Interview with Dan Lowder and Mark Rose of Spitalfield

Masquerade -- Atlanta, GA

August 31, 2003

 

Leah Weinberg: Will you guys introduce yourselves, please?
Mark Rose, vocals/guitar: My name's Mark.
Dan Lowder, guitar: I'm Dan!
L.W.: And what do you guys do?
Mark: Play in a rock band.
Dan: We play video games.
Mark: He plays John Madden Football.
Dan: That's all I play.
Mark: And I curl up and sleep in awkward positions. I play guitar and I sing.
Dan: I play guitar and I sometimes, sometimes sing, rarely.

L.W.: How old are all of you guys?
Mark: I'm the baby of the band. I'm 20. JD is also 20, but he's got a few months on me.
Dan: I'm 22 and TJ is 23.

L.W.: How is the tour going so far?
Mark: This tour is probably the best tour collectively that we've been on. For sure. Radiotakeover put this together and they asked us to be on it and they really, really went all out with the promotion and what not. So even towns that we've been to before that weren't very good for us are turning out to be some nice places to play, some nice turnouts with a lot of supportive kids. Like we knew certain shows were gonna be really good, like out in California and Seattle where Acceptance is from, but like we had no idea this show would have as many kids here. Last time we were in Georgia, there was nobody here.

L.W.: And what is Radiotakeover?
Dan: It's an aura. I don't know. You take it.
Mark: It's an online company that-
Dan: Or that.
Mark: It's like a free music type thing. Like you go to it and you can sign up and they have music constantly streaming like a radio station. Then they also have a lot of user polls and contests and stuff. You can request music and it will circulate through the system. And then they have a featured artist that's always playing. They always launch new records. It's a pretty big company and they make their money just by advertising, by sponsoring things.

L.W.: How did a sound like Spitalfield's come out of a bunch of hardcore band members?
Mark: Well, I guess I'll field this one.
Dan: I personally wasn't in a hardcore band, so...
Mark: Yeah, he was the only one that wasn't. Pretty much, JD and I are the only two original members left from when we started our sophomore year in high school, like 1998. And we were both pretty much in full-time bands that weren't Spitalfield. The thing about playing in hardcore bands was it was a lot of fun and you got a lot of support and kids were crazy and stuff but eventually, there were some other bands that were being introduced to us like midwest indie rock bands like Braid and the Get-Up Kids and Texas Is the Reason. And we really wanted to start something more melodic because we all were into that sort of thing. So we started it as a side project and no one took it seriously for at least a year and a half to two years. Kids didn't really come out to see us play. We didn't get many show offers. It was like everyone was focusing on our other bands. And as those other bands slowly deteriorated and we lost interest in it, we started putting everything towards this band. We started looking outside just the local scene to play shows in the greater midwest and what not. And slowly but surely we gained some speed and more and more kids are coming to see us. Our guitar player left and we got this chump, Dan.
Dan: I am a chump.
Mark: He is a chump but he worked out really well and he has been working out really well. Then TJ is our newest addition after our old bass player Terry left and Terry had been with us for five years. It was at the release of our EP that all of this really started to change for us and we started shopping around bigger labels, and that's when Victory came along. But you might have another question about that, so I'll stop there.

L.W.: I do actually have another question about that. How does it feel to be a more melodic band on a label traditionally known for its harder bands?
Dan: I was scared of it at first. I was definitely scared of it because you hear nothing but hardcore bands. All I had known about Victory was like Scarhead, stuff like that. So, you kind of wonder how you're going to fit in that picture. But of course Thursday came along and you kind of saw the label start to change. Even from the outside it was obvious.
Mark: It's like an interesting label because even though they've been known for having all of these brutal hardcore bands-and like we've grown up with them, too, being that we're from Chicago. A lot of bands like Snapcase and Refused and Strife all meant a lot to us, especially when we were playing in hardcore bands, so we looked up to the label. But they started branching out with bands like Catch 22 and River City Rebels. So slowly they started to cover different genres of music. And then even before we signed, The Reunion Show and Taking Back Sunday, like all of these bands kind of paved the new path for Victory. So, while they still sign hardcore bands, yeah, it was a little bit scary, a little bit intimidating, but we love it. I like the diversity of it. They're a label with so many different types of bands. Now you hear 'Victory band' and you don't know what it means.

