Elway recently embarked on a pair of tours and we spoke with singer/guitarist Tim Browne just before the band hit the road. Besides their scheduled shows, we also discussed their second album Leavetaking, which was released last year on Red Scare Industries. We talked about how it was recorded, the meaning behind its title and the record’s overall theme. In addition, we conversed about how most of the band recently moved to Chicago, their relationship with Red Scare and more.
Bill – Tell me about your upcoming tours with Red City Radio, The Menzingers and Off With Their Heads, and how everything came together with those shows.
Tim – Well, we were offered the tour with Red City Radio a couple of months ago. We were looking into going out to the West Coast anyway, and then Red City Radio played the Beat Kitchen in October of last year. We’ve known those guys since we were a really young band and sort of grew up in the same area of the country together. We’ve played tons of shows with them, but we’ve just never toured with them before. The idea of touring together started getting kicked around after that Beat Kitchen show. Same thing goes for The Menzingers. They were one of the first bands that we were friends with out on the East Coast. We’ve played with them five or six times maybe, but never gone on tour. I was actually shopping at Target when they called me and asked if we wanted to play a couple of shows with them on their tour, and I naturally agreed. We kind of tossed the idea around with Toby, (label owner Toby Jeg) and Dan Case at Red Scare, and they sort of stitched everything together with a bunch of other shows and made the entire tour eight weeks long. The thing that’s going to be a lot of fun is that we’ve known the guys in Red City Radio since 2006 and The Menzingers since about 2008. We’ve managed to become really good friends with both of those bands. More so than playing the shows, I’m really excited to be able to hang out with my friends. I’m also really happy that I get to go to San Diego in January. We leave in a couple days and I just couldn’t be happier about it. There’s no such thing as a polar vortex out there.
Bill – Last year you guys released your second album, Leavetaking. What aspects of the record are you most pleased with?
Tim – I think that in terms of the grand scheme of our band, Leavetaking is lyrically closer to where all of us want it to be. I personally really enjoy the way the lyrics read. I look back on it and I feel like it’s just kind of a better reflection of how I like to write songs. With our first album, some of those songs I wrote when I was 19. That record was just the accrual of songs that we’d had for years. The new album was more focused, all the songs were written closer together and they carry more of a theme. I just think it’s a more consistent record.
Bill – Aside from the lyrics, how else do you feel that Leavetaking compares to your first album?
Tim – It’s all self-indulgent to try and say it’s better than the first album or whether or not we did a better job. I prefer it to the first one, but I don’t know. I feel like it’s something that takes a little bit more of a commitment on behalf of the listener to get into, but I also like that about it. I think that the songs are more interesting and a little more complicated, but I suppose it just occupies a different place in my heart than the first album does.
Bill – Where did you get the inspiration for the record’s title?
Tim – It comes from a poem by Sylvia Plath called “The Ghost’s Leavetaking.” There are a whole lot of references on the record to the poetry of Sylvia Plath, and particularly the collection of poems called Ariel. We kind thought it was a cool album title because “Leavetaking” isn’t even a word that’s used anymore. There isn’t a computer in the world that won’t say that it’s misspelled. It’s just an interesting word and we thought it’d be a cool concept for the record.
Bill – Describe what it was like recording Leavetaking at Atlas Studios.
Tim – We recorded our first album there too and the reason that we went back to Atlas is that Matt Allison and Justin Yates are just super easy to work with. They’ve become more friends than associates or business acquaintances. I think that those relationships are way more important than finding the ideal producer to put their name in your liner notes or whatever. Atlas was really easy and kind of informal, which I think made it easier to get good takes. Sometimes when you’re in the studio you obsess over your songs so much that it seems like there’s never enough time to get everything done that you want and you’re kind of trying to rework parts of songs and add stuff. We were rushing ourselves somehow to get everything that we wanted to put on the record added on, but the cool thing about Matt and Justin is the way they work makes it so easy to talk through things and get down what you want to do. It was a pleasure, as it always is, to record at Atlas.
