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MUSIC INTERVIEW: PANIC! AT THE DISCO

Brendon Urie & Spencer Smith Create a Whole New Kind of Panic

By: Team Buzzine

April 1, 2011

http://buzzinenetworks.s3.amazonaws.com/videos/Panic_LG_qtp.mp4

With the departure of founding members Ryan Ross and Jon Walker, the pressure was on Brendon Urie and Spencer Smith to carry the Panic! at the Disco flag forward, high and proud. So they enlisted some musician friends (Dallon Weekes and Ian Crawford) to help play and a couple more (John Feldmann of Goldfinger and Butch Walker of Marvelous 3) to help produce what became Vices & Virtues. That new Panic! at the Disco album blends many of the best aspects of the band’s two previous albums into a new spin on their sound. A couple of days before the album was released (and became a Top Ten entry onto the US album charts), Buzzine sat down for a chat with Brendon and Spencer at the Sheraton Hotel in Austin, TX during the SXSW Music Festival.

Stefan Goldby: New record, new year, new lineup -- brand new you?

Brendon Urie: This is the new Panic! We have a new record coming out on March 22^nd called Vices & Virtues. It’s a new Panic really. It’s just Spencer and I working this time on the record, so that’s exciting. New tour is coming up…

Spencer Smith: We’ve got a lot going on.

SG: Also you have Dallon Weekes and Ian Crawford joining you on stage: Why them, and what do they add to the mix?

BU: Dallon Weekes had a band called The Brobecks, and we were fans of the band, we really liked the music, and when we finally met him, we just kind of played a few songs together, jammed a little bit… The first thing we noticed, actually, is we shared the same humor, so that was a telltale of, “Okay, we definitely get along with this guy, so I hope that he wants to play with us.” We talked with him about it and he said, “Yeah, of course, I’d love to play with you.” So we were lucky enough to win him, and also Ian Crawford, our other friend, who is an amazing musician as well. And they’ve been touring with us for the past two years, I’m glad to say…

SG: When it came time to really start focusing on this new record, was there a specific mindset? Was there intention, or was it just go and see what happens?

BU: When we started writing for the record, no direction was really talked about. Each song had its own direction, but ultimately, with the album, it was never a full concept prepared for it. So in that regard, yeah, we just wrote an idea and if that was where we wanted it to go, we just kept going. So it jumps around a bit, sonically, and there’s a lot of different-sounding stuff, so that’s important as well, though. We love doing that.

SG: Did it move quicker, with a couple less voices to balance, shall we say?

BU: Less arguing, yeah. With less people, there was less arguing.

SS: I think, at the beginning, it took us longer to get into being confident that we knew exactly where we wanted the record to go…Even though it was still Panic, it felt like a new thing, and we knew that we could kind of go wherever we wanted to, and also Brendon lyrically figuring out exactly what he wanted to talk about on the record. But after that, it was pretty smooth. We just kept kicking off the oldest songs and keeping the newest ones…

BU: [Laughs] That was the real problem, yeah.

SS: So we just had to say, “All right, we’re done…or we’ll never be done.”

SG: You also had two more musicians in the studio with you, in the shape of your producers Butch Walker and John Feldmann. Was that a deliberate move, to have a couple of platinum musicians in their own right along for the ride?

BU: Working with John Feldmann and Butch Walker…they’re both very different but equally amazing. We started working with John Feldmann first, and our work ethic wasn’t nearly what it is now. It used to be a little more relaxed [laughs], and John helped us get out of that pretty quickly. He is a workaholic, to say the very least. He’s got this work ethic…he’s like a 7:00 a.m guy, and he’s up until like 2:00 in the morning… On the elliptical, running, pounding coffees, in-between vocal takes he’s working out and stuff [laughs]… But John Feldmann is awesome, and he definitely got us out of the lethargic behavior that we had, so that was cool. And Butch Walker too…he’s got such an awesome studio and is so talented too. Working with both of them: they’re both singers, so melody is a huge thing for our band, and that was something we didn’t have to compromise with those guys. It was awesome bouncing melodic ideas off those guys, so that was cool. We love those guys.

SG: Is there a day of recording this album that stands out most in your mind?

BU: There’s a lot we can think of. A really cool thing we got to do toward the end of the recording process was in Butch’s studio - we got to bring a children’s choir in. It was 15-18 kids around the age of 8 to 12 years old, and it was surprising how good their pitch was and how good they could actually sing. I don’t remember being able to do that at that age, so it blew us away, and having them come into the studio and record was really awesome. That was memorable.

SG: Do you think the experience of making this album now with the two of you has broadened what you think you’re capable of as a musician? You’ve certainly put a lot of pressure on yourselves…

BU: [Laughs] We tend to do that to ourselves quite a bit.

SS: At first, we didn’t know what was going to happen. I think, lyrically, it was a big change. Musically, it wasn’t that big of a change, we just had more to do. But it was nice, after a little while, to get zoned in on exactly what you wanted to do and having songs you were really excited about. But now, to have it done, it’s somewhat of a relief, and I think yeah, we do have a different perspective on moving forward, knowing that it’s possible and we’re really happy with what we’ve done.

BU: I think we feel that we keep getting better and better, and we hope that that continues. [Laughs]

SG: What are you proudest of about the finished album?

BU: Probably proud that it’s finished finally. I think, for us, I’m most proud that we did this as a duo, together, just the two of us.

