Recently, I interviewed the Connecticut-based alt/indie rock band The Inside Out, after the release of their most recent single, “Mr. Arrogant.” Check out highlights from our interview, and the full transcript along with audio below.
Introductions
Josh from Stereofade: Alright. It was good to see you all. Listening to your albums, listening to your new single that we’ll talk about today titled Mr. Arrogant, and we’ll get into that momentarily. But first, I just want you all to introduce yourselves one by one, and just tell me your name and just how joined the group and how you all met each other.
James: My name’s James. I started the group back in 2018 with some friends from school. It developed into this revolving door of a lineup until I met Zach. We worked at Sam Ash together. And then, Andi joined the band after I put up a Twitter post. And then, we found John a year and a half later on a Craigslist ad.
James: I play the guitar and vocals.
Zach: I play lead guitar, I do some backing vocals, synth here and there. But yeah, mainly lead guitar.
Andi: Yeah, I’m Andi and I play the drums.
John: I’m John and I play bass.
Josh: While you were talking about just introducing everybody, how did Craigslist work for you? I’ve been a little scared to do that. Did you have a lot of responses, or kind of one and one it down and get lucky?
John: Initially, I put up a post saying, “Oh … ” Well, I wanted to join a band. I was tired of playing by myself in my bedroom. I put up an ad saying, “Oh, I play guitar. If anybody’s looking for a guitar player, hit me up. Here are my influences.” And one other person besides this band had hit me up at first and I was like, “Oh, cool. Send me over some of your music. Let me check it out.” And then, it wasn’t something I was interested in, so I hit them back very respectfully. I’m like, “Hey, man, this isn’t really for me. Best of luck.” And I got hit with a barrage of, “You suck. How dare you?” A whole thing. And I was like, “Oh, my God, this is wild.” Of course, Craigslist. And then, Andi hit me up and she’s like, “Hey, I’m in a band. I play drums.”
Andi: I found him on, like, page 10 of Craigslist. I was scrolling for a while.
John: Yeah.
Zach: He’s a page one basis in our book.
Andi: Yeah.
Zach: Page one.
John: Yeah. And she was like, “Hey, you interested in coming down and trying out?” And I was like, “Yeah, totally.”
Andi: Yeah. And then, his car wasn’t running at the time, so he’s like, “Hey, could you come pick me up?” And I don’t know, being a woman, I was like, “I’m not about to pick up some random Craigslist dude I’ve never met before,” so James picked him up so that we were able to-
Zach: Yeah, I was like, “I don’t mind. I’ll go pick him up.” Yeah, we need a bass player, so I’m down for anything.
Josh: Hey, that’s what we call blind faith.
Zach: Yeah.
Josh: It worked out. That’s good. Alright. Next question I have. I’ve listened to some of your old stuff. How do you think you’ve grown as a band from when you first met to where you are today? And we can start with James.
James: Yeah, I can only attest to, for this lineup, we could start with the single Teeth. Zach and I wrote that on a whim on his birthday back in 2020 or 2021? I forget now at this point.
James: I don’t know. It was a while ago. We decided to literally just get ripped and jam, and I actually was playing the drums and Zach was playing bass and we were like, “Oh, this song kicks ass. This is awesome.” We just literally recorded it the next day just so we wouldn’t forget the idea. But then, we didn’t have a bass player, so we showed the song to Andi and she was like, “This is sick.” Andi came up with a cool drum part for it and we wanted to release it, but we didn’t have a bass player. It was cool.
That was how I feel like our initial writing process started with this group. Before that, we actually had a full length record, No Brains, No Blood, that we released. I wrote a lot of that during the pandemic and before the pandemic in my apartment studio. And I would write these songs in full and do these demos with everything and just show everybody and be like, “What do you guys think? Do you like this song? Do you like this?” And we would learn and essentially make live versions of them and that was cool.
I feel like it was awesome working on Mr. Arrogant because we all had a much more collaborative writing effort because we were finally a unified lineup, versus all those ideas from the last batch of songs we released were all hodgepodge with either just me or half of our lineup. You know what I mean? I think, going forward, we’re going to start releasing some music that everybody hears what this lineup of The Inside Out sounds like.
