Editor’s Note: It was a beautiful time at the Vans Warped Tour as we got to interview some amazing artists. I hope that someone will pick up where Kevin Lynam left off with this extravagant festival. Punk rockers Makeout were the first on the docket and it made for a thoroughly good conversation. They are known for their highly energetic show and music that is full of fun and happiness. Fans can find Makeout at the following locations:
www.facebook.com/MAKEOUTOFFICIAL
Madness To Creation: You must work out guys! *laughs*
Sam: Yeah man! I’m so buff! *laughs*
Madness To Creation: What types of working out do you like to do?
Sam: Honestly man, I like to skate. I try to do some pushups every now and then, and our set is pretty much all cardio. In the morning, I like to run around if I have the energy. This morning, I was literally running around yelling at kids promoting the band.
Madness To Creation: Speaking of that, what are some effective ways to promote the band?
Sam: In general is definitely different than Warped Tour. In general, I feel like the internet is a really good asset to have promoting other people, and sharing the love with other bands is always really good, but at the Warped Tour, it’s kind of about making sure that people are doing the right thing, staying hydrated, and taking the time to talk to them. I like to excite people the best I can.
Scott: We’ve run out now, but we were hanging posters everywhere, announcing when our set time is and when our signing is and to tell people who we are.
Sam: We were trying to be funny with it too, like the first couple of days, we would put our posters on trash cans and stuff, it would literally say “trash” and we would put the poster under it, it’s funny cause it’s like saying “Makeout’s trash”, you know, just kind of doing things outside of the box always helps, I guess that’s universal too, being outside of the box and not so cookie-cutter always helps.
Madness To Creation: Speaking of cookie-cutters and trash, what are some things that you consider to be “cookie-cutter” and trash”?
Sam: That’s a hard one because I feel like all music to a degree kind of sounds cookie-cutter, people will reference old classical pieces, in that type of metal, like neo-classical, it’s the same shit but with their own spin, I feel like a lot of music is like that, honestly it doesn’t really work that way, I don’t really consider really anything “trash” anymore, I used to when I was younger though, but with some stuff you kind of understand that there’s some originality and creativity involved, and you just never heard it before. If you hate it, you’re probably just uncomfortable with the new feel.
Scott: Some people have referred to us as that because some people just assume that it’s wank.
Sam: Just because it sounds different, I have this homemade producer back at home and he kind of has his own thing, he’ll take any band, he’s not a huge producer or anything, but it’s the same thing, after you’ve worked with him for awhile, you can just hear and be like “oh, that’s definitely him”, but it’s like every producer has that. When the producer is huge, people just start to realize it as a whole, but realistically, music is just music, you know?
Madness To Creation: Speaking of your producer is that what the writing process is like when you go into the studio?
Sam: We had like 70 or 75 demos that were just verse and chorus laid out, and I tracked them all at my house for the most part, just kind of like “whatever”, and we would just show John a bunch of shit and he was kind of keeping eyes on us as we were sending him demos, but really nothing caught until we sent them off to Salt Lake City and that really caught his attention, and from there we had a few of the songs end up on the record, and the rest of them, we just kind of wrote there, as we split up and share ideas, we literally just come back in the room with a bunch of different songs, “how about this one, how about this one”, and the writing process was really just sporadic and in the moment off of discussions that everyone was about.
Scott: Especially after the Blink(182) tour that we did, Sam and I went back into the studio and we had a guy in there named Lil’ Aaron, he’s incredible and he can go off the top of his head.
Sam: And he never writes down anything. It was cool because my writing process is opposite of him, it’s very well thought out and he’s like “this, this, this”, so it’s cool to mix it and have that new environment, and I think John is really good at pushing those boundaries and making an artist kind of uncomfortable, and it created something that we would’ve never expected.
Scott: We wrote and tracked five songs in two days, and four of them made the album.
Sam: “Where’s My Charger”, “Crazy”, “You Can’t Blame Me”, and “Secrets” all came from that one studio session in two days.
Madness To Creation: And you brought up Blink 182 a little bit ago, and there is one guy that left the band(I can’t think of his name), and he’s doing stuff with aliens now, do you believe in aliens or have any crazy conspiracy theories?
Scott: I do of course! I think it’s silly to not believe in aliens or other lifeforms.
Sam: Whether or not we would ever be in contact, because realistically, the universe is ever-expanding, it’s always bigger, it’s kind of self-centered to imagine that we are the only thing out here whether they’re f****** hundreds of light years away and we will never be able to get there.
Scott: They found bacteria on Mars right?
Madness To Creation: What is the one thing that you believe and people would be like, why in the hell do you believe that?
Sam: I think aliens is a good start.
Scott: I believe in fate too. I kind of believe in paranormal stuff.
Sam: I don’t believe in that, I don’t believe in ghosts.
Scott: I do just from personal experiences.
Madness To Creation: I’ll tell you mine: 9/11 was an inside job.
Sam: I could kind of see that. I can see where it would happen.
Scott: There’s a load of facts to back that up.
Madness To Creation: Let’s get to talking about your music a little bit, take us into the music video for “Childish”.
