Halfway through the release of a six part project and halfway through a tour with MewithoutYou, The Dear Hunter’s Casey Crescenzo took a break to talk to us about the album project and the future.
Bethany, PopWreckoning: You guys just released Act III: Life and Death, so for those who don’t know, what’s the story behind the acts and specifically that one?
Casey Crescenzo, The Dear Hunter: It’s just basically, all of them are basically about somebody from birth to death and everything in between. The one we just released is kind of a, well it is not kind of, it is about this main character going through war and what happens to somebody when they’re in an extreme situation like that.
PW: So are you still on track to do all six acts of this?
CC: Yes. Absolutely.
PW: So where is it going?
CC: To death. Haha. No, the next will just get darker and it will get more depressing, I guess, before it gets better. At the end of this record it is kind of the idea that from everything that he is put through, he gets a little twisted and bitter—overly bitter. It’s terrible. The next record is the aftermath of after something like that has happened to you. If you have grown into something horrible, what you could do and specifically what you could do in a position of power after something like that.
PW: I read that with the acts, a lot of this is based off experiences you had, but at the same time they’re not because obviously you never were in WWI.
CC: Yeah, it started out that way. It started out with the more relatable things like the love and family. The ideas like that are definitely based on a romanticized version of things that have happened to me. Everything is just romanticized of what I have gone through or the way I feel about different things. Like this record, obviously I haven’t gone through WWI or any wars for that matter, but there is the idea of being stranded in an intense scenario or in the middle of something very hectic that you don’t necessarily believe in or remember why you’re there in the beginning. It is that search to find it in the middle of looking for why you’re there and being sidetracked continuously by things that make it worse and worse. A lot of it for me, is not getting too political about being in a band on a label or anything like that. There’s a good deal of fighting that you have to do as a musician or a touring musician. You do have to have a close knit band of brothers that you’re traveling around in a van year round and you have to stay close. Sometimes you feel, you get bogged down and you have horrible weeks, and you find something that makes it worth it again. I wouldn’t say that it is the same thing as the anti-war thing behind it to anti-wanting to be in a band, but that’s what I pull from because I have no real idea what war is like, you know?
PW: The main guy isn’t named, right? Is there a reason for that or a plan to name him?
CC: No. Just because no one really has names. If someone does have an actual name, it is meant to just describe them. One thing I wanted with the story is that if you hear a name, if somebody has a name, or at least for me if there’s somebody with the name of somebody I know, it is hard for me to not think of the person I know. So aside from that, it is just hard to assign the characters names. It’s like you have to name a dozen children or something like that—they’re a bunch of babies. So even the Ms. Terri or Ms. Leading is just meant to be a really immature play on words.
PW: With a big concept project like this do you ever think in terms of potential singles or is it always the album as a whole?
CC: It’s somewhere in between those. We definitely, well it is not written as one giant song. You don’t write the intro and look at it as a 60 minute song, but at the same time, it is not really separating it to the point of singles. You’re just really writing the record in these different moments and movements and just moving things around, so I don’t think there is ever a really an idea of this gearing our creativity toward preparing anything for something other than its place on the record.
PW: With the deluxe edition of this album, you guys have the artwork for Act II. Are you guys going to do more artwork like that?
CC: I’d like to, but it took two years just to get that out. It is hard to convince people or labels to money into it when it takes money and really just don’t have any money of our own. It is completely dependent on somebody wanting to put money into a book by a band.
PW: How closely did you work with the artist on it?
CC: Everything he did, I was very stubborn about. Luckily he was very in tune—well both artists: the guy who did all the coloring and the sketch layout—they were both really excited and interested in paralleling themselves with what I felt it should be. I didn’t need to do any quality control, but for something this specific, I felt I needed to be as involved as I am. If I could have actually drawn it myself, I would have, but I can’t, so…
PW: I saw online that there was a talk of a color project. Is that still in the works?
CC: Yeah. Every time it comes up, I say the same thing. I never announced it. We never announced this project that we were doing. We just have a really small fan community and most of the people on there we knew personal, so in the middle of a thread I said that it was this idea we had and we were going to do it and we were really excited about it. People kind of caught on to it and started talking. It won’t be like where Act I, Act II, and then Act III are released. It will be all of them at once: all the colors. That will happen when it happens. It is not a priority really. It is more of a creative challenge that we gave ourselves as musicians and songwriters.
PW: So when you say color is it like yellow—people associate happy, so it is more of an upbeat song or how is it?
CC: Yeah. Definitely. There are things like that. Red people associate with intensity and anger and heat and all of those things you’d probably gear toward. I think each of them are going to be like 20 minute EPs. You would gear red toward more intense—I don’t want to say screaming—but everything would be a little bit more intense and a little more emotionally passionate and extreme than something like blue would be where you feel calm and subdued. When I was thinking of blue I was thinking of lounge music and surf rock kind of stuff. It is very natural. It is not like, what is that called? The dance that people do when they’re trying to act out the stuff?
PW: Interpretative dance?
CC: Interpretative! It is not like that. It won’t be so abstract that you’re going to have to read into it to see why it is yellow or blue. It will be more obvious.
PW: So with these different sound styles a project like that would entail, would it still be under the name the Dear Hunter?
CC: Yeah, it is just a name. A band like us, we already do so many styles to begin with and we’re willing to do whatever kind of song we want. This won’t have the promotion of a full-length. We’re not going to market it heavily. We’re not going to tour off of it heavily. We probably wouldn’t even play the songs live. It would be a studio thing we’d do just for fun. There is no reason to not call it the Dear Hunter because it will be everyone in the Dear Hunter. Maybe not. Maybe we’ll call it the colors. I don’t know.
PW: Cool. That’s all I have unless you have any final words.
CC: I have nothing. Thanks!
The Dear Hunter: website | myspace | @ the Granada
