Interview: Conducting

Collin: When and how did the band get started?

John: We started in late 2003 when I started recording songs on guitar on my four track tape recorder of stuff I had been writing with my best friend from high school Chase. I knew Greg Donnelly (drums) through an old bandmate and so I called him up and gave him a copy of the tape and he started writing drums to it. Chase, Greg and I started jamming at Gregs barn, but Chase left to go away to the Art Institute for Graphic design in San Diego before we even came up with the band name (which sure as hell paid off for him better than staying in Sac and playing music, because he has his degree and a career down in LA now, whereas we are all broke and in debt from touring lol!). My old band had shared a room with With Passion, and I knew Jeff Morgan from this and knew he was no longer in that band, so I called him to see if he wanted to join up on guitar duties to replace Chase and he agreed to joined us despite how horrid we were back then lol. Once we had about 4 or 5 songs written high school friend Chris Macres took vocal duties, and we found bassist Phil Williamson from hardcoremusic.com's message board when he posted that he was a bassist looking to join or start a band. This completed the earliest line up of the band. The name came about because Greg and Chris had piano class together at CRC and their eccentric germaphobe teacher said "make sure you wash your hands after playing this pianos every day, if you don't pretty soon you'll be conducting from the grave!" It just sorta clicked with us I guess, and since we wanted to start playing shows so badly we finally settled on it as a name even though I thought it was ridiculous at the time. We only played a handful of shows with this lineup before Chris was replaced by Shaun Gier of With Passion, then Shaun quit after recording a 4 song demo and was replaced by our current and most amazing front man Drew Winter.

Collin: What do you guys enjoy most about playing the music that you play?

John: The live shows are intense! I wouldn't want to play metal if it weren't for all the crazy kids running around in circle pits and stage diving and headbanging. I actually love tons of poppy/emo bands like The Get Up Kids, Brand New, Say Anything Bayside etc. and I wouldn't mind starting a side project band playing stuff along those lines but I don't think I would enjoy playing that style of music live because there just isn't as much energy.

Collin: What are some of your influences in terms of other bands?

John: The stuff I actually listen to now that has influenced my writing is Between the Buried and Me, At the Gates, Arsis, All That Remains, Himsa, Necrophagist, Darkest Hour, but when I was learning guitar the stuff that influenced me was bands like Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, Pantera, and Sepultura. Thats just me though, everyone else has their own influences.

Collin: What made you guys want bring back Conducting?

John: Well Greg Jeff and I did the With Passion thing for about 2 years, but after Shaun and Mike (the last two original members if you don't coun't Jeff who quit and then rejoined) quit it seemed pointless to go on under the name and continue on the downward spiral. We sorta seemed to fall off basically, our label Earache records wasn't really behind us at all and fed us a bunch of empty promises of how we were supposed to go to Europe this past summer and how they were gonna get our video on MTV etc. Staying as With Passion would have trapped us into 2 more albums with them. Promoters and booking agents didn't want to book us because we had pretty much no draw since people seemed to stop caring about us after all the line up changes we had. So we just evaluated the situation and said "alright, we know for a fact that we did way better as Conducting being unsigned then we have ever done as With Passion, and we know we would continue to do well if we reunited, rather than keep struggling playing as With Passion." We couldn't even play more than one song off of "In the Midst of Bloodied Soil" after Mike quit because we didn't know the bass lines to show our new bassist Steven Lovas. So basically it just made the most sense to put With Passion to rest and accept the fact that while it seemed like a good idea to join up with Mike and Shaun two years ago, it ultimately ended up never catching on and not being worth the effort to keep it going. Thankfully Drew was willing to be a part of the band again despite us having kicked him out for personal reasons back then, and it seems the future is looking bright for us.

Collin: Do you think the band has changed at all since you guys first started?  And for that matter, after the break you guys have taken, do you think the new music you're writing will be any different?

John: Well there is a new song up on our myspace so you can be the judge of if its different or not, we actually learned a lot about song writing through our experience writing the With Passion full length. Whereas With Passion was crazy technical (or we tried to be anyways) and didn't have many repeating parts or much room for vocals, the old CFTG stuff was always simpler, catchier and more well structured. We definately take these observations into account when writing new CFTG songs, we try and put structure and catchiness over technicality, and we try to leave plenty of breathing room for vocals to shine through. But of course, I was only 17 when I wrote a lot of the riffs on our "Trials of the Forsaken" EP and I'm 22 now so my musicianship has definately improved over that time so the songs are going to for sure be more technical than the old CFTG. I mean I couldn't possibly bring myself to dumb stuff down to the point of boredom for me just to appeal to the masses, but I'm ultimately more concerned with writing good solid songs as opposed to have that "ooo look what I can do! *shred shred shred*" feel that new With Passion had to it.

Collin: How is the song writing in the band handled? Like who writes the songs and what instruments do you lay down first?

John: Well I write the majority of the riffs, but its not really intentional I think I am just more of a "riff machine" and Greg and I vibe off eachother when jamming really well, whereas Jeff likes to take his time structuring these total technical masterpiece riffs (for instance the main riff to Improper Burial). So for example Jeff will come in with a cool riff like that and we will jam it, then sometimes me and Greg will just improv after it and come up with something that flows well and so we memorize it. Our bassist Steven is originally a guitarist and he writes riffs for us from time to time as well. When it comes to piecing the songs together it seems I come up with ideas when I'm sitting at home bored and I'll go over them at the next practice, usually by the time a song is half done I try to envision a structure to try and finish it. Like I'll say "ok I like this and that riff from earlier, maybe we can transition back into them in some way, then maybe end with whole different riff" Drew will also often have good ideas while we are writing, like for instance sometimes we will get stuck at a certain point of a song and he chimes in "hey I think it would be hella brutal if we went to a part that was kinda like..." and then he air guitars his idea and we try it out.

Collin: Lastly, what do you think we can expect from Conducting in the future?

John: Well we seem to be getting very positive responses so far to our new material and kids are stoked in general on our return. We have great management behind us (Eric Rushing at the Artery Foundation) and we already have some interest from some record labels and booking agents. We didn't expect things to happen so fast, and honestly I don't really look forward to things moving so fast because after the last two hectic years of trying to balance my finances and relationship with chasing the pipe dream that is making it as a musician, I really just want to be home for a while with my girlfriend and work a steady job. But at the same time, playing shows every night is amazing, and we meet all sorts of cool people on tour and have tons of fun, so I dunno. The future is definitely looking bright though, this reunion seems like the smartest step in my "musical career" so to speak.

Collin: Thank you so much for your time if you took the time to read and answer the questions. I would be eternally grateful, and I can't wait to see you guys.