Music

The Weekly interview: Taking Back Sunday frontman Adam Lazzara

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Taking Back Sunday
Ryan Russell
Chris Bitonti

So February 24, the same day you play Vegas, Taking Back Sunday is also releasing a box set, Happiness Is: The Complete Recordings. What better way to celebrate than to go to Vegas? We’ve been working on it for quite some time now and going back and forth and trying to get it just right, so to have it be finally coming out is pretty awesome. Hopeless [Records] said my copy is in the mail—I haven’t gotten it yet, so there’s still a little bit of disbelief that it’s actually happening. But it’ll be awesome to hold it, and I’m excited for other people to hold it.

It’s, like, this seven-inch box set, and it has all the B-sides from the Happiness Is recording session. We had all the songs recorded and done, and deciding which ones to keep off the record was really difficult for us. In the past, there [are] normally a couple songs that raise their hand and say, “Maybe, I shouldn’t go on the full-length,” but there wasn’t one of those this time. So to have them be out there in the world is cool.

Have you always pressed vinyl for releases? We’ve always tried to. Some of them were a little difficult to convince the label. I know that Louder Now and New Again and the self-titled record were pressed, and now we’re trying to get them repressed, which is this whole process. For me, if there’s a record that I really love, I go and I buy it on vinyl. I grew up going to record stores, and I would get lost in there for hours. And there’s something about being able to hold it and look at the artwork and all that. I have a brother who’s nine years younger than me, and I feel that a lot of that is lost on a bunch of his friends. They don’t quite understand that experience or what’s so special about it. So we always try to make something that you can hold, and the packaging is cool. We take a lot of care with that stuff.

So for the new record, when you originally recorded it, was that without a label behind it, hoping someone would pick it up? Yeah, we didn’t have a label at the time, but we had the songs. So we just figured, let’s record them, because it’s gonna get put out even if we have to do it ourselves. And then, thankfully, Hopeless came around. It actually works out great, ’cause then there’s no outside influence. There was no other cook in the kitchen. We were really freed up to do a lot of exactly what we wanted.

I saw you guys last year at Extreme Thing, and there had to be 30,000 kids at that show. How did you not have a label fighting for you? We had gotten dropped by Warner. We just weren’t selling enough records for it to make sense for them to keep us on. That kinda happened during this whole process, when we were finishing up touring and figuring out where we were gonna record, and we already had all these songs written or close to finished.

Hopeless isn’t a small label by any means, but would you sign to a major again if the opportunity came around? The deal would have to be really good. It’s really nice working with a smaller team, ’cause it’s easier to get things done. You don’t have to go through so many channels. And it’s also nice to be working with people who want to be working with you and are also invested. With all that said, I’m open to anything. You just see what opportunity comes up, and if it makes sense, you take it.

You guys have been pretty relentless—touring, writing, recording, releasing, touring a lot more—but there’s been kind of a swing back with your emo/punk genre. Is it strange for you to see some of those bands that fell by the wayside getting back together and coming back out on tour and playing again, since you’ve been going strong the whole time?Honestly, I don’t pay all that much attention to it, but I think if anything it speaks [to] our perseverance. It’s not going to change what we’re doing or what we do one way or another. And I know it sounds like I have blinders on or something, but the whole emo thing, everybody’s saying all this right when I thought we were getting away from it. ’Cause I never thought that we were an emo band, I just thought we were a rock band; we played loud. I’ve always said folks can call us whatever they want and classify our band however they’d like just so long as they listen.

You’re touring with a pretty eclectic bill: Taking Back Sunday, The Menzingers and Letlive. That’s a varied show, for sure. I’m glad you said that, ’cause that’s exactly what we were trying to do. We wanted to put something together that would have a little bit for everybody. And I personally think it’s a strong line-up. Letlive, they’re a little more erratic and very heavy. And then you have The Menzingers which is more in the rock ’n’ roll and punk rock kind of world, And then there’s us. I personally think it’s going to be a great time.

Taking Back Sunday with Letlive, The Mezingers. February 24, 5 p.m., $28. House of Blues, 702-632-7600.

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