Off The Record with Plaid Brixx
Jared (Left), Chris (Center) and Mark (Right)
Off The Record had the chance to speak with indie-rock trio Plaid Brixx in St. Louis, MO during their spring tour with We The Kings. The trio consists of Jared Sawaya (Keys), Mark LeRose (Drums), and Chris Duggan (Vocals & Guitar).
OTR: Listening to your EP I've found an activity for each song. For example, when I run I listen to Renegades and I want to know how each song began to form as you recorded the EP?
Plaid Brixx: Since we knew we were going to do an EP we wanted to mix up the songs so there weren't any 2 songs that sounded the same.
OTR: Talk a bit more about the beginnings of Plaid Brixx.
Plaid Brixx: When we started we were more punk oriented, like "let's do punk meets EDM" and no one was doing that. Back in high school we played in a band that was a crappy rip off of Blink-182 and so we tried to the sound more modern. At this point we're trying to put out the best songs possible without trying to fit them in any specific genre.
OTR: How did you all come together to create Plaid Brixx?
Plaid Brixx: [Chris]:Mark and I went to school together and I was like "lets start a band" and Mark was like "Okay". [Jared]: I joined about 2 years ago, I just found the guys at a show and I joined the band playing synth then I switched to Bass after our bass player left so now I play bass guitar.
OTR: Nice, so you basically stalked your way into band (laughs)
Plaid Brixx: [Jared]: (laughs) thats right, yeah, I jammed my way into the band.
OTR: You're touring with We The Kings, what has been the crowd response after your set?
Plaid Brixx: [Chris]: Usually fans come up to us and are like 'We've never heard of you but you're fucking awesome! How have we not heard of you'. [Mark]: It always takes a minute live cause people have never heard us but after the first song people are starting to get into it but by the end of our set people are usually rocking out, having a good time. It feels good to slowly be winning the crowd over.
Plaid Brixx: In addition to people liking the music we've found that individually we have our own fans (laughs) of us as people. Mark has fans that are Plaid Brixx fans that are Mark fans and Jared has ladies that are like 'he doesn't know it yet but he's going to marry me'.
OTR: What have you noticed differently about other crowds in other cities that make it easier or harder to win over a crowd?
Plaid Brixx: [Chris]: At the end of the day it's all about the songs, people connect to the songs and not how they're packaged. We've played metal shows where metal bands would come up to us and say they like our music. [Jared]: We were at south by and we were on a metal bill and that is always weird and there was this very grizzled army dude wearing camo with a shaved head and a bandana jamming to the metal bands before us and we go on and he's rocking and afterwards he comes up to us and was like 'You guys were awesome! I love your music'.
OTR: Is there a full album in the works anytime soon?
Plaid Brixx: I don't think we'll ever do a full length album unless it's in extreme demand, what we would like to do is release a song a month, indefinitely.
OTR: So no possibility of a Plaid Brixx album?
Plaid Brixx: No but you will get 12 songs a year. Plus other stupid "us we idiots stuff" on camera (laughs)