interview from right up front:

Right Up Front: How are you enjoying your first ever headlining tour?

Andrew: Yes. It's been awesome. It's been really good. Better than we expected, to be honest.

Bill: Yeah. There's been great crowds, great everything. Everything is going cool, no complaints at all

RUF: How have the other bands been?

Andrew: Awesome.

Bill: All of the bands on the tour have been really great. We've made good friends with all the bands. They come up and jam with us on stage and stuff, and it's been really cool, you know.

Andrew: See the cool thing is that they're all new bands. None of them even have an album out yet, but they're all big buzz bands. They're the kind of bands that they're going to show up to a city for the first time, and kids are going to come out because they've heard them over the Internet.

RUF: The Internet has played a pretty big role in the careers of all the bands here.

Andrew: Totally. Even us. All of our stuff was word of mouth, you know underground, mainly. Yeah, it's been a really cool tour dude.

RUF: Any good stories from the road?

Bill: We saw a fight at Denny's one time.

Andrew: It was a twenty person brawl. Someone got ran over by a car. This is in Texas.

Bill: It was Lubbuck, Texas. It was a big gang fight.

RUF: What are your plans for after this tour?

Bill: We're not sure yet. We're going to start writing some material. We don't know what's going on yet, if we're going to go back out or start the next album. Time will tell, but we don't know yet.

Andrew: We're in the process of changing record labels actually.

RUF;Oh yeah, from...

Andrew: Well, we were on Mojo, which was a part of Universal. Mojo/Universal split up. So we've kind of been sitting in limbo with no marketing, no push or anything for like four months. Actually, now Mojo is selling the label to Jive. So this is actually be the fourth record label that Mankind will be released on.

RUF: Have you not been affected by the label change yet?

Andrew: Oh, we totally have, yeah. When we started out, Universal did a really good job of getting a street team and getting the video on MTV2 really helped, that was cool. A lot of street team and marketing stuff was what really got the momentum going. When you lose all that, you have nothing. All you have is this: being able to tour. The fact that we toured for a year helped us completely because now we can come to places like this and headline and we can bring in a decent amount of kids.

RUF: What about the new album? Have you written any songs for it.

Andrew: We've got about four, maybe five new songs.

RUF:Any song titles?

Andrew: There's one called "Ecstasy," that we play a whole lot. We usually throw that in our set. Another song called "Vanity." A song called "May 1st." We have another song that has no title yet. We just call it "Song No. 4."

Bill: It's good to get a lot of ideas, but when we go home after this tour we're going to start kind of formulating them more, putting together the real songs.

RUF: How does the material compare with Mankind?

Bill: It's along the same lines but it's more mature. We wrote, or actually, we recorded Mankind back in early '99. That's when it was originally recorded and released: in the summer of '99. So it's like, we've come a long way since that came out. We've changed a lot as people and as musicians. We've experienced a lot of stuff. It's definitely more mature. The quality of the songwriting is definitely a little higher.

Andrew: It's a tad bit more musical. It's not as straight forward as Mankind. It's still heavy. It's still Factory 81. If you pop it in you'll know it's Factory 81. It's just a little more melodic, more singing.

RUF: Is there a working title for the album?

Andrew: No.

Bill: No. We're not anywhere near that yet. We don't even know when we're going to be able to get a chance to start recording it. We want to get in and do it though. We're all so eager to start writing and recording and everything. Even before this album was re-released on Universal, we all still wanted to record. That was back in October.

Andrew: We've been playing these songs for about four years now.

RUF:I was about to say. The material on Mankind is probably some of the first songs you wrote together, huh?

Andrew: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. It's been about four years now.

Bill: Some of the songs on the album are seriously like four years old, so it's all really old stuff that we're playing.

RUF: Do you have any idea of who you would like to work with as far as a producer, and has that changed since the label changed.

Andrew: We have a couple ideas.

Bill: There's a lot of good ones. Terry Date I think is really awesome. He does a lot of cool stuff. There's just a lot of really good producers. There are new producers coming out every day that do great stuff. I guess when the time comes we'll have to look to see whose out there doing something that sounds good, and see what their availability.

Andrew: Yeah, and how much money they want.

RUF: Do you think that will be a problem with the new label?

Bill or Andy:I think the contract actually just shifts over. We don't have to sign with Jive, they just sold our contract. It should stay the same. Our first album, Mankind, was only a $2500 album. It was cheaper than most demos bands do, because it was an independent album originally. We were lucky it came out as good as it did for $2500. This time we'll have a chance to go into a real studio with a producer and take our time and spend a little more money and try to get exactly what we want with the recording.

RUF:I saw you had scheduled three shows in Japan in November. Are you going to do a whole tour, and is that going to get in the way of recording the new album?

Bill: We're just doing the three dates. They asked us to come over and do them, so...

RUF:Do they pretty much pay for everything when you fly over there?

Bill: Yeah, they pay for everything, the flight, everything.

