MC: As live performers, how did you make the transition from small clubs to giant festival stages?
Josh Dun: From the beginning, we’ve looked at every stage as a challenge. When we first started, we were trying to get people’s attention and to get them to remember the show. When we began doing festivals, it was at a point where we had people’s attention, at least in the Midwest. We want fans to talk about [our shows] to their friends and family. Ten years from now, this will continue to be our philosophy. We’ll naturally put on a good show and we’ll always try to win somebody over.
Joseph: Festivals are way different than a headline show and they always will be. You don’t know who’s there or if they’ve ever seen you before. They may not know or even like us. There’s something really exciting about that.
MC: How important was it for you to self-release your first two albums (Twenty One Pilots in 2009 and Regional at Best in 2011)?
Dun: It was important to put in the time and get our bumps and bruises trying to do it completely alone. You learn a lot about yourself when you release your own music. You come up with your own plans and strategies, even though it’s not well thought out. You realize that you have control of your art. That’s important for an artist to understand. Now that we’ve moved into a partnership with a label, we’re able to fall back and rely on our instincts.
MC: Tyler, when you first started out, you worked with two other band members: Nick Thomas and Chris Salih. When they chose to leave in 2011, did you find it difficult to continue? Was it scary?
Joseph: There was a reason those two guys quit: nothing was happening. We didn’t have any money and we weren’t getting any shows. I knew that as a songwriter I’d continue to write songs. I never had a band to quit, only one for which to continue writing songs in my basement. Because of that, I was able to stick with it a little longer. But during that process I’d met Josh. We were friends for about a year before we wrote anything together. I knew the night we met that this was the guy I wanted to do music with. After a year we realized that everything fell in line. It’s good to have history as a band. But it’s also important to realize what we have now.
MC: How much pre-production time do you put in before actually recording a new piece of material?
Joseph: Years. The day we released Vessel, I started production on Blurryface. I’d been writing, demoing and working on that record the entire time we were on tour. What’s great about this new record is that it’s influenced by live music. We’d go up on stage, play a set in front of a bunch of people and come off. Then we’d set up a poor man’s version of a recording studio, whether that was on a bus, in a hotel room or backstage. We’d record and that’s where the album was born and where it continues to live.
It’s kind of cool to see that transformation happen, where a song is born in a live setting and it continues to live in that same live setting in the Blurryface tour cycle. When we walk into a studio, we have everything written, demoed-out and ready to go. That’s why we could turn around and release the record so quickly after a three-year album cycle with Vessel. We’re proud that we were able to do that.
MC: How important are outside opinions when it comes to shaping your music and shows?
Joseph: We both felt pressure going into this new record that wasn’t there before. People would say things like, “If they deliver the right record, it’ll go to this height and sell this many.” There was some talk going around among the different partners that we have circling this project about getting in with different songwriters and super producers who manufacture hit songs. Since we had such a strong and powerful background of doing things ourselves, we were able to look at them and say, “Listen: you have to let us do what we want to do.” And they did; they went away, although the pressure didn’t.
When we wrote this record, there were times of insecurity; times where we felt doubt. But when we were done in the studio, it was just me and Josh looking at each other saying, “Do we like this?” When the answer came back “Yes,” we went with it. There’s almost a kind of blind ignorance to writing and recording music when it’s just two guys looking at each other saying “Do we like what this sounds like?” So, yes: there was some outside pressure. But we were able to zip through it and come up with something that truly represents who we are.
