Andy recently had a chat with Coby Linder of Two Tongues/Say Anything. Here’s what went down…
PT: How are you Coby?
Coby Linder: I’m great is this an interview for Say Anthing or Two Tongues?
PT: Two Tongues!
CL: Oh great, I would love to talk about Two Tongues! I was just saying the other day how weird it is to be recording the Say Anything record and releasing the Two Tongues record at the same time, it’s such a weird feeling. Two tongues we recorded like a year ago and it’s this idea we’ve been demoing for a couple of years, then we started working on Say Anything again about four months ago. It’s kind of crazy to have something we did over a year ago come out now, while we’re doing something new. It’s good though, we’re keeping busy!
PT: Whereabouts are you and what are young right now?
CL: Right now, we’re in the studio in Los Angeles. It’s nice and sunny. All the drums are done and we’ve started on keyboards and vocals, and it’s starting to sound great.
PT: Ok tell me from the start, how did Two Tongues come together?
CL: To go waaay back, in high school, Saves the Day were definitely me and Max [Bemis, Say Anything/Two Tongues vocalist]’s inspiration for Say Anything. We got into them and Get Up Kids, Face to Face, Alkaline Trio, the whole Vagrant lot, and they just became our favourite band. Before …Is a Real boy we would just sit in our room and cover Saves the Day songs.
When we met them they were just so awesome, Chris [Conley] was so nice and we jus started talking about doing some songs together. Eventually we went to Chris’s house in upstate California to record demos and they turned out really cool and we liked them, so we just thought ‘let’s do this for real, let’s do a record’.
PT: It must be a bit of a headfuck for you and Max, considering you grew up listening to Saves the Day.
CL: That day, I remember Saves the Day did an acoustic performance and Chris covered bit of ‘Molly Connelly’, and we were just like ‘shit that’s amazing’. He’s such a NICE guy and he really genuinely likes Say Anything. He likes Say Anything as much as we like Saves The Day, which is the coolest part. It’s awesome.
PT: For someone who hasn’t heard Two Tongues, how would you describe them compared to Say Anything?
CL: In terms of Max’s writing compared to Say Anything, it goes back to our original roots I think, whereas Say Anything is always trying to push the envelope. I look at Say Anything as something that tries to be innovative and new at all times. We’ll make a record with 27 songs, with all these different styles of songs. With Two tongues, all the songs are in a similar vein, they’re all very cohesive with one another. It’s a little bit more traditional. But the fact that it’s Max and Chris – it’s very special.
PT: Have you any plans to tour Two Tongues?
CL: I think we’re just taking it one step at a time at the moment. It’s taken like a year for the record to come out, so for right now we’re focusing on Say Anything. I definitely see a Two Tongues tour happen in the future I just can’t say when. We have a lot of crazy ideas to do something more than just a traditional 4 band bill tour as well!
PT: The album’s released next week, but it seems to have been in the works for a while. I understand you originally had a release date set for last summer, but it didn’t happen. Why was that?
CL: It takes major labels a lot of process for something like this to go with in terms of everybody OK’ing it from both sides. I’m glad it’s coming out now, it’s had a little chance to get a buzz behind it you know? All the reviews and the feedback so far has been really awesome!
PT: The album leaked onto the internet last week, and you’ve put it up for a full stream yesterday. Was that a reaction to it leaking?
CL: The myspace thing was always planned, it just happened to leak a few days before.
PT: Do you worry, as a musician about the effect album leaks, illegal downloading and the like has on your career?
CL: It’s such a weird conversation to have. Deep down it doesn’t, but then once you start thinking about money it sort of does. But deep down you play music not for money, you want to live that lifestyle and you want to play from the heart. Bands are struggling with the way the economy is right now, but we’re not broke, we can still be on a bus, and get tour supports and play shows and have fun. That’s all it really is.
I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. You only live once, and whether making a lot of money or not, we’re living the dream.
PT: So how far have you gotten along with the new Say Anything record?
CL: Well it’ll definitely be finished soon. We’re going full force for the next couple of months. We’ve only been recording for about three weeks, but we’re going pretty quickly. I want to say it should be out by late Summer, but who knows? All I want to say is that it’s turning out to be our best record so far.
PT: Can we expect another double disc concept record then?
CL: Oh I wish we could do another double-disc record, that was probably the most fun thing I’ve ever done! That was something that we did for ourselves which was awesome, and I’m so proud of it, but you know, it’s twenty-seven songs long! We’re going for maybe 13-14 this time around, but we’re going the for the most epic, boldest, fucking awesome Say Anything record yet!
www.myspace.com/twotonguesrock
Two Tongues debut self-titled album is out now through Vagrant Records.