Katie: Okay, so you want to introduce yourself?
Matt: I am Matt MacDonald, and I sing for the Classic Crime

Katie: What do you think makes The Classic Crime different from the other bands on Tooth and Nail?
Matt: Well all the bands are different (laughs), and a lot of our labelmates are doing different things musically. I think especially right now a lot of our labelmates are really broadening their sounds, which is inspiring because for a while it seems like Tooth & Nail put out a lot of the same records, and now it sounds like they are branching out. I think what makes us different is that we try not to stick to one genre, and we are kind of schitzophrenic in that sense. We all have different influences and we all write different songs and we all love different types of music...
Katie: Versatile?
Matt: What?
Kelly: Nevermind..
Matt: Sorry, I'm.. retarded, apparently. (laughter) So we try not to play to a certain scene, specifically, and people say it hurts us but I think that in the end it should help us reach a broader audience.
Kelly: It seems to help.
Matt: I'd like it to.

Katie: What is it you hope to accomplish by making music? Do you have any goals in mind?
Matt: Well, ultimately people want to leave their mark in the world, regardless of what they're doing, and we would like to leave a mark of good things we have done in peoples' lives. Music can be therapeutic, so we hope in some way we can help people get through things that are hard in life just by relating to things we have been through. So, that's one aspect, and we really have a heart for the world in general and the suffering of a lot of people in third world countries, so we hope to be able to give ourselves in other countries, and try to make a dent in poverty in general. We are really blessed.. we have a lot to complain about, because everyone else is complaining, but we don't really have that much in the big picture. We haven't done a lot of it yet, but we are going to.

Katie: On that subject, back in early 2007, you blogged about a recent trip to Calcutta, India. What do you think was the most important thing you took away from that experience?
Matt: I guess I just-- I knew this in my head, but it really helped to affirm it in my heart-- that we're all the same. Humans are not in certain predicaments because they are lesser people, or bad people. There's beauty all over the world, and humans in general, in every society, have a lot of similarities; they love their friends, they take care of their families. Deep down they are good, and a lot of times they are born in situations that they don't deserve-- or at least to us we feel they don't deserve. I took a way a lot of good things, but that would be one of them, that we're all essentially the same--
Katie: No one is better than anyone else...
Matt: Right, if we're born in a position of providence or promise, it's kind of our duty to help those who aren't. So yeah, it kind of affirmed that in my life.
Katie: Have you been back since then?
Matt: No, but Skip, our drummer, and I were talking about the opportunity of going in January again. It's just that it's $2,500! Yeahhh, I already hit up everyone I knew I first time around. I think it's worth it, definitely, but it's just a matter of getting the money.
Katie: Thinking about making an annual trip out of it?
Matt: Yeah, I'd love to! I'd love to make--
Kelly: Go on tour man! Hit up India! (laughs)
Matt: Atleast once a year, yeah! That's what we did when we were there; we played music for them, it was fun.
Kelly: Did you find that when you were down there, people were more happier than Americans?
Matt: You know what... yes! It's the strangest thing. Apparently when we were there, we were the highlight of the year, or whatever you know, because they don't have a lot of Americans visiting or doing anything interesting like that; but it was nonstop smiles, with the most simpliest of games and the most simpliest of things. You know, when you have less I think you can appreciate, you can enjoy yourself with less. Being in a band has been a slow process of minimalizing our lifestyles; and we don't have a lot of extra money, or a lot of extra space for stuff. Slowly our wardrobes drindled and it came down to basically what we needed; the pair of jeans we were going to wear all tour, and the rest of the stuff... who cares! It's kind of freeing a little bit, because our lives, I would say, are more joyful than when we had a bunch of stuff we had to take care of. Now we only need to take care of ourselves and it's fine. Play music and take care of ourselves, trim the fat.

Katie: About the new CD--
Kelly: It's out today!
Matt: That's right! Holler!
Katie: What did you do differently with the new CD that you didn't do with Albatross?
Matt: We did a lot differently-- the recording process was way different in that we didn't use click tracks or quantizing, which in laymen's terms, it's like no digital snapping to a grid.
Katie: You had said that you wanted to record the CD like CDs were recorded 15 years ago...
Matt: Right! Like, we wanted to do a record to capture a band's sound how they did before digital processing came in and you were able to basically...
Kelly: Fake it!
Matt: (laughs) Put it through a formula and come out with this cookie cutter sound and our producer, Elvis, really backed up. His name is Michael Baskette, we call him Elvis, he really backed our desire to do this and recorded a lot of stuff live, in a room... The songs just have a flow and they have a contrast that you wouldn't have with a real, quantized, computerized sound. We're really proud of it.