Creating Mr. Arrogant
Josh: ’21, okay. So about two and a half years. Okay, gotcha. Sounds good. Alright. We talked a bit about Mr. Arrogant. Does anybody want to go into a little bit deeper detail as far as the creation process behind Mr. Arrogant and how collaborative the process was? We can go with Zach. We’ll start with Zach, see what he wants to add.
Zach: Sounds good. Yeah. I believe James came up with the lead guitar that I’m playing for the choruses, and we were just messing around with some different variations and more of a band setting after that. He brought it to us, fleshing it out, brought out the old trusty whiteboard for the arrangement process, which is something I think we were doing for the first time. And it actually happened to serve us quite well, just structuring and it all came together with only a few subtle tweaks here and there, and it was nice to have stuff gel so well and so fast for all of us.
Andi: Yeah. It was a lot of us just in the same room playing the song a million times in a row, and then, going to the whiteboard and putting the arrow to be like, “No, this goes over here and this is long,” all the arrows and crossed out … Yeah, just us locked in from home. It didn’t take us too long once we had the general structure to finalize the whole idea for the song.
Josh: That was good. Anything you want to add, John or James?
John: No, I think they covered most of it, but I just remembered the song really coming together really quickly. And a lot of times we’ll go back and forth on, like, “Oh, what should the follow up to the chorus be? Should we do instrumental there? Should we go right into the verse?” I feel like a lot of this song just kind of wrote itself. It was pretty obvious the first thing a lot of us came up with for where the song should go and ended up being what it was.
Josh: Sounds good. Alright. It seems like it was a very … It’s almost like mad scientists at work, everybody in the lab just cooking, I guess.
Josh: Next question, were there any roadblocks or obstacles while making Mr. Arrogant, or was it all smooth sailing?
James: I feel like, for the first time in a while, this was a smooth sailing song as far as production goes. We’re also working on a music video too. That was also really smooth sailing as far as filming that. When we were doing the full length record, No Brains, no Blood, we had roadblocks everywhere because we were in the process of moving from one studio to the studio Zach and I myself built. And now, by now, it’s already been open. It’s our home away from home, so everything was set up. We have our own studio. We were able to take our time mixing it, take our time recording it, and it was a really easy process. I want to say.
John: The album Art for that single was kind of a roadblock.
James: Okay. That was a roadblock. I forgot about that.
Josh: The album art. Yeah.
James: I blacked that out.
John: Yeah, we couldn’t agree on anything for what the album art should be. We kind of threw a Hail Mary with let’s just go to the beach and take some photos. And then, yeah, through the magic of Procreate, it came out to be pretty cool, I think.
Josh: Let’s see. Yeah, sounds good. How many songs have you recorded so far for your next project?
James: Oh, geez. We’ve got a lot written. We’ve got another single that’s fully recorded. We just got to mix it, and then, we’ll probably start working on the music video for that. Other than that, I want to say, in total, the next record’s probably going to be another full length, but we’re taking our time with it. It’s probably not going to come out until the spring or summer next year, but we definitely have a lot of material for it already, probably 10 or 15 ideas.
Josh: I’m looking forward to hearing it. Do you expect the album to be a drastic difference from No Brains, No Blood?
James: Yeah, definitely.
Josh: Do you think stylistically or musically or just more polished?
James: I think …
Andi: Musically.
James: I think, musically and stylistically, not necessarily polished, but just we’re going towards more indie rock, alt rock, upbeat version of what we can do. And No Brains, No Blood was more of a leave it on the shelf, cathartic, emotional, just release versus … It hit those old emo rock territories, but this is more we just want to have fun playing stuff live and just release stuff anybody can listen to while they’re driving or jamming.
Josh: Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, Mr. Arrogant is definitely something you can listen to on the drive home. Well, considering I’ve listened to it probably about 25 times just to get used to it, most of the time’s been in the car. It does sound great in the speakers. I’ll commend y’all for that, because you mix your own records.
Josh: It makes sense. That’s one thing that stood out to me was how clean the single was and everything seemed like it fit where it needed to be, and that leads a hand to just making the overall listening experience great. I definitely think you all got that down pat. And lyrics wise, production, everything sounded good. Not to sound like a groupie or fanboy, but it was a great record and everything, which is one reason why I wanted to-
James: We appreciate it.