L.W.: I know you guys absolutely hate this question, but where did you get the band name from?
Mark: That's okay, I'm so used to it because no one knows what it means. It's a town in London where Jack the Ripper is from. Our first guitar player Blake came up with it a long, long time ago. It kind of had a dark undertone to it being that it's kind of an eerie type of story and what not, and we're obviously a pop band, so at the time we thought that was pretty cool. But a lot of bands are doing that now. There's a lot of bands with dark names with poppy sounds.

L.W.: How does it feel to be in this month's Alternative Press?
Dan: Haha, humorous because they misspelled our name and say we were from L.A.
Mark: Both of those things are great. No. Our biggest fear is having our name misspelled, but it's actually funny now. We're starting to see the humor in it, but it's really, I don't know. With a big thing like Alternative Press, we were so psyched...
Dan: Yeah, it's our first big...
Mark: Our first big, big feature and we were like, 'Oh.'
Dan: Aside from that, we're trying to figure out now how we're actually gonna go about telling Victory that our name is changed to Spitafield and how we're actually going to get enough stuff to move to L.A. But that's just logistics. We don't really have to worry about that so much.
Mark: The feature's great though, in theory.

L.W.: Were you guys good friends with Fallout Boy before this tour?
Mark: Yeah, we actually toured with Fallout Boy last summer, too. Most people don't know that only because neither of us had label support. And we had like Sinister label back home in Chicago, but outside Chicago we had no support.
Dan: Most people don't know that because nobody saw us, basically is what it comes down to.
Mark: It was one of those tours. And Fallout Boy, they came along and they've moved really fast. We're definitely very proud of them and excited for them. But they've only been a band for like two years now, and they've grown so quickly in our backyard kind of. We just like watched them develop. They played at our EP release show for our EP that we did last fall and now they're doing wonderful things.

L.W.: Didn't a radio station in Chicago put your two songs up against each other in a contest one night?
Dan: Yeah, nobody knew about it.
Mark: It was weird because Fallout Boy were on the Cage Match, which is where they have listeners call in and vote. We knew about it because we were on tour with them and we were excited for them. They won two nights in a row, and then the third night came along and they didn't really say anything to us, we didn't really say anything, we didn't really know what was going on, and we get a phone call, we're like, 'What, we're on tonight?' We had no idea. It was kind of weird.
L.W.: Who won? M
ark: Oh, they won. It was, I don't really want to go into it. It was weird though.
Dan: They killed us basically, is what it comes down to. He's embarrassed. Haha. I'm just kidding, by the way.

L.W.: Is there any competitive vibe between you guys?
Mark: Only in a healthy way, I think. Since we've been doing this so long together, like last summer and this summer and all around Chicago, we're more happy to play with each other and feed off each other than to play against each other.

L.W.: Do you guys have any pre-show rituals?
Dan: [Laughs]
Mark: I don't know if that really counts as one. No, I don't think so. You can assume, but you're probably going to assume wrong.
Dan: Yeah, it's going to be bad assumptions. Basically, you get nervous and you have to do number two.
Mark: And sometimes it ends up being a full group thing.
Dan: It sounds terrible.
Mark: Yeah, we're all next to each other in different parts of the bathroom and we talk to each other. That didn't happen tonight though.
Dan: That's so bad.
Mark: No, pretty much pre-show rituals is TJ being pessimistic, Dan being nervous, me being stressed out, and JD not knowing what's going on and not caring. So that's pretty much it.

L.W.: 3 words that describe Spitalfield.
Mark: I'm going to come up with two words, and you're going to come up with one, Dan.
Dan: Okay go.
Mark: John. Madden.
Dan: Water?
Mark: No. I was gonna say John Madden Football, but no. Let's see. Should we do something really cheesy?
Dan: All the Huxtables?
Mark: All the Huxtables.
Dan: All the Huxtables. And you can quote me on that one.
Mark: Actually, I want to go with that. That's a glorious answer, man.

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