The Academy Is… interview

interview by Keri Franz

Whether you know him as Adam, Sisky Business, or just Sisky, Adam T. Siska, bass whiz in The Academy Is…, means business. Even though he seems like a wacky character on stage or on TAI TV (the band’s hilarious podcast), he is very down-to-earth and serious about what his band is doing. Since its inception, The Academy Is… has collected fans the world over with three records, two EPs, and bunches of videos. Currently on the Alternative Press Fall Ball 2009 tour, they have become a household, Warped Tour name, and they’re only getting more popular. Adam talked to me about the perks of co-writing, the work on The Academy Is…’ new album, and why bonus tracks just aren’t a good thing.

How did the band form? How did you all meet and get the band started?

Well there are some people that aren’t in the band anymore, but the three of us, Mike, William and I, met in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. I met William in 2001. He played drums in a band with my brother, and he’s 3 years older than me. We kind of bonded, just talked about music and this record label called Asian Man records (which was a underground punk rock record label that was run out of garages). Like I said, we bonded over that and our friendship grew. A couple years later, we met Mike Carden who was from 2 towns over, rival schools. He seemed like he had a similar outlook on music, and we just started writing songs together in basements and playing in basements. Along the way, we met our drummer, Andy, who’s from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and our guitar Michael, who’s from Sydney, Australia.

That seems like a pretty far ways off from Chicago!

Yeah, we kinda turned in into a global thing.

Cool, well it seems to be working well for you all. You guys have great chemistry. As far as the process of making the music though, do you all work together or do you work separately then come together and combine everything?

It really varies from song to song. There will be times where our drummer will come in with everything written and recorded on a demo or the guitar player—any one of us will write a song like that. Or there will be song that the whole band will sit in a room together and collaborate on. Those ones tend to be my favorite ones that the band gets to play together on and “jam” as they say. I’m a bass player, so I get to have my voice heard a little bit more when I write with the band as opposed to bringing in my own song. This way, it keeps us together as a band.

It seems like with the “Fast Times at Barrington High” CD, the bass wasn’t as accentuated as it was on “Santi”. Do you think you were shafted a little bit or was it just how it all kind of came together?

That was a conscious decision. I loved doing the bass thing on “Santi,” but I personally think that sometimes when you busy up a song it can really take away from some of the focus. On “Santi,” the record wasn’t about focus. It was about a certain feeling and experimentation. On the last record, we wanted to buckle down and write more in the pocket. I mean there are still a lot of drum and bass grooves on fast times. I just thought that the dancing around and the hot dogging was a little bit over the top. On “Santi,” it may have impacted the songs in a negative way. I think the vocals showcase a lot more when the bass isn’t dancing around like that. Who knows, the next record may be a little bit more similar to how it was on “Santi,” but we just like to try different things and that was a conscious decision for playing on the record.

So you just experiment but then try to find your niche. And just find out where you feel comfortable.

Yeah, there’s a fine line between self expression and trying to inflate your ego with a bass line that’s a little bit too complicated or busy and some of my favorite bass players were the ones that played simple little parts that were complimentary. You have to find that balance.

Speaking of vocals, sort of, I read somewhere that for the next album, there will be outside writers, besides the guys in the band obviously. Is there any validity to that and what’s your perspective on it?

It’s hard to say, I’m personally not a fan of it. I don’t know if there will be outside writers. A lot of our favorite records by some of the most respected musicians out there were co-written. We’re not dogging the idea of co-writes at all. I mean you look at some of the best Bob Dylan songs; a lot of Ryan Adams songs, the Clash…all our favorite bands did a lot of co-writes. So it doesn’t take away from the creative drive of what you’re doing as a band. I mean it’s almost like you’re driving a car and you want to take a look at the view around so you let someone else put their foot on the gas for a little bit. I think it can be a healthy thing for any band. We’re not too deep into writing on the next record, so we don’t really know. We’ll always be writing songs on our own, and when it comes to the co-writes, it’s not like you just come in and the song is just written and we go with that. It’s literally a co-write. We write with someone else in the room who can act like a therapist in helping us complete these songs. As you can see on “Santi,” we have a lot of ideas that are floating around in our heads, like the thing about the bass lines. It’s nice to have someone there to keep you in check and remind you of what the big picture is and what you’re going for on the record. The last thing we want to do is loose the credibility of saying these songs come from the heart. It’s hard to say a song comes from the heart when you didn’t write it. I think the big picture for us is to do whatever we can to make sure that we feel like it’s our song and that we feel like it’s coming from the heart. If it doesn’t, no one will ever hear it because it’s the last thing we’d want to do.

The band is so organic; it’s like a family unit. It’s kind of cool just to know that everyone is in on it. It’s like everything is in the family.

