Artist interviewed: Jeremy Enigk
Home base: Seattle
Style: Emo-rock
Latest album: How It Feels To Be Something On
(SubPop), released September 22

How can you save time and money when recording?

The best way to save time is to record live with everyone playing together, and that will be really quick and save money. We did that for Diary, our first album, but we don't do that anymore. Personally, now I think it's important to be relaxed and feel like you're home, Spend as much time as you need in the studio but utilize the time as best you can. These days we do things in chunks. We'll all play live to lay down the drums, and then we'll do the bass over, then the guitars and then the color and the little pretty things to deliver hooks, and then the vocals. I think it's important to be able to relax in the studio, but at the same time you want to get things done.

What's the secret to successful touring?

Doing short tours and taking it easy. Doing a few short tours as opposed to doing a two month tour. That's the approach that we're taking for How It Feels To Be Something On. We're doing a nice, mellow tour. We're doing three weeks and then taking a couple weeks off and on we're going out again for three more weeks. We learned from our first tour, which was two months. We hated each other at the end; we did not want to be in the same band anymore. Also, having a crew is important, so if things go wrong technically you have help. As far as having successful live performances you want to be as prepared as possible. Be really hardcore about practice and get tight beyond the point of tight, to the point where playing the songs is second nature and you don't have to think about the lyrics or playing the riff. It's important to have backups too; if you're a guitarist you should have at least two guitars.

How do you write a song that works for your band?

Dan [Hoerner, guitarist] and I will come up with concepts, and that's usually free flow. I'll be sitting in my house when nobody's around and just come up with a riff that comes out of nowhere, and then I'll bring that to Dan, and he'll jam on it and we'll come up with a concept that we'll being to the rest of the band. Or Dan will come up with an idea and bring it to me. When we were writing How It Feels To Be Something On we had so much information pouring through us. We would just instantaneously come up with something pretty. We could have written five albums worth of material.

What's your most Indispensable piece of equipment?

My tuner. For a long time this band didn't have tuners, and they really help to speed things up on stage.

Now do you know when to quit your day job?

It might depend on how much you can take. For someone who's working and trying to do music I wouldn't want to quit a job until I had a record contract that supports you, or unless you were playing a consistent amount of live shows that earned enough to pay your rent. I was very fortunate in that I was in this band right out of high school and within three months we had a record deal and we got enough support to get us by. We didn't have a lot of money and we still don't have a lot of money, but we scrape by. If you're young and you don't care what happens you can just live for the now. I had a lot of faith in what we were doing. I just wanted to play music.

-Jason Zasky