Taking Back Sunday's Matt Rubano on flying mics, MySpace, Boston, and playing bass with Shaq
By VICKI G. SIOLOS | June 22, 2006
TAKING BACK SUNDAY |
After seven years and two albums on Victory Records, Taking Back Sunday’s hard work has paid off — their new album LouderNow, on Warner Bros., debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard charts, and their latest tour finds them playing huge venues (like the parking lot of the Tweeter Center in Mansfield, where they’ll show up June 24). Having risen from the class of Long Island post-hardcore bands that even your mom has taken to calling “emo,” they’re now a band with a rock and roll work ethic and aspirations to pop greatness. Making the jump to a major label has brought a new set of anxieties, but the band has channeled that creative tension right back into their music. Singer Adam Lazarra has said of Louder, “This album is about struggling to figure out where the hell we all fit in.” Ask bassist Matt Rubano, though, and he’d probably tell you the only thing TBS has to fear is TBS itself: on a recent tour date in London, Lazzara accidentally smacked him in grill with a microphone. But that was a distant memory when the Phoenix caught up with Rubano by phone from the West Coast. While shaking off the cobwebs and imbibing his morning coffee, Rubano chatted about flying mics, MySpace, his school days in Boston, and playing bass with Shaq.
So how’s your face?
[Laughs] My face is doing well! I’m all healed up. I had a half dozen stitches put in, and was able to recover pretty quickly. What actually ended up happening was I got hit during the first song of the set, and was able to make it back on stage by the middle of the second song. So, really, I lost only about a minute or two of actual music. It was not pleasant! I had to finish the show with my head wrapped. It wasn’t that big of a wound, but you know, your forehead bleeds like crazy. There’s actually a video of it on our official site. That Webisode has some actual footage of me laying down, and now that I watch it I only thought I went down for a quick second, but in the actual footage I’m down for five or ten seconds, laying there motionless and not sure what just hit me.
TBS has been touring through many cities. Is there anything in particular that stands out about Boston?
Well, for me in particular it stands out because I also went to school in Boston. I went to Berklee for about a year and a half to two years. Being in Boston is cool because I have tons of memories. After I left school, I moved back there for one summer when I was about 22, and that was when I began my heavy touring. Boston is also filled with memories for us as a band. We did the 10th anniversary Warped Tour in 2004, and that was tremendous. We also played on Landsdowne Street, and the audience started a pretty sweet “Yankees suck” chant in the middle of the gig. I don’t know why that happened because though there are a few sports fans amongst us, we’re not that kind of band. No one had even mentioned baseball, and at a pretty non-descript point of the show -- about 8 or 9 songs in -- the entire audience just started chanting, “Yankees suck!” So, yeah, it’s always fun to go to Boston. Something interesting always happens.
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