You guys have been in the studio for a long time now, huh?

Yes! It has turned into a major event, but our producer gets more and more excited about it. He's like, "alright, we're way over," but we're paying the same amount we said we would, because he's not going to charge us for the extra.

Who's your producer?

His name is James Paul Wisener.

Who has he produced?

A New Found Glory, As Friends Rust...he did our EP, but he did that in like two nights and it wasn't supposed to be heard by anybody, it was just supposed to be our demo. He did Legends of Rodeo, the new 238, the new Underoath. He's an excellent producer, and now he's got all these new gadgets in the studio, so our record is going to sound even better than we expected it to.

Are you almost done recording?

Well, I am. I won't be there for the next bit because I'll be on tour with Dashboard.

How did you guys get along in the studio, since you've been at it for so long?

Well, we haven't been in there together at the same time. Actually, we did part of it altogether and now schedules dictate that we go in separately.

So you had all of the music written before going in?

Except for two songs, yeah. Two, we'd written but never played as a band and there were no lyrics. But we've done one of them already, and all of us agree it's our favorite song....I flipped out when I heard Chad's bassline, because I'd never actually heard it before. He was really happy to hear what I had done vocally. It could have gone either way - everybody could have really hated or really loved what the others did with it, but they're all kinda way in to it.

So do you write most of the music or is it a sharing thing?

It's a sharing. I wrote all the vocal lines and all the lyrics but we all write the music together.

So the one guy from Strongarm who isn't in FSF, did he write the lyrics for Strongarm?

No, actually the rest of the guys wrote the lyrics in Strongarm.

They don't mind you writing all the lyrics now?

Actually, no, they like it. I think it's a relief for them. The didn't want to write lyrics anymore. Strongarm was cool -- they all wrote the lyrics, even Josh's wife wrote some -- and I loved their lyrics. I wouldn't have minded singing them, but they'd rather I do it.

I was surprised that at Cornerstone, you seemed to be the buzz band and everyone at the show seemed to know all the lyrics....

Yeah! And we only have three songs!

Yeah, I thought, "how did anybody hear of these guys?". I thought nobody would be at the show when I went.

I don't know why we're getting so popular....

So, when's the release date for the full-length?

Last I heard...and this is typical Further Seems Forever fashion, things taking way longer than expected, plus everything I heard about T&N is that they shelf things forever.... The album is going to be done next week [that would be first of October-ed.], but it's not coming out until February. Which sucks, but they don't want to release it in the fourth quarter for business reasons. Which is fine, because I was going out with Dashboard anyway.

Chris takes the mike to the pit for the people to sing...

photo by Brian Heflin

...and our photographer dives headfirst into the crowd, getting this shot from the front. Amazing....heh, just kidding. We had pics from two different people.

photo by Alissa Beth

Dashboard is just you still, right?

Hmm--mmm.

We'll get to that in a second, but how does the FSF album compare to the split EP?

Oh, forget it! Production-wise, it's the difference between two or three days and seven, eight, nine weeks. Before, we raced thru the stuff and it was barebones budget and we hadn't been a band for very long. "New Year's Project" we couldn't even play right as a band, since we had just written it the week we went into the studio. So actually we re-recorded it for this album and "The Bradley" for this album. You'll be able to directly hear the difference between the two records.

Great! I've been waiting for awhile. So, on to Dashboard Confessional...how did that come about? How did you do that in between the EP and the full-length?

Okay, this is how that came about. Basically, I used to be in a band called the Vacant Andy's and I used to play guitar and sing, so that's second nature to me. So it took me awhile with Further to figure out how to just sing. I was missing guitar, and I went and played in this band called The Agency for a record just to help them out, and I got the bug back. Also, the reason I got into Further was because when I was in the Vacant Andy's and we went on tour with A Newfound Glory...right before we left I had these three acoustic songs I had taped, and I gave them to Chad and he was way into it, and that's how I got the Further Seems Forever gig, I guess. I dunno, how did Dashboard Confessions come about it? I was talked into it. That tape I made I did in one night in the studio when I had two free hours, and I wrote the songs in a half hour and recorded three songs that night. And I made one tape, but somehow hundreds of kids have copies! *laugh* And they always wrote asking when was I going to put something else out.

How long were you in the Vacant Andy's?

For a couple of years.

What kind of music was it?

Ummm....it was like, it was like....really hard to explain. We played with everybody from Hot Water Music to Soul Asylum, if that gives you any idea of what we sounded like.

I read on your message board that your stuff with them is going to be re-released on CD in November. Were there any CDs from the Vacant Andy's?

No, it was all vinyl. Seven inches. And some crummy tapes. We were definitely indie.

Were your vocals similar for that as they are for Further Seems Forever and Dashboard Confessional?

No, I was younger and not that great of a singer, and I was just learning. And it was more punk for sure. Just screaming. 

 
Chris tries his best to sing up a lung.
(photo by Brian Heflin)

(photo by Brian Heflin)

With Dashboard, it seems like all of the songs are about romantic relationships.

