Sunday Morning Chameleon - Interview Ryan Flagstad: vocals/keys/guitar Jamie Cassedy: slide/lead guitar Josh Veselsky: bass Dan Siegfried: drums

A conversation with Sunday Morning Chameleon can be an exercise in mediation. The band today is charged with conversational energy; one question can lead to a torrential downpour of answers and debates amongst the band mates. Although it sounds like a difficult situation, in reality the band’s honesty with each other and their willingness to discuss differences made it apparent that behind each instrument is a man with a sharp intelligence, a sense of humor and ease with laughter, and most of all, a passion for the music they are making together. Here is what they had to say about their recently released second album, the influence of new band members, MySpace as a music promotion tool, and about each other.

This is your second EP and it’ll be your first with Jamie, how has changing the band members changed the sound of the band?

Josh: Everyone plays a different role. It’s healthier. It’s better.

Ryan: Jamie is a raw rocker. At first, he didn’t use a lot of effects. Now he’s morphed into what this called for: soundscape and mood.

Jamie: When I first joined, they wanted to get away from sounding like other bands at the time. I played a lot of rock n roll and a lot of slide guitar so I ended up melding my sound towards atmospheric, effect-driven guitar because that’s what the music called for.

Dan: You end up meeting in this middle ground that’s hopefully new and different. We think it’s better. That’s why we got Jamie. We had something in mind when we auditioned guitar players and we sort of had thought about where we wanted to go. It’s not exactly where we went.

Jamie: It’s not really meeting in the middle. It’s more like I changed what I played dramatically to try to shape that into the songs rather than the songs shaping into the way that I played. So it’s probably 90% me.

Dan: I think its meeting somewhere completely new. We changed around you and you changed around the band. My point is that the band changes as well.

Why do you guys record short EPs vs. full-length albums?

Ryan: Money is so important. It really is, you know?

Josh: If we had 25 grand in money, we’d have 2 full-length albums.

Jamie: The other way of looking at it is for the same amount of money we could record 12 songs and have them sound like crap. What’s better?

Dan: For the money we spent on this we could have easily recorded a full-length at the same level as our first EP, but this is much more professionally done.

Would you ever consider taking both EP’s and releasing one full-length album or are they just way different?

Dan: Jamie didn’t even play on the first one. We’d love to redo some of those songs.

Jamie: It would be difficult because a lot of those licks aren’t mine. And it would be difficult to stray from that because they’re so embedded in the songs.

Ryan: My biggest fear is moving forward, you know? There’s probably nothing more unattractive than writing a song or something and then sitting on it and sitting on it and just continuing to sit on it and then be like, ‘well, look what I’ve done’ and then all of a sudden sitting on it is four years ago. And you’re like God, nothing ever changed. Nothing ever evolved or happened. No growth.

Dan: And you’re also not doing things in a bubble. It’s not like we’re writing songs in a bubble and not listening to music. And the industry, not necessarily the industry, but music as a whole is changing and if you’re still stuck in what you were doing 2 years ago you’re already playing something that’s dated

Jaime: And thus far, it’s never been a lack of material. I’ve played in other bands where that’s a problem. …it’s nice to be able to throw stuff out and use other stuff. The lack of material has never been a problem.

Dan: And there’s stuff that we think is really good that we haven’t recorded yet.

Jaime: And the songs change once you start recording them, too, which is probably the funnest part about it.

Would you say that one of you writes more of the material than the others? Or are you each responsible for your own parts?

Ryan: I write in my basement late at night on an acoustic guitar and these guys layer and that’s when all the bickering happens is how to layer it.

Dan: Yeah, we all write our own parts, but everyone has input. Someone hums something.

Jaime: Everybody polices each other.

Ryan: Sometimes somebody has a great idea and it’s not the person that plays that instrument and that’s just how bands work and how producers work, for that matter. If I write a song and the producer says go to this chord here, I have to give credit to that guy that that’s a good move.

What would you say are some of the difficulties that you encountered during the recording of this second album?

Jaime: Well that, in particular, is somebody taking some leadership on where it could go. Cuz you have 4 of us and a producer and everybody has a bunch of different opinions and you could sit and think about parts all day long, you know and so you know certain people have been better at being a leader than others. You can waste a ton of time unless you do just like what we were saying. No that doesn’t work, let’s try this, instead of well let’s try it for 2 and-a-half hours and then decide that it sucks. So using different producers, we saw different styles. We saw how some people are better leaders than others.

Dan: There’s a style of leadership that we mesh with and there’s styles that we don’t, and we’ve discovered what we need out of a producer.

What are you planning on doing after it’s finished? Are you going to tour? Perform locally?

Ryan: I think there’re a lot of things that are out of our control right now.

Jaime: Well I just kind of got into a little ego argument with some guy over Craig’s List today.

Dan: [laughing]This is what Jaime does. Jaime reads the Craig’s List musician page and he picks fights with musicians.

Jaime: He’s basically telling me, or telling the world, fuck ever signing with a major label, you don’t need to. MySpace is a great promotional tool. You can do all this stuff for free. I came back and I said what can you do for free? Fill up people’s MySpace requests with shitty bands so that there’s so much fucking out there that you can’t even find the good music because it’s so over-saturated with bullshit? So no, it’s not a good marketing tool. Secondly, how are you going to go out and book a tour by yourself? You tell me how you can do that, because I can’t even get a show in Milwaukee. How are you going to do that? And how are you going to be able to string that together so that you’re actually moving across the country and having dates? You can’t, dude. You can’t. So if you wanna call it signing with a label, or having someone back you, whatever you want to call it, you can’t do that on your own. And people think that now technology has moved on that you don’t need these types of people, you’re full of yourself. Go try to do it. That’s what I told the guy, bottom line. We were going back and forth. I posted something back and I’m like this is nonsense. You’re not going to sell a million copies of your record on MySpace, OK? You’re not.

