Going Green with Anarbor: Our Interview!

Recently I got the chance to go out to the latest This Providence headlining tour and interview your favorite bands from it. All of the bands on the tour are ripping it up in the alternative scene and all of them were either on the cusp of releasing their latest album or writing their new one so there was definitely a lot of excitement around the show.

Anarbor dropped their first full length a week after our interview, and already kids are going crazy over it! It's crazy to think that this is their first full length record as this band has always been on my radar for the last few years at least. Staying together since they were thirteen and fourteen except for one member leaving in 2008, this band has definitely grown up together and matured into the great live show that I was lucky enough to see later that night.

Read on for everything we talked about like their crazy tour schedule that is lining up this year, including all of Warped and what they think they may have been doing if they weren't in music. Maybe we would have seen Slade's name on a soccer jersey even!
If you could collaborate with any other band on this tour say on one song, who would they be.
Slade: Ooh!
Would it be This Providence, The Bigger Lights or The Audition?
Slade: That’s a good question, aah. Depends what type of collaboration we’re making.
Mike: Because if it was writing a song, I would want to do it with This Providence.
Slade: Yeah, this providence!
Mike: But like Seth does all the recording and he wants to do a remix of our song ‘Let The Games Begin’ so for something like that, we would collab with The Audition.
Slade: Yeah, The Audition would be cool too.

And how has the tour been going so far for you guys coming up to the new record?
Slade: It’s been awesome like this is probably one of my favorite tours we’ve ever been on to tell you the truth. It’s lot of friends and good promotion for the record so it’s going really good.
Mike: Everybody’s hanging out, everybody’s good friends.

Good. What’s the craziest thing you’ve seen. Maybe not necessarily on this tour?
Slade: We see a lot of crazy stuff but like sometimes the crazy that we think is crazy is not that crazy to us because like it’s so normal.
Mike: Yeah, I get what you’re saying. Like car accidents and things like that, or even things like we’ve done fifty one hour drives. You tell that to a normal person and they’re like ‘Oh my god! How many times did you pull over and stop and sleep’ and we’re like ’we drove the whole fucking way’. You know, its like that type of thing.

What can fans look forward to when coming out to one of your live shows?
Slade: High energy and rock and roll.
Mike: Just in your face I mean. Really we try to get a lot of crowd participation and we really like to get everybody involved. We have a good time! Come out, drink at the bar, do whatever you do (laughs).


What would you say is your favorite part of touring?
Slade: Favorite part of touring. Well I mean, traveling but hands down I love to play music so playing live. We love to play shows, it’s like what we love to do.
Mike: It’s the best part! We get to play in a different state.
Slade: The Music yeah!
Mike: We’re actually going out of the county, so a different country. The UK and Japan all in the next month.
Exciting!
Mike: Yeah, we’re kind of nervous.
Slade: Definitely nervous but pumped at the same time.

And then you come back and play Warped Tour all this summer? You’ve played in the past as well I believe!
Slade: Yeah, we played like you know a couple of weeks here and there last two years but this is actually the first year that we’re actually playing the whole thing so we’re really excited.
What are you most excited for?
Mike: (laughs)…The Catering!
Slade: Catering! The food yeah!
Mike: I heard you eat better on Warped then like anywhere else so I’m like stoked for the catering.
Slade: Good meals yeah. We also have like a lot of friends that are going to be on this one so it will be a lot of fun. Lot of partying.
Well, that’s what Warped Tour is for though.
Mike: Oh yeah! It’s going to be like a band summer camp.
Slade: Yeah, band summer camp. Hanging out.

If you could tour with any three dream bands, who do you think they would be and why?
Mike: Any type of bands we’d like to tour with.
Slade: The Beatles.
Mike: There you go!
Slade: Umm, Bob Marley.
Mike: Yeah. Jimmy Eat World. There you go!
That’s a pretty sweet line up.
Slade: Pretty sweet tour!

How did Anarbor first come together?
Mike: We started when we were thirteen years old. We’ve been the same exact band, we lost a member but we’re same group, same four of us. No member changes or anything like that. Yeah been together (laughs) played a lot of fucking shows.
Slade: (Laughs) We’ve been together forever.

And how did you come up with the name?
Mike: Um, it’s a name we picked. I threw it out there. My family is from Michigan and stuff and we kind of just wanted to pick something that like represents kind of where we come from and like who we are so that’s why we went with it.

Who would you say, well I know the new album comes out soon so obviously you have some influences maybe going into that album. Who would you say are your bigger ones?
Slade: Maybe not like musically, but definitely like friends definitely influenced this record. Family, I mean just life experiences we’ve gone through. I mean, stuff we do every day, just basically.
Mike: Yeah, everybody experiences different things. I mean we’re all going through temptations. There is all sorts of different things like whether it be with drugs, whether it be with girls, whether it be with drinking. Whatever it is, you’re growing up, you’re going to experience it. So it’s kind of about, it’s our life.

And that comes out a week from today.
Slade: Yeah exactly a week from today.
Mike: 4/20.
What can fans look forward to. This is your first real full length.
Mike: First record ever. We’re stoked. What can they expect? They can expect a lot of diversity amongst the songs. We had a lot of room to work with. Before, we only had six songs so we kind of put out like what we felt were almost like aggressive type songs or whatnot and this gives it a lot more room to see the different sides of Anarbor.
And how did that recording process maybe differ from the last EP’s and the writing process?
Slade: It actually, if anything, it just got better because we worked with Mike with all of our stuff so when we were going in with our full record, it was just so comfortable. It was like hanging out with our friend writing songs. It was awesome.

I know you’ve been in this band for years and years but maybe if you weren’t, in a crazy life, doing music, what would you be doing?
Slade: Well, I played soccer for a really long time so if I wasn’t in a band, I’d probably be playing soccer. I mean, I wasn’t bad not to brag but (laughs) yeah.
Mike: I would probably be-
Slade: Chess?
Mike: Yeah I’d be like probably a rocket scientist.
Slade: Yeah, that too.
Mike: Final answer (laughs).
And then, like I said, there’s a whole lot of touring. Right when you leave this tour, but you go right to the UK.
Mike: Correct, we literally drop off this tour four days early to go to the UK. We literally fly from Chicago to go to the United Kingdom, we land in London and we don’t know what the fuck we’re going to do.
Slade: We have a lot. I mean we go to London, we come back. We do like a eight day run with Automatic Loveletter and then, um, we’re home for like five days and we go straight to Japan.
Mike: Five day break woo! Then we go to Japan.
Slade: Then we come home for a like a week then we go to Warped Tour so we’re busy!
And do you think that’s going to continue for the rest of year?
Slade: Oh yeah!
Mike: That’s all we do. We tour. That’s how you keep your band going. I mean, we want to be playing to kids every night. Trying to create that draw. Um, a lot of bands these days kind of just expect to be on these big tours and kind of expect for all of this shit to fall in their laps and for them to become big overnight because of fucking myspace but we think you really need to get out there and be touring in order to kind of earn like your keep, if you know what I mean.

Well thank you so much guys.
Slade: Oh, you’re welcome!
Mike: Thank you!


Check out their music on their myspace and catch them in the UK and Japan up until the Warped Tour where they'll be playing the whole thing!