Yeah, it does seem like that, doesn't it?

I was wondering if that was all from personal experience, or if you were trying to write common experiences that everybody could relate to, or....?

Well, I don't really have an agenda when I write, I just write. I don't think too much about where it's coming from. There's a few songs that are definitely my personal experiences, but one other song, for instance, is written about a friend's situation. It was an experiment -- can I do this, can I write through someone else's eyes? The funny part is that there are a lot of songs on there not about girls at all, and have nothing to do with romantic relationships, but I guess it's my writing style. There's one song that everybody is like "That's sooo romantic, what girl is it about?" And I'm like, "Man, that song is about the worst day of my life and it has nothing to do with a girl at all!"

Which song is that?

I'm not going to say, because I'd rather let people hear whatever they need to hear out of the tunes, you know. Whatever it means to them is more important than what it means to me.

I have to ask about the one song, "Ender Will Save Us All," though...is that from the book Ender's Game?

Yes! That's where the title is from.

When I got the CD I went right to that track but I didn't see anything in the song about that.

Okay, here's how that came about. First of all, my middle name is Ender, so when I saw the book I was like "Wait a minute!" And I got way into that book and I shared it with a friend, and then that song was actually a Vacant Andy's song just called "Ender," and it was written out of the fact that the friend and I kinda shared that book together and got a lot out of it, and we read the whole series of four together. Then we sorta had a falling out as friends, and talking about the book again brought us back to being friends again. So I had written the song when we weren't getting along so well. And I wanted to be able to get along with that person again, and I didn't have a title, but then after we started getting along again we started talking about the book again and I was like "let's just call this Ender." But it was a Vacant Andy's song and it was a rock song and it was a HEAVY song. And so when I re-recorded it, I just called it "Ender Will Save Us All." It had a way of saving our friendship. [whew! did everyone get that?-ed.]

That's a cool story. So, is Dashboard Confessional your full-time thing now, (now that) when you're not with Further Seems Forever?

Umm, I think so, but...it's going exceptionally well, but I don't know how long it will be before I want to rock again. Actually, the plan when I did Dashboard was, "Okay, I'm with this band Further that I love and creativity-wise it's the most original thing I've been involved with, blah blah blah, but I missed playing with my friends. And so on Dashboard, there are people I wanted to play with, like Jodie who sings some background vocals and John from Recess Theory and Legends of Rodeo -- he plays a little guitar and sings some backup on the record. I wanted to do something I could forever change the members of forever. That's why I didn't call it Chris Carrabba, I called it Dashboard Confessional so I could keep a revolving door policy. I always planned it to change and change and change, and I do think it's going to be a band at some point. I know I'm going to do some shows with Jolie's band Rocking Horse Winter being my band, and also my friend Mike from The Agency keeps asking me if I want him to play drums, and he's a phenomenal drummer so it could happen, I just don't know when.

Back to Further Seems Forever...where does that name come from?

Pretty much all the members of the band were currently involved in or had been in long-distance relationships -- LDRs -- and it was a lyric in a song I think Nick was writing, with the lyrics "further seeming forever" I think, as in "the further you are away, the more it seems forever until I'm going to see you again." At least that's how I took it. We had some bad names floating around before then!

What were some of them?

Well, I'll give you the background on the one that was about to stick. Steve, our drummer, worked at Airborne which is a courier service, and he had to wake up every morning at 4:30 and so we couldn't practice past like 7 pm at night, but none of us got out of work until like 6:15, so we were racing to practice for 15 minutes, and so we were going to call ourselves Four-Thirty Airborne at first. But then there's so many "plane" bands out now, and we never really loved the name.

I think Further Seems Forever is great.

Yeah, yeah, it has a nice ring to it. But I work at an elementary school and the other teachers are like "Why is your name so long?" But easy names are taken! You've got to come up with something a little original these days.

In your guys' bio, it says you want to make "beautiful music that inspires." What does that mean, exactly?

First of all, I think that's true but I didn't write that, that's cheesy. I dunno, the best kind of music to me is the kind that when I hear it, it gets me feeling something, whatever it is. So if we can inspire people to feel something, to have some kind of emotional reaction while listening to our stuff, then we have succeeded.

Okay, man, that's all the questions I have.

When do you think this interview will be up?

Well, hopefully in about a week. We update once a month, so.... We've got you guys and the Violet Burning and maybe The Blamed for this next issue, so....

When I was at Furnace Fest, I asked from the stage if anybody had seen the movie Through the Eyes of Tammy Faye, which is this indie movie about Tammy Faye. Nobody had, but her son in the documentary is wearing a Blamed t-shirt.

That movie got great reviews, but I haven't seen it.

It was excellent, man! It really opened my eyes to some things. You should check it out.

by Josh Spencer -- 9/24/00

these two photos by Kitt Jennings

Go to Takehold Records to buy the Further Seems Forever/Recess Theory split EP.

Read the review of Chris's Dashboard Confessional CD.