Keep Calm Presents: An Interview with Dylan Mattheisen of Tiny Moving Parts

  

 

     On June 5th, Tiny Moving Parts played to yet another sold-out crowd while a part of Modern Baseball's headlining tour.  Amidst all of the excitement of playing five sold-out shows in a row, including one at Webster Hall with 600+ people, Tiny Moving Part's Dylan Mattheisen took some time to chat with Keep Calm and Carry On about tour, an upcoming LP, and signing to Triple Crown Records!

Keep Calm and Carry On: So you just finished playing a sold-out show here in Manhattan.  How do you think it went?

Dylan Mattheisen: Oh it was super solid.  It was a really, really fun set.  My peddle board fucked up . .  . Yeah it kind of screwed up but you know what, we overcame it and it was so much fun.  Like everybody gave a shit. It was good.

Keep Calm: This was another sold-out show on this tour. You’ve only played to sold-out crowds since the tour began in Philly on Sunday.  What do you think about the tour, as a whole, so far?

DM: It’s just incredible.  There are no other words to say it besides incredible.  I remember we played shows with Modern Baseball last year in basements in Philly.  It would be a good show – a good basement show with 60+ people in a basement.  But now, tonight was like 600 people, sold-out, in fucking New York City.  It’s just insane.  We are very thankful, very stoked about this whole tour. 

Keep Calm:  Since the tour is just beginning, do you have anything that you are most excited about?

DM: We’ve been on the road for 43 days now.  It perfectly lined up 3 different tours with each other.  So we technically did a full US tour, went to Canada for a few days, and then we played Bled Fest in Michigan, and now we are doing an East Coast/Midwest thing again.  We were super excited 43 days ago, honestly.  We just couldn’t wait for this whole trip!  We just couldn’t wait for the whole thing.  It is kind of hard to sum it up.  This last past week has just been sold out shows, it’s insane.

Keep Calm: You’re talking about doing so much touring in the last couple months and it’s really been nonstop.  How do you guys manage it? A lot of bands would hit the point you’re at be like “no way, let’s take a break.”

DM: Oh yeah.  I think that’s where the benefit about us being a family being.  Matt and Billy are brothers and I’m their cousin so even if we were home, no matter what, we would be hanging out with each other every second of every day, basically, of our lives.  Either being on the road in a touring band or being home in our small town – we live in Benson, Minnesota.  It’s a town of like 3,000 people, super small, nothing to do.  It’s just a lot more entertaining to go out there and adventure. 

Keep Calm: You mentioned playing Bled Fest and there were a couple more big festivals you’ve stopped off at including Skate and Surf and SXSW.  Is there a difference in your set or way you perform for these big festivals as opposed to these smaller shows around the country?

DM: Honestly, not really.  The thing about our band – we are only a three piece.  I play guitar so I do a bunch of different tunings.  We want to play the hit songs – is that cool if I say hit songs?   The hit songs!  We want to play or favorite songs off of our past releases and we want to do the hit songs without doing a shitload of different tunings. We molded an overall – what we feel comfortable for a full set.  We do the same thing from house shows to these bigger shows.  Even when we did Skate and Surf, ya know, it’s similar sets.  But the thing is we have a new album and it’s coming out later this year. But we did not want to bore the audience with a shitload of new songs. Nobody wants to do that – like a fuckload of new songs?  If I was an audience member and I liked the band and I saw them perform and all they played was new songs, I’d be like “hey, this is cool but it’s not what I was looking for.”  We find a happy balance between everything.

Keep Calm:  While we are on the topic of your new album, how was writing for this album different than for the first LP This Couch is Long and Full of Friendship?

DM: The two main things – this album, we had so much time to complete the songs. The last album This Couch is Long and Full of Friendship, there’s a couple songs where we didn’t know what to do for certain parts but we went to the studio and figured it out the day of recording.  So it was kind of forced – not really forced but it was really on-the-spot.  This album, we had a lot of time to think it all through, which was really great. Also, it was like – not a pressure – but it was like “okay, we can’t really fuck this up.”

Keep Calm:  Tiny Moving Parts recently signed to Triple Crown Records, which is extremely exciting.  But why sign to Triple Crown now for this album? What made you go for this well-known label for the upcoming release?

DM:  The history of Triple Crown is incredible to us.  They’ve released so much of our favorite albums  Our manager Lisa did a great job of asking Fred Feldman, who is the manager of Triple Crown, to come out and watch us at a show.  That’s basically how this all got started, where we got signed to them.  We were really thankful because we’ve always loved Triple Crown to start it out.  We really don’t know a better step to go to at this point.  You always hear about if you sign to a “major” and you lose all your independence and all this bologna.  We feel comfortable.  We are very grateful for the attention we are getting.  It’s incredible to us.  Billy sacrificed school for it.  All of us sacrificed jobs for being a touring band.  So we are very grateful for everything that is going on.  We just felt comfortable taking the next step with Triple Crown – everything about it.  Fred is an awesome dude to work with and we are just in a very comfortable spot right now. 

Keep Calm: So are you guys done recording that album now?

DM: Yeah, everything’s done. Mixed, mastered, everything.

Keep Calm: Sick, so do you have a tentative release date yet?

DM: Sometime, hopefully mid-September.  Maybe late September.  Not too sure.  For surely, by the end of the year. That’s all we can say.  For surely!

Keep Calm: While we are talking about new releases, just in the last couple weeks, Tiny Moving Parts released a split with Old Gray, which was so awesome. Did you write the songs specifically for the split or did those tracks come about from writing the LP?

DM: Those were our two newest songs.  We wrote a new song and we figured we wanted to do a split and then have a new album.  We wanted to do a split because we hadn’t done a split in quite some time.  Derrick from The World is a Beautiful Place and I am No Longer Afraid to Die hit me up and was like ‘hey, would you guys be interested in doing a split with Old Gray?’ And I am like ‘Dude, yeah! They’re awesome. Yeah, I love their stuff!’ And he was like ‘Yeah, they think the same thing about you guys.’ And we’re like ‘No shit?!’ So I started talking to Cameron Boucher and we were on the same level with each other. So we were like ‘yeah, let’s do a split together. It’ll make perfect sense!’  We have similar fans and would enhance each other’s other fans. It would just be a great experience.  And we did it and we are just so stoked on how it turned out.  We’re so hyped on it.   

Keep Calm: The music video for “Fair Trade,” a song off that split came out recently.  Why put out a video for that song specifically?

DM: We love both songs [off the split] equally.  The way we write songs – you can take a song in different aspects.  You can have different outlooks on it.  We felt like that one was more obvious, maybe?  I guess that’s what I’m trying to say.  We loved both songs equally but we just felt more comfortable doing “Fair Trade” over “Swimming Lessons.” 

Keep Calm: And did you mean [for the video] to make it seems you guys have the best time ever all the time or does it just come out like that?

DM: It comes out naturally!  We love being on tour, playing shows.  That’s the whole reason we’re a band.  We love playing music for everyone.  It’s kind of like a getaway.  We are all very optimistic people.   We just love the whole aspect of being a band – going on tour, playing songs, and people singing along.  People taking it for what it is – it’s incredible.

Keep Calm: It definitely shows.  That’s all I have on my end.  Is there anything you want to say to wrap this interview up?

DM: We just want to thank Modern Baseball, our best boys, for taking us on this tour.  This tour is amazing!

Big thanks to Dylan for taking the time to talk with Keep Calm and Carry On.  Check out the links below to find Tiny Moving Parts on social media as well as where to pick up some merch!

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