Interview

Here is an interview I conducted with Thomas Dutton (vocals/guitar) of Forgive Durden Thursday, November 11, 2008.


EP: First off, can you please state your name and position in the band?
FD: My name is Thomas; I play guitar and sing in Forgive Durden.

EP: Well, let’s get right to it. Did you consider calling it quits with Forgive Durden, and music in general, after the rest of the band members left late last year?
FD: As soon as I left that band meeting, I called our A&R guy Johnny Minardi and I told him what happened. At that point, I’d already started working on the musical so the immediate questions were: “do we change the band name,” “do we get new people and make a permanent lineup or follow in the style of Bright Eyes or Say Anything where it’s a one man show.” But it was never a question of quitting.

EP: How did the idea for Razia’s Shadow originally come about?
FD: We recorded the first demo/snippet probably more than two years ago. At that point, I already had the idea for a musical and the second half of the story was coming to me as far as a main character who felt destined for greater things and wanting to leave this place he felt constrained by. I really like stories of destiny so that story line really came fast to me.
EP: So were you writing the story as you were recording?
FD: I had the second half of the story planned out by the first time we recorded a full demo but once we went into the studio I had the entire story mapped out.

EP: So you’d been writing and recording this album for two years. Was there any special moments that really stick out to you?
FD: I pretty much knew all of the singers prior to doing the record but the only person I didn’t know was Chris Conley from Saves The Day. I knew his drummer so that’s how I got that connection. He heard some of the stuff and sent it over to Chris. One day when I was in the studio and my phone rang so I answered it. He was like “hello, this is Chris Conley.” I just sat there... I was speechless. He was actually one of the first people who sent in his vocals to me. Hearing this singer I grew up idolizing singing my song was such a crazy moment.

EP: You have quite a few big name guests on the album. Did you initially plan to have all of these guest spots while you were writing for the album?
FD: I don’t know if I had the idea for 13 characters but I definitely wanted a good handful; probably 8 or 9. Some of them were really obvious. The first person I cast was Brendon from Panic [At The Disco]. He sang on the first demo we did. Him and Max [Bemis (Say Anything)] for the spider.
EP: I thought it was really interesting how you added lyrics from Max’s ‘Spider Song’ into his lyrics for the song ‘The Spider And The Lamps’ and in Aaron’s [Weiss (mewithoutYou)] narration he said “brownish spider” from his song ‘Brownish Spider.’
FD: I am a fan of all of the people’s bands who I asked to be a part of [this album] so I wanted to be a fanboy a little too. When I first sent it over to Max I wasn’t sure how he would react but he liked it.

EP: What are the biggest differences fans can expect seeing you for the first time performing this music versus the album?
FD: The biggest difference is that we only have six people on stage where if we were trying to pull of the record we would need 30 people and we don’t really have the means to do that. I have a great girl and guy singer that fill in the different singer’s shoes. We talked about rearranging the songs to be rock songs so we could pull them off live without a track or keep it more like the record. You have to expect being a support band on a tour that people don’t really know who you are.
EP: Also with the album just being released.
FD: Exactly. So I decided to make it sound like it did on the record. We tried to recreate as much as we could with keyboard, piano and guitar but we also have the backing to fill in things we couldn’t recreate.
EP: I think it actually turned out really well.
FD: Yeah, thanks.

EP: Do you ever plan to perform Razia’s Shadow as a full stage musical?
FD: The one thing that’s really cool about this project is that there isn’t really a ceiling to what we can do. There has been a lot of talk between our management and label and some cool ideas bouncing around. Our first main goal is to pull off some sort of full production with a lot of guests there. There are even these insane ideas to buy the movie rights or give it to Broadway producers. But our first really big thing is early next year we want to put on some full production of it.
EP: I’ve always loved the idea of hearing a record that was meant to be together in its entirety live.
FD: That’s what I’ve tried to do live. We’re going to add in the song ‘Toba The Tura’ [to the live set] and once we do that we’ll be playing the first five tracks from the record and that will help people understand that there is a storyline there.

EP: How does it feel being back on the road after almost two years working on this project?
FD: It’s awesome. Touring is this weird, “grass is always greener” thing. When you’re on tour you wish you were home; when you’re at home you wish you were on tour. It’s really interesting with this group though because I sort of plucked them and none of them knew each other before joining this group. It’s much different than with the previous lineup because we were a group of friends touring together. This time it’s more like an episode of [MTV’s] Real World. Only a few of them have ever toured before so it’s funny to see them react to things the way I did when I was first touring.

EP: Your debut album Wonderland was also a record based on a story. Do you see Forgive Durden’s future releases staying in this same format?
FD: I don’t know. Besides our first EP, there’s never been a personal song about me. I have plenty of stuff to talk about in my life. Initially I thought this musical would be a side project because it would be impossible to tour with so I was going to record this record and another rock record back-to-back. The musical was going to come out and then I was going to let it run its course and then put the rock record out but the musical took everything over... which I was happy about. I still want to make a really raw rock record that is very personal. At the same time, because my mind was in that musical universe for so long, when we stopped [recording] my brain kept churning so I have these ideas for if we were to do another one and directions to go with a new story line. I could go anywhere with this after so we’ll see.
EP: Do you ever feel that your personal life experiences find their way into the stories somehow?
FD: Definitely. With Wonderland I used the story line to make social commentary and give my opinion on politics, greed, and religion. I did that a little bit more subtly on Razia’s Shadow but on [this story] I wanted to do this very epic, movie style tale. But things I care about and believe bleed through everything.

EP: What is the band’s plan after this tour?
FD: We get home in the middle of December and we’re figuring out our plans for January but we’ll be back on the road in January. One thing we’ve been talking about is whether we want to tour [Razia’s Shadow] to the ground or keep it more special. We definitely want to get it off the ground but once we do, perhaps do more selective stuff so it does feel like this different, special thing. We’ll probably be touring through the spring and I don’t know if we’ll keep touring through the summer or not. It depends on how everything goes I guess.

EP: Well, I’ve run through my questions, thanks so much for your time.


Thank you again to Thomas for his time and thank you to Jessy Easton for setting up the meeting. Pick up the band’s new album Razia’s Shadow: A Musical in stores and online now.