Josh: … definitely wanted to talk to y’all and see the masters behind the creation. It’s probably early if you’re looking at next year for the album, but you have some potential titles floating around there? Or you don’t have to say what they are, but do you lead with a theme or idea and then build around that, or you make a bunch of different ideas and then form your title or your overall theme from there?
James: The title of our next record is 99% going to be Road Trip.
Josh: Road Trip, okay.
James: That’s going to be the name of it, unless, for some reason, I wake up one day in the next four months differently and I want to change it, but I’ve had that idea in my head for a while now for a couple of the song ideas that have been lingering for it just go perfectly with that vibe to me, so I think that’s going to be the name of it.
Andi: I was just saying, Mr. Arrogant had two different song names before it was Mr. Arrogant, and we almost changed it from Mr. Arrogant to a different song name.
Josh: Can I ask what those potential names were, or is it a secret?
James: Three names.
Andi: Yeah, the placeholder beginning name was 2:00 a.m., because we were jamming on it and coming up with the initial idea of it at 2:00 a.m. And then, I think the second name was Mr. Man?
James: No, no. It was Everything Is Fading Away.
Andi: Okay. Yeah. It was Mr. Man for a second, but …
Andi: [inaudible 00:15:12]. And then, it was Mr. Arrogant. And then, James was like, “Guys, should we call it Mr. Arrogant, parentheses, (Everything Is Fading Away)? And we’re like, “No, no, no. Just keep it Mr. Arrogant.”
Music Video
Josh: And then, your music video for Mr. Arrogant, does that have a firm release date yet or is it coming out for the next few weeks, months?
James: Hopefully, the next few weeks. We got back the first cut and we’ve been going over our revision list. I’d say it’s probably got at least a couple weeks on it, though, because it was a big production. There’s a lot of really cool stuff we got in there, and we just want to make sure we get everything right.
Josh: Gotcha. Can you spill some beans on, I guess, the look or the feel for the video, what it might be?
Andi: Yeah. Should I go through the plot or just the general vibe of it?
Josh: Oh, we got a movie, short film going on.
James: Yeah. Okay, let’s get into this. Let’s get the scenes down.
Andi: Our previous music video, for our single Figure Me Out, it was a play through video and it was pretty cool and cinematic, but we wanted to change it up this time, for this music video, and we gave it more of a plot and added some funny humor to it. Funny humor. But yeah, we just made it a little more comedic and a little more fast paced. And I don’t know if someone wants to describe the exact plot.
Josh: Don’t spoil everything.
John: The overall concept is just us waking up in different places and the obstacles we all individually face trying to get to a show that we’re playing. It almost feels like a dream. I feel like it’s something I would dream.
Andi: It’s like a fever dream where you wake up, or you’re sleeping in high school and you forgot your pants and your notebook and you don’t know where your classes are. It’s kind of like that.
John: Yeah. We had a lot of shenanigans.
Andi: But in a funny kind of way.
Zach: We got frantic vibes interwoven.
Musical Influences
Josh: Yeah, no, that sounds good. Yeah, I don’t have too much more left. I do want to just ask, and each of you can give somebody, what do you think your musical influences are as a singer, as a guitar player, as a drummer or as a songwriter? Who are some of your influences? Let’s go … I don’t know, right from left in this case. We’ll start with James.
James: Okay. My influences are probably Modest Mouse and Brand New. From day one, since I was starting to listen to music, I’ve always loved them. They’re my favorite bands. I tend to drift towards them when I am writing music. But I’ve also loved, as far as guitar playing, I’ve loved bands like The Killers or The Strokes, or even Death Cub For Cutie. I love those artists as well.
Josh: That’s good. Alright. John?
John: Oh. When I was really young, the first music I remember being enamored with was a lot of hip hop and rap, which is what my mom was listening to, and bumping on my way to elementary school. That was fun. And then, in middle school, I discovered pop punk, and that was really my bread and butter for a long time. So Blink, Taking Back Sunday, Yellowcard were huge influences for me. Nowadays, it’s much more eclectic, kind of all over the place, but yeah, big rock roots.
Josh: Sounds good. Andi?
