The Hot Lies

With a recently released single and a new record on the way, The Hot Lies are gearing up for a busy 12 months.

Jared (drums) spent some of his rare downtime answering these questions for us…

Interview w/ Jared of “The Hot

Lies”

Thanks for your time today

Jared. 

Hey mate, how are you? 

I’m great thanks man. Are

you guys home at the moment? 

Yep. I’m home in Adelaide at

the moment and we’re gearing up to start touring again this week. 

What’s been keeping you busy

lately? 

Well, we’ve had a couple of

weeks off which has been really sweet. We haven’t really had any time

off over the last 6 months so I’ve just been sitting on my arse on

the couch and watching some telly, ha ha. 

I was just saying to my girlfriend

it feels weird and I should be doing something. Things have just felt

weird lately but we’re about to get back into it again so it’s all

starting to feel normal again. 

“Emergency Emergency” was

– are you guys happy with the response so far? 

It’s done a lot of cool stuff

for us already. We’re really happy with how it turned out and that

sort of thing. It’s been picked up by a few radio stations that we

didn’t expect so yeah, we’re really happy!  

The promo clip for the single

film? 

We were really lucky that we made

friends with director so we were able to work with him. We’d always

wanted to shoot a clip on film. We’d worked with film before and the

colours we got were just great. I never realised there was such a massive

difference between film and HD so yeah, we wanted to use film again. 

He said if we do it in Sydney

then we can keep the cost down because he knew a bunch of people who

could work for free on it. He was really cool because a lot of dudes

working with film have to do commercials and jobs like that all the

time but he has a team of people who were siked on doing music videos! 

They were able to find a road

in the middle of nowhere that no one was using and they found a car

that someone didn’t want. He really pulled it all together. We’re

so stoked with how it turned out. It looks really Aussie you know? The

colours look really Aussie and the old Kingswood looks really Aussie,

ha ha 

Ha ha ha 

So yeah, we’re just stoked with

it overall! 

“Ringing In The Sane” is

set for release on the 15^th of this month

– what can fans expect from this record? 

It was an opportunity for us to

find our sound a bit more. We were able to experiment with different

song structures which was cool. 

It’s the same old story with

EP’s you know? You get out there and you have to blast because you’ve

only got 5 songs to work with so you have to make an impact. But with

the full length we got to do slower songs, get the acoustic out and

play around with some piano too. It was an experimental process for

the whole thing. 

A few people in other interviews

have said it sounds different so I’ve been getting them to explain

what’s different about it… and they all say it’s more pop.

We didn’t set out to write any specific kinds of songs. We wrote 22

tracks and chose the 12 that we liked the most. Some of those songs

sounded like some of our older material so when it came to putting the

album together we just chose the ones that stood out. 

How do you think the record

differs from your previous releases? 

Getting our new guitarist brought

a different flavour to the band. Anytime you get someone new – especially

a lead guitarist – it changes your sound a bit. We were able to spend

more time on the songs and doing different kinds of songs. Yeah, I think

that’s the biggest difference, just getting to spend a lot of time

working on the songs as opposed to doing 5 songs and then bang, hitting

the studio. 

Some days you think about the

songs too much but with 12 songs you’ve got a lot on your plate so

it’s a lot more work. Some people had said to me “you’re not a

real band until you’ve done an album” and I was like, I’ve done

2 EP’s, I know what I’m doing. But when it came to doing it I was

like "Whoa, you’re right!"

You touched on this briefly

of the record or was most of the material already finished? 

I’d say it was 50/50. We already

had some of the songs finished but some of the other songs were re-written

quite a few times. Some of the songs didn’t come together until we

were doing pre production with Phil – they were just bits before that

– so Luke definitely had input on those.  

It’s awesome that he came in

when he did. It would’ve sucked if we’d recoded the whole album

and then he joined the band because then he would’ve been playing

someone else’s record. Like I said, some songs were done but we said

to do whatever you want, it’s your band too, so that way it made it

feel more a part of him as well.  

It would suck if you’re a writer

and then you didn’t get any input… you’d feel like you were in

a cover band! 

Losing a guitarist is never a

good thing but he made it cool. 

“Ringing In The Sane” was

process? 

He’s a very chilled out dude…

he didn’t wig out once in 2 months! He was just so relaxed and he

even said to us “freaking out is never going to get me anywhere, so

just relax and we’ll get there”.  

He’s very honest and if he thought

something sucked then he’d say it. He’d tell us to go home and work

on something if it wasn’t up to scratch. He was a good dude and it

was a pleasure to work with someone like him. 

I’ve heard stories about other

bands working with US producers and they can’t stand the dude but

Phil was so nice and having someone that relaxed made it very soothing.  

new record or was it tracked in a more traditional fashion? 

Yeah, the drums were tracked with

bass, guitars and vocals which was cool. It was all set up. We didn’t

keep a lot of the guitars that were tracked with the drums but it was

a full band while we were playing and tracking. 

It just feels better. Some of

my old bands that I’d been in you’d track your drums with just the

bass player and it freaked me out… it was weird and I’m not used

to it. This time round we had a nice big studio where we did the drums

and it helped me put more of a vibe into it.  

Kalju (Tonuma – producer) introduced

us to live recording and that’s something we’ve held onto. Phil

wasn’t into it to begin with but yeah, it worked! We liked doing it.  

