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After relentlessly touring KC multiple times over the past year, Bethany finally caught up with Alt rockers Anberlin. Guitarist Christian McAlhaney, formerly of Acceptance, filled PopWreckoning in on life on the road and at a major label.
Bethany, PopWreckoning: You guys are one of the most popular alternative bands now, but it wasn’t always that way. What were some of the challenges of breaking into mainstream?
Christian McAlhaney, Anberlin: It is endless. Anberlin has been a band…some of these guys have been playing together for ten years. So anywhere from starting from zero and playing in front of absolutely nobody to touring in a small, cruddy van that doesn’t work to going to a Taco Bell and having just $10 to feed everybody and that kind of stuff, every step there were more and more challenges. I feel like we’ve been very blessed where there has always been a forward momentum and progression, you know what I mean? It is the same challenges that most bands that have been bands for a long time have to face.
PW: You used to play in another group that I really liked called Acceptance, what was it like coming over to Anberlin and do you ever miss Acceptance?
CM: It was a pretty seamless transition because Acceptance was very similar to Anberlin, just in the kind of music that we wrote and the kind of guys that we were. Just the way we looked at touring and the way we looked at life. Anberlin and Acceptance had a lot in common, we even toured together. I actually met them a long time ago and long before we toured with them. It was simple. Even as a songwriter, I didn’t have to change or anything and I kept writing the same kinds of songs that I was writing for Acceptance for Anberlin. I miss some of the, I miss the guys from Acceptance. It was an awesome part of my life, but I’m happier now than I was then. It was just tough for Acceptance. We had a lot of things that went wrong when we signed to a major label and that was just frustrating and it was a really dark time for the band. Just the other day in Milwaukee, I saw our drummer, he lives in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and I’ll probably see the guitar player, Kaylan [Cloyd] in Seattle, and probably our old bass player Ryan [Zwiefelhofer]. Kyle [Flynn], who plays keyboards for Anberlin, also played in Acceptance, so it is good to have one of my good friends touring with Anberlin as well. 
PW: You touched on the major label thing and Anberlin just released New Surrender on a major label. That was also the first for a lot of things: 1st without Aaron Sprinkle and on Universal. What did you think of that whole process after just coming from the Acceptance deal?
CM: When I joined Anberlin, they had just finished Cities. I toured for the first tour after they finished Cities and they let me know that they had been talking to major labels and at the time I was like, “Nooooo! You guys don’t know what you’re getting in to.” Even with what happened with Acceptance, that wasn’t all the major label’s fault. That was the time when record sales were really going down and internet downloading was really on the rise and they didn’t know what to do and people were trying to keep their jobs. Nobody wanted to be the one that took a risk that may have been a bad choice and lost their jobs, so it wasn’t necessarily all the label’s fault. Basically, everything that could have gone wrong for Acceptance went wrong with our label and it was kind of everybody’s fault: the band, the management and the label. So, I was a little leery, signing to another major, but with Universal, it has been completely different. You can tell, I mean there were a lot of jabtalkers in the industry, people in the industry that you knew were just full of crap and would just say these catchphrases and you’d be like, “What does that mean?” And they would say, “You’re a priority at the label,” and when you ask, “What does that mean?” They’d say, “I don’t know, that’s a good question.” So I’m like, “You said it. Don’t just blow hot air up my skirt.” You know what I mean? With Universal, the people we met at Universal were straightshooters and music fans. You find that there is always this stigma like “Ooh, big evil music label,” but you’ll find that most of the people that work at major labels are all the biggest music fans. After Acceptance, I could have gotten into the music industry doing that kind of stuff. I am just a dude that loves music and most of those people just love music, too. It is hard to combine art and business whether it is a major label or an indie label. Some of the crummiest things I have ever heard of have been indie labels screwing bands more so than majors. Universal has been great. Obviously, one of the main reasons we signed to a major label was that we knew they were good with radio. They had a good relationship with radio, whereas Tooth and Nail, didn’t necessarily have a relationship. They took “Feel Good Drag,” a song that was on a Tooth and Nail record and wasn’t even a single, they took that song and got it to number 1 on alternative radio. They got it to that platform and then people took it to number 1.
PW: It definitely has gotten a lot of play here in Kansas City.
CM: Yeah, it has been completely amazing for us. We can’t even believe it.
PW: Talking about “Feel Good Drag,” I notice some similarities between the chorus, musically at least, of that and another single, “Paperthin Hymns.” Was that intentional at all like as an homage or just a coincidence?
CM: I am probably the wrong one to ask because I didn’t write either of those songs, but I know that as a songwriter there are only 12 notes in a scale, so you find yourself stealing from yourself a lot.
PW: I had heard that sometimes as a band, you like to do tricks like that and I had a friend who had that would be within your all’s character to do something like that and reuse lyrics or passages.
CM: Oh yeah, totally, reuse lyrics or reference past record’s lyrics. One time Joey [Milligan] wrote a song that was basically the same chords of…What’s the first song off of Blueprints for the Black Market? “Readyfuels?” and he just reversed the chords and that was another song. So instead of whatever going this way, it was going the other way, you know? As a songwriter, you know where Stephen [Christian]’s sweet spot is and you know what chords and chord arrangements are proven for where his voice sounds really great. A lot of our songs have a lot of the same chords, but are just done a little differently, I guess.
PW: How difficult is it to translate that into, like I saw you play acoustic today, how difficult is it to transition your songs into that format?