Sam: I love “Childish” because it’s an homage to “how can we still be kind of like kids, but not be acting like children”, you know what I mean, in the sense where like children will bully each other and do all sorts of stupid shit, how can we still be creatively, stay young at heart while still being mature, not necessarily like “f*** money” and throw it out the window and stuff like that, but how it’s okay to be a little boisterous sometimes and outgoing and just ridiculous. It’s okay to be creative and come up with your own ideas, like how Tom DeLonge is about aliens and this. I don’t know if you know anything about his project, but he’s definitely pushing science and thinking way outside of the box, and coming up with ways to where we can travel a lot faster, and all of the ideas are really bizarre, but that’s kind of what this song is talking about, but how can we just keep the creativity in that in that imagination in that song, and that song really talks about that kind of thing.
Madness To Creation: What makes you feel like a big kid at heart?
Sam: Lots of stuff! Being out on this tour, if you were just a dad, I feel like you wouldn’t get the most out of it, you are surrounded by so much energy and being surrounded by so many different types of people, I feel like if I was just super boring, I like to climb things too and stuff like that, some things like that you get in trouble for here, I’m not trying to cause any ruckus, I’m just trying to be a little different and be fun, and if that’s how you capture things and make it into a moment, people will remember it.
Scott: Everyone on tour has got bikes, and motorbikes and playing roleplaying games, and stuff like that, everyone is just having a great time.
Sam: Scott bought this little bike at Wal-Mart and he put a bell on it.
Scott: It’s got little streamers on the handlebars.
Sam: We run around and it’s like this big, it’s so funny dude!
Madness To Creation: What’s the one thing that you’re going to miss about this(Vans Warped Tour) the most?
Sam: Warped Tour has been such a huge thing, you always dream of playing it growing up, for Scott it’s a little different because he’s from Australia.
Scott: But I grew up listening to these bands that have come from Warped Tour and just getting the chance to experience it for myself, maybe if I wasn’t in a band it would be different for me.
Sam: It’s such its own thing and this is the only festival for this kind of music for just every single band that you would want to possibly see, and it’s even cooler because there are bands that are only tagged on certain dates, and we get all of them, unlike when I’m back home in Massachusetts, if you go to the Mansfield one, you only get to see half the bands that you want to see, but now we get to see every single act that’s ever on this last Warped Tour, it’s really crazy to be a part of it and we’re sad to see it go.
Scott: And the friends. After the day is over, everyone just gets together and hangs out, that’s the funnest thing about this tour.
Madness To Creation: Outside of this band, who are some of the coolest people to hang out with on this tour?
Sam: That is ridiculously tough because everybody’s got their own thing, everybody is doing something different, everybody just kind of likes to chat differently, I haven’t picked any favorites yet. It’s too difficult to just marginalize people and go “they’re the best”, you know what I mean.
Scott: My buddies from back home are fun to hang out with. Doing country renditions of songs, I’ll have to show you that later! State Champs are funny!
Madness To Creation: What’s the plans for Makeout after the Warped Tour?
Sam: More touring! We’ll be back around the U.S. and we’re trying to figure out some way to get overseas or something and really share some of our love over there because our Internet presence is a little bit over there, but it would be really cool to reach out into those markets and stuff, so that’s where we’re at, our record just came out last September, “The Good Life” and we have a lot of shopping to do with that and to show people what’s up, so we’re really trying to spread the word on that right now.
Madness To Creation: How would you define “The Good Life”?
Sam: Life. Not all of it is good though, which is kind of an ironic title, it goes through the ups and downs of general life and all of the hardships, all of the great times and f****** awful times, it kind of covers it all, it’s definitely about life, and it’s got a lot of energy thanks to Scott! *laughs*
Scott: It’s pretty much about finding your own happiness and loving what you’re doing, so it’s pretty much like working a regular job, if you love your job, then that’s not work, that’s “The Good Life” to me.
Sam: It’s different for everybody, which is kind of cool. There’s all sorts of people that have listened to it and we got a lot of different messages from it from people that are either in their 60’s or people that are like 12, and they say that it helps them in whatever way, and it’s kind of cool to see that, it’s just really different for everybody.
Madness To Creation: Is there anything else that you would like to add about Makeout that we have not covered?
Sam: Just make sure that you follow us on our socials, it’s #MakeoutOfficial on everything, we will be posting tour dates pretty soon, and we also have a music video that’s going to be coming pretty soon, just keep an eye out for that.
Madness To Creation: What can people expect from the music video, or is it still under wraps?
Scott: It’s not so much under wraps anymore, we’re actually getting fans involved with this video, they were sending submissions, or singing the chorus, or just talking about how how they were affected by that song, we’re trying our hand at the fan interaction.
Sam: We wanted to make it really involved. The song that we’re doing is “Open Minded”, so the whole principle that we have with that is that it’s all inclusive, everybody can be involved, we’re just trying our best to try to make that happen. We have so many submissions that we have to go through, but it should be a fun process.
Madness To Creation: It’s so important to have that inclusive message in 2018.
Sam: I think so too, there is a lot of diversity in this country at this point, everybody is just trying to do their own thing. People’s minds are getting tighter, as more things happen, people are getting more scared of it, they’re like, “UHHH, this is weird”, when really we just gotta let it go and let it happen.
Here is the audio video to “Open Minded” by Makeout!
Special thanks to Sam and Scott of MAKEOUT for taking the time for us! Truly humbling to talk to them. Stay abreast with their socials for upcoming tour announcements!
