Panic! At The Disco hangs with Ryan Ross & Jon Walker, “still friends”

The band known as Panic! At The Disco went from a quartet to a twosome on their way from Pretty. Odd. to new release Vices & Virtues, but that doesn’t mean the four can’t all still be friends. In fact they still are. Panic! frontman Brendon Urie tells Beatweek that he and founding drummer Spencer Smith, the two remaining Panic! members, have since hung out with departed members Ryan Ross and Jon Walker, who went on to found the Young Veins. “It’s still fun,” Urie says of hanging out with his former bandmates. “We’ve hung out with them a few times, actually, and it has been nice.” As far as his former bandmates’ current project? Urie says “I am a fan of their record.” He does admit, however, that about a month and a half initially went by after the split before the two sides had any contact, although he chalks that up to everyone having immersed themselves into working on their respective new albums.

The new Panic! At The Disco album Vices & Virtues debuted today at #2 on the iTunes Alternative album chart. Brendon Urie and Spencer Smith are set to hit the road for the Panic! tour, along with touring members Dallon Weekes and Ian Crawford in tow. Panic! is on the cover of the March 22nd issue of Beatweek Magazine, and you can read the full cover story interview with Brendon Urie right here.

Panic! At The Disco – the Beatweek interview: Vices & Virtues & more

by Bill Palmer

This is the cover story for the March 22nd issue of Beatweek Magazine

“I’ve always wanted to live near the ocean,” says Brendon Urie of why he’s now residing in California after having spent his whole life in Las Vegas. And perhaps the change of scenery is why seemingly nothing fazes him these days. He’s sufficiently at peace with the fact that half of his Panic! At the Disco bandmates left him two years ago to work on another project that he’s since hung out with them. He loved the challenge of playing nearly every instrument on Panic’s new record Vices and Virtues on top of his usual singing duties. He gets a kick out of the fan fuss over the fact that the exclamation point in his band’s name keeps disappearing and reappearing. And even with the Vices and Virtues release already out the door today, he’s developed such an addiction to songwriting that he’s still writing new material daily out of habit. But the 2011 story of Panic! At The Disco starts back in 2009, when Urie and drummer Spencer Smith woke up one day and realized they were suddenly a duo and decided to plow ahead together anyway.

“It took a little bit of time for us to get comfortable and realize where we wanted the band to go,” Urie says of those initial days. “But it was pretty simple for us to realize that yeah, we do want to continue on as Panic! and we want to keep making music. We were definitely on the same page with where we wanted to go musically. That being said, we never had a direction for an album or anything. We were just writing songs and trying to better ourselves as songwriters now that it was just the two of us instead of four opinions and four people writing together. So we definitely had to, I guess, work a little bit harder in that aspect.”

With Brendon penning a greater percentage of the lyrics for Vices than for Panic’s previous releases, he’s learned that his best efforts tend to be the “songs that sneeze out of you,” whether that be the ones which come together immediately or the ideas which get shelved and then later blaze back to life. Lead track The Ballad of Mona Lisa was among the latter, with its chorus dating back to the band’s early days. “I guess I’d written it four or five years ago, and never did anything with it,” Urie recalls. “I showed the band a couple times but it just fell to the wayside, we never did anything with it. Other ideas beat it out or whatever reason it was.”

Rather than bring a new guitarist and bassist into the studio, Urie simply took advantage of his own skills on both instruments. But lest anyone get ideas about Panic! now being a quasi-solo affair, he makes it clear why he stayed away from the percussion. “I love the way Spencer plays drums,” he says of Panic’s founding drummer. “I feel it’s what makes this band our band. It definitely gives us our own voice percussive-wise. It’s awesome to have someone as talented and as creative as Spencer on my side.”

As to what motivated him to cover the rest of the parts himself instead of relying on studio musicians, Urie has to think about it. “I guess maybe it was a thing where I wanted to show people I could play it? But not really. I really do just have a lot of fun singing, playing other instruments, playing accordion or bass or guitar or something. So yeah, it’s just another fun thing for me to do. I get so bored just doing one thing.”

Those instruments were vacated after Ryan Ross and Jon Walker departed in 2009 to begin a project called the Young Veins, a move which stunned fans and was at the time explained away by all parties as simply being a matter of musical differences. As it turns out, it was exactly that. Not that there wasn’t some initial awkwardness to shake off along the way.

“When we first decided to kind of split the group up and they wanted to go and just start a new project, it was a little weird,” admits Urie as the two camps each plunged into their respective new records. “It took a couple months for us to kind of get back in touch and realize yeah, this was musical differences, we shouldn’t act weird. We’re still friends. We share the same humor. We still get along great.”

