Gym Class Heroes

Gym Class Heroes aren’t your average hip hop group. Without a turn table in sight and tours with some of the world’s biggest rock bands, GCH do things on their own terms.

Drummer Matt spoke with us about their upcoming Australian tour and why hip-hop fans should give them a chance…

Gym Class Heroes interview

w/ Matt (Drums)

Tuesday June 19^th

By Cameron Chambers

How are you today Matt? 

I’m good man. 

Do you have some time off at

the moment before you hit the road again? 

Umm, I guess we’re in between

shows at the moment. Actually, I’d say we’ve been “in between”

shows for the past 3 years. We’ve pretty much been on tour for 3 years.

Any time we don’t have a show is a break, you know? Ha ha 

You guys have been on tour

– what have been some of the highlights thus far? 

Well, we were on Warped Tour when

we released that record which was cool. Warped is a party every night

so it’s like, a really good festival to be on when you have an album

coming out – or about to come out. You can just get out there and

sell records and get people to listen to your band. 

About 6 months later “Cupid’s

Chokehold” exploded and now it’s a slightly different situation.

We’ve always kind of like, well, we know what it’s like to come

from the ground up so we know how to hustle to get people to listen

to our music. We still have that hustle mentality. 

Sorry man, I’ve gone way off

topic, ha ha. 

I’d say a highlight would be

our first big headlining tour which we did in spring. It was cool because

we were able to bring out bands that we wanted to tour with and see

perform every night. We were able to take K-OS and POS which is great

because they’re musicians we really like.  

I guess that’s the beauty of

the music that we make, it kind of transcends genres and we don’t

really get pigeon holed and stuck into thing so it gives us a few more

options than most bands. 

That’s the cool thing about

our shows, you can see a rap artist or a rock act and it helps because

the fans we attract are an open minded group of people. It just brings

heaps of positive energy. 

When you wrote

take off the way it has? 

No way man, definitely not. We

never write music to “take off”, you know what I mean? We’ve never

compromised the bounds of our music or our integrity and I think that

keeps our music fresh and good and relevant. We just make music that

pleases us and our friends and that’s always been the working formula.

I would never want to think of music that way. 

That’s good to hear man. 

Ha ha, definitely. We’re actually

in the “infancy” stages of a follow up record now. It’s cool because

musically we’re in a position where we can go in different directions.

We definitely don’t want to do the same record twice. I’m really

interested to see what we come up with! 

Your first trip down under

isn’t a bad way to introduce yourselves to Australian audiences… 

Yeah man, it’s cool. The big

shows are awesome. But after saying that, there’s nothing better than

seeing a band and being 6 inches away from their face, ha ha. We’re

just stoked to be coming there in general, just stoked to be visiting.

Being able to perform in front of heaps of people is a huge bonus! 

What can people expect from

a Gym Class Heroes performance? 

Well… first we take our pants

off…. Ha ha ha. 

Nah, we don’t take ourselves

too seriously. You know, every band comes out and says “we have a

high energy stage show” but I really do think we have a high energy

show, ha ha.  

We definitely have a lot of interaction

with our fans. Sometimes we’ll just stop playing and Travis will ask

a random person in the audience what they do for a living, ha ha. Actually

talking to people is cool and we just throw towels and stuff from the

stage at people. It’s a lot of fun when we play. 

We don’t play the same set every

night which is cool. Every night we do something a little differently,

something will get tweaked. You know, we’ll have a guitar solo, or

a drum groove in a song, or a medley or another riff or something. We

have a lot of spontaneity which is cool for the audience but it’s

great for us as well because we don’t play the same thing every night

which is a blessing. 

Is there anything that you

sets on the Gwen Stefani gigs? 

Well, we’ll probably play for

a bit longer, ha ha. Umm, we’ll definitely drink more beer and yeah,

ha ha, I don’t know. We’ll just play more songs and probably get

more goofy than we normally would. It’s a little bit more uninhibited

when you’re playing to a few hundred people rather than several thousand

people. 

Headlining shows are awesome! 

Up until recently, Gym Class

record that’d be the one to break you? 

Hell no! Definitely not! 

I mean, Cupid’s is on one of

our old record and we kind of never really wrote that song to be a single

or anything like that. We actually wrote that track before we were even

signed. We wrote it in our friend’s bedroom, we just thought it was

a cool song, you know? 

When we recorded it again we didn’t

even think we’d put it on the album but management said we were crazy.

I guess you could say we didn’t put all our eggs in the Cupid’s

Chokehold basket, ha ha. We slept on that song and I guess you could

say the rest of the world slept on it as well. 

The world is to blame! That song

was around for a while before anyone started to listen to it. That goes

with us as a band in general, it seems to take a bit longer for people

to catch onto us, ha ha. 

We didn’t garnish the overnight

success that a lot of bands get, which is cool as it helped us build

an honest fan base first and be able to work for our audience. I guess

Cupid’s is something to fall back on though if the rug is ever pulled

out from under us, ha ha. I’m glad it’s picked up even though it’s

3 year old because it’s still a song that we wrote and believed in. 

