INTERVIEW: Title Fight (USA), April 2011

I did this interview in bed. No, seriously. I forgot it was happening and then had the phone given to me at quarter to eight in the morning, leaving me to scramble to grab my recorder and try to remember what questions I had. It’s also worth mentioning that the first time I heard of Title Fight was when I was asked to interview them. Joey from Hysteria used to spring a lot of relative unknowns on me at the time, but they all ended up being favourites – The Chariot, letlive., these guys. Learning on the job!

Anyway, for an interview that was essentially Wayne Brady’d, this turned out alright. Not great, but what can you expect given the circumstances? I got to do another Title Fight interview this past December, and it turned out WAY better. I’ll share that here eventually.

– DJY, February 2015

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After building up a solid underground reputation, Title Fight are ready to break through to the other side with their long-awaited debut album, Shed. Combining a sense of melodic pop-punk and ruthless hardcore, Shed is the kind of album that will last in your mind far longer than its half-hour playing time. Australian Hysteria caught up with Jamie Rhoden from the band to discuss the new album, a change in recording style and their inaugural visit to the country.

AUSTRALIAN HYSTERIA: Hey Jamie, how’s your year been so far?

The year has been really good! Although we haven’t done much with it so far. We finished recording in December of last year and were pretty much home until now. We did a short tour of Canada with Comeback Kid and maybe two other shows besides that. Our record came out at the beginning of the month, and people are excited about it! We go on tour in two days.

It’s understandable that people are excited. That’s a pretty long time to be sitting on the record! Was than an executive decision – “the man” making you wait that long?

[Laughs] No, we kinda chose that time ourselves. We were trying to push for it to come out earlier, around March, because they said that the record will take two months to get from the final production stages into the pressing and all that other stuff that I don’t understand. Then everything took so long, with the mastering and the artwork and taking forever to get into contact with people, so it got pushed back a little bit. We weren’t mad at anyone – I mean, it would have been cool, but it’s really good timing for us. I think it’s worked out for the best.

Fair enough. You must be excited now that it’s finally out there, though?
Yeah, it’s definitely a big weight off our shoulders. We’ve been anticipating this for a long time – it’s our first full-length and our first release with SideOne [Dummy Records]. It’s a really big thing for us, and we had a lot of pressure. People were always going to say whatever about this – “they signed to SideOne? They sound like this now! They suck!” All that usual crap you hear whenever a band does something. So far, though, people have been really supportive. I’ve got no complaints at all!

What was the recording process for Shed like? Was it all that different to when you guys have recorded previously?
A huge difference. The other two or three times that we’ve been in the studio, it was literally somebody’s basement that we turned into a studio. We were there for three days, and finished all the songs in the studio. We were unprepared and rushed – we wanted to get everything out as soon as we could. With this one, we spent basically a year writing the album itself, and then when we went into the studio, we did two weeks of twelve-hour days. It was our first time in a real studio with a producer. All these things were really new to us, but we tried our best to make the most of them. Even though two weeks is a really long time, a lot of people who go into these big studios will be using them for months at a time. They have a day for a drum part, a day for a vocal take. We got everything done at once. It was a long time for us, but there was still a lot for us to pack in. I think, for our first time in a situation like that, we were as prepared as we could have been.

With that said, being in the studio for such an extended period of time, was there ever an underlying fear that perhaps you might be overthinking the process?

Sometimes. I think in the writing of the album, that’s especially what happened. We were afraid that we were going to write a song and we’d get reactions like “that songs sounds exactly the same as this one,” or that “that song sounds nothing like this one.” Just this fear that we would write something that wasn’t “us.” We kind of got to the overthinking point when we were really focusing on the writing, where that fear would keep creeping into the songs. “I don’t want it to sound like this,” or “I don’t want it to sound too much like that,” or whatever. We had to sit down and say to ourselves: “Why do we care?” Why do we care what it is, as long as we’re happy with it? Let’s just do our own thing – and that’s just what we ended up doing.

A debut album is always seen as a pretty big landmark for a band – was it important to make a strong first impression?
Yeah, we had that idea when we were going into record it – we wanted to make a statement, I guess you could say. I think it’s a great example of who we are as people and as songwriters and as a band at this point in time. We really wrote songs that we needed to write.

What songs from Shed would you show to someone in order to best represent what the album is about?

There’s a couple of songs that come to mind. There’s a song that we wrote called “Society,” and the entire idea behind the song is that we’re the kind of band that writes these short, fast, aggressive songs. Why can’t we write a short, slow, angry, aggressive song? We drew influence from bands that we all love but perhaps doesn’t come out that much in our music. I think it’s a cool song that kind of sticks out in its own way, and I don’t know how people are going to react to it. I’m really excited about showing it to people.

You must be looking forward to playing these songs live?
Oh, yeah. The last time we recorded was in December of 2008. We’ve been playing pretty much the same songs since then. Don’t get me wrong, those are great songs. At the same time, though, when you do the same thing at every single show, it gets fairly boring and redundant. We’re just excited to play anything new at all. But the fact is we really like the songs that we wrote, and we’re really excited to play them.

Tell us about the tour you’re about to start – we’ve heard it’s pretty massive!
Yeah, we’re doing a full U.S. tour, and it’s with Touché Amoré, The Menzingers and our friends in Dead End Path. It’s a tour that we wanted to be big, but we also wanted it to be on our terms. We wanted to be touring with bands that we like, that are diverse and that we can have a good time with. It’s gonna be cool – it’s our first-ever proper headlining tour in the States! We’ve toured a lot in the past year, but we’ve never had something big like this before.

Sounds exciting. And then you’re bringing Touché to Australia with you for the first time!
Yeah! I don’t know if we’re bringing someone else out or not – we’re working on it, but we don’t have any more info yet. But we’re coming in September! It’s our first time crossing the equator, and it’s gonna be really cool. We love going to places that are extremely foreign to us, and it’s definitely gonna be a crazy experience. Especially with Touché! We can’t wait.