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You have to give them something where they walk away and say, 'I want more of that.' To create something like that, you have to take them on a journey. So the live show is very important to us; we've been working on that a lot.
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You hear about our conservative background and know that we're Christian guys, but we're not timid at all. I will take anyone on when it comes to outworking them or putting on a better show or standing up for people who are being put down.
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I think one of the toughest things is that balancing act of trying to maintain relationships while being on the road.
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I don't love the way I look. Nobody does, and if they do, I don't want to be that person's friend. But we all know what we're insecure about. The question I had as I was writing was, 'How are these things affecting the way I live? How am I compensating because I don't like this about myself? What do I do to cover it up?'
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I didn't know that there were many rules in music when I first started writing.
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If you really see how many live shows are going on... you can start to do things that are out of the ordinary.
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Pretty much all the programming on our CDs is done by me personally, so I've kind of been able to have complete control of what sounds I'm looking for to complete a song.
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Josh is the guy in the band who's just so friendly and super, wanting to walk up to you and say, 'Hey, I'm Josh. I drum in this band, and I'm a big fan of you, and I really appreciate what you do.' Josh has all these great friends in the industry now.
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From the beginning, my songwriting was from writing in a journal; it was completely unfiltered. I don't know if I really meant to show everyone this side of me, but when I saw how people resonated to the things I was saying, some of the questions I was asking, I realized I was not alone.
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You kind of have to celebrate the moment that you get to create something that you love that falls into the parameters of a 3-minute-and-20-second song, to try to be creative inside of those parameters.
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We had so many friends who did the band thing, and one of their first moves was to go on tour, and they'd just blow all their money.
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Radio is a hungry monster that eats very fast.
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I remember the first time I ever showed my parents a song that I had written. The content may have been a little darker than they were used to, or really introspective in a way that may have been uncomfortable. I thought they'd retaliate with some kind of judgment or concern about whether I was feeling all right, but they were proud of it.
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Writing songs is kind of like a wrestling match to me. You have to pin it down and make it do what you want it to do.
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If I were to give advice to someone that just started a band and how to get someone's attention, you've gotta have a central hub. For us, it was Columbus, Ohio.
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There are times when we look back and think, 'Do you remember when we had to lug a piano downstairs to a basement of some venue to play for five people?' We do a lot of reminiscing. It helps us keep our heads on straight.
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Blurryface is this character that I came up with that represents a certain level of insecurity.
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We're constantly faced with decisions. A lot of times, the right ones take more work; it takes longer to see benefit: they're the long route.
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We know in order to get where we want to be and do what we want to be doing, sometimes we have to do what we don't feel like doing. It takes hard work, and the band name is a constant reminder of that.
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When you play a show or festival, people know what they're getting; they want it. Then you're thrown onto a show where people are watching TV in their houses, and whether they ask for it or not, we're being played in front of them. There's a lot of negative feedback.
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For a long time, we just played here - Columbus is a perfect place to work your way up and maybe build a fan base.
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I've forgotten what it feels like to be in one place for more than a day... But we signed up for this. This is our dream. We sat down and said this is what we want to do, play music and touring.
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There was a lot of pressure to find a genre and stick to it. People would tell me all the time, 'You can't be all things to everyone.' I would say, 'I'm not trying to be! I'm being what I want to be for myself.'
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One think that you notice about anyone that gets up on stage is that they don't really have a lot of self-awareness. It's kind of a trait that performers don't have because you just kinda just have to let go and do whatever you want to do on stage.