Put Down Your Goddamn Camera Phone

With gold albums on both indie and major labels under their belt, Long Island’s Taking Back Sunday has been around the block a few times now since their formation in 1999, and have shared stages with artists from all over the spectrum, from Kanye West to Bob Dylan.

Their newest album, New Again, hit shelves on June 2nd, and has been praised by critics and fans alike as the band’s best to date. We caught up with bassist / backing vocalist Matt Rubano to talk about the album, their upcoming tour with Weezer & Blink-182, and live show gripes from the fans and the band, among other things.

Antiquiet: Hi! Please describe your immediate surroundings & state of mind…

Matt Rubano: I am currently at The National in Richmond VA, a beautiful venue with one of the most comfortable and excessively luxurious backstage areas I’ve ever seen (3 showers, sauna, hot tub that sits 20, immaculately clean, delicious catering). My current state of mind is content, relaxed, and anxious to play the show tonight.

Antiquiet: You guys are playing Call Of Duty: World At War with your fans on Xbox Live. Who are the biggest gamers in the band? Any favorites?

Matt Rubano: I think I’m the only gamer in the band. Although that was my first time playing WAW, and I didn’t do very well. I liked talking to the other players as they blew my head off, it was fun. I like FPS games but prefer more fantasy story type games like God Of War, and Unleash The Force. I just played the UFC game today and I am buying it the second I get home.

Antiquiet: You’re on tour with Blink-182 this summer. Are you guys familiar with one another, or is this a new connection for everyone?

Matt Rubano: We have had a long relationship with Blink 182 and Tom DeLonge in particular. We toured with Blink right before their hiatus and Tom directed our video for This Photograph Is Proof. They took us out on our first huge venue tour and we learned a lot about how to handle that type of audience. I would even go so far as to say we’ve been intimate with Tom.

Antiquiet: It was mentioned in a review of your June 4th Anaheim show at the Grove that Adam was speaking out about the cameras being held up in the audience. Was it just bad at this particular show? What set that off?

Matt Rubano: It’s bad at every show and I think Adam’s comments are meant to get people to realize that paying money for a ticket, making the trip to a show, only to watch it through a less than one square inch screen of your camera is kind of robbing yourself of the experience. People spend so much time ‘behind the screen’ these days that we would prefer if they came to a TBS show to escape all that and have fun. And let’s be real, those cameras suck for audio and with thousands of people in the audience pushing one another around you aren’t exactly going to end up with a video that you’d ever want to watch.

Antiquiet: Is Matt Fazzi still considered ‘the new guy,’ or has the transition been natural?

Matt Rubano: Technically he’s the new guy but that’s it. He’s as important as any one of us at this point. Hazing and all that weren’t necessary because not only was Matt the best musician we tried out but he’s a great human being. A lot of the energy behind New Again comes from the fact that there is mutual respect and admiration for one another now which replaced animosity and criticism.

Antiquiet: I’ve seen a lot of TBS fans talking about Tell All Your Friends being their favorite TBS album. How much of the album are you guys playing on this tour?

Matt Rubano: We play material from all of the TBS albums live. Some people have had a hard time accepting the fact that whichever record is their favorite, we will always be progressing and developing musically. The people that stick with us appreciate that and get it. We know that people love ‘the old songs’ but on this tour the requests for songs off of New Again has been overwhelming.

Antiquiet: I caught an interesting Twitter exchange from a couple weeks ago. A twitterer named Dan Howard said: ”I’d like to give a big FUCK YOU! To @tbsnewagain for their overpriced tickets, $25 come on! What happened to $10-$15 prices?” To which TBS replied: ”Stop stealing music.”

Matt Rubano: I find it hard to believe that a 3 band bill for $25 is too much. If $8 is too much to see a band that you like then maybe concerts aren’t for you. The answer to what happened to 15 dollar tickets is ‘times they are a-changin.’ That’s strange to me because we do our very best to bring a great tour at as low a price as we can. [Howard] should price some other artists’ tours out there before making a comment like that. At the same time, the fact that people don’t buy albums anymore has basically changed the life of a recording artist. Touring is the only way to survive and even still, we keep our tickets as cheap as possible.

Antiquiet: Following that thread of thought, bands nowadays are faced with new frontiers/hurdles (depends how you look at it) in this new industry climate, where everything is changing and the majors are in serious trouble. Being that the term “selling out” has essentially been redefined these past few years, where does a band with your level of exposure draw the line on promotional integrity?

Matt Rubano: A lot of strange or unorthodox opportunities have come our way and we have learned that some of them can be really helpful, especially when releasing a record. We feel that the most important thing is to do things our way. Like, we wouldn’t endorse something we didn’t use or like or do something we thought was cheesy or cost us integrity. We find that there is a way to do things on your own terms and make it fun. Selling out, to me, is kind of hard to quantify these days. I mean, our music is what defines us and we have always done that without apology, without regard for ‘the scene,’ or concern for how it does commercially.

Antiquiet: As you’ve undoubtedly seen, social networks like Twitter and such can be a great tool for talking directly with your fans & getting direct feedback. There’s no bullshit fabricated image to hide behind. There’s no mistrust between the fan and artist, because there’s a greater likelihood that they’re getting a direct message and actually contacting a real person, instead of this figure that’s spoken for by handlers, managers and PR spins. It can really lead to greater, new ways of interacting between fan and artist. How has that whole scene affected you?

Matt Rubano: It can be really overwhelming at times but for the most part I enjoy it. It would be logistically impossible to communicate with all of the fans that send us individual messages but we do our best. I like using twitter because I think it provides the real time update of where you are and what you’re doing and people seem to really dig that. Our MySpace inbox overflows with messages it’s hard to get to it all.

We still feel that the best thing we can do is make ourselves available at shows to meet people before & after. We have always treated the face to face interaction as a really important part of being in TBS. We’re proud of our fans and supporters because we have always felt like TBS fans are cool people. That sounds like sucking up but I mean it for real, after years and years of touring and meeting thousands of fans, I made friends and have seen people stick with us through everything. There’s no way to express how much that means to us.