Josh: …Now you can get your record out by putting it on the internet, that’s not the problem. The problem is still moving around the country and actually eating better than just a cheese sandwich.

Dan: You can book shows but you can’t get people to come see you, so to answer your question, what are we going to do now? We’re definitely playing locally. We’ll definitely tour at least regionally when things come up, but the idea is sort of as high as we can go depends on who’s interested. Like if we sign to whatever label, depending on where it is, that’s what we’re going to do. It’s out of our control. Money is still an issue for us, for everyone. Means is an issue. And we don’t have either. So until someone gives us money and someone with means gives us money to support what we’re doing, we’re sort of limited in what we can do on our own. So, talk to us in a year and we’ll tell you what we’re doing.

Jaime: It just fires me up when people tour and you see these bands. ‘We’re gonna do this thing and then we’re gonna tour!’ You know thinking you can do it by yourself, it’s just not a possibility. You cannot do that on your own.

Do you think it’s different for musicians than it is for comedians or other entertainers? I don’t know how true this is but I once heard that Dane Cook promoted himself completely via MySpace.

Jaime: I think, this is my opinion, the cat got out of the bag about MySpace. It’s so oversaturated. Even just a year ago, when I first started doing it, people would actually respond back and say ‘great songs.’ And now you don’t even hear anything about music on MySpace anymore. All it is is a big cesspool of marketing.

Dan: What happened is that there’re programs that people developed to request thousands of friends a day. And when that happened, it fell apart. The other difference between a comedian and a band is a comedian is one person with no gear. A comedian can go anywhere and tell his jokes. He doesn’t even need a microphone…. I think even an acoustic solo artist is in a better position to do it on his own. For instance, [a solo artist] can go play a show for a couple hundred bucks and come back.

Jaime: Plus, in each city, in Milwaukee for instance, there are 4 places that have a PA, Chicago obviously a lot more. But think of some of these podunk towns. There’s one 2 places you can play. So an acoustic guy has the pick of the litter.

Josh: [laughing] Every band wants an acoustic guy opening for them because it’s one guy on stage. Please open up for us.

Dan: It’s great if people hear us and like us, but (MySpace) is not a tool that’s as effective as people like to think. A friend of ours in the industry said that labels used to care how many hits you have on MySpace and now they don’t care anymore.

Ryan: But some labels hire out these college kids to go on MySpace, run wild, find every band you can, tell me what’s good, I want a report.

Dan: What’s nice about it is you can get anyone’s music right there. Everybody can hear it. You have to be on MySpace, there’s no question about it.

Jaime: Bands that get fifty thousand, or a one-hundred thousand hits a day, those bands are going to do well. There’s no doubt about it. But in terms of starting from ground zero and building up, I don’t think MySpace, it’s not like you can only do it on MySpace, but you do need to be on MySpace.

In unison: Next question!

Can you describe in words how your sound has changed from the last [album] to this one? I know that you’re totally different, but sort of a general overall, is there something you’d say is different?

Dan: I think that on our first one, we sounded a lot like some other bands. And our influences were very transparent. I think this one, at least so far, when we listen to it, I think we sound like us and a lot more care went into it but I think the big thing is we found our own niche, whatever that is, it’s ours.

Would you say there’s a song that you’re all, as a group, most proud of from this one and the last one as a whole? What’s your favorite that you’ve actually released or are going to release?

Jaime: You’ll get more than one answer.

I read somewhere that it was “Light Year?”

Dan: We love playing "Light Year" live. During a show, if the energy’s not there, as soon as we get to "Light Year" it’s there. But as far as the recording of it, like it? I don’t think that’s the one that stands out or means the most to us.

Ryan: Yeah there’s one for me (off of the first EP), but I don’t know, I’m not as proud. It’s kind of like, I don’t know what the analogy is in life but when you haven’t seen it all or you haven’t seen enough. (But) you’re in this thing and you don’t really know what’s going on or what’s taking shape and when that’s done with and then you go on to the next thing, your eyes are just blown away by what could be, you know? And I don’t know how many more levels there are because for me it’s like, gosh, is this what’s out there? Is this just the tip of the iceberg for what could be? I don’t even really feel like I’m that proud of anything 9on the first EP).

Dan: Whenever we talk about it people are like, no we like it, we like it. But it’s just not what it should or could be.

Ryan: Yeah and that really bums me out. Another level or two, the attention to detail, and the attention to the quality of song, if we can get that a little sharper, then maybe we’ll laugh at what we just did a couple years from now.

Don’t you think that every artist, especially a musician, is unhappy when they look back?

Dan: Things changed a lot when we saw what could be with the second one. So I think that it’s possible that this one will stand the test of time in our minds, but we don’t know. We didn’t have a huge budget and we didn’t have tons of time. A major label artist has a huge budget and tons of time.

Is there anything else you want everyone to know about you?

Jaime: Josh speaks Spanish and looks good in a tool belt.

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