Interviews (219)

• July 3, 2016
• Colleen Johnson
• 0
• 1529
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I’m happiest covering bands where I just can’t help but bob my head and tap my feet in tune! One of those most recent nights when down when I interviewed Philly based CRUISR. I caught up with lead singer Andy States on the band’s second to last night of their most recent tour with PVRIS. We spoke to the band a few years ago on their first major tour which just happened to be with The 1975 and since then, the band has been steadily releasing new music including their latest single ‘Take That’!

The band just announced a handful of headlining dates for the summer but their next focus is buckling down and making their first full length album. For now read our interview and get up on this talented trio if you haven’t already!

It’s been quite the long tour and you’re coming down to the last two dates. Both PVRIS hometown shows. Maybe how has this run been going for you? Maybe with the different crowd, a little bit of a younger crowd. 
Well I think the interesting thing about this crowd is that it doesn’t cross over that much with the tours that we’ve done before. So this is kind of a completely new audience for us and I think that’s the number one thing and the main reason we’re doing this tour is so we can introduce our music to a new fan base. The kids that are into PVRIS, a lot of them are into the stuff that we do too and I think we’ve realized that nobody listens to just one type of music. We listen to all kinds of different things. The fan base is kind of younger but I think we’ve already played definitely for a pretty young fan base. Especially touring with The 1975 and we love it. I think the younger fan base is more in touch with what’s going on in the world right now and also more open minded about getting into new music and really I think connects with music in a different way then people who are old and jaded like us.

Old and jaded, not so much and obviously a lot has gone on. I think when we last spoke to you, you had only released a song or two. It wasn’t even like an EP yet. Obviously, you’ve been pretty busy since that time with 1975. You released the new single ‘Take That’ near the beginning of this tour. Maybe the story behind that song?
So I think that song has actually been floating around for a while. We have a lot of songs that are sort of in these half done states for a while. We’ve actually had that song, ‘Take That’, since probably The 1975 tour. It’s just generally about sort of being empowered by the people around you and supporting each other. Kind of overcoming people or things that are holding you down but it’s been kind of a long work in progress. It ended up being like two different song ideas that got mashed together but for us, what we’ve been doing is releasing these singles just to kind of keep people reminded of the band. We know that people don’t really ideally listen to music the way people used to. It used to be very focused on albums. We definitely intentionally have not done an album yet to just keep reminding people and it’s been working out great for us. I think after this tour, the main focus is going to be getting to that album and taking the best of the best from what we’ve done so far and then adding a bunch of new stuff to that and putting an album out.

And you talked about how you haven’t it done yet but kind of maybe after this tour starting it, is it something where you have a few new songs that you’ve already kind of finished for the record?
Yeah it’s not as simple as like oh yeah we have these songs done. It’s kind of like we have a bunch of songs that just need finishing and just need kind of ironing out the kinks here and there. Fleshing it out, putting a little meat on the bones and I think there’s kind of a lot of songs that we’re excited to take from like the skeleton state and see where we get that along side the other ideas that we have. So it’s a constant thing, we’re always writing. We’ve always got a ton of ideas that are just kind of in various different states at all times.

And then like I said you guys have had a few crazy years. Touring with The 1975 was like the first really big one but you’ve been actively touring. I believe the last time you were in Boston was with Young Rising Sons.
We did a tour with Misterwives but we did not come to Boston on that one. So our last show here was at Sinclair. That was a fun tour.
Then maybe for you, all your tours have been big tours. The 1975, PVRIS who are really young it’s happening for them. Maybe the biggest moment for you so far as CRUISR? Kind of on this really quick path that it’s been.
I mean I think for us, we’ve had a lot of awesome things happen when we release tracks. Like seeing the tracks slowly get more and more love. It’s funny, when we put out like ‘Throw Shade’ like a year ago, it didn’t kind of take off right away but I think over time it’s become one of our more popular songs. For us, the most exciting thing is putting new stuff out and seeing reactions to that. Obviously, these tours have been huge for us. They’ve definitely shaped the way we’ve grown and how quickly we’ve grown. I think we see these big jumps when we go out on tour especially with bands like PVRIS or The 1975 or Misterwives. Those create like big jumps in the following and we see a lot of people coming back from those previous tours. It’s kind of the goal for us to just keep growing and writing new material.

And for you, is the writing process still changing or do you think you’ve kind of fallen into a pretty steady rhythm?
It’s constantly been changing. It’s been me trying to like slowly let go of the reigns and it’s hard because a lot of it is me being a control freak of stuff and figuring out how I can integrate these guys more. It’s definitely been a lot of growing pains. It’s not an easy thing to go from where we started as me doing a lot of the writing and then I have all these kind of half-finished songs that’s already filled up with shit. So it’s kind of a hard thing to figure out, how can we release the best material and also integrate everybody into the writing process? It’s been difficult for us for sure. I think it’s something that we’re working on sort of in tandem with producing more material. I think the most important thing for us is to get out new and great songs. Then we’re trying to change how the band works and how we work together but we definitely try a lot of different things. There’s a song that we’re working on right now that has a loop of Jon playing drums where we kind of went and retracked some stuff. There’s aged drums now which is appropriate because they have an old sound to them anyways. They’re like a fine wine.

Then like I said, this tour comes to an end tomorrow. You’re here for two nights in Boston which is kind of a nice way to end a tour. Not having to jump in the van and go somewhere else tonight.
This is an amazing way to end a tour! Then I think these two nights are going to be just a little bit more lax. Like not having to unload. When you do these two nights in a row, you don’t have to take your shit out of the venue. You don’t have to unload. Tomorrow we won’t have to load in and that’s amazing. They already have our monitor mix figured out so we don’t have to like really soundcheck tomorrow.