TEN Gossip

Lifehouse & I: The Interview

Posted by taylor blue on February 8, 2010
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Ten years ago, one of my favorite songs came out, Hanging By A Moment. I loved the sound and I loved how I couldn’t stop listening to it. That doesn’t happen often to me. It was a different kind of sound to me. It was the era of Default, 3 Doors Down and Nickelback. And Lifehouse managed to stick out with that song and it threw them into the world that they have not stopped for the last ten years. “We went from playing this one Irish pub in front of two or three people I remember the record company was bribing people with free beer just to come see us play, no one knew who we were, to going on the road with Pearl Jam and opening up on the side stage.” says Jason Wade, lead singer of Lifehouse.

They are releasing their fifth studio album on February 23rd called Smoke & Mirrors and the album is more for everyone, the hip upbeat tunes to the things we are used to hearing from them. Jason explains, ”We were adamant about sonically pushing ourselves in this record we tried out some more electronic sounds, you know some synth basses. Basically, if we had a song and we didn’t feel like the lyric was right we would just start over on it. This record took a good year and a half all along the way it was a lot of fun but it was also very challenging.”

I had a chance to talk to Jason Wade the lead singer of Lifehouse at the beginning of January. I have to say this was my first phone interview and Jason made me feel calm and sure of myself. Here are the highlights from the interview.

On if there is a process he goes through to get his music and words together: My process is usually I pick up an acoustic guitar. I start playing chords until something kinda surprises me. Maybe something that’s a little different then something I’ve written in the past. And I’ll sing melodies over those chords until it sounds like I am saying words. It almost sounds like gibberish at first, I go through this process where I’ll record it and then listen back to it and kind of decode some of the vowel sounds until the song starts to take shape.

Usually the lyrics come last and the melody and the guitar comes first. Sometimes, I mean it’s different every time. I try not to get into the same pattern of writing the same song twice. On this last record I started just getting song titles and I would write them down in my journal and I then would wait until I would get the inspiration and the song would come to fruition and I would just kinda write down these titles and wait for the song to manifest.

On why they changed their name from Bliss to Lifehouse: We couldn’t own the name properly. We tried to clear it and get a website and all of that and it turned out that there was another band that already licensed the name over in Europe. And so we decided that it was just time to change our name altogether too cause the band was shifting a couple of members quit and a couple got fired. And we kind of at that point it was 1999 me and Rick started Lifehouse together after No Name Face was finished and just kinda felt like we needed a new name for a new start.

On if the name Lifehouse has a meaning: Not really it was one of those things where someone just said and we thought it was an interesting was an interesting play on words. To be honest we were desperate for a name because our record was finished but we didn’t have a band name so we just went with it without putting much thought behind it.

On how Lifehouse has grown from Hanging By A Moment to Halfway Gone: In the earlier days I wrote most of the songs by myself, I would occasionally write with our producer but that’s kinda changed I’ve opened up a little bit more to co-writing and we wrote Halfway Gone with Jude Cole who produced this record and the last record with us, and he had the idea to Kevin Rudolf, we all liked that song, Let It Rock, and he came into the studio one day and we basically had great chemistry he had the chord structure already there and I just kinda started singing a melody on top of what he was playing and it was a great collaboration, it happened pretty effortlessly. I just think that it was important for us sonically for us to try something different not just keep creating the same record over and over and just do with what you are comfortable with. So we kinda just stretched out on that song and made it a little more current sounding.

On how fans say that Halfway Gone sounds like a departure of the band: It definitely is different. For a lot of people it seems like a departure for Lifehouse which it is but once the record comes out I think that a lot of people will see that a lot of the songs are reminiscent of the older Lifehouse sound so we kinda split it down the middle between songs that are catchier and that can be played on the radio and then songs that are more rock tracks, that are little more rock live feeling.

On if the process of recording Smoke & Mirrors was as easy even though it was the fifth time they recorded an album: Actually no, it was harder to be honest. I think when you have been doing it for ten years now which we have been basically recording and touring a good ten years you get to a place where you get really comfortable with your sound, with what you do in the studio and you almost kind of …you can get too good at it in a way to where you don’t stretch yourself to try new things. So we were adamant about sonically pushing ourselves in this record we tried out some more electronic sounds, you know some synth basses. Basically, if we had a song and we didn’t feel like the lyric was right we would just start over on it. This record took a good year and a half all along the way it was a lot of fun but it was also very challenging.

I know there was still a lot of the interview I didn’t even get to touch on. I will have to publish a second part The Outtakes next week. I just have too many things that I want to share.

You can catch Lifehouse on Twitter, Facebook or at their official site. And get their new single, Halfway Gone, here from iTunes.

See the second part of the interview here>>>