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You guys get this by now, right? Me and Marianas Trench? Yeah. Round four, let's go!

"Yeah! Killing zombies, listening to some Marianas Trench. That'd be great." - Matt Webb, Marianas Trench

We always start off all of our interviews with introductions, so who are you and what do you do for the band?

Okay, my name is Matt Webb, and I play guitar in Marianas Trench.

Since we've talked to you guys a few times before, we decided to ask your Fancorps if they had anything they wanted to ask you guys, so we have a couple fan questions for you.

Okay, sweet!

SO: Ryan from Wellington, New Zealand wants to know if you have any rituals that you perform before you start rocking out?

Oh! Um, that's funny we usually like to... at shows, it's always fun to bring your friends backstage and stuff, but we always kick everyone out of the backstage area, about a half hour before the show and we just kind of get into the zone. We have a little secret handshake thing that we do, I can't tell you about that though. There's a little chant we do, but it's top secret. That's probably it, I guess!

Alright, cool! So Mendi from Toronto and Marli from Ridgeway, Ontario want to know what do you do with the gifts you get from fans that are thrown on stage, or sent to 604?

It's funny, we actually get a lot of those things. I don't know we keep pretty much everything. I've got some pretty random stuff at home from fans that I've picked up over the years. Obviously when you're on tour sometimes, it's a little more challenging because you only have a suitcase, and there's not a whole lot of space to put things. But letters and all of that kind of stuff are awesome. The best gifts that we get are when fans like, they'll-- *laughs* I got a Tim Hortons gift certificate one time or like Starbucks cards, or like all that kind of stuff where people buy--

Practical stuff.

Yeah! I swear to god, if you want to give us gifts, practical stuff is so nice, because we tour and those little things are really special for sure.

Especially the Timmy's card, I mean, we're Canadians, we run on Tims!

Yeah, absolutely!

What's the most random thing you've ever gotten?

Ahh, gift wise?

Yeah.

oh jeez, um, I don't know, every once in a while we'll get gift bags that people put some pretty funny stuff into, but they're usually more like loot bags that you would get at a kids birthday party or something. I can't really think of a specific random thing that I've gotten.

Has anybody ever gotten you anything that's kind of like "Woah, what the hell? Where did this even come from?"

Uh, there's been some letters that have been a little bit weird, but as far as an actual physical gift, I can't think of something that would have really weirded me out.

That's probably for the best!

Yeah, I mean, we're pretty weird guys to begin with, so I think people kind of like, if we've been tweeting about something, or if we've been talking about something, the fans will actually go out and get it. Like, I don't know if you would know, but a long time ago Mike and I filmed this ridiculous video called "The Spheres Video" have you seen that?

Yeah! [WATCH IT HERE: VIA: YouTube]

Okay! So when people get me spheres, that always makes me really happy, because I'm like "people get the joke". And the funny thing is, is that it's come full circle! Because the whole thing about the Spheres was that they were just super annoying and inconvenient to carry around, and then people actually give me spheres, and I'm like "fuck, what am I going to do with this thing?" But I love how it's come full circle.

That's awesome! All right: Susan from Liverpool, UK says: Music is incorporated into so much these days like movies, TV, games, et cetera. Your music has been used on a lot of TV shows, but is there any particular franchise or a certain video game or something that you'd like to see your music in?

OH! Well, ANY video game would be awesome. I think we had a song in one of those snowboarding games or sports games or something, I can't remember, but it would be sweet to have a song in like HALO or some crazy game like that! Or I mean, like any kind of movie or anything, It's so fun to go and hear your stuff anywhere and I'd love to have it in some ridiculous Will Ferrell comedy movie or something.

Or a zombie game where you're taking out a bunch of zombies, and Cross My Heart starts playing...

Yeah! Killing zombies, listening to some Marianas Trench. That'd be great.

I've done it. Okay: Jessica from Windsor, Ontario, wants to know: What was the first piece of music that ever spoke to you, and what's the most powerful piece of music you've heard to date?

