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Circles & Soundwaves: For the record, could you each state your name, your role in Major League, and a random fact about yourself?

MAJOR LEAGUE:

Brian Joyce: My name is Brian, I play guitar and sing in Major League, and I have a John F. Kennedy tattoo because I've always been in love with the Kennedy association.

C&S: What about it?

Brian: I did a report when I was little on the Kennedy assassination, and after that I was hooked- I wanted to know everything about him.

Kyle Bell: My name is Kyle, I play bass, and I have a dog named Henry.

C&S: You guys are out on The Honeymoon Tour with Mayday Parade, Tonight Alive, and PVRIS; how have the first couple of days been?

Kyle: Fantastic. We can't ask for anything better. It's so much fun- we're so grateful for having the opportunity to do it. It's been insane.

Brian: It's been amazing. Last night we played Long Island. We've played Long Island close to 50 times now, and last night just completely blew me away. I got up there on stage and immediately threw up in my mouth. I was like, "I'm not ready for this!"

C&S: On stage last night, you were talking about how nervous you were; how do you handle those nerves?

Brian: I don't, I just kind of let them drive.

C&S: You sweat to the point that some kid at the show in D.C. calls you "gross" on Twitter?

[Kyle laughs.]

Brian: Yeah, it was bad- I just let the first couple songs get it out of me, and then I keep looking at these guys.

Kyle: He looks at me, and I'm like, "Hey dude, no worries man. We're chilling."

Brian: Any time I get nervous I look at these guys, and I'm like- "If I'm fucked, you're fucked, too."

Kyle: Once we get through the first couple songs, I'd say it all settles in.

C&S: And you're in New Jersey now which is your home state- it's gotta feel good playing a big venue like Starland.

Brian: Yeah. Starland was always one of those places [where I thought], "Man, could you imagine if we ever got to play Starland?"… We got to play here last December with The Starting Line. When we saw the tour routing for this and we saw that we were playing again- we never thought we'd play there once, let alone twice, so this is completely incredible.

C&S: Your new album, There's Nothing Wrong With Me, comes out in two and a half weeks; as that day draws closer, what's going through your mind?

Brian: A million things. I have these thoughts [that] I'm 25 now and I really hope this goes over the way we intended it to…. Everything else was kind of like a test-run for us. We did two EPs and we were like, "Okay, cool- things are starting to [pick up]; we're doing more tours, people are starting to catch on- this is nice." Then we did Hard Feelings and… we didn't do it exactly how maybe we wanted to- but that also had to do with where the band was at the time and the people in it.

So then with this record, [it was] the four of us, and it's always kind of been the four of us but we never really did it the way we had initially planned. We're not getting any younger, [so] now's the time to really just be the band we wanna be. And if it goes over well, that's great, and if it doesn't, at least we have something that we're extremely proud of that we could say we did.

It was a hurdle to get over; it was working with someone like Will Yip.

C&S: I've heard a lot of good things about Will Yip- a lot of people have said he's a "song guy" and that he really focuses on making the songs good songs- would you say that aligns with your experience?

Kyle: Absolutely. Definitely. We would have parts written and then he would be like, "Alright, what if we take this and put this there, take this put this there", rather than, "Eh, I'm not in to this part- let's completely change what the whole song is." He'll really take what you have and help you shape it in to something better than you thought it could've been.

Brian: Working with Will, you feel like you're working with a legend, and he's only 27…. Someday, whether this all works out or I'm some 50 year old guy eating potato chips and sitting on my couch, I know I'm going to see Will either winning awards or in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Someday I'm going to be able to tell somebody- I don't know who it is- that I got to work with Will Yip.

I've said it before but he's so ahead of his time, but he's so old-school at the same time.

C&S: What do you mean?

Brian: Will never got in to that [style where] everything's DI and you put 808 drops and use computers to shape a band. He's one of the only people that still does records on tape, and everything is super raw and very forward.

I had this melody for [the chorus of] this song called "Little Eyes" and it took me four times to do it. [When] we finally got it, Will turned around and looked at me and was like, "You're gonna have four times to do this live?" and I was like, "No" and he was like, "You're right"- and he just deleted everything [and said,] "Think of a new melody."… He doesn't let you do anything that you won't be able to pull off live…. He wants to make sure that everything the band's gonna do, the band can actually do.

