light, but there’s a heaviness to it.
We were also having fun that day. It reminded us of the old, really sarcastic Nirvana videos from the nineties, like “In Bloom”.
NA: Or the “Buddy Holly” video.
JD: I think the video, in a lot of ways, kinda sealed the deal on “Laugh About It”. I think the people that were kinda a little shrug shoulders, ‘What’s Paper Route doing on their next album?’ I think that video kind of made them realize, ‘I get it out now.’
CH: It like synergized well with the song. A positive loop.
QRO: Because the song would have been your first new stuff in a while…
JD: I don’t think people really got ‘the wink’ in that song.
It’s a very dark song. Just the way that it’s packaged, seems a little different.
CH: We got to channel a little Nashville in the performance, too. Part of the ‘smiley’ section, we’re doing the synchronized [sways with guitars].
[Daly] does have great hair – for the record.
QRO: Most importantly, JT, do you always wear that hat?
JD: No, not all the time. I usually wear a Cavs hat, Cleveland Cavaliers hat.
But if we’re doing Paper Route stuff, I kinda like to do it. I kinda like having a thing.
There is a guy, Orlando [Palacios] at Worth & Worth in New York, that is, I think, one of the best hat designers in the world. He made this hat, and he’s made a couple of them for me.
CH: He does have great hair – for the record. Only Nick & I see it…
JT: My mom’s favorite artist of all time is David Bowie. So when I’m just surrounded by that, as a kid – still, to this day. When he passed (QRO R.I.P.), I came home, and my mom had bought two of every magazine – from around the world – that he’s been on the cover, and she gives me the other half, for me to have.
And I’m flipping through, and I’m just like, ‘This man was such an icon – in every single way.’ He would walk into a room, and you would be like, ‘And that man needs my attention…’
So it’s getting kind of harder, as this planet spins in space – well, at least I’m gonna wear a hat… [all laugh]
