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Growing Up On The Internet
My American Heart
Interview by: Julia Conny

I sat down with the guys from My American Heart at this year's Warped Tour to discuss just how damn hot it was. Occasionally they mentioned their adventures as 17/18 year-olds with a successful, freshly-signed, nation-wide touring band on their way to Taste of Chaos Japan. And to think I was just a little jealous.

All right! Can everyone just go through and say their name.
Larry: I'm Larry from My American Heart. I'm 18 and I am the singer.
Steven: I'm Steven. I play drums. And I'm 17.
Jesse: I'm Jesse and I play guitar!

How old are you?
Jesse: I'm 17.
Jeremy: I'm Jeremy and I'm 18 and I play guitar.

Let's talk about Warped Tour since we're here and it seems appropriate. This is your first time, right?
Larry: I've grown up, from about 10 till about 12 (laughs)...Honestly, no. Warped Tour is an amazing experience. I mean you learn so much about hard work. It's all hard work. You have to load all your own equipment. Merchandise. The heat. I shouldn't be talking about this because I don't do shit all day. (laughs) I'll let Jeremy take on that.
Jesse: Me and Jeremy wake up at like 6 am every morning and load in all our cabs and stuff, set up our tent, go out and promote with flyers and stuff.
Steven: We pretty much promote our band all day.
Jesse: All day. That's what it's all about.
Steven: We're going to have the same explanations of Warped Tour from every band member (laughs).
Jeremy: We drive every night for about five hours and sleep for about two hours. We wake up at seven, load our stuff in and hope we get a good merch spot. And hope we sell some stuff, which we never do. We figure out our time, we walk around with signs saying what time we play.

I saw a couple of those.
Jeremy: We pass out flyers for people to throw on the floor.
Steven: Why are you so negative, dude?! No one likes our band. I'm going to kill myself. (laughs)

I have a feeling that you guys are doing OK. You guys are 17, 18 years old and you just signed to Warcon. At least, in my opinion, that's fucking huge.
Larry: Well thank you so fucking much. You're fucking welcome. (laughs)
I did hear that you got other offers from other labels. I would really, really like to know which ones.
Larry: No, we didn't have any other offers.

Really? I heard somewhere that you had like 7 or 8, like it was some sort of battle.
Jeremy: We had a couple labels show interest but it was nothing more, really.
Steven: Tinted Amber Records!!! Yeah!!!
Larry: No, don't put that.
Steven: No! Put that!
Larry: I'm so sorry. Will everybody just let me fucking talk!

All right. Let's talk about PureVolume. That's how I first discovered you guys. I found you on it one day, and I was like, who are these little kids?
Larry: We went around with a thousand computers and we kept clicking our plays.

Oh, so the billions of plays you have now aren't really...oh, ok.
Larry: It's a fluke. It's a fake.

So you're really not as big as you guys are?
Larry: Yeah, we lie.

That's such a disappointment. (laughs) But seriously, the thing that was insane was you guys went from completely unknown to dominating PureVolume. My question is, do you think that's what credits to your success?
Jeremy: We've been on PureVolume since it first started, ever since MP3.com went down. We branched out to all these other great MP3 sites and we had no idea that PureVolume was going to be that big so we signed up as No Way Out. We just went from there and before we knew it, it was really huge. Plays, and plays, and plays, and hits, and hits.
Larry: It was the new MP3.com pretty much.
Jeremy: We were on the main page when PureVolume was brand new.
Steven: We pretty much grew as PureVolume grew.

You really did. And I don't want to say that most of your fans are from PureVolume, but I think it's pretty fair to say.
Larry: I think the Internet is the greatest thing invented. It's helped so many bands. And it's helped the scene so much. But that bad thing about it is there are 20 billion bands on that website.

Wow. But there are all kinds of different music. It's an amazing website. San Diego. I'm clearly from the East Coast.
Larry: You're from the East Coast?