C&S: Right, because what's the point of making a record that you can't play live?

Brian: Exactly. That's where I feel like Will's very old-school, but I say he's ahead of his time because he skipped that whole [style] when bands were doing bass drops and T.I., T-Pain [auto-tuned] vocals… When every producer was doing [that], Will was like, "If you want that, you're not coming to me." He has surpassed that and now bands are getting out of that.

I mean, we've done very auto-tuned vocals on our previous stuff.

C&S: Was there any auto-tuning on this record?

Brian: No, on this [record] it was like, "Hey man, if you're not gonna sing it right, it's gonna sound like shit, so you better get this right."

C&S: With you stepping up as lead vocalist, was there a lot of pressure- not only in your singing style but in terms of the songs themselves, since you were going to be singing them now?

Brian: It was so much pressure because I had done harmonies before but this is my first time singing the main vocals on a record. When you first hear your voice on an audio or video tape you're like, "Oh, that's what I sound like?"

I would have these melodies in my head or an idea of where I wanted the song to go, but then trying to portray it- but Will never let me get discouraged. If it started to become visible or audible that I was getting pissed off or upset, he'd be like, "Hey man, let's take five and grab something to eat." He kept me very calm and relaxed. He told us, "Listen, I don't care if this record takes us five weeks or five years to get done- we're gonna get it done, it's not a big deal. Let's just take our time with it, let's make it great." I think that was the thing that helped ease me in to it, because I had [the thought] in my mind, "I have to do this. I have to get this done. I have to do it this way."

C&S: What was urging you to do it?

Brian: Just the pressure of- when we had parted with Nick- and this was something that we were all very open about- he had never written lyrics, melodies, or anything like that. It was our system- it was the way we did things.

C&S: Patrick Stump doesn't write most of the Fall Out Boy songs.

Brian: Exactly, and it happens with a lot of bands- it's not a huge deal. But the big deal to me was that when he had left, there was a lot of circulation on the internet of, "Oh man, he was the band" and "Oh my god, they're not going to be the same without him." What are you talking about? Did you not read the press release? He didn't write anything- it's just the voice is going to be a little bit different.

It just seemed a little crazy to us that it was getting portrayed as if he was the band. It's weird for anybody to say that somebody is the band. As much as I've written all of our stuff, I own the van and trailer, the LLC is under my name, and all this other stuff- if I left the band, I would hope the band would continue. Not one person is the band.

C&S: That's the difference between a band and a solo project.

Brian: Right, it's exactly that. It's frustrating when I see other bands where people are like, "Oh my god, if he wasn't in the band, they wouldn't be anything." In our band, there's three other people that made this record come together. Kyle wrote more of the guitar parts than I did… but there was a lot of everybody writing everything. That's the thing that I think people get misconstrued with every band- they think that because somebody's singing the songs he writes everything. You always see people say, "Oh, he's a musical genius." No, everybody that he's working with is. John Mayer is a musical genius.

C&S: The Beatles are great as individuals, but it's when you put them together that something really special happens.

Brian: Exactly. For me, in the studio- I know the truth, that he wasn't the band, we know that he wasn't the band, I know what the band actually is- but I felt like I had something to prove, like I had this pressure of, "Fuck you- no, not one person is the band!"

I'm not against [Nick]- it would be no different if Matt [Chila, guitar] left the band- it was more to the people who were saying that. Who are you to just come in and say who does what? You're not behind the scenes; you don't know what goes on so don't assume you know what goes on.

So I think for me, that was the motivation behind it- to just be like, "I'm gonna bust my fucking ass to make sure that this band gets seen the way it should've been all along, because for some reason it didn't [and] got pinned as one person."

And so I think that's the reason why I felt so much pressure of, "I have to do this. I have to get this done"- which Will pulled me back from a little. Will was like, "Yo, who cares? It's just us. Who cares if this record sells zero copies? You're gonna come back in and we're gonna make another record and then after that we're gonna make another record…. We're musicians. Just come in, jam, write songs- it is what it is. Stop worrying about what other people are going to think."