And then there’s the part which will have longtime Panic! fans feeling at ease: “It’s still fun to hang out with those guys. We’ve hung out with them a few times, actually, and it has been nice. Grab a drink or grab dinner or something. It is nice and comforting for us personally to know that we can still be friends after this whole dramatic situation, whatever came out of it. I am a fan of their record, and they’ve expressed their feelings and their excitement for our stuff and showed their support. So we definitely support each other. We can’t wait to see what else they come out with because they are exceptionally talented guys. I’m sure it’ll be great.”

But when asked whether the two official roster spots will be kept open indefinitely, Urie offers “I don’t know.” Dallon Weekes and Ian Crawford have joined Panic! as touring members, but will they eventually become official members? “We’ll see. But I definitely think Dallon and Ian, if they’ll stick around, we’ll love to have them.”

Live performances aside, the Vices and Virtues record is all about Urie and Smith. After having locked themselves away for the better part of two years while working on the record, “It’s gonna be great to get back into that,” Urie says of finally hitting the road. The marathon recording process kept getting elongated by new material which was being written along the way. “All these new songs would pop up, and I’d show Jon Feldman or Butch Walker or whoever we were working with at the time, and I’d be like ‘Here’s this new one and I think this is way better,’ and they would be like ‘Yeah you’re right.’”

Brendon Urie may spend the rest of his professional life answering questions about the internal punctuation within the name Panic! At The Disco. But rather than begging off the never ending topic, he appears to get a kick out of the harmless hoopla surrounding it. Years ago, when fans first pointed out that the had an exclamation point in their name, their bemused response was “Oh yeah, we do, we forgot about that. It was like a one-time thing that we did on the internet that just ended up sticking around and we never really thought about it. And then on the second record we never thought about it not being there, and so we just wrote it without it and thought yeah, that’s not going to be a big deal. And then people were like where did it go, why did you do that? And it just became this whole thing. We’ve had a lot of fun with that,” he admits with a laugh.

But on a more consequential note, it turns out Urie says he’s suffering from an addiction: he’s still habitually writing new material for his band’s new album even though it’s already been released. “As of late I wake up and I have to go work on music. Immediately when I wake up I grab my coffee, maybe go outside for a smoke break, and I just immediately start writing music. It’s something that I feel I have to do. If I don’t, my whole day is messed up.”

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Beatweek Magazine: Panic! At The Disco interview, top 50 iPad apps and more

Beatweek Magazine’s March 22nd issue highlights:

• Panic! At The Disco cover story interview: Brendon Urie talks Vices & Virtues, life after parting ways, and songwriting addiction

• The top fifty apps for your iPad including games, music, video, photography, books, productivity, social networking, education, shopping, and more

• Interviews with Sky Ferreira, Katie Costello, and Pierce The Veil

Read this issue now

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Panic! At The Disco’s Brendon Urie explains his songwriting addiction

When fans get their hands on Vices and Virtues tomorrow, it’ll be the first new album they get to hear from Panic! At The Disco since the band became a duo consisting of frontman Brendon Urie and drummer Spencer Smith. But as Urie explained to Beatweek, some of the songs on the record, while new, have existed as ideas for some time. In fact the chorus for lead track The Ballad of Mona Lisa has been around since before Panic! parted ways with its former guitarist and bassist. “I’d written it four or five years ago, and never did anything with it,” says Urie. “It was one of the ideas that we showed [producer] Butch Walker, and he really liked the idea. So that built our confidence up.”

In the cover story for Beatweek Magazine’s March 22nd issue, Brendon goes on to explain that since he’s assumed the lead role in crafting the band’s lyrics, he’s spent the past couple years “writing like crazy. Now it’s like an addiction. It used to be a thing where I would write, but I never wrote as much as I have in the past two years. It was definitely more casual. As of late I wake up and I have to go work on music. Immediately when I wake up I grab my coffee, maybe go outside for a smoke break, and I just immediately start writing music. It’s something that I feel I have to do. If I don’t, my whole day is messed up.”

Urie also tells Beatweek of his his post-split interactions with former Panic! members Ryan Ross and Jon Walker, confirms that he played every instrument on Vices and Virtues save for the percussion (and explains why it’s so vital that drummer Smith is still in the band), and shares why the exclamation point has returned to his band’s name. Beatweek Magazine’s March 22nd issue can be read in full (for free) on Beatweek.com as of tomorrow. Vices and Virtues will also be released, not coincidentally, tomorrow.

