I Am No Masterpiece
My body is broken and I just want to listen to silence on this last contemplative drive home from another tour. No music from the stereo. No conversation. Just lovely silence. Silence to think about the past two months on tour and perhaps a little farther. In April I celebrated my twenty-first birthday in a promoter's basement in Nebraska, grooving to tunes on a checkered dance floor and ending the festivities by smashing my leftover chocolate cake into my little sister's apprehensive face. Dia will be 19 in October. Who knows where we will be by then; fish markets in Seattle, a lonely theater in the scorching deserts of Utah. Touring the country with my sister, and Nick Price and Kenji Chan (both twenty-one), whom make up the remainder of Meg and Dia, has brought us so much closer. We were close before, I mean, we've had a whole year to get to know each other, but there is definitely something about being on tour and so far away from home which forces one to remove all one's pretences and expose one's real self. It's funny to compare the chemistry in the band now with the way we were when Meg and Dia first began.
Before Nick and Kenji joined the band there was just Dia and myself and an acoustic guitar. For Christmas when we were kids, ironically she got the guitar and I got the karaoke machine. We quickly learned, however, what we were natural at and destined to become. She became really focused on her voice and began singing little country ditties at local county fairs and retirement centers. I started out playing whatever was on the radio or whatever happened to be in my buddies' CD player. My dad was a DJ in his early twenties so he had quite an extensive record collection which I listened to occasionally. After I experienced my first heartbreak and I thought the world was going to end, the natural way to console my tattered heart was to write a song. Of course my parents, being the supportive and loving caretakers they are, showered me with much un-earned praise and encouraged me to keep writing. My sister and I heeded their advice and began writing and playing original songs together. We formed our first band when I was in 8th grade. Since then we've been in several different bands. Each time gaining more experience and becoming more motivated and focused. After a few years of doing different projects and hooking up with random managers and agents with nothing really happening, we decided we needed a break to think about if this was really going to work. I decided to go to college and Dia stayed at home.
While taking courses spring semester 05' in Salt Lake City, I once again became inspired. Dia felt the same and decided to finish her High school career in packet form so she could relocate to Utah to write with me. After playing a few shows together we decided we needed a bigger sound and therefore needed a few more individuals. We hooked up with Nick Price, our current drummer in March 2005. Nick's involvement in the band initiated with a modest wreck I had in a Smith's parking lot. I needed a bumper replaced and Nick just happened to be my mechanic. He seemed interested in our project so I made him buy a CD in order to listen to us, (a minor gesture he still holds against me to this day.) After we tested out his drum skills, Dia and I did our usual interrogation: "How serious are you? Are you willing to eat, sleep, and breath, in sync' with us?". Basically the main question was: "Are you willing to give up your life?" His bleached buzz cut, over-sized motor cross T-shirts, and infatuation with Blink 182 left us more than skeptical. However, he has more than met our expectations. Not only is he an amazing dedicated musician, he has morphed into the responsible dad of the band and has actually taken the lead when it comes to business matters.
Kenji's old band played a show in Vegas that Dia attended while she resided there about a year and a half ago. They talked every once in a while. When it became necessary to find a second guitar player Dia gave him a ring. Kenji became the lucky second contender of our next interrogation which took place over the phone, "So, how much do you know about music theory? Are you familiar with the Mixolydian scale?" We asked him these along with a whole serious of other ridiculous questions that none of us knew the answers to. Kenji bought a plane ticket in September and within a week he was standing in my unfurnished living room with a guitar, a back pack ,and of course his stuffed panda bear. The first day I made him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, gave him our CD, a quick hand shake for good measure, and went off to work, leaving him to devise his own means of surviving in his new foreign surroundings.
We quickly formed an unbreakable bond between the four of us, and a sound which fused all of our influences into a single dynamic noise. Powerful and emotionally driven melodies and lyrics with female vocal harmonies, of course. Harmonies that mimic sirens. (Well, maybe not sirens, but pretty close.) If I had to put us in a genre I would definitely say Pop and hopefully no critics will jump on my back for using "Edgy" as an adjective to describe our sound as well. And now, after an adequate description of our sound, perhaps now would be a good time to go over our song writing process. It begins with a dream. Somewhere in between plunging off a cliff without any hope of reaching the bottom and finding myself nude in English class, a soft melody plays from a concealed jukebox. At this point I spring from my bed, grab my guitar, and if I am concerned about disturbing my sister, rush into a closet. Here, within my cube of concentration, is the moment when either a song is born or dies a slow nameless death. I repeat the jukebox melody several times in my head. Soon a chord progression and a song structure are laid out. The middle of the night is the paramount time to write lyrics. All day long thoughts are collected and as I lie in bed they are rearranged and settled. So by the time I am roused from sleep for a song writing session my thoughts are most focused and intense. After jotting down the basic structure and lyrics, I fall into bed reluctant yet exhausted and a bit apprehensive to how the song will take shape in the morning. The song is then presented to Dia. If she approves she'll learn the vocals, which she almost always recites perfectly after hearing it the first time. She'll then proceed to add her little quirks and particulars. Occasionally, after I have explained the lyrical content, she will modify a few lyrics here and there to convey the meaning more accurately.
I write my songs about anything that can make me laugh, or cry, or really happy, which would usually be one of the two "L's": love and literature. If I'm not writing songs, or playing the guitar, I will most likely be found reading. I love English or British Literature written in the 18th and 19th centuries. You know, really old, classy fairy-tale stuff. Also, any American Literature from the 20's. I love Fitzgerald, Salinger, and Steinbeck. "Monster", the first song off our new album ,"Something Real", is about East of Eden written by Steinbeck. "Indiana", is about the book, Indiana, written by George Sand. I stayed up late finishing that book. After I turned to the last page and my eyes fell upon the last word, I hurled the novel to the floor and called my sister. Wailing with sobs of uncontrollable volume (my neighbors can confirm this), I asked her how to soothe my tender heart. With slight annoyance in her voice, after patiently listening to my lamentations, she said very calmly and matter-of-factly, "Meg, write a song." Well, O.K. And that's pretty much how it happens most of the time.
As for the future, I don't have any detailed plans for our band. I could say that my goals are to make "X" amount of money, or to sell "Y" amount of records, or reach "Z" amount of fans. Sure, those things are important and vital to the continuation of our careers, but the main goal here is to make really good, moving music that will effect peoples' lives in a positive way. I believe music is a living organism, changing and growing and falling back again as time moves forward and I want to be part of that cycle in a significant way. After recording our first album I realized that there is this voice, a tiny living creature within our music yearning to be released, but at this time it is just the beginning. We've so much to learn about every aspect of the art and the point is to keep learning and learning and learning.
-Meg Frampton