Andi: Yeah. In elementary school, middle school, high school, I was listening to a lot of pop punk as well, and then, alt rock too, and some punk. When I was first learning the drums, I would listen to a lot of Rage Against The Machine, Rise Against, Muse, lots of different bands at the time. And then, as I’ve grown as a drummer, obviously, I branch out to a lot more things, but yeah, those are my roots specifically.
Josh: Sounds good.
Zach: Yeah, I grew up really listening to a lot of classic rock. The Police were both one of my favorite first bands as well as first concerts that I ever saw. I saw them, I think, when I was around eight years old at Rentschler Fields, West Hartford, something like that, and it was just mind blowing to me, first concert. It was a large scale world-known band on their last tour, all that. But today, I listen to a little bit of everything. Big fan of jazz, big fan of alt, indie rock, I listen to hip hop, electronic music, just whatever tickles my fancy, I guess.
Josh: That sounds good for me. Alright. Well, if you’re all are set, I’ll close this out. You all have been listening to and reading a transcript from The Inside Out and their interview regarding their new release, Mr. Arrogant, and hope you all enjoyed everything. Until next time, my name is Josh Brown with Stereofade Magazine, and we’ll see you again. Alright.
Check out the full audio and transcript below, and stay tuned to Stereofade for more music news, reviews, and interviews.
Audio
Full Transcript
Josh: Cool, cool. Alright. Deep breath. Alright.
Alright. My name is Josh Brown with Stereofade Magazine and here today, we have the Rock Band The Inside Out. How are y’all doing today?
John: Good, good, good.
Zach: Doing good.
James: Mighty fine.
John: Yeah.
Josh: Alright. It was good to see you all. Listening to your albums, listening to your new single that we’ll talk about today titled Mr. Arrogant, and we’ll get into that momentarily. But first, I just want you all to introduce yourselves one by one, and just tell me your name and just how joined the group and how you all met each other.
James: My name’s James. I started the group back in 2018 with some friends from school. It developed into this revolving door of a lineup until I met Zach. We worked at Sam Ash together. And then, Andi joined the band after I put up a Twitter post. And then, we found John a year and a half later on a Craigslist ad.
John: Yeah.
James: I play the guitar and vocals.
Zach: I play lead guitar, I do some backing vocals, synth here and there. But yeah, mainly lead guitar.
Andi: Yeah, I’m Andi and I play the drums.
John: I’m John and I play bass.
Josh: Alright. Let me write down everybody’s name. And I’ll be talking in between and edit all that out. So we got James, Andi, John. Is that John with an H?
John: Yes.
Josh: Alright. And I missed …
John: Andi with an I.
Andi: Yeah, Andi with an I.
Josh: Andi with an I. Yeah. And then, I am missing …
John: Zach.
Zach: Zach with an H.
Josh: Zach with an H. Awesome. Alright. James, Andi, John, Zach. Alright. Cool, cool. Alright. Let’s get back to it.
While you were talking about just introducing everybody, how did Craigslist work for you? I’ve been a little scared to do that. Did you have a lot of responses, or kind of one and one it down and get lucky?
John: Initially, I put up a post saying, “Oh … ” Well, I wanted to join a band. I was tired of playing by myself in my bedroom. I put up an ad saying, “Oh, I play guitar. If anybody’s looking for a guitar player, hit me up. Here are my influences.” And one other person besides this band had hit me up at first and I was like, “Oh, cool. Send me over some of your music. Let me check it out.” And then, it wasn’t something I was interested in, so I hit them back very respectfully. I’m like, “Hey, man, this isn’t really for me. Best of luck.” And I got hit with a barrage of, “You suck. How dare you?” A whole thing. And I was like, “Oh, my God, this is wild.” Of course, Craigslist. And then, Andi hit me up and she’s like, “Hey, I’m in a band. I play drums.”
Andi: I found him on, like, page 10 of Craigslist. I was scrolling for a while.
John: Yeah.
Zach: He’s a page one basis in our book.
Andi: Yeah.
Zach: Page one.
John: Yeah. And she was like, “Hey, you interested in coming down and trying out?” And I was like, “Yeah, totally.”
Andi: Yeah. And then, his car wasn’t running at the time, so he’s like, “Hey, could you come pick me up?” And I don’t know, being a woman, I was like, “I’m not about to pick up some random Craigslist dude I’ve never met before,” so James picked him up so that we were able to-
Zach: Yeah, I was like, “I don’t mind. I’ll go pick him up.” Yeah, we need a bass player, so I’m down for anything.