The Young Veins interview

Ryan Ross and Jon Walker have joined together to form The Young Veins after both of them quit their former band, Panic at the Disco, in July of last year. Despite the fact that the new band features half of Panic’s old lineup, the music from The Young Veins has an entirely different feel.

Compared to the old days, both Ross and Walker now play lead guitar and sing lead vocals. The pair has become quite a well-oiled, songwriting machine as well. To the lineup, they have added Andy Soukal on bass, Nick White on keyboards, and Nick Murray on drums. You can hear for yourself just how this musical adventure sounds on June 8 when their album, “Take a Vacation!” is finally released. I had a lovely conversation with Jon Walker about why Panic really split up, what it’s like going back to square one, and why he and Ross have never been happier.

According to many interviews in late 2008 and early 2009, Panic! at the Disco’s third studio release was the most anticipated. The four of you seemed like you were excited to embrace new ideas and work together. Cue to summer 2009 and Panic was splitting up due to “creative differences.” Was that completely the issue or was there something that broke the camels back? I mean, you all seemed to be really good friends and were working well together.

We were, and really that is what it was. It was creative differences. To elaborate on it, me and Ryan were really excited to work on new stuff, and we were working on new stuff. The majority of the album was written while we were still in Panic touring with them. So, it was more along the lines of feeling like we were doing something that was ours and not having much motivation or contribution from the other side.

It was a really hard decision too because, you’re right, we were really close and we had a good thing going. [It was hard] having to walk away from Pretty. Odd. [Panic’s second album] which was the album I was part of (and even more so for Ryan with both of the albums, he had a big part in writing). With all that going on, I think at the end of it we just realized that our excitement kept growing between us, and it just felt like the right thing to do. It was a really daunting decision to leave all that behind because of such a silly concept as creative differences. It really was disabling for us as a band to continue doing anything that was organic and real.

I think the music speaks for itself here too. I mean, between the two singles that The Young Veins and Panic have out right now, it is pretty obvious that the musical directions have shifted.

That’s even going to be more so once both of us have albums out. The music really will speak for itself. And it is a weird situation because there isn’t really any animosity between us. We just haven’t really happened to talk. It was kind of a surprise to us that [Brendon Urie and Spencer Smith] would have continued as Panic! at the Disco considering the level of contribution that [Ryan and I] had to the band. I think that might have been the main reason for our break of communication.

It was a really confusing time that there were so many different things going on. On top of it all, me and Ryan had this fire underneath us that we just felt so extremely motivated. We were having fun more than anything, and we doing what we loved doing and we didn’t want to loose that. So, does that answer your question? It’s a pretty long answer.

You did and that’s fine. If nothing else, I’ve always wanted to know for myself what happened. It just felt like there was more going on with the whole situation. I’m betting the fans feel similarly…

A lot of people assume since we didn’t say much about it that we don’t really talk anymore and that there was a lot more going on than creative differences, but there really wasn’t. I mean, the creative differences just pushed us apart in opposite directions.

Well, let’s put it this way. I look at the breakup of Panic as your parents getting divorced. That sounds horrible, but really you’re split between two parties. Over the holidays, you’re going to go to two places and get more gifts and affection; but, at the end of the day, your parents are still divorced.

That is a great way to look at it especially for [fans] and for me too. Having to walk away from the stuff that we wrote was hard. Those songs mean a lot to us. Those guys meant a lot to us too, you know. We went through a lot together, and it was such an incredible time in our lives. I’m just looking forward to the future. I feel like time is on our side, and everything will work itself out. It all really feels like it was meant to be.

Any plans to do any songs from Panic’s second album, Pretty. Odd., on tour? Many of the songs sound similar to the theme of The Young Veins’ music.

We’ve never actually decided whether we would or not, but it wouldn’t seem right. It’s not really a big deal since it was such a huge part of our lives, and it was half of us that started this band. The fact that we were in Panic, it still does seem pretty relevant which is why it’s probably still so weird for us. The album isn’t even out yet, and the majority of people still haven’t really heard where we’re coming from or what we’re even doing. Or had a lot of time to give an honest reaction from it.

I’ve already seen you guys perform live once, and I definitely think The Young Veins is an amazing project. The small club you played at was great. It’s certainly a switch for you two being used to playing global arena tours.

That whole [Foxy Shazam] tour was amazing and playing in those small places was fun. The difference between each of the bands was really fun too. That’s something we haven’t really done. Most of the touring we’ve done, it’s been the same type of bands from the same genre.