SS: It’s like Will Smith and his son, you know?

BU: Exactly. It was just the two of us.

SG: Wait, which one is Will?

BU: Well…he’s Big Willie style and I’m probably little Willie style…

SS: The Karate Kid…

BU: [Laughs] I’m the Karate Kid, yeah exactly. I’m just proud that we did it. I thought we did a really good job. I’m excited to get this record out finally.

SG: And a great music video to kick it off. Can you tell is a little bit about the original concept and about life on set with director Shane Drake?

BU: We shot the video for “Mona Lisa” with Shane Drake, and he is awesome. We love working with Shane, he’s so fun. [Laughs] We just started kind of bouncing ideas, like we want to allude to some of the stuff we’ve done in past videos, we want to do little homages to “Nine…” and do ‘this’ in here, just for fun, just to see if fans pick up on it, and they definitely did, so that was cool. [Laughs] But he’s always a blast to work with. He’s always got really cool ideas.

We worked with a group of people called The League of Steam, and they build their own gadgets, they have their own wardrobe, they go out and do little showcases for people and interact and have ghost machines that have ghost voices talking and stuff… Really cool. We had them come out for our live show too in LA, and they were interacting with the fans in line…it was awesome. [Laughs] But it’s really cool when you can work with people as creative as League of Steam and Shane Drake, and that was a blast. It felt really fun.

SG: You’ve played the first few shows with “Panic! 2.0…” Obviously it’s different. I’m not gonna talk around the elephant in the room, so how specifically is a Panic! show different compared to what it was before?

SS: It will be interesting to see once we actually get going on the tour, because we’ve just been putting ideas together recently for the stage show…I think we got away from the bigger production on the ‘Pretty. Odd.’ tour, but it’s something that we were always big fans of, and I think we want to do as much as we can on the first tour. But as far as playing with Ian and Dallon, it has been awesome because we feel like how we did at the very beginning of touring with Panic! because none of the offstage stuff is affecting the onstage stuff, and it’s refreshing to have. And it’s been amazing to work with those guys, even musically and then vocally. We’ve been able to do harmonies that we’ve never even really done before. It is a new thing, but it’s been cool.

BU: It’s awesome. [Chuckles] It’s been fun.

SG: Plus, all that touring expense saved because you don’t have to have four buses now.

SS: Exactly. [Laughs]

BU: [Laughs] Which could have been the case, definitely.

SG: Between the two of you—you’ve played together for a decent number of years at this point—how do you know when it’s a great night on stage?

BU: When you’re on stage, you kind of get a feel, like back and forth - I’m running around on stage from the front going to the back to talk to Spence, and we’re just looking at each other… After playing together for a while, you just have that sense of “yeah, this is going well.” But then there are the obvious points of the show where guitars mess up or an amp shuts off, or you trip or something happens where you just have to pick up the slack again and keep going. But usually we can tell from just the crowd reaction. That really does take the live show to another level really. I just makes you feel…I don’t know. The crowd is a huge part of the live show.

SG: What, so far, has been the single best moment on stage for you guys?

SS: Hmmm. There’s been a couple things because we’ve done…where we never dreamed we’d be doing headlining tours like we’ve done, and then to do a festival where obviously not everybody is there for you at that time, but to be playing later on in the day… We played one in South Africa, and to just be in South Africa and then to play to 30,000 is just really surreal. But also on the first headlining tour where we brought out other performers…just to look at that live show and see what we were able to do - it’s so far beyond just going up and playing in your jeans and t-shirts and stuff. I was really proud that we were able to put that together, knowing nothing about production like that.

BU: We want to keep doing that. [Chuckles]

SG: We’ve done a bunch of interviews this week of artists at all different stages of their careers. What would you say has been the biggest surprise about how your career has gone, compared to how you thought this would go? Because, to a lot of people, your career trajectory is what they dream of and how they picture it’s going to be, even down to ‘Behind the Music’ moment in the middle…

BU: It’s weird thinking about longevity and the career long-term, which is something we want. We want to be a band as long as we can. When we watch The Rolling Stones play and Paul McCartney still playing, that gives us hope. It’s awesome. It’s so cool. So I’d be…maybe not surprised but very pleased if that would occur. I think that would be awesome…but who can really say?

SS: It’s hard because… all the bands we were listening to when we were doing our first records and our favorite bands were touring in vans and trailers because that music just wasn’t being played on the radio and stuff like that, so I think, initially, that was success, to just be able to do it for your career, not have to have another job. So that’s how it started out, and then right around the time that we started getting more success than we really thought was possible, the genre of music we were in started getting some notoriety and on bigger levels, so we didn’t really ever… The idea of playing huge arenas and stuff wasn’t ever like, “Yeah, that’s what I want to get to,” because it never seemed possible.

BU: We wanted to stay in a van and play these little shows, and then we had to come up with the Circus Tour, like, “All right, this will be fun,” but we never expected this would happen. But it was cool.

SS: I wouldn’t care if we were ever back at that level that we were at the end of the first record because…I don’t know… it’s cool to play, but you’re also playing in like an ice hockey arena every night…

BU: The sound is not that great…

SS: I think our band and our show fits more in like a theater, so I like playing in those kind of places.

SG: Doing a week in a theater is kind of nice – or maybe the Ozzy style of touring. Play a show, three days off. Play a show, three days off… It’s a good aspiration, I think.