Does anything from your travels inform your music
What city has given you the biggest culture shock?
now?
JARED: Probably Mumbai. If you’re touring over there, the people who have the
COLE: One of the most inspiring musical things I’ve heard from Turkey, and
luxury to bring you there are pretty wealthy. So just seeing the wealth gap, that was kind
Lebanon — all over the Middle East — was the Muslim prayer call. It’s usually
of jarring. It hits you right when you get there like an assault on all your senses. I don’t
blasting over a loudspeaker, sometimes multiple loudspeakers, and they’re
really get culture shock in many places. I mean, Japan is super weird, like in cool ways.
bouncing off walls; it’s reverberating and echoing through the city, and sometimes
But India was pretty shocking. Just walking into a club there’s like heaps of garbage
the speakers aren’t loud enough to pump as far as it should so it’s really distorted.
[outside] and people crawling all over it, and open sewage, and then you go up in this
And they’re singing a beautiful, religious poem or a song; that’s what it appears to
club where you’re playing and [it feels like] you [could] be in Manhattan or something. A
be. I find that very inspiring. I wanted to incorporate some of that into our music
club in Nashville could be the same as a club in Naples. Outside it’s different but when
but it’s very difficult from a music theory level. I’m still trying to figure it out, but I
you’re inside it’s all the same. Even before we went to Japan everyone was telling us the
have been studying that.
audiences just stand still and they clap politely after every song.
JARED: Maybe it’s because I’m not at home and tied to anything, but traveling
around, you’re kind of in a different mindset. Especially if I’m somewhere like
I don’t believe that for a second.
Europe or North America. I just get in this mind frame where it’s easier for me
JARED: No, and that didn’t happen at all. All the kids were going crazy and crowd-
to write songs. When we were in the Middle East, their song structures are [so]
surfing.
different than ours. Everything here is a 4/4 measure, blues-based kind of thing.
When you’re listening to a lot of Arabic music it’s a completely different structure.
I feel like Japan is the one place where they just love
Everything we do is so based in traditional American music. Sometimes it’s cool to
everything.
hear their traditional music, and add elements of that [to our music].
JARED: And when they love something they really, really love it. And find out
everything about it. I like their passion for getting into genres of things and
subcultures.
Even when we were in the Middle East, a lot of the kids that we talked to and
who went to our shows had never been to a rock concert before, but they acted the
same as most of our crowds. It was like an automatic response.
You seem like a tight-knit group and you’ve been
through a lot together. How does this play a part in the
process of writing your songs, conveying a message and
your overall vision? Does that feed into your creative
process?
JARED: 100%. I know bands where there’s a definite main person and no one
else has any input. That would always just seem weird to me. I would have trouble
just being a hired gun or something like that. Not there’s anything wrong with that.
I mean, I would do it for a job, but for us, everything is purely democratic and
everyone writes so it’s always been a process like that. But I couldn’t imagine being
in a band with people I didn’t grow up with. All our parents know each other, and it’s
more like a family.
I’ve started other bands with [other] people and it’s fun and you do your music
and stuff but it’s not something I would dedicate my life to. It’s nice knowing people
that have your back and knowing you’re all in it for the same reason.
Have you learned any vital lessons through traveling? Is
there one singular lesson that stands above the rest?
JARED: Don’t kiss other boys onstage in India because it’s illegal. And they get
really mad at you.
Cole and girlfriend Zumi in Croatia: “Zumi actually
plays sax with us now, she tours with us sometimes.”
72 . TRAVEL WITH PURPOSE