Set Your Goals

Having spent the better part of the year on the road, Set Your Goals are all set for their first trip to Australia as part of the 2008 Vans Boys Of Summer Tour.

Jordan took some time out of his band's hectic schedule to chat with us...

Interview w/ Jordan Brown (Vocals)

of Set Your Goals

By Cameron Chambers

How are you man? 

Yeah good thanks Cameron. How

are you? 

Yeah, great mate.

Are you guys off tour at the moment? 

Yes we are. We’ve actually

been home for a couple of months now so we’ve just been working on

some songs and just taking a break from tour. 

What else has been keeping

you busy? 

We just shot a video for our

song “Echoes” which has been a year in the making! We worked in

conjunction with the music foundation to fund raise along with our tee

shirt design and it turned out great! It was a benefit to their organization

and our video! 

It's been a pretty crazy

year for the band, what have been some of the highlights? 

The highlights have definitely

been the Warped Tour this summer, which was awesome! We also

did a couple of months in Europe with our friends No Trigger!

It was our first real out of the US experiences but really, we’ve

done so much cool stuff! 

We also got to do a local show

with Lifetime which actually kicked off our year but overall,

the amount of touring we’ve done this year has been great! 

Touring with New Found Glory and Paramore must've been a fair step

as far as venue sizes etc... Did you guys approach those shows any differently

to a regular Set Your Goals gig? 

We pretty much wanted to play

more… well, a lot of the people on the Paramore tour hadn’t heard the band before, so we wanted to show them what

we’re all about but at the same time, we wanted to show our old fans

that we really appreciate them coming out and supporting us!  

Our long term fans really help

us to get other people into it. There’s a lot of crowd interaction

and we had a lot of time to tell the audience what the band and the

tour is all about and hopefully we were able to get some more people

into the band!  

Eulogy Records is

known for churning out bands that lean towards the heavier end of the

musical spectrum. What made you guys sign with them as opposed to going

with a more pop punk friendly label? 

I think it’s because we were

so rooted in the hardcore scene as far as all our contacts and friends

etc… It was just the right fit for us at the time.  

We hadn’t gained much interest

from many pop punk labels at the time so I guess that was the main thing.  

Do

you guys still get to play with heavier bands or have you found that

your increasing popularity means you're touring with groups who

are more similar to yourselves? 

I think we’re always able

to go back and forth and play all kinds of shows. Recently we’ve been

playing with our friends Daggermouth and they’re pretty similar…

they’re a melodic hardcore band in the vein of Lifetime and The Movielife. 

We did a Less Than Jake tour last fall and then we went straight into a tour with Terror!

We love doing stuff like that… we like being able to tour with so

many different bands! 

We try and pursue every tour

offer that we get… every once in a while we have to turn tours down

but it’s never been because the band didn’t sound like us or anything

like that.  

“Mutiny” has been out

since August 2006, when can we expect a new Set Your Goals record? 

Hopefully we’ll have it done

by the fall of 2008. We’re doing Warped Tour this summer so

we’re hoping to record a bit before we leave for that so we’ll have

some songs ready for the tour! 

But yeah, we’re hoping the

record will be done by fall 2008.  

Are the new songs in a similar

vein to “Mutiny” or are you expanding your sound a little bit? 

Well, the more hardcore songs

will be more hardcore and the pop punk tracks will be more pop punk!

It definitely sounds like Set Your Goals but we’ll step the

lyrics up. 

I feel like the last two years

has been the busiest two years of my life so we’ve got plenty to write

about.  

Will Eulogy be releasing your next album? 

As of right now, yes. We met

with them a couple of months ago and we’re working out a few things.

Our relationship went really sour with them but right now things are

good. 

They’re signing a new distribution

deal which will make the record more accessible because I know people

have had a lot of trouble finding it.  

You don’t have to answer

this if you don’t want to, but it seems as though a lot of bands don’t

have many positive things to say about Eulogy. Care to comment on that?  

Yeah, I’m more than happy

to talk about that, ha ha. 

Ha ha, go for it man.  

That label has had its ups

and downs with the entire roster… I don’t think that they were aware

of what they were getting in to when they signed so many bands. 

