Lit - Jeremy Popoff

[Guitarist] Kevin [Baldes] was a lot more involved this time. On our records we’ve always invited friends to have them sit in with us, jam and throw out ideas. But for the most part it’s pretty much me and my brother.

I think it just comes out personal. If I’m writing a song that’s about a certain situation I will tell the other guys what I want to do then they will help tweak and arrange it.

In the past we’ve tried to keep things kind of vague. When we would write something that was very personal we would tend to adjust it to leave things open to interpretation so to not alienate anybody. Then there was the fear of not opening up too much personally and being vulnerable but on this record there was stuff I was writing that I was nervous to say. But I just thought it was real and I wanted to put it all out there.

I don’t know why. Maybe we were still figuring it all out. We had this thing where we wanted everybody to be able to relate. If someone asked us what songs were about we would tell them it was about whatever you wanted it to be. But now there are specific songs that are about something. I feel confident in the band and the band’s ability to deliver live but as far as feeling confident as a songwriter there is a certain degree of vulnerability you throw out there and I don’t think anyone ever feels confident about that. When you open yourself up to personal shit you never put down the pen and go “Fuck I’m so great.”

Well we’ve been keeping our clothes on now for a few years. AJ went to jail for one night so we decided to hold back.

Somewhere in North Carolina.

Yeah, that was a wakeup call. Grown men aren’t supposed to get naked in front of audiences.

It’s because we wrote it, recorded it, mixed it and produced it all in Orange County. The whole band felt the most unified when it came to this album. If you don’t like this record then you don’t like Lit.

When we started recording we didn’t even realize we were doing the record. It started out as almost writing and demoing. The engineer and studio we found were so good that when the time came to do the record we realized that it might be halfway done. It sounded as cool if not better than our other records so we just kept going.

I miss a lot of the people. When we signed with them in 1998 we got to work with a lot of cool people. Then we grew up a little bit and realized that a lot of the people we thought were our friends weren’t. Then one by one they were dropping like flies. I don’t miss anything about it now but I would love to be in business with the same team we originally signed up with.

The main problem is that the day the album came out our product manager got fired, which is never a good sign. Then the president of the label changed and everyone moved up a notch. So they went from jobs they were really good at to jobs that they didn’t know a whole lot about. There was a whole learning curve. Then there were so many people losing their jobs in the industry that people started being more concerned with that as opposed to how they are going to break out records. They were operating out of fear as opposed to passion for music.

So many people never even knew that Atomic even came out. But the people that did, said it was better than A Place In the Sun. In my opinion we did our job for Atomic but it’s not our job to market and promote CDs. With this record we are doing everything we can to let people know that it’s coming out. Now we are shipping more records of this album than we did of Atomic.

A good friend of mine is Matt Hotch and he won the Biker Build Off. His shop is right down the block from my house so I would pop in. We had a poker game one night so I might be in it.

I sure don’t.

I build songs and that’s about it.

We did a secret show a couple of weeks ago at The Viper Room. There was a cocktail reception on the roof and AJ just decided to jump into the pool then greet everyone dripping wet.

[laughs] Naw, he’s not on drugs.

Alcohol. AJ is a big Jagermeister drinker and the rest of us are all about vodka and beer.

We fight like any brothers but we’re the only kids in our family and we’re only two years apart. We’ve always been close and we’ve always played music together.

I am.

Not really. We used to beat each other up when we were little but we’re over it. When we do fight it’s never about the band but about dumb everyday shit.

Yeah it was Iron Maiden opening for UFO in Long Beach. I think we were nine and seven. It was pivotal because the next day AJ and I were rocking out and playing air guitar in the living room. He was in radio can that be said better? so he was pretty liberal in taking us to see music.

Well in fifteen minutes we’re actually supposed to go on The Tonight Show.

One time someone threw up a prosthetic leg. That was freaky.

Yeah we just looked for the guy without a leg and gave it back to him.

The worst thing we ever got hit with was when we did this outdoor festival in Providence Rhode Island with 10,000 people. One of the sponsors of the show was Speed Stick and they thought it would be a good idea to give everybody who came in a Speed Stick. It was inevitable they would start throwing them and I got hit right in the face, from 100 feet out. That sucked. It split my nose open and I said, anyone who brings me that guy gets a $100. I think security ended up throwing him out.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck