Pac Sun Tour has been well underway and has brought its diverse line up to many cities already. When the tour stopped by Kansas City, Beau Burchell, guitarist of the headlining act Saosin, took some time to talk about various subjects with me such as the Pac Sun Tour, having a song on a popular TV show and the band’s popularity in Indonesia of all places. Read the full interview below.
Bethany, PopWreckoning: Talk to me about this tour. How did you get hooked up with Pac Sun?
Beau Burchell, Saosin: We kind of got the offer to do the Pac Sun Tour and it just seemed like a cool a thing. The line up that they had chosen was a pretty diverse line up and we really liked that about the tour. It’s nice to tour with not all the same style of bands. It was kind of cool for us. 
PW: It is a diverse line up. How have audiences reacted? Are they acting differently than your other tours?
BB: We haven’t really noticed much of a difference for us, you know? But I’m sure it is going to be different somehow. So far, I haven’t been able to tell if there is a positive or negative reaction towards it.
PW: At this show, and I’m not sure how many other dates have this, but there was a Battle of the Bands competition to open for you. Did you have any involvement with that? What do you think of having new people open every night?
BB: It was our idea to have the Battle of the Bands because we think it is a good idea to support. It seems like if you are in a band just starting out, there’s really no way to just be seen or to get out there, especially when the only really cool shows are from bands coming in from out of town. So otherwise, you’re stuck playing shows where you have to sell tickets or stuff like that, so we thought it was cool to be able to throw local bands on the tour.
PW: Awesome. Was it your idea, too, to do the in-stores or was that Pac Sun?
BB: We actually did a whole tour where we were doing in-stores and acoustic stuff, so, it was kind of a group effort.
PW: Now you just switched labels for this latest release, right? What’s changed for you with the switch?
BB: It’s actually the same record label now – with the way the record industry is going. Virgin and Capitol are owned by EMI, so now what they’re doing, Virgin is kind of the rock department and Capitol’s bands like Beatles, Coldplay and bands like that.
PW: On your new, well latest, I guess, it’s been out awhile, but on your latest release, you guys reworked three songs from an EP. Why did you decide to rework those songs?
BB: Normally, on the last record, we did the same thing. We put out these EPs before we put out the records. What we do, is on the EPs, it is just demo forms of those songs. So it is just songs as we see them at the very early stages of the song. What we’ll normally do is we’ll put out these EPs of the songs that are the demos and it is almost like little baby photos of the songs, so they can actually hear them. Then, when the record comes out, they can actually hear where they went, so it is kind of cool because then they kind of get two kind of versions of the song.
PW: I love that description of demos as baby photos. You also just had a song that came out on “NCIS” and its soundtrack. Are you fans of the show?
BB: Yeah. I watch it all the time. My uncle is actually, he, well it is funny, my uncle was just talking to my mom about it and we were talking about TV shows and I was saying that I watch “House,” “Law and Order” and stuff like that a lot. Then I said “NCIS” and he was like, “Oh I love ‘NCIS.’” So it was just funny because a week later I was like “Oh you got a watch. We have a song that’s going to be on it.” He was like, “Oh that’s awesome.”
PW: After watching that song in a scene on a show, is that kind of what you pictured for that song?
BB: Uh, no, but it was definitely cool. It was pretty rad. The guy in the show, basically, well he supposedly kills himself, while blasting that song in the car. Kind of funny. Haha. Yeah.
PW: Another song that you recently released, was an acoustic version of “Changing.” Is it hard to adapt your songs to be acoustic like that?
BB: Some of them are harder than others. Others are easier. We’ve actually reworked a lot of our songs acoustic. We try to make it so most of our songs will translate acoustically. A lot of the time, it won’t. So depending how riffy they are or what kind of song it is, it may or may not translate.
PW: I know that one of the things I hear you guys get praised for is the high energy live show and I know that can be hard to carry over to an acoustic performance.
BB: Yeah, we really can’t. We always make them super mellow versions of the song.
PW: Right, like “Changing.”
BB: I like that version better than the real version.
PW: You guys doing that song acoustic on this tour?
BB: No.
PW: Any special surprises for this tour?
BB: Normally, our light show is about twice as big as this. Tonight we drove from Denver, Colorado and it was icy, so what should have only taken us about 10 hours took us almost 20, you know? It was really tough. So we got here and got everything loaded in under two hours, so we only have half the light show. Normally, we have this big crazy light show. People leave the show deaf and blind. It’s awesome.
PW: For a final question, as this decade ends, the ‘naught’ decade, do you have a favorite musical memory of the last 10 years?
BB: Does it have to be anything at all? My favorite memory would be playing Jakarta. We played Jakarta, Indonesia and we had no idea that we were popular over there. We showed up and we had full-on armed escort through the airport. There were guys with machine guns bringing us in and we were like, “This is a little overboard, don’t you think?” And they were like, “No. You guys are huge here.” So we got there and it was like we were Korn. We played this huge tennis arena and there were billboards of us and our faces everywhere. We did this big press conference right before we played. It was crazy. It was really fun. I didn’t ask any questions and was just like this is great.
PW: That’s great. Thanks so much.
BB: Thanks a lot.
Saosin: website | myspace | @ pac sun tour, beaumont club
