Josh: You guys are from Texas... there aren't really a lot of bands out of Texas right now, are there?

Jim: There are a lot of bands out of Texas right now, they're just not big, but they're getting there. They haven't hit it big but there are a lot of up and coming bands. Like Those Peabodys, the Rise who is on Ferretstyle Records, they're gonna do well.. Us... Trail of the Dead... Texas has a good scene.

Robert: Texas rules.

Josh: This is probably the eighth time I've seen you guys this year.

Jim: What?

Josh: I see you guys once every couple of weeks it seems. Before Wednesday, it was Skatefest, and then the Thrice tour and Further Seems Forever before that. Are you as aware of it right now as everyone else kind of is that you're just everywhere right now? You go on tour with a lot of different bands and a lot of big bands. If you people have never heard you before, I'd say that by the end of the year they will have heard you.

Jim: Or at least seen us once. All we do is tour. We just wanna get our music out there, get our name out there. That's why we're doing this. We wouldn't have been on tour ten months out of this year if we didn't want people to hear our shit and like it. We definitely want our name- RECOVER- to be out there. We've done a lot this year, so hopefully it'll pay off and kids will start realizing.

Josh: It seems like every time I see you, there are more kids singing along and who just know what's going on.

Jim: It's slowly getting better and better, and that's what we want. And we're having a good time.

Josh: For getting better and better, somebody once said- maybe Dan- that your new EP is some of the best stuff you've ever done.

Jim: We think so.

Robert: The first record was the first ten songs we ever wrote. It was only the second thing we ever did, but it was a whole lot better.

Jim: We just got better at writing songs, and just playing. We've been on tour so much this year we improved all around and I think the next thing we release will be even better.

Robert: Yeah.

Jim: We really like the new EP, we really like those songs. We don't dislike the old songs, we just like playing the new songs better.

Josh: Was it at all harder- and is it- to kind of write songs since you're on tour all the time?

Jim: Not really. Dan and Robert bring acoustic guitars on tour, so if we're sitting in a hotel room or backstage at a club, we'll just start jamming, coming up with riffs and stuff. We're always thinking of new songs, no matter where we are. We don't really sit down to write a song, it just kind of comes out. If it sounds good then we keep on trying to do it, we keep on trying to write it. It's a very easy process.

Josh: With the EP, when I opened it, one of the first things I noticed was a picture of you guys with topless women fell out... What's up with that?

Jim: That was just an idea that I think Dan had first kind of just thrown out, hoping we could actually do it... They pretty much let us take control and we requested to do that and it happened. They called up some friends who happened to like to strip and stuff, just got 'em in a room and took pictures of them. Eight hours worth. But it was fun.

Josh: Note to self- make friends with Fiddler.

Jim: The picture gets a lot of different reactions.

Robert: Whether it's good or bad, we don't care.

Jim: Yeah, we just want people talking. It's good.

Josh: You should do a thing when you say "yeah, we have t-shirts and cds for sale in the back" while you play, just add in "and buy our ep because it's $5 which is a dollar per song and there are some tits in it" and see all the guys run.

Jim: Yeah, we should. We'll do it in Europe and see how it works. And the girls are hot too.

Josh: And then there's music too, so...

Jim: Yeah.

Josh: Your reputation kind of proceeds you as a live band perhaps, like one of those bands where "you have to see them live", do you think that your music ever really suffers for that because I don't think I've ever seen you when you'd sing the second part of "Pardon the Wait", after the "pardon the hate" part, where you actually say "pardon the wait"?

Robert: Yeah, I usually don't do that part. Words and lyrics during the set are sometimes hard to make happen.

Jim: We don't really care about being perfect every night, we just try go to out there and make it happen.

Josh: I just think people other than me should start singing it, so it's just kind of like, the whole crowd does even if you don't.

Robert: That'd be awesome, man.

Josh: Do you think it's better or worse to have it where Robert screams and Dan sings, as opposed to just one guy doing both?

Jim: For me, I like it better when bands have more than one voice. And Dan lately has really been stretching his vocals. He used to be singing pretty lightly, and now he's just giving it all he's got and pretty aggressively. Now Robert is singing a lot more. It's all working out. But I don't sing, so I don't know.

Robert: We're just mixing it up.

Josh: Which came first, the t-shirt or Push Push?

Robert: The song. We actually wrote that song on the Piebald tour we did.

Jim: Yeah, we were in Louisville with the guys from Piebald and Elliott and the guys from Elliott let us jam on their equipment. We stayed up really late one night on tour and just made it up.

Robert: Yeah, Dan had the idea. It all just kind of came together.

Josh: But I'm not crazy in thinking that the shirt actually existed before the song was being played or anything, right?

Jim: Right. It was a lyric that no one knew, but when the ep came out it made sense.

Robert: We did demos and there was another shirt we had that says "kill your friends" on the back of it. That was a lyric no one really got either.

Jim: Kids freak out over that shirt, it's our best selling one.

Josh: Is it true you guys have been pursued by major labels?

Jim: Ever since Island signed Thursday, every sort of major label wants their own Thursday. Majors are at every show we play, looking at every single band. A lot of bands are getting attention from majors and stuff. Majors can be a good thing, a lot of people think of it as selling out or a bad thing, but we wanna make a living out of music. If they're gonna get your music out all across the country and the world... We're not trying to cash in or anything.

Josh: And better distribution. You need that.

Jim: Yeah.

(Ben from Armor for Sleep walks by and says he parked the van too far away. I yell "suck it up")

Josh: Is it accurate to say that you kind of have been offered deals with majors, but you shoot them down because you're just happy where you are?

Robert: Well, we just kind of try to hear out everybody. We have one more release with Fueled by Ramen and then who knows...

Jim: Ultimately, in the end, it's our decision. We're going to make a decision that's smart and we're not going to take anything we can't handle.

Josh: The past couple of nights, your speakers say "go vegetarian", are you guys vegetarian?

Jim: That's Midtown, we've been sharing equipment. None of us are vegetarian.

Robert: We're all meat eaters.

Josh: This is my theory, and this is the last thing I want to say, but if bands were television shows, you would be Dukes of Hazard.

Robert: Because of my hair, right?