I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Justin Pierre of Motion City Soundtrack and the next 45 minutes produced one of the most interesting interviews I’ve ever done. From the 4 Albums, 2 Nights tour, to their upcoming album, and even their exciting new project with Drexel University, there was never a dull moment. Check out the interview below.
Hi, my name is Justin Pierre. I play guitar and sing in the band Motion City Soundtrack. Yayyyy!!
How would you describe your genre to people who had never listened to your music before?
I don’t know, I just kind of tell people that we’re a rock band. I think a lot of people think of us as “pop-punk.” That is the phrase that gets thrown at us and I think that’s because we spent many years on Warped Tour, playing Warped Tour and we’ve sort of been associated with bands that have also had that label, whether it’s Blink 182, The All American Rejects, or Fall Out Boy, you know those are the sort of bands we went on tour with. So I don’t know. It neither pisses me off nor excites me, that label –pop-punk. I mean it is what it is and if people want to call us that, that’s cool with me. But I usually say “I’m in a rock band,” because that’s very generic and just sort of the simple answer.
What got you into music, originally?
Man, I don’t know. I guess this could be totally crazy. I think I was always a fan of music, it was always around my house. I know my dad had a lot of records and as a small child, wearing diapers, he has pictures of me listening to headphones of his Beach Boys albums and Beatles albums and stuff. So I think I’ve always listened to music but as far as playing music, I sadly attempted to play the saxophone when I was in grade school and it was not so good. But I had this friend who played guitar and we were both into Metallica so we decided to start a metal band where he played guitar and I played sax and it didn’t go so well. But, yeah I think it was kind of, I’ll have to say Metallica made me want to play guitar. So this was around the time, before the album “End Justice For All” but somewhere around there was when I got a guitar and I basically just taught myself how to play by reading their tablature books. So I learned how to play guitar to Metallica tablature books. And then I just, I don’t know, I started playing and in high school I got into different music, I guess it would be considered alternative but it was more of the weird, indie music that sort of blew up in the wake of Nirvana blowing up. So bands like Super Chunk, Pavement, Pixies, Nirvana, Jawbox, Fugazee, things of that sort throughout high school. Then after that I ended up, I had one high school band that was pretty good and we ended up playing like in Duluth, Minneapolis, and St. Paul, Minnesota - those three places. And I ended up playing a lot of shows with a band that Josh Cain, who’s the guitarist in Motion City Soundtrack, was in. So we sort of became friends that way and then when our bands broke up we ended up forming Motion City Soundtrack in 1997. So that’s kind of how I got to be in Motion City Soundtrack.
As most of you beloved fans know, we launched our very own record label The Boombox Generation this past fall with the limited edition vinyl 7” release of our cover of Trampled By Turtles “Wait So Long” and their cover of our song “Disappear”.
We’ve been hard at work behind the scenes on a brand new project and we’re excited to tell you a little more about it today.
As you may have seen from some of our recent tweets we’ve been busy in the studio working on some new recording projects. Besides mixing our forthcoming new album (we promise we will be announcing new information soon!), we have been working with and recording a few new bands.
We are pleased to announce that we have partnered with Drexel University’s music business program’s student run record label, Mad Dragon Records, to curate, produce, collaborate and co-release a series of five singles from five emerging artists to be called Making Moves. The singles will be released via our The Boombox Generation label and Drexel’s Mad Dragon Records, and distributed by ADA. The singles will be released on limited edition 7” vinyl as well as digitally over the course of 2012.
We individually oversaw production of these recordings with the highly skilled engineers and team at Drexel’s very own recording studios on their Philadelphia campus.
We are excited to tell you more about who are the bands, share some video from the sessions, and of course, play you new music. All in due time.
Tomorrow, check back in and we’ll introduce you to the first band in the Making Move series.
Yours truly,
Motion City Soundtrack
or just listen to the song by motion city soundtrack, amirite?!
(Source: perfectbucketlist, via perfectbucketlist)
From the falsest smile to the fear of death is why
the pain reminds us that we’re still alive.
With our hopes on hold and our lack of interest exposed,
all hands damage our determined eyes..
but the lines are drawn, and the red begins to creep
its way from boredom toward apathy.We love that game, but we never play
‘cause we will lose and we wanna stay
the way we are, the way we’ve been
for far too long.- Feel like Rain, Motion City Soundtrack.
Motion City Soundtrack did a Hot Session with Hot Topic to promote My Dinosaur Life when it originally came out, and Hot Topic has now released a remastered version of the performance. Check out Motion City performing “Disappear” below by clicking “Read More.”
can i just say how much i love motion city soundtrack? never in my life have i ever heard or met a band or artist whose music is basically about me and written for me besides that band. not even fall out boy comes close to this band lyrically for me. when i met Justin i couldn’t even bring myself to walk up to him, and he saw this. he saw me awkwardly staggering around but unsure of how to approach him, so he came over to me. walked right on over to me and started having a conversation with me. i couldn’t even believe it, it seriously took me a minute to get everything together because i couldn’t believe i was standing outside talking to him. i told him how much his music meant to me, how every line in every song is my life to a t, like everything was written for me. at first he didn’t know how to respond, i guess he was a little weary that i felt that way knowinghow some of the songs they have are but he grabbed me and took me into a hug and said “that really means a lot to me, i can’t believe something myself and those guys over there wrote mean that much to you, mean that much for you to come here just for us. i’m sure when you get older you won’t feel that way anymore, but if you still do always know that you won’t be alone.” it took everything in me not to cry standing in front of him. after we talked i asked him to take a picture, and he said of course as he was also making jokes about how badly sunburnt i was and how i probably have sun poisoning and i should get it checked out. he was right though, i did have sun poisoning. once i snagged the picture he said he had to run off because they had a signing but he thought i should go to meet the rest of the guys, so i did.
every time i look at this picture or i see this picture it just makes me unbelievably happy because of what he said and what he did. i also laugh because of my sun poisoning (and yes, i did have sun block on). its just words cannot describe how much he and that band mean to me.
We here at FYMCS looove to hear your stories about meeting the guys or what MCS means to you. So always feel free to submit your stories!