RUF:I figured that's how it works. I couldn't see being a band a being able to afford to go all the way to Japan for just a few shows.

Andrew: It was a promoter. This lady in Japan, in Tokyo, that saw our video on MTV2. She's actually based out of Hollywood. She saw the video and then when we came through on the Slaves On Dope tour, we played at the Whiskey in Hollywood and she was out there. She's like, "Yeah. I'm sure the kids in Japan would totally dig your guys shit. So, we're going to fly you out to Japan to jam." We were like, "OK, sure."

RUF: What about Europe? Do you plan to go there any time soon?

Andrew: See, that's the thing. We don't really have... We'd love to go out there, but we don't have distribution there yet. There are kids that know about us just from word of mouth, but... Once the whole thing with Jive is complete and starts moving, I think they're going to have worldwide distribution. We'd love to go to Europe. The United States is great. We've been doing this for a year, but we want to check out something else. Sometimes bands do better in Europe than over here.

RUF: They do like their heavy music over there.

Andrew: They sure do.

RUF: So, how is Mankind doing now? Is it still selling well?

Andrew: It still selling. Surprisingly it still sells pretty decent. It's not what it used to be when we had a push, but it's still there.

Bill: It's going still, you know, it's like the kids, the word of mouth, the touring, it just keeps it going still.

RUF: What about Napster? Now that it's pretty much gone, has that hurt sales or helped them?

Bill: I know it definitely helped. It haven't necessarily looked at it close enough to see if it hurt us, but when it was there it was helping us because kids would be like, "Oh, I heard you guys on Napster."

RUF: Do you plan on releasing another single from Mankind?

Bill: "Peace Officer" is going to be the next single.

Andrew: It's actually already been remixed by Jay Baumgardner who did Papa Roach and Drowning Pool and stuff like that. It should be pretty cool. I don't know how it's going to do. When we put "Nanu" to radio it didn't really stick. It was extremely too heavy. "Peace Officer" is still pretty damn heavy, but it has a little more of a groove so we'll see what happens.

RUF: I would imagine that song has been misinterpreted by some?

Andrew: Totally.

RUF: Do you see any problems arising from that, or is that why you chose to release it?

Andrew: No. You know what? Nate, our singer, would probably be able to answer that the best. It is misinterpreted a lot. I think people take it as like, "Yeah, fuck cops, fuck pigs." That's not what it's about. It's actually just about a simple experience. It's about a bigger, more general idea.

Bill: It's about people abusing their power.

Andrew: It's more or less anyone in a position of authority who abuses their power.

RUF: Do you have any fear that radio will pass it over without even listening to it because of what they think it's about?

Andrew: I know what you're saying, but actually that's one of the best reasons that we're going to put it to radio. A lot of them are going to be like, "No. Fuck you guys, there's no way we're playing it." Some of them might take the chance, and if they do I think it will be such a controversial idea that it will stick and the rest of them will come around.

RUF: You mentioned MTV2. Did they play your video a lot? How much did that help?

Andrew: They did our "Nanu" video. Honestly, I think the MTV2 video helped us more than anything. Like I said, we didn't get much radio, and when MTV2 was playing the video a decent amount, a lot of kids, even here, would show up and say "I saw your video, dude." That's like the best thing that's ever happened to us. MTV2 is really cool.

RUF: How many singles are you gong to release from it. Are you going to put this one to bed soon?

Andrew: This is it, just "Peace Officer." We going to do a video for that. It's going to MTV2, and then Mankind will probably be finished.

RUF: What about a home video or DVD? Anything like that in the works?

Bill: Not yet. Maybe after the next album something like that will come out a little better. We need some more touring experience.

Andrew: We've videotaped some pretty funny shit, but it's not complete yet.

RUF: Would you like to say anything to your fans?

Andrew: We're still here. We're still hanging on. You guys are the only people that keep us here. We don't really have anything new as far as news. There's nothing to say. We have a hard time getting opening slots on bigger tours because until you have a label to back you, you can't get on a tour, you know. We were almost really forced to do a headlining tour because there was nothing else to do. Like I said, it's been really cool, the fact that kids even come out. You would figure that that would give you some pull on getting an opening slot on a bigger tour, but it doesn't. It's all about which record label backs you, puts money into it, has all the promotion and marketing. If you don't have that, you don't have shit.

RUF: Your new label doesn't have many heavy artists? Is that going to be a problem with getting tours?

Bill: No. I think it will actually be better because we stand out more on that label.

Andrew: Yeah, the labels don't really directly get you on tours, except for some of the Roadrunner stuff because they have so many heavy bands, it's more about the booking agent. The booking agent really won't even push to get you on a tour unless the record label has money and marketing behind it, because then you have nothing to offer the rest of the tour. It's really a huge circle of stuff. They all go hand in hand. If there's a missing link then nothing happens.

-Brian

www.rightupfront.com