MC:It’s been exciting to see and hear Cage develop in interesting directions.
Shultz: A lot of different elements have played into that. When we were younger, we just wanted to get out of town and be a genuine rock band, so we made a record like that. And you get bumps and bruises along the way, either self-inflicted or inflicted by other people, and you look at your creative process and say, “What can I do to grow as a writer?”
It’s funny, because as human beings we grow, and it’s not a linear thing where you start here and move forward. We grow like trees in all these different directions, and who’s to say what’s a good direction or bad direction? Sometimes when it seems you’re moving backward, you’re actually moving forward, and when it seems you’re moving forward, you’re actually moving backward. It was that kind of thing for me.
Growing up, I’ve always been told in our music career that the more people you emulate, the better your band is going to be. After a while, it just got old and hard to chase that. It wasn’t something we wanted to do anymore. I’d rather just create sounds that come from ourselves, and if people don’t like it, that’s fine.
MC:Can you talk about some of the songs and the singles on the record, the process of writing them and how they came together?
Shultz: “Telescope” was one of my favorites. We’d spent a year off the road, and it was the first time I’d ever had my own place, ever. I didn’t know what to do with myself, because we’d constantly been doing things for the past five years, and suddenly there was nothing, so I went out, bought furniture, did all the normal stuff you’re supposed to do, and became obsessed with decorating the house.
It was ridiculous. I finished that, and would be sitting in my living room, and I felt I needed to give each room value, and would move from room to room, because I had to justify all the meaningless toil I’d poured into decorating the house, and I’d find myself staring at the wall or just looking at the blank TV, and this overwhelming cloud of imminent doom just seemed to be following me everywhere.
I felt it was a sad picture, this guy walking from room to room in his house, and he’s supposed to have everything, right? Staring at blank TV screens, and all you can do with your time is become obsessed with decorating your house, you know? I thought it’d be really funny to be able to watch that from a bird’s eye view. And I thought what if you wrote the song about yourself, but as if you were watching yourself from some other place? That’s kind of how that song came to be.
MC: What about “Cigarette Dreams”?
Shultz: “Cigarette Daydreams” happened so fast. I became obsessed with this theory: I wanted to see what seemed like ‘70s cheese and make it cool, like a ‘70s TV show theme like for Mash. That was kind of the idea in the back of my mind idea for a beginning and direction, started working on that and the melody starting coming through, and I called up our producer, and he said, “Matt, sit down and finish that song. Do not leave the house until you finish it.” So I did, and we recorded it, and it just happened so fast and felt so special.
MC: Since the band’s early days, how has your set list evolved?
Shultz: The songs people liked, we’d keep; the songs people weren’t reacting to, we’d get rid of. We were learning how to communicate to people and speak their language, you know? For us, it became the learning process, having our friends around, writing songs and looking for their reactions. For me, communication is the only way to get outside all the strangleholds of things that plague us in the creative process. One thing I know for sure is a pure thing in music is the communicative aspect. If you start there, then everything else I just like an extra. I think it’s important if you want to find a place in people’s hearts is to write songs that are honest and pure.
MC: What’s your take on the current state of songwriting?
Shultz: I feel like with all the constant bombard-ment of image today, it’s become very difficult to get away from creating music from a place of fear. It’s like pop music has become a hollow shell of aesthetic with no story. There are guys like Dylan who write something one hundred percent authentic, poetic, and it’s a true story, like the song about Hattie Carroll. It rhymed and it was gorgeous––not cheesy rhyming; it was perfectly intentional. That was a place I wanted to get to; not to sound like Dylan, but to get to a place of creation like that.
MC:Are there any artists you’ve toured with so far who’ve made a particularly strong impression on you?
Shultz: Foo Fighters are incredible. Queens of the Stone Age were so great to us. There are all these bands that just treated us like little brothers. Silversun Pickups, Manchester Orchestra, Muse, the Black Keys. It’s really been crazy to tour with such amazing artists.
MC: How has replacing lead guitarist Lincoln Parish impacted the band?
Shultz: We didn’t replace him. Lincoln joined the band when he was 15 years old. When we moved to England, his parents had to sign legal guardianship to the band, and we were like parents, but the world’s worst parents ever that took you to parties and stuff [laughs]. You know, just not good. We didn’t know that at that point, because he was so mature, and we just saw him as one of us. I think being 15 and being exposed to stuff so young and touring for five years solid, he missed out on a lot, and when we got back home to make this most recent record and spent a year off the road, it was like a breath of fresh air for Lincoln, and I think he didn’t want to go back out. He loved being at home. So we’ve got a great guitarist touring in his place; his name is Nick Bockrath. But Lincoln hasn’t been replaced. It was Lincoln’s choice, we didn’t tell him to go home. There was no animosity.
MC:Could he potentially come back? Is the new guitarist just temporary?
Shultz: Everything’s temporary.
MC: Looking back on your life, what inspired you to envision music as a career?
Shultz: I think the greatest inspiration on me is my father. He always wrote songs as we were growing up, and he always encouraged originality. We would be writing, and he would say, “That sounds like a song I wrote.” He was always driving that into us [laughs]. When we were younger, me and Brad, we dug a drum kit out of a dumpster in the neighborhood and brought it home. My mom was disgusted, my dad was like, “This is great!” It didn’t have any hardware, so we pushed the bass drum against the wall, propped up the tom with pillows and played with coat hangers. I was the world’s worst drummer, with no technique, and my dad loved it. He said, “Get really good at that, because no one plays like that.”
Contact sarah.weinstein@rcarecords.com