You guys had some assistance

– how did the collaboration with Eskimo Joe come around? 

We’ve always worked with other

people on our song writing. When we did the last EP Kalju helped us

out and we had some friends listen to the songs and have some input

as well.  

Apart from Luke, none of us are

natural musicians. We’re not these crazy gifted people that can play

every instrument. Some bands have those dudes but we don’t. Luke’s

definitely gifted but the rest of us have to work on what we do. We’ve

always called someone in to help us if that’s what the song has needed. 

We wanted to do the same thing

on this record. When we were talking about bands, Eskimo Joe came up,

so did Cam from Bodyjar. They said they weren’t keen on doing pre

production with us because they didn’t have the time - I’m pretty

sure they were signing a US deal – but they invited us over to Fremantle

to have a jam in their studio and to see what happens. 

We weren’t really fans of their

music but we respect them as a band. Every time they do a record they’ve

done a little bit more for them and built themselves up. We respected

that about them. Pete went over a couple of days early and just hung

out and played acoustic guitar with them and relaxed on the beach. From

there it all just fell into place. 

We flew over and had just jammed,

had some barbies, some beers and we ended up getting 2 songs out of

it and it’s awesome that it worked out like that. Down the track those

guys are interested in being producers so working with them it felt

like we were with producers. They were able to bring all these ideas

out of us so it was definitely a profitable experience.  

They convinced us to buy a Pro

Tools rig… they couldn’t believe we didn’t already have one! They

were just like it’s so cheap and such an amazing demoing tool. We

learnt how to use it while we were over there so little lessons like

that were great! 

You were lucky enough to support

– how were those shows for you guys? 

They were cool man. It was really

weird though. It was a totally different crowd than what I’ve ever

experienced before. Did you go to the show? 

Nah man, ha ha 

Ha ha, it was such a weird mix

of people. There were biker dudes, teenage girls, surfer dudes, families

with kids. It was probably the world’s most commercial crowd so there

was just this crazy cross section of people. 

It was cool to play to a new audience

especially because most of these people hadn’t heard of us before.

After the show there were people asking who we were which was cool but

yeah, it was a totally different world. We’re used to the punk crowd! 

Did you use the opportunity

like? 

We’ve been playing about half

a set’s worth of new songs. Coz we’ve been playing the EP’s for

so long it’s exciting to play new songs! By having 10 new songs from

the record we’ve instantly doubled the amount of songs we can draw

from at each show! 

Apart from your own headlining

pop bands?

I dunno man, it’s gonna be bizarre.

Somehow they’ve done it again. They (Good Charlotte) slipped a bit

but now this album has gone absolutely crazy. It’s going to be another

Yellowcard styled experience I think. Don’t get me wrong, club shows

are great and you’ve got that energy that translates between the crowd

and the band but the arena shows are fun too! 

You usually find yourself standing

there saying “imagine if we were this big”, ha ha. Kisschasy are

doing the tour as well which is great. We’ve never toured with them

before – we’ve toured with everyone else but never them – so it’s

been a long time coming and will be a lot of fun! 

What do you guys have in the

works once the Good Charlotte tour is wrapped up? 

We have a regional tour planned

which is going to take us up to North Queensland. I think they call

it “off Broadway” because there’s no capital cities. We hit all

the small towns in between and that’s taking place some time in November.  

That’ll be great because it’s

starting to warm up around that time so I can bring the surfboard with

us! It’s only 2 hours between shows as opposed to 8 – 10 hour drives,

so it’s a summer holiday styled tour! Then hopefully we can hit Japan

which would be awesome. Our EP’s were released as an album over there

so yeah, hopefully we make it over.  

We’re trying to get the new

record released over there as well. We’re so keen to get there and

Japan is such an exciting and mystical place and I think not being able

to speak the language would make for a great experience.  

Having sold in excess of 10,000

be having a crack at the US market in 2008? 

We’re keen to do it but we want

to make sure we’re ready. It costs a lot of money to get over there

and you only really get one crack at it. If you go there and screw it

up and you’re not ready for it then it’s really difficult to do

it again. 

We want to make the album work

here first and then try things properly over there. You have to make

an impression when you go over there… someone like Prom Queen went

there and made a great impression and that meant they could go back.  

The market over there is saturated

with our sound as well so it’d be a cool experience but really hard.

We’re so jealous of these other bands over there. Our friends in Trial

Kennedy and The Getaway Plan are both recording over there and I keep

messaging them on MySpace saying how much they suck, ha ha. They’re

just like, get on a plane but there are too many things to tick off

down here before we do that.  

What have been your favourite

records for 2007 (so far)? 

I’ve been listening to that

new Minus The Bear record a fair bit. Um, what else have I been listening

to? I’m trying to think. Well, it didn’t come out this year –

and I’ve been listening to lots of mellow stuff – but the last Mogwai

record is great. Just into that sort of mellow, cut back sort of sound.  

I’ve been working a lot so I

can’t play music at work that is too full on. What have you been listening

to? 

Um, Horsell Common, Elora Danan

and Mindsnare. Pretty much all Australian which is always a good sign! 

Yeah man for sure! 

That’s about it mate, any

final words? 

Nah, thanks for your time though

mate.  

For more information on The Hot

Lies head over to:

http://www.myspace.com/thehotlies