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With the first leg of their tour underway, I caught up briefly with Mark to ask him about the new tour, Tom DeLonge, and how it feels to be starting over.
I know that Travis had broken his arm and you guys are finally back in the swing of it, So how does it feel to be back on the road?
It feels great to be back on the road. The tour has been really fun. And with Travis’ amazing ability to play with one arm, it’s like we haven’t skipped a beat; you can’t even tell that he’s missing an arm actually.
You guys were just at KROQ’s Almost Acoustic Christmas right? How was it?
It was really fun. Acoustic Christmas is always a great time, and I thought that the line up this year was really cool so we were glad to be a part of it. It was rad to be home for a day and see all our friends and play the show.
Did you stick around at all for night 2 to see Tom’s band?
No, we had a show the next night so we were out of town.
Have you been in touch with him at all?
Not at all, no.
I’ve been reading the blogs and reading all your MySpace fans’ comments about wanting Blink to get back together. Do you think there’s any chance of that in the future?
It doesn’t feel like that now, but there’s no telling what’s going to happen in 10 years.
What do you think of his band?
It didn’t really strike me but that’s just my opinion. I’ve always respected Tom as a songwriter, but his new record didn’t really strike me.
Do you have any plans for the break? I know you’re wrapping up...
We wrap up this tour, and then we go to Europe for a while, and then we go to Australia and Japan, and then come back and do another US tour, so it’s going to be a while before we have an actual break. But we’ll be home for 2 weeks over Christmas. That’ll be awesome.
With all the young talent out there, how does it feel to be re-entering the music scene with a new band?
It feels great to go back and start a new band. It feels really good to be going and playing these small clubs and starting this band from square one which is exactly what we wanted to do. The energy in our band is really good. Everyone is really excited.
Can you tell me a little bit about your podcast?
I love playing music by bands that I love, and hopefully turning people onto some new bands. And talking shit with my friends and recording it and putting it out there. It’s just us being silly in the studio or backstage.
You sound like you always did even ten years ago onstage. It’s awesome hearing the podcast so I have to say props on that.
Aw, thank you.
And you won an award for it too didn’t you?
The award we got for the podcast was a year last year on our website. So that was cool.
Have you ever been on Bandnation.com?
I was just on it today.
Do you have any advice you would give for local bands starting up?
Yeah, the best advice I can give any band is just to play music that you love for anybody that will listen to you and make it happen for yourself because no one else will.
Where are you living now?
I live in Los Angeles.
You have your studio there too?
Yeah, Travis and I bought a studio, it’s great.
When we’re home we spend a lot of time in the studio just doing what we love which is why we bought it. We have some friends that come over and record there as well when we’re gone. It’s just a really great creative environment.
Are you writing stuff on the road?
Yeah, a little bit. We have a new song that we’re working on while we’re out on the road that we’re probably going to record after we get back from this tour or soon afterwards.
Great, well I’ll definitely look forward to hearing it.
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