Josh: Hey, that’s what we call blind faith.
Zach: Yeah.
Josh: It worked out. That’s good. Alright.
Next question I have. I’ve listened to some of your old stuff. How do you think you’ve grown as a band from when you first met to where you are today? And we can start with James.
James: Yeah, I can only attest to, for this lineup, we could start with the single Teeth. Zach and I wrote that on a whim on his birthday back in 2020 or 2021? I forget now at this point.
Andi: 2020.
James: 2020?
Andi: Yeah.
Zach: 2020, yeah.
James: I don’t know. It was a while ago. We decided to literally just get ripped and jam, and I actually was playing the drums and Zach was playing bass and we were like, “Oh, this song kicks ass. This is awesome.” We just literally recorded it the next day just so we wouldn’t forget the idea. But then, we didn’t have a bass player, so we showed the song to Andi and she was like, “This is sick.” Andi came up with a cool drum part for it and we wanted to release it, but we didn’t have a bass player. It was cool.
That was how I feel like our initial writing process started with this group. Before that, we actually had a full length record, No Brains, No Blood, that we released. I wrote a lot of that during the pandemic and before the pandemic in my apartment studio. And I would write these songs in full and do these demos with everything and just show everybody and be like, “What do you guys think? Do you like this song? Do you like this?” And we would learn and essentially make live versions of them and that was cool.
I feel like it was awesome working on Mr. Arrogant because we all had a much more collaborative writing effort because we were finally a unified lineup, versus all those ideas from the last batch of songs we released were all hodgepodge with either just me or half of our lineup. You know what I mean? I think, going forward, we’re going to start releasing some music that everybody hears what this lineup of The Inside Out sounds like.
Josh: Sounds good. Now, how long have you been around, John?
John: I joined in March of ’21.
Josh: ’21, okay. So about two and a half years. Okay, gotcha. Sounds good. Alright. We talked a bit about Mr. Arrogant. Does anybody want to go into a little bit deeper detail as far as the creation process behind Mr. Arrogant and how collaborative the process was? We can go with Zach. We’ll start with Zach, see what he wants to add.
Zach: Sounds good. Yeah. I believe James came up with the lead guitar that I’m playing for the choruses, and we were just messing around with some different variations and more of a band setting after that. He brought it to us, fleshing it out, brought out the old trusty whiteboard for the arrangement process, which is something I think we were doing for the first time. And it actually happened to serve us quite well, just structuring and it all came together with only a few subtle tweaks here and there, and it was nice to have stuff gel so well and so fast for all of us.
Andi: Yeah. It was a lot of us just in the same room playing the song a million times in a row, and then, going to the whiteboard and putting the arrow to be like, “No, this goes over here and this is long,” all the arrows and crossed out … Yeah, just us locked in from home. It didn’t take us too long once we had the general structure to finalize the whole idea for the song.
Josh: That was good. Anything you want to add, John or James?
John: No, I think they covered most of it, but I just remembered the song really coming together really quickly. And a lot of times we’ll go back and forth on, like, “Oh, what should the follow up to the chorus be? Should we do instrumental there? Should we go right into the verse?” I feel like a lot of this song just kind of wrote itself. It was pretty obvious the first thing a lot of us came up with for where the song should go and ended up being what it was.
Josh: Sounds good. Alright. It seems like it was a very … It’s almost like mad scientists at work, everybody in the lab just cooking, I guess.
John: Yeah, yeah.
Andi: Yeah.
Josh: That sounds good. Next question, were there any roadblocks or obstacles while making Mr. Arrogant, or was it all smooth sailing?
James: I feel like, for the first time in a while, this was a smooth sailing song as far as production goes. We’re also working on a music video too. That was also really smooth sailing as far as filming that. When we were doing the full length record, No Brains, no Blood, we had roadblocks everywhere because we were in the process of moving from one studio to the studio Zach and I myself built. And now, by now, it’s already been open. It’s our home away from home, so everything was set up. We have our own studio. We were able to take our time mixing it, take our time recording it, and it was a really easy process. I want to say.
John: The album Art for that single was kind of a roadblock.
James: Okay. That was a roadblock. I forgot about that.