CM: It depends. Some songs are harder than others. Like when you have a really heavy song like “Feel Good Drag,” for example, we just recently recorded an acoustic version of it. Originally when it was a single we were like, “Ugh, how are we going to play this acoustic,” because that is what people want to hear. Like when you go into a radio station and play acoustic, they’re going to want to hear the single, you know what I mean? Some songs translate a lot better than others and you know beforehand what is going to sound good acoustic and what is not.
PW: It sounded great acoustic.
Caitlin, PopWreckoning: On that note, any chance we’ll see an acoustic album any time soon? You guys sounded great today that way.
CM: We haven’t talked about it. But thank you. I’m not opposed to it at all.
PW: I know Stephen is kind of working on a side project called Anchor and Braille. Do the rest of you have any other side projects in the works or what will you do while he is doing that?
CM: That record is coming out next month, I think, the beginning of next month on his own label. He actually has his own label that it is being distributed through Universal. He is doing a tour, I think with Copeland, when we’re not touring. So he always puts Anberlin as priority number one. We’re going to have a month off after this tour, but I think that’s not conflicting at all. Side projects…Kyle, the keyboard player, and I, when Acceptance broke up, we both moved to LA and started a new band with the drummer from Acceptance. We were kind of writing songs and doing stuff. We’ll probably finish that and maybe release an EP like a thing like Stephen did and do our own label and release whatever. There are songs that I genuinely wouldn’t have used for Anberlin. Anything I write and I know would be good for Anberlin, I use for Anberlin. These were songs that aren’t really in Anberlin’s genre really.
PW: I know you guys do a lot of humanitarian work. Is there a project right now that you want to draw attention to?
CM: Stephen is really involved with Faceless. We support, I am always for any humanitarian thing. My sister, right now, she’s applied to do the Human Justice Mission, I think. They try to stop human trafficking. I guess it is really famous. My parents were trying to tell me about it. I guess there is like a whole CNN or something on it. We are all really for that kind of stuff. I would love to get to a point where if we were big enough and in a city for more than 12 hours, or however long we are in a city for, to like get kids involved and go to a shelter or soup kitchen and get fans and kids involved locally. A lot of times, people think I could never go to South America or that’s too much or that’s too big. Every place that people live there are people in need. I am always for that kind of stuff. It is out there if you look for it. There are a million different non-profits and that kind of stuff. 
PW: Cool. You guys released a video called “Compound Lockdown,” which kind of was described as a response to people calling you sell-outs. Is there even a such thing as a sell-out anymore in today’s industry and why did you make that video?
CM: It wasn’t necessarily a response, it was just we were on Warped Tour and there was a tour bus on there called the John Lennon bus and it has a recording studio on there and all this different video editing stuff and they would have different bands come on there and they would do a day in the life. And we had this idea and we were like, everybody from Warped Tour that goes on there, their day is exactly the same. It is like, we got up, we’re going to catering, every day is the same and it wasn’t different. So they were encouraging if you guys have ideas or interesting content like recording a cover song, whatever. When recording Cities, they had extra time and Joey made all those beats and they all wrote fake raps just to be funny. So we were like, “We have all these songs. It would be funny to make a parody of a rap video.”
PW: It was really funny.
CM: It is funny because now there are so many scene bands coming out now where there is like “Scene rap” and I won’t name any names, but it was funny because we were making a big joke out of it and these people are serious about it. We were like “Really? OK. Awesome.”
PW: Yeah, it is weird. I would go to house parties in Omaha and every weekend they would have designated rap night and it was at a scene house that used to be famous for Saddle Creek and those sorts of bands, but now it is scene rap and they take it very seriously.
CM: Yeah, for us it was just something fun to do and we had it, so as for if there is a sell out…I think anytime somebody compromises their plan or integrity from when they started out to make money, that is selling out. I am not against band’s progressing or having one song sell for 20 years, but still.
PW: OK. That makes sense. We are getting kind of close to the 15 minute cut-off mark when your manager was coming back.
CM: He’ll be lenient.
PW: Haha, well for a final question to wrap it up, are there any up and coming bands you want people to know about?
CM: Hmm. What to say that nobody would know of?
Enter manager.
Manager: Hey.
CM: What is an up and coming band that we should tell people about?
M: An up and coming band?
CM: Yeah.
M: Nevershoutnever. Haha.
CM: Ugh.
PW: They’re from Missouri.
M: Sorry. I don’t have any, I’m a tour manager.
CM: My friends have a band in Seattle. The Shim. They’re awesome. They sound like Queens of the Stone Age or the Raconteurs. They rock and are awesome. They picked that name, they didn’t know what Shim was and what it meant and somebody told them and they were like, “That’s not what it means.” One of Kyle’s best friends is the bass player. So good live. Thunder Thunder. That’s Kyle and I’s side project. Tycho Brahe. Like the astronomer. My friend has a band in San Diego called Watch Us Burn and they’re pretty good and that’s a good friend of mine.
PW: Oh and before I forget, I’m supposed to name drop Dayna of Big Picture Media. What’s it been like working with Dayna?
CM: We just started. You are the second interview we’ve done through her. But she’s awesome, though.
CM: She’s great. Best publicist I’ve ever had.
PW: She has always been really good to us. Well, thank you so much.
CM: Of course. Thank you.
Anberlin: website | myspace | @ city market
