YOU SAY PARTY! WE SAY DIE!

A—And you went as far as Newfoundland?

B—Yeah.

A—How was that?  Have you been there before?

B—No, it was our first time. It was very cool. Being on the ferry, you just feel like you’re out in the wild ocean. Giant waves.

A—How long was that ride?

B—Seventeen hours, I think?  I pretty much slept the entire way there…

A—Even though there were giant waves… you just slept like a little baby, being rocked to sleep?

B—Yeah [laughs]. I woke up with an hour to kill and they wouldn’t dock us because the waves were too big. We had to wait for an extra two hours until the waves left.

A—Just floatin’ around in the ocean?

B—Yeah. So I got to watch the waves for a bit and then we landed and… it was nice. Except everyone else was super sick.

A—I like just watching water. It’s really calming for me.

B—Yeah, there’s something really nice about being out on the open sea. It’s also kind of this terrifying, thrilling feeling, mixed with, I don’t know…

A—…feeling like you could go down any second?

B—Yeah. You feel really close to death. But not in the scary, typical way you would imagine it. I’m terrified of death, so you’d think that it would be really scary, but it’s kind of more thrilling, heart racing, kind of…

A—Do you get like that on planes at all? Do you get freaked out of flying?

B—A little bit, not too much.

A—So, would you rather be in a plane or on a boat?

B—I think I’d rather be on a boat.

A—Me too.

B—I’ve just always had an affinity for the ocean.

A—Yeah, same.

B—Probably because of my love for mermaids [laughs]. Trains… trains are great.

A—That would be really cool to do a whole tour on a train, like in Festival Express.

B—Yeah. We got our chance when we were in China, we took a train from Nanjing to Hong Kong. It was full of people and we had some bunk, it was so crowded! It was a classic old train and we got to see all this beautiful countryside.

A—That must have been amazing.

B—It was like an old world, just like you’d imagine China back in the 1930’s or something. It just had this timelessness to it that was really cool.

A—How long was that trip?

B—I think that one was, like, seventeen hours too.

A—Are you in any other side projects?

B—A little bit. Stephen and I have a side project that we’ve been working on for awhile. We’re hoping that in this next year we’ll actually get some recording in and make the album happen,  because we have so many amazing songs. I’m so pumped about it… we’re just forced to put it on the back burner right now.

A—What kind of music is it?

B—It’s kind of electronic but not. I mean, it’s me singing, it’s really me getting the chance to be a solo-songwriter pretty much and then Stephen creates the music to go with it. It’s all collaborative, we work on it together.

A—Do you guys have a name yet?

B—Double Happiness is the name. When we were in China, they were telling us about how when you bless somebody, or wish them well, you wish them happiness, but if they get married, then you would wish them double happiness. It’s not just blessings, or happiness, you always double it.

A—That’s sweet.

B—I remember we thought that was pretty cute.

A—So, You Say Party! We Say Die! have toured and played a lot of festivals abroad, right?

B—Yeah, we did the festival circuit in Europe and the UK and it was a whirlwind! The schedule was really intense and it was crazy drives. It was actually the tour where things kind of fell apart for me, ‘cause it was just so intense.

A—Sounds intense. [laughs]. What was the coolest place you played in Europe?

B—There was this one in Malmo, Sweden, that was pretty cool.  There was this other one, where was it? … I can envision it, ‘cause they had all these cool things in the trees, all these little tree houses you could climb in this forest…

A—Like a little Ewok village?

B—Yeah! It was like going through this magical forest… Sonic Youth played, so Derek and I were losing our minds for Sonic Youth, and embarrassed ourselves in front of them. [laughs] We were like, gushing to them after. So they’re just like, “Oh, that’s nice, what’s the name of your band?” “Oh, we’ll have to check you out. Good for you,” It was really awesome. We were all like, “Hee hee hee, we love you!!”

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