Bill – What would you say is the overall theme of the album?
Tim – The theme is sort of in the title. It’s kind of about some experiences in my life of leaving Colorado and moving to Chicago. It’s also about old, failed relationships and then trying to make a positive, personal spin on it. Also, like I said, a lot of things are borrowed from some of Sylvia Plath’s poetry. She was a very introverted and quite frankly depressed woman for the bulk of her life, but she managed to take those emotions and write really, really beautiful and powerful poetry about it. I thought that it was something I would like to adapt for punk rock music. Punk rock tends to err on the visceral side of things. To be able to take those sorts of sentiments and put them into a medium that’s usually kind of rough and aggressive, I thought that it was pretty cool. I tried to write the lyrics so that were you to read them without the music, they would still be their own piece of art. The music wouldn’t have to carry the lyrics and the lyrics could stand on their own. It’s hard to say that this is absolutely what the album has to mean. One of the cool things about it or about any art form, punk rock included, is that people will listen to it or take it in and kind of develop their own meaning. I certainly hope that people have done that with the record, though I can’t speak to that at all.
Bill – Three out of Elway’s four members now call Chicago home. What transpired that led to most of the band moving here?
Tim – In 2011 we played Chicago about six times. We came through a lot and some really good friends from Fort Collins, Colorado moved to Chicago a few years before we did. We started to make a lot of friends in Chicago. Also, Fort Collins didn’t have the charm that it did when I was in college. It’s a college town, so people are very transitory there. The friends you have eventually move or they become townies. The whole world seemed to feel very small there all of a sudden. So, I moved to Chicago and then Joe, (bassist) moved here in February of last year. Garrett, (drums) just moved here very recently, within the last month. I think Chicago is one of the greatest cities in the world that I’ve ever been to. I have a lot of fun here and it feels like a good environment not only to have a professional or social life, but also to have a creative life and make music in one of the best punk scenes in the country.
Bill – What do you like best about working with Red Scare?
Tim – Let me count the ways. Toby’s a no-bullshit kind of guy. It’s really easy to find people in any corner of the music industry that are utterly full of shit or have their heads so far up their ass that they have no idea. They’re all over the place. I guess it takes a certain degree of maybe not being cynical, but jaded perhaps about the music industry to know how to best carry on. I think that Toby is a great example of that. His experience working in the music industry makes him incredibly knowledgeable and incredibly easy to work with because he’s not going to bullshit you at all. The way that it translates in a practical way for our band is that it’s really easy to organize tours and organize studio time and figure things out without having to stress about it. There’s no false hope in other words. Toby isn’t the kind of guy that’s going to tell you that you’re going to put out a record and then you’re going to make a whole shit-ton of money. It’s about practical goals and realistic expectations, all done by somebody who I am very lucky to count as a friend. I love working with Toby and can’t imagine somebody coming along that does what he does better.
Bill – What are you hoping to accomplish with Elway in 2014?
Tim – After the dates with The Menzingers and Off With Their Heads we’re doing about another week and a half of shows on our own, heading back to Chicago. After that we’re doing another tour of the East Coast with The Lawrence Arms and The Copyrights. We come home for a couple weeks and then we go to Europe for six weeks and play a festival called Groezrock in Belgium. We’re doing that tour with Joe McMahon from Smoke or Fire. We come back to the U.S. and then we’re going to go out to Pouzza Fest in Montreal, and just do a couple of Canadian dates. After that, we’ll be back in Chicago and we’ve got a pretty large crop of new songs that we’ll sort of retool and rework over the summer and kind of just finish a record. I don’t know how much touring we’ll be doing, but it’s early though. We want to finish writing the new songs and we’ll see where it goes from there. This year is also the tenth anniversary of Red Scare and when Toby eventually organizes the tenth anniversary party, we’ll be a part of that. I can imagine we’ll play the Fest in Gainesville in the fall too. Right now we’re just focusing on touring the first six months of the year and then after that we’ll finish writing our new stuff.