Do you feel like you are kind of going backwards as a band? I mean, you start off as household names and now you’re playing these dive bars. You don’t have security anymore, and stuff like that.

If you stop to think about it, it does seem like we’re going backwards. We’ve never been more successful or more happy doing what we’re doing. It feels so right, and it feels real. When you’re having fun and you’re doing what you love you don’t really notice those kinds of things. It kind of works itself out—seriously. I do miss our security guard though; he was a friend of ours. Unfortunately, we can’t afford to pay him anymore.

Speaking of security, do you still have the obsessive fans coming up to you and hounding you like they used to?

Yeah, there’s always gonna be fans like that, and I think especially on this last tour we did. The majority of the people that came to see us were really die hard fans considering we only had a couple songs on the internet. It was really great and extremely refreshing to have that kind of support after being away and being really unsure about what to even expect from the first couple shows. It was a pleasant surprise.

Are you excited to get started on your new tour this summer with Rooney?

It’s going to be amazing. The record will be out. We’re touring with Black Gold which are the guys who played on the record, the drummer and the singer; the guy who plays keyboards. I actually toured with [Rooney] a long time ago when I was working for another band, [The Academy Is…]. The first tour I did with them was with Rooney. It’s going to be a nice little reunion.

The places we’re playing are a little bit larger. We just got done last week recording a few covers for B-sides for some random international releases. I think we’re going to be playing some covers on the tour. It’s just gonna be fun. I think that we worked out a lot of kinks on that first tour and now we’re even more ready to do it.

That being said, is the five member lineup of the band solidified yet?

Yeah, as of right now, we don’t really need any more people [laughs]. We’re bringing our old merch guy out on tour though—Dan, who was Panic’s first merch person for about three years. He’s coming out with us and selling merch, so it’s gonna be a lot of fun. [As a five piece,] we’ve been working on new material. Whenever me and Ryan hang out, we usually always end up by the end of the night playing guitar and writing something. That’s what we do for fun. It’s going to be great now that we have a solid band that is just as excited about the music as we are. We actually get a lot more done, and we’ll probably be recording by winter [for the next record]. I mean this record’s only 28 minutes long. We have more stuff to say, so it won’t be too long before we release something.

For those who have yet to see The Young Veins perform, you and Ryan are doing things a little differently than you used to with Panic. Ryan plays rhythm guitar, rather than lead guitar. You play lead guitar, rather than bass. You’re also doing some lead vocals now. Why the changes, and how do you feel about them?

I was a guitar player. I started playing guitar when I was ten years old. That’s always something that I wanted to do. But, when I joined Panic, their guitar player didn’t just quit [laughs]. It’s cool because I played bass on the [Young Veins] album, and Ryan played a lot of the lead—he’s a great guitar player as well. Alex Greenwald [singer of Phantom Planet] played some lead guitar as well. A lot of the parts, especially during the songs that Ryan is singing, it’s kind of hard for him to sing and play at the same time. We just kind of switch it up, and I love it. I love playing the guitar, and I love playing bass too. And singing, that’s something I’ve been waiting to do for a long time.

Well, you’re both very talented guys, that’s for sure.

Hey thanks! It’s really exciting to know that the possibilities are kind of limitless now as far as what we can do and what we want to do. We have a lot to accomplish now.

Back when you worked with The Academy Is…, you were behind the camera for the original TAI TVs, which were short videos that chronicled their lives on the road. Did you have any interest in picking that hobby back up?

You know, I do and I don’t. That was something that I started doing because I felt like I needed to do something creative. When I went on tour with The Academy, I did originally go out to be the film guy, but I wasn’t really that good and really didn’t have much a vision of what I wanted to do. Being the guitar tech, it just happened to work out because they needed someone to do it and I knew how to change guitar strings. Jack the Camera Guy [who currently creates TAI TV] is so much more talented than I could ever probably be. I don’t know if I would ever do something significant in video editing, but just put little stuff together here and there. And I probably will once we start touring and being busier as a band. I would just need a good concept to go with … TYV TV? How about that? [laughs]

That would make me a happy camper! Besides TYV TV, what is on the horizon for The Young Veins in 2010 and beyond?

Pretty much after the US tour with Rooney, we’ll be playing pretty much anywhere else that we can play. Wherever we can go, we’ll be going. Like I said, we’ll probably be utilizing our time off in the winter to be writing and hopefully start recording some more songs. What else are we gonna do?

Learn more at TheYoungVeins.com • iTunes • MySpace • Facebook • Twitter