Josh: The album art. Yeah.
James: I blacked that out.
John: Yeah, we couldn’t agree on anything for what the album art should be. We kind of threw a Hail Mary with let’s just go to the beach and take some photos. And then, yeah, through the magic of Procreate, it came out to be pretty cool, I think.
Josh: Yeah. Who was that in the picture?
John: That’s me.
Zach: Yeah.
Josh: Okay. Gotcha.
John: Yeah, yeah.
Josh: Because at first, I was looking at it on a small screen, and then, I was just like, laying back throwing a rock or something. And then, when I got to see it up close, I was like, “Wait, no, isn’t that the Earth or something?”
John: Yeah, yeah.
Josh: That’s a pretty good artwork. I’m a photographer, so I always appreciate some good art.
John: Thanks.
Josh: Let’s see. Yeah, sounds good. How many songs have you recorded so far for your next project?
James: Oh, geez. We’ve got a lot written. We’ve got another single that’s fully recorded. We just got to mix it, and then, we’ll probably start working on the music video for that. Other than that, I want to say, in total, the next record’s probably going to be another full length, but we’re taking our time with it. It’s probably not going to come out until the spring or summer next year, but we definitely have a lot of material for it already, probably 10 or 15 ideas.
Josh: Got you. Hopefully, that’ll come out sooner than later. No delays. Let’s get to it.
James: Yeah.
John: Hope so.
Josh: I’m looking forward to hearing it. Do you expect the album to be a drastic difference from No Brains, No Blood?
James: Yeah, definitely.
Josh: Do you think stylistically or musically or just more polished?
James: I think …
Andi: Musically.
James: I think, musically and stylistically, not necessarily polished, but just we’re going towards more indie rock, alt rock, upbeat version of what we can do. And No Brains, No Blood was more of a leave it on the shelf, cathartic, emotional, just release versus … It hit those old emo rock territories, but this is more we just want to have fun playing stuff live and just release stuff anybody can listen to while they’re driving or jamming.
Josh: Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, Mr. Arrogant is definitely something you can listen to on the drive home. Well, considering I’ve listened to it probably about 25 times just to get used to it, most of the time’s been in the car. It does sound great in the speakers. I’ll commend y’all for that, because you mix your own records. I believe you ..
James: Yeah.
Zach: Yeah, a lot of the mixing process was done in this very room where we’re sitting now, James and myself.
James: Yeah.
Zach: Yeah, ever since the studio has kind of been up and running, like you mentioned, the process for just about every aspect of what we do, especially band related, it’s just totally streamlined and only getting more fast and more efficient, Songwriting Included.
Josh: Exactly.
James: Yeah, I don’t think we’re going to always be mixing our own records and everything, but I think, right now, where we’re at, I think it’s an awesome tool in our belt, for sure. It’s what Zach and I do as a profession, so we love doing it. But I do think that I wouldn’t mind … I always giving people a shot and chances. Giving the reins to other people on the mixing side would be nice for maybe the record after this one or something when we can have the budget for it. But if we already have the studio ourselves, it’s like, why spend the money?
Josh: It makes sense. That’s one thing that stood out to me was how clean the single was and everything seemed like it fit where it needed to be, and that leads a hand to just making the overall listening experience great. I definitely think you all got that down pat. And lyrics wise, production, everything sounded good. Not to sound like a groupie or fanboy, but it was a great record and everything, which is one reason why I wanted to-
James: We appreciate it.
Josh: … definitely wanted to talk to y’all and see the masters behind the creation. It’s probably early if you’re looking at next year for the album, but you have some potential titles floating around there? Or you don’t have to say what they are, but do you lead with a theme or idea and then build around that, or you make a bunch of different ideas and then form your title or your overall theme from there?
James: The title of our next record is 99% going to be Road Trip.
Josh: Road Trip, okay.
James: That’s going to be the name of it, unless, for some reason, I wake up one day in the next four months differently and I want to change it, but I’ve had that idea in my head for a while now for a couple of the song ideas that have been lingering for it just go perfectly with that vibe to me, so I think that’s going to be the name of it.
Josh: Yeah, that sounds good. Yeah.
Zach: Song naming, I feel like it’s just-
James: Song naming is, I have no idea.
