valencia - do you believe?

Valencia –interview with George (bassist) and Brendan (guitarist)
What is the basis of the band name? How did you settle on it?
George: I guess when we first got together. We were kind of trying to figure out what our band would be called. We were so used to being in those other bands that we were having trouble. We came across Valencia. We did a little search on the back-story of what it meant. There’s a lot of different cities named Valencia and like an orange that is named Valencia. But that story of Valencia in Spain suits our band. During the Golden era it went through a lot of progression and evolution and when all of our bands broke up we really clicked when we were writing songs and stuff. WE saw that story and thought it clicked with our band’s story.
Can you list some of your musical influences – both musical and otherwise?
Brendan: Well musically we are pretty eclectic. We all like different things. Specifically I like to listen to the Beatles. I like older stuff, specifically Neil Young and Bob Dylan. I think the same goes for George. But it’s different for other people. As far as non-musically, I think we take inspiration from our family and from our friends. People we love.
How has music been a part of your life? How has it been present?
Brendan: Music’s everywhere. You can’t go anywhere without hearing music. IN Highschool I was in jazz band. Just grew up listening to music my whole life.
George; I went to a Catholic school until I was fourteen and we used to have to go to mass once a month in school. But the songs were so much different than what I used to listen to. That’s when it hit me that music was a big deal. That it was really important. That’s where I took it from. After that it aws listening to my mom’s CDs.
What are your thoughts on the current music scene? How do you feel your band fits in?
Brendan: I don’t know. What we tried to do on this last record we tried to stray away from the current music scene which is going towards shit with auto-tune and no one is playing their instruments.
George: Everything is so cut and paste.
Brendan: We tried to be a real band and play real instruments. And write real songs. Wt don’t fit into it. It’s a good thing because we don’t want to.
Can you describe your songwriting process?
Brendan: It’s usually one of us coming up with an idea. We’ll be sitting at home or in the van with our acoustic guitar or our laptop. Record it real quick. Bring it to practice and flush out the idea. It’s kind of an organic process rather than one person coming up with everything.
George: Sometimes we’ll just be at practice and somebody will play something that just catches everybody’s ear. It changes for every song.
Do you have a favorite track from your material?
Brendan: A song called “Carry On” – the fifth song on our new record. It’s just a sense of accomplishment when we finished that song. Because we’ve never written a ballad song. I mean we have, but they all sucked and that was the first good one. So we’re pretty proud of it.
George: I’m pretty proud of the last song on our record. Because it sums up the record as a whole. If you listen to the whole thing from front to back, it’s telling a story. And that is the conclusion of it. Everything about that song from the lyrics to the structure of it – it’s a good way to go through everything for me.
What do you consider to be your greatest musical achievement thus far?
Brendan: This record.
George: Yeah, I think finishing this record.
Brendan: It was a long process. We recorded it once and then re-recorded it. It was just a long process. So finishing it was a big deal for us.
George: Everything about the finished product is crazy for everyone. I mean, we got to do things we never thought we’d do. We moved out to LA and recorded the album for like two months. Worked in a bunch of different studios with a bunch of different people. The finished product is something we were all stoked about.