You know, he was right…. There was so much on [the record] that I was afraid to talk about that was easier because what does it really matter? What does it matter if I'm afraid to put it out there? It's something that I need to do for myself and something that we need to do for ourselves. That's what made working with Will so easy, that he kept us in this [mindset]- "When you're here, the rest of the world doesn't matter, so who cares."

C&S: I was interviewing Frank Iero about a month ago at the first show on his solo tour, and his first solo record had just come out; he said that no matter what other people get out of it, "I already got my benefit out of it- I made it. It came to fruition."

Brian: Exactly.

C&S: Not that you haven't touched on deep and personal stuff before, but with There's Nothing Wrong With Me you really dive in to a lot of vulnerable stuff and who you are as a person; you said there was some apprehension about that. Where do you think that apprehension comes from?

Brian: Um… I don't know. There was a song we had done called "Seasons" and that was my first step into putting myself out there a little bit, but somebody else was singing it, so I didn't feel like I was putting myself out there [as much].

C&S: Now that you're singing, do you feel like you're putting yourself out there more?

Brian: I had so many different things that I went through, and one of them was, "Do I sound too whiney?" I started to think- is this what people want to hear? When I'm talking about this stuff, do they even care or am I going to come off like a baby, like I'm complaining about life and all this other stuff?

But it wasn't. For me, it was something that I've held on to for so long and I'm finally putting it out there and releasing that. If other people can relate to it, that's great, and if not, I hope you just enjoy the music. But… there's not a single song on the record that is just kind of "a song."

C&S: Listening to the record, I can tell there's a story behind every song.

Brian: Even songs like "Pillow Talk"- yeah it's about a girl, but she meant the world to me; we spent three years together. When I see people being like, "I don't know man, the lyrics don't really do anything to me"- I'm like, "Okay, well, you're 36 years old and a guy, so I would hope that the song doesn't make you feel the way I wanted her to feel."

Again, if you enjoy it, that's great, but when you start to diminish the band's integrity because, "Oh, they just wrote a song about a girl"- okay, "Walk Away" was just a song about a girl…. It meant nothing- I was in the best part of my relationship when I wrote it. I had to tell her a million times, "Hey, this has nothing to do with you! I'm just writing a song; I'm just trying to fill a record here." But [with] this record, there [was] so much going on that needed to get talked about.

C&S: What helped you get to the point where you were able to talk about it?

Brian: I think it was the environment. It was these guys- just sitting down at three o'clock in the morning in the studio with Kyle and having long life talks. The next day I got up and [realized] that it felt good talking to him about it and it's going to feel even better screaming my lungs out. It's gonna feel even better belting it out and getting it off my chest.

Even if I squeaked in the studio or my voice shot out, Will didn't laugh. It was like, "Alright, pick yourself up- let's do it again." With lyrics, he never once was like, "Man, these lyrics are cheesy." He was just like, "Is that how you feel? Cool, let's do it. Don't let me tell you what to write. It's your songs- it's your band. I'm just helping you further it." That's what makes it a little bit easier to do stuff like that- the environment you're in and the people you're surrounded with- nobody making you feel like it's not cool to talk about these things.

C&S: It's been eight months since your first show as a four-piece; do you feel like you've become more comfortable on stage with the current line-up?

Kyle: Absolutely. On the first day when we started touring with four people, Brian was freaking out. I had to be like, "Dude, just chill." [Vinnie Caruana] had a word with him because we had a tour with I Am The Avalanche coming up. He said, "Hey man, I'm gonna see you in a few months and I can already tell that you're gonna be improving every time." We all feel it. [Brian] went for a drive today and we were all talking about how his voice every day seems to get better and better. He's getting more comfortable.

Brian: Oh hey, thanks guys! [Laughs.]

Kyle: As a four-piece now, with this tour, especially- as soon as it started, I was like, "Wow, this is crazy- I'm the most comfortable I've ever been."

C&S: Despite being in such big rooms?

Kyle: For me, it kinda helps. It's like- damn. It's all these people here in front of us.

C&S: Is it validation at all?

Brian: Yeah, cuz even though they're here for Tonight Alive and Mayday, they didn't walk out.

Kyle: They're watching.

Brian: Whether you're forced to watch cuz there's no reentry or not, they could just all turn their backs.