Haha. Yeah, I am. I know how the music scene is here, and I know you've tour around here quite a bit. How do you compare West Coast to East Coast, if one is better?
Jesse: Northeast, like New Jersey, has one of the best scenes, in the country. San Diego is really all about the hardcore scene. And we're not really all that hardcore. But we still have a big fan base there. We do well there. Hopefully!
Jesse: No one is really that big in San Diego.
Steven: Haha, yeah, San Diego is just like a bunch of random bands. We just got lucky. (laughs)

Or maybe you're just talented.
Larry: Haha. I think we are our own worst critics and we doubt ourselves way too much.

Sometimes I prefer local shows, and I understand you guys have played some big shows. But when you go home, I imagine your home shows are really, really big. Then you come here and you might not play to such a large and uh, receptive audience. What do you prefer, the big shows with all of your friends, all of your fans that have been with you since the beginning? Or just going out on tour, going back and forth from good show to bad show to good show?
Larry: Going out on tour. Of course! That's the only way to do it. The more you put into touring the more you're going to get. Copeland toured for 11 months out of the year and within that span, they blew up. Plus, their music is amazing too. They had the product and they didn't care if the market was huge. You gotta make that market. The more we came back to New Jersey the bigger our scene got over there. It just gets bigger and bigger every time we play.

What's your next tour? Do you know yet?
Larry: There is talk of us going out with Paramore in the fall. And we are definitely going to Japan for the Taste of Chaos in November. And we might be doing a tour for our CD release that's coming out in September.

And I was listening to the new clips on PureVolume just yesterday and I noticed how much harder it was. It doesn't seem deeper or darker, just more in depth. Does that make sense?
Larry: It is more like we grew as musicians to actually play our instruments. Tour does that to you. You learn so much. If a band doesn't progress then there is no point.

I know as a writer that there was a period of time or a moment when I knew that I loved this stuff and that it was all I wanted to do. Did you guys have a moment, like a show or a practice, where you guys realized this was something you were going to pursue and put your hearts into?
Larry: We were only a band for a month. We had to write six songs because we signed up for this battle of the bands. And there were about 50 bands from San Diego, all local. You had to sell presale tickets to get a good spot. It was horrible. Twelve bucks a ticket. It was a money scandal. We ended up winning and we were the youngest band. And we were probably the newest band.
Steven: We were like, let's go join a battle of the bands!
Larry: After that we decided, hey, this is something that we want to do. We don't want to be the kids that just go to school.
Steven: Cover Blink 182.

I heard you guys used to be a big cover band.
Larry: Oh yeah. We were a HUGE cover band.
Steven: Haha. I bet you I've covered (points out the van window) a bunch of these bands out here.

So you were big fans before all of this. And I know that for us, because this is our first year backstage, we're going crazy.
Steven: We've listened to all these bands. If we weren't in the band right now, we'd probably be here. We'd be like, hey, let's go watch Acceptance because they're great.

That's awesome. Everything for you guys just seems to be falling in place. You have the new album, an amazing producer. I am not even going to try to pronounce his name.
Steven and Larry: Sal Villanueva

And am I right, Geoff Rickly was also part of the record. That's incredible.
Larry: It was really awesome. He heard our stuff and he really showed interest in it. And it really pumped us up. It encouraged us because we really think Geoff is a great musician. He has done so much for the scene.

It's Thursday.
Larry: Yeah, it's Thursday. To have him interested in something I've written, it's an honor. That's awesome. And I am sure the new album will be awesome as well.
Jeremy: Turned out a lot better than what we planned.

So you didn't have regrets or hesitations?
Jeremy: No regrets.
Steven: (making fun of Jeremy) Yeah, I know we're going to suck. (laughs)
Jeremy: No, it just turned out a lot better than I thought. I really like it a lot.
Larry: It's not so much that I like it, I am just really proud of it.
Steven: I am just proud to be 17 and being signed to a label, being with my best friends and touring for 11 months and not deal with our parents!
Jesse: We all dropped out of high school too. You gotta do what you gotta do.
Larry: Hey, I'm going to finish high school. Fuck that. (laughs) I gotta get my fucking diploma. My mom is going kill me.

Well, thank you guys. That is all I really had. Make sure to stop by the tent. And good luck with everything.


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