Armida asks: Imagining that you have children in the future, would you want your children to be twins? Why or why not?
I would love to have twins. Being a twin myself I thought it was great to have a sibling my age. Built in best friend! Obviously there is always the desire to be your own person and not have someone who looks just like you around all the time but overall I loved it!
Thanks for the question!
Jess asks: How do you usually go about writing a song? What do you do if you’re trying to write a song and can’t come up with anything?
Usually I just sit down to play and come up with some guitar melody or chord progression that feels good. A melody usually happens soon after. I then typically rush to write lyrics and record it before I forget. If I am struggling to write I just avoid writing for a week. Usually the urge comes back and I get something good. Also if I am writing something and I don't think its very good I will finish it anyway. You never know. I hated Living Room.....when I was writing it.
Jolis and Realtin ask: On previous tours you have played all over the world. How do you decide which countries you are going to tour in? From there, how do you decide which venues you are going to play in? Do you think you will be playing in any countries you haven’t played in before when touring for this album? Do you plan on doing any in-stores around the release of the new record?
Hey Guys!
Great questions!
First. We decide which countries we are going to tour in based on what countries will release our record. You would be surprised how hard it is for us still to get our record released in certain places. Each country has its own division of the record label and some are not fans or some just don't think the record will do well so they don't even bother releasing it. So we pick places that the record will be released to tour. Sometimes, we will go somewhere (France) to tour to show the label how much demand there really is for Tegan and Sara and then they release it. We are definitely talking about touring other countries. We would love to go back to Japan and we've never been to Mexico. There are so many places to go and just not enough time. Ha.
In regards to venues. We always approve the final choices. Basically Sara and I like to keep costs low for the fans. So we try to pick places that we think will be fun to see us in, but not too expensive. If you see us in the a soft seat theatre chances are the tickets will be more expensive then if you are seeing us in a club. The costs for a shot in a theatre are very high. Also, we [try to] only play all ages. Sometimes it can't happen but our venue options are limited often because they aren't all ages.
And lastly we pick venues where we get to sell our own merchandise. A lot of venues insist on selling merchandise themselves and then they take huge percentages from the band. Since we don't need them to sell and they didn't pay for the merchandise (we did) we don't like playing places like that. Its a big fight we have A LOT. In order to keep our merchandise costs low we insist on selling and not paying out huge percentages. Some classic American Venues ask for 25%. That's mental!
That's how we chose venues. All ages, cost of doing a show there, can we sell our own merchandise and will people be able to see us and hear us? Ha. Our agents work very hard. Poor guys.
Julia asks: What other projects or collaborations have you and Sara been working on?
Sara produced a record with an artist named FENCES earlier this year. Its not out yet. I produced a record with an artist called CHAR2D2. You can get it on Itunes or at www.maplemusic.com. We also have 3 books coming out the same day as the record about touring in the US, Australia and writing our new record. Its beautiful and will be reasonably priced. Its taken a year to put together. The hardest thing I've ever tried to do! And its amazing! Emy designed it, Ryan Russell and Lindsey Byrnes took the photos and all our friends in bands contributed! So cool!
Noelle asks: Being on tour there's a lot of down time while driving and hanging out before the show. What do you do to kill the time?
Internet would be the number one time killer. We spend a lot of time doing business, talking with friends, reading the news etc on our computers. DVD box sets would be number two. I've seen pretty much every awesome episode of TV the last few years. Talking/eating/sleeping/reading/aimlessly wandering/shopping are the next things to try after those 2.