Even though it's Mayday's tour, we got asked to do it, so that's validation right there- this band had to have listened to us. It wasn't a favor to somebody…. Mayday Parade is as big as they are and as good as they are; they could've taken out anybody they wanted, and they chose us. And especially when you're on a line-up with a band like PVRIS opening, who is flawless, front to back; then you have Tonight Alive, who have just completely mastered their sound; and then Mayday, who has basically built this empire- you kinda feel like, "Why are we here?" But obviously it's for a reason, so this is cool. At first it was like, "Are we going to be friends?"

C&S: Was there intimidation?

Brian: Oh yeah. These bands to us are flawless… these bands are incredible. So we're this curveball that's on the tour, which is very cool to us. We're taken out of our comfort zones, because we're used to these punk-y, underground-type tours.

C&S: You did the Senses Fail tour about a year and a half ago, which was also a pretty big tour, but it was closer to your typical vibe.

Brian: Right, exactly. We were a five-piece, and we said, "Let's just jam out and do our thing." The thing that's different about this tour is it takes us out of our comfort zone and it's making us create a new one. Normally, if we're on a headliner of ours or with other bands that are our size, we'll get up there and be like, "What's up guys? We're Major League", and we'll play ten songs straight through and there is no talking. I did that the first night- we just got up there and I looked at Luke, did a four-count, and we started our set. It just felt like a disconnect with the crowd, because you see a band like PVRIS, Tonight Alive, Mayday, and they're very involved with the crowd. They make the people feel like you're a part of an experience rather than just like, "Hey, experience this" and throw it in their face.

C&S: Especially if people aren't already familiar with your band.

Brian: That's the thing I've learned, just in these three days. I'm doing things I never thought I'd do- I'm putting my arm in the air and getting the crowd to wave back and forth in slow songs, getting the crowd to clap along- just being more interactive, which is something I never thought that our band would be.

C&S: I've noticed in general- especially last night- but just in general, since you've become a four-piece, you seem to be more interactive with the crowd.

Brian: Nick was a very private person, so when he would get up there he would face the drums and jam and do his thing. All of us were up there for a release- I would do some talking and stuff like that in between songs, but he never did a lot of talking; he had his zone that he went in to.

I can't speak for [Nick] so I don't know what he felt, but I have always felt like, "Yeah, this is my band." I'm a part of this band; it's like my baby. I want it to be perceived as something that people should want to hear and be a part of, so I think that's why it's easier for me to talk. I don't feel like I'm trying to sell myself- I'm just kind of like, "Hey, let me explain it a little bit. This is who we are and this is where we come from and this is it." Whereas for him, I think he kind of felt like he had to sell the band- like as if he was working for a company, trying to sell a product, rather than the product producer going out there and being like, "Hey, this is what it is."

But as much as I've talked and stuff like that, I've never done that. I've never gotten the crowd to interact. But it's fun- it's fun for us because it's kind of new and you make this connection.

C&S: You Tweeted last night, "That was the most fun show we've ever played."

Brian: It's just something about these shows… I don't know. You learn from these bands as well; watching them through the first couple nights, they know their band. They're not trying to sell their band. They don't need to pretend for people. We've realized that we've never felt like we were pretending, but maybe we came off that way. Maybe we were coming off like that, so let's be more natural with it. Let's relax a little bit and have fun and roll with it. The vibe is just so fun. We just get in the van every night and laugh- we're just like, "What the hell? How?"

Kyle: Like I said before, it's definitely the most comfortable all of us have been on a tour. It's [got] really good vibes going on.

C&S: Back in May, you got back from overseas and went right in to the studio to record the song "Montreal", and you said that you had learned a lot about yourself through writing it. What do you feel like you've learned about yourself through writing this record in general?

Brian: I've always had this wall up in my mind of, "You're not good enough. Why you? Why should it happen to you?"

C&S: The music?

Brian: Yeah, just kind of everything in my life. Not to get crazy personal, but my girlfriend [and I] were together for three years and then we wound up breaking up. It wasn't even really, like, "Oh my god, I can't believe we're breaking up"; I truly, at 25 years old, felt like I was spending the rest of my life with this person- I loved her to death, we spent so much time together. But I had this thought, "Well, of course it was gonna end- why did you think you would have it that easy? Why did you think you would wind up being with this person? She was too good for you anyway." I've always had this thought, "Of course it was gonna happen."