Ooooh, ahh that is a good question. First piece of music... well I don't know. I started with Piano and played in band and stuff when I was in school. There's obviously some classical pieces that are really cool, as for a song that I heard and was blown away, I don't know... you always kind of grow up listening to your parent's music, right? My folks were into older stuff like... oh god, what do they even listen to? My dad is a huge Neil Young fan, and lots of 80's music, so I grew up listening to a lot of that stuff and really enjoyed it, and that's just kind of how I got into it in the first place, listening to cool songs and being like "I wanna do that!" and learning how to play that stuff. Man that's tough, I can't actually think of a single song that really.. I mean, I'm moved by all kinds of music, and that's the great thing about it. Music puts you in all kinds of different moods and depending on what you want to listen to, you can feel so many different ways. That's why it's a great, beautiful art!

All right, so now we'll move on to some of our own questions: you guys are currently running a charity contest with Change for Change [Editor's note: Guys, we are so sorry this took so long to get up. Feel our shame...]

Yeah! Yeah.

Can you tell us about that, and what inspired you to get involved?

Yeah for sure! Okay, um I'll start from the very beginning. A friend of the band's, this guy... I don't even have to mention his name, because it's not FOR him, but he started this charity last year and the idea was to go-- he was putting buckets in restaurants and stores and saying "hey, if you have some extra change to donate, throw it in this bucket, and at the end of the charity drive, we're gonna take all this money and give it to Covenant House." And Covenant House is an organization that helps keeps kids off the streets and we are obviously definitely behind that! Anyway, this year the guy that was running the charity approached us and he was like "Hey do you guys wanna get on board with this, because you know, I'm only one guy, I can only do so much, but you guys have a huge network of fans and an online following that might be interested in contributing to this cause." And a lot of our fans dig the cause! Covenant House is a great thing for kids and young adults, and have probably helped out a lot of people who have listened to our stuff. So why wouldn't we do anything we could to try and raise some money? So we got on board with this charity, we had a contest where whoever could raise the most money would get some kind of Marianas Trench prize package, and that's cool, but it's not really about that, I'm stoked that kids are doing it to get the prize, but it's more about trying to raise awareness for the cause. And it just worked out really well. I know yesterday, unfortunately, we were out of town, but in Vancouver they had the Change for Change wrap-up party which was a really big success, and then we're going to find out the totals pretty soon of all the money that people raised, and it's gonna be BIG. The first year they did the charity they probably raised about 3,500 bucks to four grand, which is AWESOME, but this year, we are absolutely just going to knock that number out of the park.

Yeah, I follow you guys on twitter, and I know I saw some re-tweets that you guys did that were like, kids saying they had already collected three hundred dollars, or something..

Yeah! There are pictures of kids holding checks for like thirteen hundred bucks, and that's huge money! And the great thing about it, is that you don't need a ton of money to make a really big difference, and we're just really proud that we could get behind such a great cause, and that our fans are wicked enough to help support us with that. It feels nice to do something like that because we've been really lucky, so it's nice to give back.

So you guys have been playing shows in the states for a few months now, how are the American fans reacting to you guys, and is there a difference between the American shows, and the Canadian shows?

I don't know, fans are just... the fans. They're just amazing, and they don't really change too much, wherever you are. The difference between the shows is that in Canada, we're obviously now well established, and the shows are a lot bigger. In the US we're just sort of getting our feet wet, so we're playing a lot smaller shows, but I love doing it because it's kind of like the olden days in Canada where we could go out into the crowd after shows and meet people and mingle with the fans. We can't really do that to much anymore in Canada because it's just getting a little big. When you go out into the crowd when you're playing to 5-10,000 people, you kind of get crushed, and it's a little difficult to handle, but you know we're on tour right now, and I think the biggest show on this tour is about a thousand people, and it's awesome. We're opening too, so we can go out after the show and meet people and I love to do that.

Just go and hang out again?

Yeah! The tour of the states has been a riot! But like I said, we're getting our feet wet, starting from the ground up, and it's exciting because that's the best part of the job, it was building the Marianas Trench empire.

Your Army!

Yes! Exactly.

So you're currently in the process of recording your third album,

Yup!

What are you planning to do, to follow up Masterpiece Theatre?

That's a good question. We're not gonna do the same thing, I think that it's good to evolve and grow. Obviously we're gonna come out with some songs and you're gonna know it's our band, but at the same time, I don't ever like to just repeat what you've done we're not so much about a formula, but about just making good music that we enjoy and that sounds current, and hopefully that our fans are going to like! I think this record is going to be pretty cool, we've tracked three songs for it now, and have lots more to go. So after this tour, when we go home, we'll be back in the studio for a couple of months. It won't be out for a while, but it's going to be good, I'm excited.

