TEN Gossip

Lifehouse & I: The Interview Part Two

Posted by taylor blue on February 22, 2010
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A couple of weeks ago I published the first part of my interview with Jason Wade, the lead singer of Lifehouse. I thought I didn’t get a chance to touch on the new album, Smoke & Mirrors, as much as I wanted so I am bringing you the second part of the interview. Smoke & Mirrors, their fifth studio album, is being released next Tuesday.

Here is the second part of my interview with Jason:

On if music was something he always wanted to do or if it found him: It just kinda happened. In my youth I was really into martial arts and had no musical ability. My mom and my sister were always fairly musical. I know my mom played the 12-string acoustic guitar, I always have memories of her writing songs so I think that was always embedded in me at an early age. Basically, when she lost interest and put the guitar away I started basically borrowing it and she taught me a couple of chords and I just kinda took it from there. I didn’t really know what I was doing, I didn’t have any training, I just started writing these songs. The age of 12 to 18 were really difficult for me because my dad basically just left. And my mom was left to raise us so it was a difficult time and I think that’s how I processed through everything I was going through was writing, it started as poetry and as I grew as a musician I started writing all these songs. One song in particular a song called Trying I wrote when I was 15-16, it was one of my first songs, it’s a song off of our first record.. It just kinda happened naturally out of necessity.

On working with Chris Daughtry on the new album: I wrote a song with [Chris] and Richard Marx he came down to the studio and isn’t featured but he sang some background vocals.

[Chris is] super cool. He’s one of the most down to earth guys out there. That’s why we basically hit it off, he played a show with us in Texas and I guess he was a fan of ours, we had mutual respect for each other and basically started hanging out every time he was in L.A. Working on his record. And then I wrote a song for his record, and while he was in the middle of recording his project he had the idea to bring Richard Marx in and write with the three of us. Once again the chemistry just worked out and the song is called Had Enough and I’m really happy with how it turned out.

Three words describing the new album: Radio friendly, Organic, Exciting…I think there’s a lot of tracks that just kinda jump out of the speakers they just have that feel they have that live energetic organic feel to them.

On the meaning of the album’s name, Smoke & Mirrors: We didn’t want to over think the whole process of coming up with an album title that was going to be taken too serious, I think that Smoke & Mirrors reflects that the two sides of the record, which is half of the songs are a little bit more pop and a little bit catchier the other half is basically what we have done for the last ten years is play live with two guitars, bass and drum. So I feel that this record is really split down the middle between the two different faces of what Lifehouse does.

On if it was easier to record this album the fifth time around: 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.

On how Jason would like the fans to see the album: When the record comes out people are really going to enjoy it and realize there is something on the record for every body for fans that have enjoyed prior records I don’t think that it’s fair to say that Halfway Gone represents the record in it’s entirety. I am just excited for when the record comes out, people get to hear the whole record.

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