Zach: We name a song right after we write it. It’s just so we don’t forget it. We’ll come back to it. And maybe the name changes, maybe it stays the same.
James: Yeah.
Josh: There you go. That’s how you approach it, yeah. What were you saying, Andi?
Andi: I was just saying, Mr. Arrogant had two different song names before it was Mr. Arrogant, and we almost changed it from Mr. Arrogant to a different song name.
Josh: Can I ask what those potential names were, or is it a secret?
Andi: Yeah.
James: Three names.
Andi: Yeah, the placeholder beginning name was 2:00 a.m., because we were jamming on it and coming up with the initial idea of it at 2:00 a.m. And then, I think the second name was Mr. Man?
James: No, no. It was Everything Is Fading Away.
Andi: Okay. Yeah. It was Mr. Man for a second, but …
James: Was it Mr. Man?
Andi: I thought it was Mr. Man for a second.
James: Maybe there was four names.
Andi: [inaudible 00:15:12]. And then, it was Mr. Arrogant. And then, James was like, “Guys, should we call it Mr. Arrogant, parentheses, (Everything Is Fading Away)? And we’re like, “No, no, no. Just keep it Mr. Arrogant.”
John: Yeah.
Josh: It’s a long title.
Andi: Yeah.
Josh: No, Mr. Arrogant definitely fits. I like that. Cool, cool. And then, your music video for Mr. Arrogant, does that have a firm release date yet or is it coming out for the next few weeks, months?
James: Hopefully, the next few weeks. We got back the first cut and we’ve been going over our revision list. I’d say it’s probably got at least a couple weeks on it, though, because it was a big production. There’s a lot of really cool stuff we got in there, and we just want to make sure we get everything right.
Josh: Gotcha. Can you spill some beans on, I guess, the look or the feel for the video, what it might be?
Andi: Yeah. Should I go through the plot or just the general vibe of it?
Josh: Oh, we got a movie, short film going on.
James: Yeah. Okay, let’s get into this. Let’s get the scenes down.
Andi: Our previous music video, for our single Figure Me Out, it was a play through video and it was pretty cool and cinematic, but we wanted to change it up this time, for this music video, and we gave it more of a plot and added some funny humor to it. Funny humor. But yeah, we just made it a little more comedic and a little more fast paced. And I don’t know if someone wants to describe the exact plot.
Josh: Don’t spoil everything.
John: The overall concept is just us waking up in different places and the obstacles we all individually face trying to get to a show that we’re playing. It almost feels like a dream. I feel like it’s something I would dream.
Andi: It’s like a fever dream where you wake up, or you’re sleeping in high school and you forgot your pants and your notebook and you don’t know where your classes are. It’s kind of like that.
John: Yeah. We had a lot of shenanigans.
Andi: But in a funny kind of way.
Zach: We got frantic vibes interwoven.
John: Yeah.
Josh: Now that, I’m feeling that, yeah. And I can picture that along with the song because the overall feel of the song, I guess, fits in with that. I like it, which means that you have to release it sooner than later so I can go ahead and watch it and post it.
James: Yeah, absolutely.
Josh: We’re thinking by Friday, right? That’s the new goal?
James: We’ll see.
Josh: Yeah, no, that sounds good. Yeah, I don’t have too much more left. I do want to just ask, and each of you can give somebody, what do you think your musical influences are as a singer, as a guitar player, as a drummer or as a songwriter? Who are some of your influences? Let’s go … I don’t know, right from left in this case. We’ll start with James.
James: Okay. My influences are probably Modest Mouse and Brand New. From day one, since I was starting to listen to music, I’ve always loved them. They’re my favorite bands. I tend to drift towards them when I am writing music. But I’ve also loved, as far as guitar playing, I’ve loved bands like The Killers or The Strokes, or even Death Cub For Cutie. I love those artists as well.
Josh: That’s good. Alright. John?
John: Oh. When I was really young, the first music I remember being enamored with was a lot of hip hop and rap, which is what my mom was listening to, and bumping on my way to elementary school. That was fun. And then, in middle school, I discovered pop punk, and that was really my bread and butter for a long time. So Blink, Taking Back Sunday, Yellowcard were huge influences for me. Nowadays, it’s much more eclectic, kind of all over the place, but yeah, big rock roots.
Josh: Sounds good. Andi?