Props to “Super Tramp” for

even writing “Breakfast In America” in the first place, ha ha. But

we never thought this would be our smash. We wrote it because it was

a bit quirky. We never took it seriously as a huge single or anything

like that. We just can’t believe it and we’re really stoked.  

I just want people to know that

we have other cool songs as well! 

What’s the song writing process

or the instrumentation? 

It’s simple really. I write

all our songs on the accordion… ha ha ha. 

Nah, I don’t. It’s a democracy

with Gym Class Heroes. Everyone brings ideas to the table. When I’m

home from tour I don’t even really play drums that much, I usually

just play guitar. 

Time off is good because it lets

everybody get into their own headspace and write their own stuff. It

lets everyone construct their own ideas so when we get together we move

on to the next stage in the writing and recording process. 

I know most musicians don’t

to someone who’s never heard you? 

Well, I guess its like, rooted

in hip hop with the lyrics but it’s not restricted to hip hop. We

have elements of rock, jazz, funk and other stuff which is separate

to hip hop. We have a lot of melody as well but I guess it’s based

in hip hop. 

A lot of kids at our shows are

like “I don’t like hip hop, but I dig you guys are the shit”.

I don’t really get it but its cool! 

There aren’t too many hip

comes to piecing your music together? 

Totally. I think it gives us more

options to be honest. I think there are a number of different directions

we can go when we write songs coz it’s not so sample heavy. It gives

us more to create different vibes. 

First and foremost we’re band,

that’s just the way we’ve always been. We didn’t know we were

a hip hop group when we first got together – that was just the voice

that came out. It felt natural to be playing hip hop influenced music.

It’s not like we were like, “let’s make hip hop but we’re in

a band”, ha ha.  

We’re just a band who happens

to flirt with hip hop. 

A lot of Gym Class Heroes fans

– do you guys play many straight up hip hop shows? 

Yeah, we’ve done hip hop tours.

We just did a predominantly hip hop tour with K-OS and POS. We’ve

been out with people like Louis Logic and People Under The Stars.  

Lately we’ve done a lot of radio

shows with people like Ludakriss and yeah, just a lot of big name dudes.

Kanye West as well! 

We’re actually going to be doing

a European tour with The Roots which will be great. It’ll just be

a really eclectic bill. 

The Roots and you guys are

approach to your music? 

Yeah man, we get compared to The

Roots a lot. I guess because of our live band feel. But that’ll be

a great tour. 

How does a traditional hip

hop audience respond to the live band approach? 

With the hip hop audience I’m

not really sure. Hip hop is a lot like rock in that you may be a fan

of some rock, but not all of it. I mean kids who dig emo bands and dudes

that dig metal bands fucken hate each other, ha ha. So hip hop is divided

like rock. 

Some people only like mainstream

hip hop but in general, the open minded fans appreciate us. 

I guess the thing is that we don’t

focus on hip hop, you either like it or don’t. The last thing we’re

concerned with is being accepted by a genre of people who just like

hip hop. It’s like, everybody’s different and has different tastes

and we just do what we do. 

As most people would know,

off the back of pop – rock bands? 

Umm, well, we were the first band

to sign to Decadence – but we were originally picked up by Fueled

By Ramen. They were a label who built their success of putting bands

on the road and developing them, and that was our blueprint too! 

We were speaking to Major labels

and some other indie labels, and once Fueled By Ramen became interested

we were determined that they were the label we were going to sign with.  

It was the perfect situation for

us as we were a band who wanted to play live shows and it was great

to have a label that would keep us on the road and support us. It was

just the most ideal situation for us! 

Another big factor with going

to Fueled By Ramen was that a lot of other labels at the time had rosters

that were like novels. They just had so many bands on the label! With

Fueled By Ramen, they only had 7 bands you know, so it was cool. If

we want to call John (FBR owner) at 2am and ask him a question, then

we can do it. Having that exclusiveness was very appealing! 

Where to for Gym

When can we expect a new record? 

Well, we’re mostly doing international

stuff for the rest of the year. We’re doing radio shows throughout

the US, but then we’re hitting Europe, New Zealand, Australian and

then Japan. 

Once we get back we’re going

to be doing a headlining tour in the fall and then right after that

we’ll be doing a huge tour with Fall Out Boy.  

It’s going to be dope because

Patrick (Fall Out Boy) produced some songs on our last record so we’ll

probably get him to co-produce some stuff for the new record as well.

We have a great relationship with him and he’s actually bringing a

studio set-up out on the road so hopefully we can track some stuff on

the road! 

That’s

about it man, anything else you’d like to add? 

Umm no, ha ha. Thanks heaps for

doing the interview. 

Not a problem. We’ll be seeing

you in about a month.

For more info on Gym Class

Heroes check out: 

www.myspace.com/gymclassheroes