OneRepublic

Q: Where does the name of the album, “Waking Up,” come from?
A: The album title obviously went through a lot of different evolutions, and it was hard. Coming up with ‘Dreaming Out Loud’ was a very simple, kind of eureka process where someone just brought up the title of a song that we have that wasn’t even on the album and everyone just kind of went, ‘Yeah’. This time around, it wasn’t that easy. We went through all kinds of scenarios and was one even self-titled, but we thought that was a little anticlimactic. It took us a while and it wasn’t until we finished recording just about all the music that we realized, ‘Waking Up,’ which is a song title, actually works really well with what this album is about and where we’re at right now and how it relates to ‘Dreaming Out Loud.’ The first album was us wanting to get out of LA and make a difference and get into the music scene and start traveling and start touring and it was a lot of dreaming out loud, sitting around playing poker, talking about one day maybe we’ll go to Spain and so on. Now for the last year and a half we’ve been to almost every continent and 7 different countries, now we have a different perspective. It’s really a sense of waking up to what we dreamed of and now we’re in it.
Q: All the singles and the album have a similar artwork, where was the inspiration?
A: The first piece of art that we came across was what we have on the album cover. Interestingly enough, that was done by our first drummer, Jerrod Bettis, who moved to LA from Colorado with us to start the band at the very beginning. We stayed in close contact with him and he actually designed the tree cover for ‘Dreaming Out Loud,’ so we’ve always liked that but we kind of hit him up for some artwork for this album and we sent him some of the initial music, and we told him, listen to the music, you know us, what would you do? He lives in Seattle and he was walking down the street and he saw a trash can that has been splattered with muddy water, so he took a picture of splatter that was dripping down the trash can and put it into Photoshop, changed colors and worked his magic and sent us that, which is now the cover. We thought it was interesting how he even came up with it, and at that point, we asked him to style it for all the songs, and the type of ideas that come across, and that’s where all the artwork came from.
Q: Is song writing a collective effort or just a single person?
A: Writing the songs for this album was a little bit of both. The main musical vision for ‘Waking Up’ was Ryan, and then a big part was Brent. They sort of envisioned music that moved a little quicker then our first album, music that was more cinematic, and more full of strings, and hopefully a little more innovative, and maybe a little tougher, a little less sad and melancholy, and a little more up tempo and happy. It was really them heading up the vision for the music and then the rest of us were there and filled in all the cracks with instruments, ideas, music, and Ryan does all the lyrics. We don’t really have a formula, it just happens.
Q: Is there any specific messages you hope to get across to your fans?
A: When we listen to other artists, we always admire those that made a difference with their music. It wasn’t just music for the sake of music. We admire artists that manage to captivate something inside of listeners and somehow, inspired a change or empowerment, or things like that so we never want to write music just for the sake of music. I think for ‘Waking Up,’ we wanted the music to be more uplifting and more light hearted.
Q: The reason for the two-year time gap since the last album was due to touring, correct.
A: A lot was because we were touring a lot and the crazy thing about how things worked out for us on the first album is obviously the remix with Timberland. Timberland has done lots of touring, across the world so his name was already out there. Therefore, when the ‘Apologize’ remix came out it went to all those countries because everyone was familiar with him. So a lot of last year was us chasing all of that. The song went international within three months, and we didn’t want to say no to hardly anything, so we ended up going everywhere trying to cement our name and our reputation in as many places as we could. Once we finally got off the road we needed six months to take a breather. So we had to take a break and we wanted to write the second album not out of being rushed, but out of a more relaxed, pensive, state of mind. But this was of course a risk because we didn’t want any of our fans to forget about us, and we them to think that we forgot about them.
Q: What is it like when you hear that a new single you release only takes hours or days to be topping a chart internationally?
A: It’s kind of crazy, actually, it’s very flattering and at the same time its daunting because that means were going to be on an airplane for a big part of our life. The sense of having so many people in so many different countries and cultures that want us to come out and play for them and meet them is incredible.
Q: Do you feel Twitter helps to connect with fans?
A: It does. I’m still trying to learn about it and the other day it sort of hit me. I sent a message about something and literally three second later Eddie had it on his phone and there was like eighty responses in the next five minutes. That was the first time I realized that Twitter is massive, and somehow you can connect with fans and they can connect with you as your walking down the street, or going about your life you can just kind of send a message to whoever at any time and its scary how connecting it is and it almost feels like a camera is on you constantly.
Q: If you were not in One Republic, what would your job be?
A: I would be working in the same town I live in so that I could be with my wife. I think this is my one and only experience of touring. I would love to write books, and I don’t really know what that means or how that would pan out but I would love to try, or work with children, or be a clinical psychologist, or a pastor, or a songwriter or actor, one of those or all of those.
Q: What goals would the band like to achieve in the next years or so?
A: Obviously, we love playing in bigger venues, not for an ego thing, I think we all just love how music translates when that many people are together in one place. It’s very energetic, it’s electric when you have that going on and we want to go back to all the countries we went to last year. Beyond that, we want to try and maintain a certain level of balance in our lives and at some point, I want to shift focus off of what we’re doing and think about certain things that we could do to help make a difference.
Q: Arizona is not currently a tour stop; will you come here at all?
A: I would love to actually, I think next year is a lot of Europe, but near the end of next year and what I want to do is a college tour. It would probably be the second half or end of next year.