Do you have a working title, or anything you can tell us to look forward to? Or perhaps an ETA on when we can expect a new single, or is it still way too far off to know that?

It's a little far off to know that for sure, but our goal is to hopefully have a single out for the summer, and have the record probably coming out late this year. We'd like to get it out before the end of the year, ideally like September-ish. I think that's pretty reasonable. As long as we're not doing too much touring, we should be able to get it done. The problem is that things have been going really well for us in the US too, so we've kind of had to balance our time between working on the new record, and trying to fill the demand down there, but obviously Canada is our number one market, and we're going to make sure that our fans there are not disappointed. We're gonna look after you guys, don't worry!

Awesome! All right, last of our serious questions: when you're writing, what's more important to you... it would be a band question, but for you personally, do you think it's more lyrics, or melody?

Well... as you probably know, Josh writes all the songs for Marianas Trench, so it's a tough question for me. I do a lot of writing myself too, so when I write, I would say that I'm much more of a melody and music guy and then the lyrics always come last. I always struggle with lyrics, I think that's the weakest side of song-writing for me. I know Josh operates the same way, he'll have a melody and some music ideas in his head, and we'll go in and track the song even before the lyrics are ever written. We'll often do demos that are the song with just jibberish on top, but in the melody of how the melody is going to sound. Then eventually you lay lyrics down on top of that, you try and write the lyrics around the vibe of the song. Although that being said, there'll be a lot of situations where you'll have a lyric, line or something that you want to incorporate, so you'll have that ahead of time. There's many different ways of doing it.

so at The Sound Faction, we try to end all of our interviews with five random questions just to kind of leave everything on a light note...

I like that.

Okay! So, if you could live in any movie, what would it be and why?

If I could live in any movie... ummmmm, we were just talking about Anchorman in the van on the way over here. That would be pretty fun, because I would like to wear a ridiculous suit at all times, and talk about "yogging".

"I'm trapped in a glass box of emotion!"

Exactly! Wear Sex Panther perfume all the time, that would be pretty awesome.

If you could be a groupie for any rockstar, who would it be?

Ooooh... Uhhh.... hmmm... somebody like Katy Perry or Britney... No, I don't know. Who would I be a groupie for... don't be a groupie, it's bad!

That's fair. If you killed Mr. Boddy in Clue, what would you use, and where would you do it?

[Laughs] If I killed WHAT?

Mr. Boddy. Like in the game, Clue?

Oh! Yeah yeah yeah... What would I use and where would I do it?

Yeah. Like "Lead pipe in the dining room!"

Well if I had to do it right NOW, we're just sitting here in this weird brick... bar. I would probably grab one of those records off the wall over there and do a sort of throwing star style neck strike.

All right, so "In the bar, with the record".

Yeah.

All right, so: if you could interview yourself, what would you ask yourself?

I know what I would NOT ask myself...

Okay, what would you not ask yourself?

I would never be like: "Hey Matt, where did the band name for Marianas Trench come from?"

Haha, we got so many people who asked us to ask you that.

Look, we are NEVER going to tell you the answer, just so you know.

So stop asking?

So STOP asking.

And the funny thing is: my last question is "if there is one question you would never want to be asked again"--

That's the one.

Well there you go.

On our MySpace, we have a chatroom, that we all kind of drop into every now and then, and I was in there the other day and I posted a thing on my twitter that said "I'm gonna go into the chatspace, but if you ask me where my f*cking band name came from, I will kill you." And that was it. I will come to your house, and I will kill you.

And for the last bit here, this is your shameless self promo spot! If there's anything you'd like to say or talk about: by all means!

Oooh man, I don't know what I gotta say! Uh, check out our band Marianas Trench, we're on twitter, and facebook, and The MySpace. [Laughs] Um, I dont' know! Check the twitters out, because we are on them all the time, we all use them a LOT, and it's a great way to get ahold of people if you want to talk to us. I read every single twitter message that comes through, on my account, and on the band one too. We pay a lot of attention to that, it's great!

We can not thank Marianas Trench enough for being so awesome to us over the years! We've had fantastic interviews with them, and they are never anything but completely fantastic! To learn more about Marianas Trench, listen to music and see show dates, head over to marianastrench.net, myspace.com/marianastrench, Facebook.com/marianastrench or check out their videos on Youtube.com/mtrench

Also, be sure to connect with them via Twitter: @mtrench, @JoshRamsay, @MattWebbMT

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