Andi: Yeah. In elementary school, middle school, high school, I was listening to a lot of pop punk as well, and then, alt rock too, and some punk. When I was first learning the drums, I would listen to a lot of Rage Against The Machine, Rise Against, Muse, lots of different bands at the time. And then, as I’ve grown as a drummer, obviously, I branch out to a lot more things, but yeah, those are my roots specifically.
Josh: Sounds good.
Zach: Yeah, I grew up really listening to a lot of classic rock. The Police were both one of my favorite first bands as well as first concerts that I ever saw. I saw them, I think, when I was around eight years old at Rentschler Fields, West Hartford, something like that, and it was just mind blowing to me, first concert. It was a large scale world-known band on their last tour, all that. But today, I listen to a little bit of everything. Big fan of jazz, big fan of alt, indie rock, I listen to hip hop, electronic music, just whatever tickles my fancy, I guess.
Josh: Tickles your fancy. Alright. That sounds good. Definitely some broad range of influences. I can hear that, and hope to hear more of it on the next upcoming tracks. I am out of pre-planned questions. Anything you want to add just for listeners, since I’ll probably edit up, release this audio, anything you want to add just promotion wise or anything? The floor is yours, and if you don’t have anything, I’ll just wrap it up.
John: Come see us on tour.
James: Yeah, definitely follow us on Instagram. Our tag is @theinsideoutband, and that’s the platform we usually stay the most up to date on. If you guys liked what you’re hearing and everything, definitely do that. Yeah. I had a question for you. What got you into interviewing?
Josh: Well, it’s funny. I first started as a … I’ve been doing photography for years and I started working for other publications, doing photography. And then, all of a sudden, I got tired of asking permission to go out and photograph artists as far as asking an editor, so I decided to start my own publication.
And here I am just running things myself, still going out and doing a lot of my own photo work and writing album reviews and everything, but interview wise, for me, I just enjoyed talking to people I’ve never met. That sounds weird. But yeah, talking to people, meeting new people, and then, understanding where they came from and what makes them tick and what makes them function. And when it comes to music artists, for a while, I thought I can get into music, like music production, and realized that’s probably not for me, so it’s always good to see someone who’s actually good at it and seeing how you all operate. Yeah, I just enjoy learning about the musicians and the music industry. Even if y’all want to teach me how to play guitar on a Zoom one day, that’s also a thing.
My four-year-old is better at guitar than me. Yeah. But yeah, that’s how I got into it and the hope is that I continue to grow with this platform because it’s relatively new, me working on my own, but I got a team under me now, mostly photographers and reviewers. If I have someone, if y’all can’t make it to North Carolina, I try to get, if there’s somebody in another city close by to where you’re going, I could try to get somebody to come just so you can be a part of the pub, publication. But I definitely want to see you all myself, so crossing my fingers, hopefully you can get to Carolina. And I’ll be communicating back and forth with Erica. I don’t know how often y’all … I never know how the PR publicist management artist thing goes because I’ve never been on that side of it, so I don’t know how.
James: We’re very close with her. She’s the sweetheart. She done a great job.
John: Yeah, she is amazing.
Zach: Yeah.
Josh: Yeah, I can tell she’s cool. Yeah. Well, cool. Hopefully, that answered your question.
James: Yeah, definitely. That’s awesome. I’m glad you-
Josh: Interviewing the interviewer.
James: Cool.
Josh: Cool, cool. Well, Andi, Zach, John, y’all got anything else?
Zach: I think I’m good.
Andi: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
Zach: Not at the moment.
John: This was fun.
Zach: Yeah, thanks for the interview, man.
Josh: Oh, yeah. No problem. Hope to speak to y’all again, hopefully for the next releases and the album release. So you’re thinking the spring, summer? Drop it in the spring? I can jam it all summer at the beach.
James: Yeah, I’m pretty sure we’re going to aim for no later than summer, if that helps things, but definitely probably spring, summer.
Josh: That sounds good for me. Alright. Well, if you’re all are set, I’ll close this out. You all have been listening to and reading a transcript from The Inside Out and their interview regarding their new release, Mr. Arrogant, and hope you all enjoyed everything. Until next time, my name is Josh Brown with Stereofade Magazine, and we’ll see you again. Alright.
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