It’s fun to bring in outside people though. It’s like the Beatles working on “Let It Be” with Phil Spector. He turned that record into something totally different. If it wasn’t for Phil Sector, “Let It Be” would be a totally, completely different album. He’s not a member of the Beatles and no one ever remembers that he’s the one that made it that way. Same way with Billy Preston, the piano player on the Beatles records, he was the fifth Beatle. And it doesn’t take away from the credibility of them as songwriters. Everyone knows that they’re the best. You have to do whatever you can do to get your point across on an album and it’s nice to have help from people.

So you said that you haven’t started work on the new album, which is fine because the EP, “Lost in Pacific Time: The AP-EP,” just came out.

You know what, we just don’t want to say that we’re working on the album, I think once we come to a point as a band where if we say we’re working on the album that’s when we start to stress ourselves out. Whereas, if you try to gradually work at it and start writing songs, then you don’t talk about it or think about it too much then I think you get a better result. I’m sorry; you were going to ask a question.

Yes, that’s okay. As far as the EP goes, it seems to me like a mix between “Fast Times at Barrington High” and “Santi”. It’s got a mix of both styles together, but it still seems very cohesive. Was it written and put together on the road this summer?

All the songs were written at different times. There was one song that was written during the “Fast Times” sessions that we never ended up using for that album. Then there’s one song that we wrote spur of the moment over the year. They’re kind of just a collection of songs that we wrote throughout the year that we didn’t really feel like we wanted to carry into the next record because when we start a new record we like to have a clean slate. If you like a song that you wrote a year ago, it’s a good thing to put it out somewhere but I don’t think it’s really good to carry it into the new record. When you’re starting a new record it’s nice to just start over and have new creative ideas and not to just dwell on things that you did a year and a half ago. That being said, we like the songs so we thought they deserve to be heard and we thought that it would not hurt at all to record them ourselves. There’s no recording budget for the EP, we just did it on the tour bus in the back lounge. We put it out for the fans, and I think that our fans will never complain about more music.

It’s like an odds and ends EP then, which is cool because people sometimes are scrambling to find songs that are the exclusive tracks like “Ghost” off of “Santi”. This way they can buy it and it’s not like they have to download illegally or something.

It is cool. I don’t really like that there are exclusive tracks. “Ghost” I really wish was on “Santi.” That was probably my favorite song we wrote for that record. When you’re so close to the project, it’s like we’re making this decision whether something should be on it and you have two minutes to decide. And it’s like ehh I guess it’ll be a b-side. Two years later, you’re looking back and you’re like, “well, damn, I like that one better than all the other ones. It should’ve been the first song.” It’s strange how that works. That’s how records are. You only get that one window of opportunity to decide how you feel about them. From now on, I don’t think there should be any b-sides. We should just put out like fifteen tracks on an album — no b-sides or bonus tracks. Everyone should get them — it only holds back the songs.

The TAI TV podcasts are so diverse. Some of them are just you guys on your daily travels on Warped Tour or whatever, but other ones are like mini movies or TV shows. Who comes up with all of that material and edits everything and gets it out there? Do you think there will be another season of TAI TV in the future?

Well, we had our friend, Jack, out with us. Jack is a high school buddy of mine who has a real knack for the camera and editing. He’s one of the funniest people I’ve ever known. He’s one of my best friends. He came out with us and was filming those. He’d have ideas, and we’d have ideas. Anyone could have an idea, as long as it was something that seemed like it was fun, we’d do it. The thing with TAI TV was that we’d put them up every Sunday, so sometimes Saturday night would come around and you’d be like wait a second we haven’t even thought about this. We’ve just been at bars or writing songs all week. We haven’t thought about what we’re doing tomorrow for the webcast. At that point, it’s like alright guys let’s just make something up. Let’s sit down in the back lounge and make something up. That’s how it would always be. We’d just have some little idea and we’d run with it, just kind of spur of the moment. Some were better at it than others. The point of it was just to get it done and to do something fun. Once a week, we’d basically make a pledge to our fans saying that we were thinking about them. We haven’t been doing TAI TVs for a while now, and I think a lot of the fans that I talk to are kinda bummed about that. But sometimes you have to draw the line and say are we a band or should we be on Saturday Night Live or something. Right now, we just want to be a band and figure out what that means. I’m not saying that TAI TV is dead or not coming back. I think we all just got a little tired of doing it every Sunday. My relationship with Jack probably suffered a lot because of the stress of trying to deliver every week. Now he’s actually out with Cobra Starship doing Cobra Cams. It’s essentially the same thing as TAI TV, but it’s got much funnier people in it because the Cobra Starship guys are actually a comedy troupe. It’s pretty funny.

Lost In Pacific Time is available now in iTunes. Learn more about The Academy Is… at TheAcademyIs.com.