C&S: Do you feel like you've overcome that mental wall?

Brian: To an extent. I think I've relaxed a little bit and let the universe take over- "Listen man, it's in your hands now." I've tried to force so many things in my life up until this point, one of them being the previous members of the band… I was afraid to really put myself out there and step up, because I thought, "It's not gonna happen to me, but this guy might get lucky. If he's singing these songs… maybe I'll just let him do it and I could be his guitarist. That'll be cool." I never had the confidence to say, "Fuck yeah, I could do it."

I think being in the studio and doing these tours has made me realize, "Well, listen, man- you're doing it whether you want to or not at this point. You have no choice, so you might as well step up and be the best front man this band could have." I want to be the singer that I feel like the band deserves- the singer that I've always looked for. I would watch other bands and watch their front man and be like, "Man, I want somebody like that fronting my band", rather than me saying, "Man, I want to do that." I always looked for somebody else to be that, and now I have an obligation to these guys as well. When Nick left, these guys could've easily been like, "Dude, listen, I don't think the band's gonna be the same. I think we should just call it quits"- but they didn't. They were like, "Alright, are you gonna sing or what? Let's do this. We're not going to slow down- let's keep going." So I couldn't fall back at all, not just for them but for everybody involved- I had this obligation to stop feeling sorry for myself, stop putting this wall up and just man up and do it.

I think that generally, with the whole record, there are so many things that I didn't really want to talk about, but it was kind of like, "Well, I made it over all these hurdles so far, so this is just another one to get over, so I might as well just do it."

Kyle: When me and Brian write, we build off of each other's ideas, so I've learned to be a little more accepting of my ideas that I might not find so good at first- to let them build a little bit more, because one of these guys could take it into something and I'm like, "Holy shit, why didn't I think of that?" I definitely learned to be more patient with writing.

C&S: The album is called There's Nothing Wrong With Me- can you talk about the origins of the album title?

Brian: Originally the record was going to be called Naturally Yes, because my grandfather says I'm always a "yes" man. It's just the way I've gone through life and it's responsible for a lot of good and a lot of bad, because I have a hard time saying no or standing up for myself. We were cool with that name, but it didn't feel like it stuck to us- it was just kind of like, "Yeah, that's a cool name. It fits the record."

C&S: But it didn't feel right?

Brian: It didn't feel like it defined us, because this release was for everybody- when you listen to the drums on the record, you hear who Luke is. When you listen to the lead [guitars] on the record, that's Matt's voice. When you hear the guitars and bass on the record, that's Kyle. When I'm listening to the record, I can appreciate so much listening to everybody playing; I feel like I'm listening to them talk. We just wanted something that really felt like it defined our band and us as people.

Our manager [Buddy Nielsen] had been through a lot as well. We were having a talk one day, and he was like, "I want you to repeat after me." I was like, "Alright." He's like, "Say, 'there's nothing wrong with me.'" I was like, "I'm not saying that." He was like, "There's nothing wrong with me." I was like, "There's nothing wrong with me." And he was like, "You're damn right- there's nothing wrong with you. You've gotta get that through your head- you've gotta get over that." We just talked about it and stuff after that, he hit us up and he was like, "Hey, what do you guys think about calling your record There's Nothing Wrong With Me?" Immediately, Kyle was like, "Yo, that's the name. That feels so right." We shot it to the rest of the guys immediately everyone was like, "What? Yeah! That feels so right."

C&S: It does fit with the themes of the record- dealing with self-acceptance amidst realizing that, "I have these demons, whether it's depression or mental illness or loss or dealing with stuff with parents or relationships, but it's not a fault in who I am as a person."

Brian: Exactly.

C&S: Thank you guys so much! Is there anything else you want to say?

Kyle: For anyone that listens to the new record, buys the new record, or anything- thank you. And anyone who's [reading] this, thank you.

Brian: Whether we sell a million copies or one copy, thank you for listening. To us, there was so much more involved than just a band making a record. It really stripped us down and let us be able to be comfortable with who we were. So if you enjoy it, that's fucking awesome and thank you so much.