Katie: Why did you guys decide to use Elvis?
Matt: Because... we talked to a few people but when I talked to him, he seemed the most excited. It's really exciting because he has worked with some big bands like Incubus and Chevelle and Story Of The Year, a bunch of bands, and he loves our music. So, it's humbling. It's also like, "Alright, he loves our music so let's give it over to him." And that's what you need in a producer, someone who will push you and be excited for you.

Katie: Why the name "Silver Cord"?
Matt: The Silver Cord is a literary metaphor that dates back to the Old Testement of the Bible but it has also been passed down through mystic circles. It basically is the cord that attaches your spirit to your body. Once it severs, you die. There's been stories of people who have died and have an out of body experience-- they're hovering above their body and they notice a silver, tinsel like cord connected to their body and it draws them back in. There's numerous stories on the internet; so it's not only a metaphor, it's actually, these people see it. It's kind of cool, it was just an awesome picture of, well number one, the fragility of life; how fragile we're being held from here and the spirit world with a tinsel like, thin cord. A lot of the songs on the record are a reflection of doing more with your life because it's fleeting and fragile and mortality... It's a fact of life, you're going to die so what are you doing...
Kelly: That's great...
Matt: I know! (laughs) It's a little bit challenging in that sense, but a lot of the songs are just about death. One of the songs, Abracadavers, is inspired by the bodies exhibit and going to see corpses plasticized, because that's how we're going to end up. But a lot of the songs are about life and the good things in life--
Kelly: That's refreshing!--
Matt: Yeah, there's a contrast!
Kelly: Not about love and breakups...
Matt: There is one love song, one or two, we actually don't write love songs a lot, but we figure that's a part of life so we've got to throw it in there.

Katie: Why did you guys decide to go with a concept album instead of having the songs stand alone?
Matt: We never actually... we actually hate concept records, or well I specifically do, because a lot the times, the concept is forced. Concepts also take a song and put it in a two dimensional form, so it's only about this story. I like a song to be three dimensional, I like it to be about you or something you can feel... let it have that X-factor in it. With concepts, you can kind of get a 2-d message. I was really leery with all of that, but it just made sense. We were looking it up, Justin and I, and we were looking at the concepts we had for the songs... life and death, life and death, and we started looking up the silver cord and started reading people's stories of their experiences and it was creepy; it kind of gave us chills. We were like, "This is an awesome album title." So we wrote the rest of the songs with that in mind.

Katie: What kind of expectations did you have for this album?
Matt: We... I don't know, it's crazy. We don't have any expectations anymore because they've been dashed to bits. We hope for the best, but prepare for the worst... Y'know, if the record flops, we go out, do this, and try to learn the lesson that'd being taught to us. It's hard, we had a lot of expectations the first time around. Although it looked good on paper, just the state of the economy and gas prices, it's putting us financially in the ground to be out there. We just want to be able to continue to make music, hoping that this record is the platform to be able to do that.
Katie: How do you think the industry will respond to it?
Matt: I... have to not read reviews, because even the good ones are missing the point sometimes. It kind of makes me frustrated when their criticisms, sometimes I'm just like, "What?!" I have no idea what that's even about! So, yeah I try not to read them, but I hope that they can respect it. Musically, I think that it's leaps and bounds ahead of Albatross. Sonicly, as far as the sounds that we put on this record, it's way more original. Lyrically, I think there way a lot more time put into the lyrics, atleast on my part. Actually, I'm the only one that writes them, so all on my part.

Kelly: Are you guys going to have a new video?
Matt: Yeah! We've got a new video coming out, it's actually going to premire within the next week or so, on MySpace. It's for Abracadavers; it's kind of a different video, it's a little bit of a concept video in itself.
Kelly: Who directed it?
Matt: Dan Dobi. We pulled out all the stops for us--
Kelly: Is that Rob Dobi's brother?
Matt: Yeah, Dan does videos and Rob does design stuff. It was really cool, we shot it in LA in an autopsy place slash morgue.
Kelly: What's the concept?
Matt: Well, it's about Abracadavers. I play two characters, three if you count the performance shot. I play a man dissecting myself; performing an autopsy on myself. It's kind of cool, I got to dress up and get in hair and makeup and act, I've never really acted before. I didn't actually know anything about acting, I was just reacting to what I was being told to do. It was cool to be able to set outside myself. I think he edited most of the bad stuff out. (laughs)

Katie: That's all the questions I have... Thank you very much!
Matt: No, thank you!
Kelly: Yes, thank you!