Kidsday interviews Plain White T's
Photo credit: Newsday Photo / Pat Mullooly | Tim Lopez and Dave Tirio of the Plain White T's with Kidsday reporters Peter Lupfer, Collin Stinton, Shania Wilkinson and Marisa Skurka
We interviewed Dave Tirio and Tim Lopez from the music group Plain White T's in their dressing room at the Jimmy Fallon Show in Manhattan recently. We love their new song, "1,2,3,4."
Can you tell us about your new CD "Big Bad World"? Dave: We recorded it about a year ago. We recorded it in Malibu in California and finished it in Chicago. It is our second major label release, and it came out last Sept. It's been doing good. "1,2,3,4" came out and the video has been doing well, and it is kind of climbing charts right now.
How has your life changed since you become famous? Tim: I am pretty sure that Tom is famous, and the rest of us get to kind of do our own thing still. Dave: It is kind of good being the guitarists because we don't have to deal with as much. Ninety percent of our lives is traveling with each other. And going home to our family and friends that never changes if that changed that would be really weird.
How did your band get famous? Tim: MySpace? Dave: Kind of. It was MySpace and a skateboarding magazine in California Scratch. Tim: In terms of making it and getting onto radio and onto a major label, a lot of that was through MySpace. We just had a lot of people coming to our page and listening to "Hey There Delilah," and some of the other songs. The major labels realized there was a lot of potential there. That was when we got signed.
What inspires you to write your songs? Dave: A lot of melodic bands from the '50s to the current day. From the Beatles, to the Beach Boys to Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen, Jimmy Eat World, Panic at the Disco. Tim: And girls. Tom is the one who writes the majority of the songs, and a lot of it is about girls. It's about relationships or whatever. What is going on in your life, you know.
How did you come up with the band's name? Dave: Because we found out that we were really, really bad at thinking of names for ourselves. We were just completely out of ideas. We went and looked through a bunch of CD booklets of bands we really liked and magazines and stuff, and they all looked like you guys. We saw a lot of guys in bands wearing plain white T-shirts we thought it was cool. We thought it was a cool thing that never went out in style.
If you were to invite a girl into your band, who would it be? Dave: Who is the best musician girl we can think of? Tim: I wouldn't care if she had musical ability. I would be into having Rhianna in the band, though. Dave: Rhianna or Carrie Underwood is pretty talented. Tim: I would be into have Elisha Cuthbert in the band. She could just play tamborine.
Do you get nervous before the show?
Tim: Not all the time. Dave: Sometimes you get confident enough with your practicing that you feel good enough on stage that you know you are going to do well. At the beginning of this tour, I was nervous every night for sure. If we play our hometown, if we play Chicago, or sometimes we play LA. Tim: We play Jimmy Fallon. The song we are playing tonight we all know like we know the back of our hand but I think if you get out there and you allow yourself to think, ok there are millions of people watching, then you might get a little bit nervous. Dave: We played Conan O'Brien right before he moved to the west, and I was like shaking.
Did you ever think you would become famous?
Dave: I don't know. I don't think so. I always wanted to become successful. I don't think the goal for any of us was to become famous because we are all pretty relaxed dudes but we all definitely wanted to be in a big band. W wanted to make a living playing music. If you want to say fame that is just a by-product; it is just kind of coincidence that happens.
What is your motto?
Tim: Oh man, Live Free or Die Hard? Dave: That's good, quoting action movies. I don't know, but what goes above and beyond all things is keeping your family strong and your friends. That is what you are going to have no matter what happens whether you have a job or not, things are going up or down in your life. Tim: What about keep your friends close and keep Tom Higgenson closer.
Have you ever messed up in a live performance?
Dave: About 150,000 times. Tim: If we have screwed up 150,000 times almost all of them go unnoticed by the crowd. We all know exactly what we are supposed to be playing and we are hypercritical of how we perform. Dave: We are super-perfectionists when it comes to it all. The other day I was playing and it was song I have played hundreds of times and I forgot the complete chorus and it was just because my mind wandered. Sometimes someone in the crowd looks at you funny and you get thrown off; someone makes you laugh or something. DeMar falls off the back of the stage, which has happened. It can be any number of things actually. Tim: But most people wouldn't even notice.
Have you ever gotten into an argument with each other?
Dave: We get along all the time! Tim: We used to travel together in a van, and when we were in a van I think we used to get on each other's nerves really bad because you would sit this close to each other. And after a while you would start to pick up on everybody's weird quirks and that would start to bug the heck out of you. Dave: We used to get into arguments on a daily basis and we still do because there are so many opinions to fly around about a song or a way to play a song. Or even what are you wearing for the show tonight, it could be anything; where we eat for lunch. You end up treating each other like brothers. Tim: Being is a band you can either equate it to like brothers or almost like being married to four different people, and it is hard enough being married to one person. Things get pretty wild when you are all trying to agree on stuff.
Were you friends before you started the band or were their tryouts?
Dave: Tom and I started the band, we were already friends. We met in high school, freshmen year of high school. We played music all through high school in our basements with all of our other friends. By the time we were seniors Tom was writing his own songs and we decided to start a band, and when we started it was with our friends in high school. There were two other guys basically for the first five years of the band and they quit. One of them didn't want to tour anymore and wanted to do something else musically. DeMar, our drummer, Tim here and Mike our bass player were all in different bands. Mike and DeMar were in bands in Chicago and we thought they were great and we asked them if they would join ours once their bands broke up. And them Tim was in a band in California and we went out to make a record and we wanted to see if Tim wanted to be a part of the record and he played a couple of shows on the west coast and then joined up with us. We all did know everyone before but we weren't close.
Have any of your songs been about real experience?
Dave: Yeah, most of them are for sure. Tim always writes very personally and those are the ones that always connect the most.
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