Bands want to have a place…

every band wants and deserves their own attention and sometimes the

label can’t cater to that. For example, On Broken Wings asked for tour support when Set Your Goals signed and the label said they couldn’t do it because they were pumping

their money into Set Your Goals… which isn’t fair for anyone! 

They definitely like putting

the blame onto someone else…  

In a couple of weeks you

guys will be kicking off your first Australian tour with Silverstein.

What can we expect from a Set Your Goals show? 

Lots of intensity and interaction!

Anyone that’s familiar with our EP or our record should come and sing-a-long

and come up front! I don’t know if the venues have barriers but just

pretend that it’s not there. 

We’re out there with you

guys!  

The Boys Of Summer Tour has a really diverse line up, have you had

to deal with winning over potentially un-interested crowds before? 

We have actually. We did the Anti Flag tour this spring… and everyone on the tour was so great

but there were a few nights where you’d be getting the middle finger

and people saying “what’s this pop bullshit”? 

We actually covered an Operation

Ivy song on that tour and I swear to God… every kid who heckled

would walk away during that song, and we were like “before you call

us out, how bout you explore your roots”, ha ha? 

Are you familiar with much

Australian music? 

I’m actually not, but I’m

looking forward to finding out about it and seeing what your whole scene

is like down there! 

After months of build up

your video for “Echoes” was shot over the weekend. Are you happy

with how the shoot turned out and are you able to tell us anything about

the clip itself? 

Yeah, for sure man! I’d love

to talk about it! Can I give you a website address? 

Go for it man. 

It’s www.sjkimphotography.comechoes and if you go there you’ll be able

to see the production stills from the second day of shooting. There’s

heaps of crew shows man… everyone who worked on the video didn’t

pocket a cent either! 

They were either students or

people who really believed in the song and the band. It was such a cool

bonding experience because it’s a very personal song about death and

what you go through when you lose someone close to you.  

As for the video itself, there

are people who are trapped in rooms and they don’t know how they got

there. They’re scared and they are tearing away the walls and they

see news print… we cut out actual obituaries for that part, and then

the people realize that they’ve passed on.  

Then they accept it and move

on and that’s kind of symbolic of what you’d go through when someone

passes.  

The final are the band in the

performance room and there’s this really bright light at the end of

the tunnel and it’s getting closer to the room. Finally, the big,

white light fills the room and it ends the video. 

It’s a really stylistic take

on the whole process and we actually got our family and friends to hold

up pictures of real people so we got some really cool shots! 

The funds for the clip were

raised by a special one off merch design that you guys have been selling

on Merchnow. That’s a pretty unique way to pay for a video,

who came up with the idea? 

It was actually the entire

band man. This film company sent us an email saying they wanted to work

with us but unfortunately our label wouldn’t give us any money for

another video. 

So we sat down and said we

should have a band bake sale as a form of raising money, ha ha. We tossed

around a few ideas and decided that we wanted to give some of the money

to charity… something like the Cancer Research Foundation or

something that was close to our families. 

It was Mikey’s idea and it

just took off from there! 

What have been your top

5 records for 2007? 

I’ve got a few but I’d

say my top records were: 

Crime In Stereo –

Is Dead… which came out on Bridge Nine records.  

Ambitions – Neon Lights. 

The Starting

Line’s new record… we did a tour with them in the fall and I’m

loving that record! 

Katie Tunstall’s record

just for something different and I’ll have to plug the new Saves

The Day record.  

If you could take any 3

bands on tour with Set Your Goals, who would it be and why? 

Right now… it’s tough to

narrow it down to three.  

A band from Detroit called Fireworks. They’re really good friends of ours and they’re approaching

it the right way… just getting on tour and connecting with fans! 

2*Sweet from Chicago…

I think it’s the name of a WWF wrestler, ha ha. Check them out at www.myspace.com/2sweet. They’re also in our top friends

on our MySpace page.  

That about wraps it up Jordan,

is there anything else you'd like to say? 

Uh, nope. Thanks for plugging

the “Echoes” video man. This is the first interview where anyone

really knew what was going on with the video, so we really appreciate

it!