Prior to interviewing Motion City Soundtrack’s Justin Pierre, we decided to put him through the Dustin Downing “School of Candid Photography. “Pierre was open minded enough to play along as we hoisted him onto the balcony of a 2-story abandoned building and had him borrow various reading material from the stash of a Sunset Strip homeless man. Although the dismount from the disheveled building was not pretty – picture Downing with Pierre on his shoulders in a manic frenzy of trying to avoid rusty nails and a wrong step on a cement staircase – the photos turned out rather stellar. We’re happy to say that Pierre survived, was able to grab some much needed hand sanitizer and arrive safely back at his hotel.
Kicking it by the pool at The Grafton hotel, Pierre told us about the band’s upcoming 4 Albums, 2 Nights, 7 Cities tour that they will officially kick off in Los Angeles on August 19th and 20th at the House of Blues. He also discussed doing the voice of a 12- year old boy in the animated series “Godkiller” and being called a “good weirdo” by Margot Kidder at Comic Con.
What brings you to LA? Are you doing promo work?
A little bit. I came here initially to have a vocal lesson for this upcoming 4 albums in 2 nights tour because I typically tend to lose my voice very easily. We signed on to doing this even though we knew it was going to be a daunting task trying to do perform for that long because we’ve never done anything longer than an hour ever. To do back to back 3 hours worth of playing is an undertaking that we’ve never really been a part of. That was the main reason of me coming out here and then I opened my big mouth and was like, “If you need me to do anything else while I’m here, let me know” and then they, being management, hit me with a whole bunch of things. It ended up being a lot of fun and humbling though as I performed a couple of acoustic tracks for songs and I tried to be a little bit more creative than I had in the past and I’m rusty. It’s a good thing. I need to start rehearsing and practicing for this.
Tell me a little bit about this 4 album 2 night 7 city tour. What was the decision behind it and what we can expect from the shows?
Well the first time we did this was the end of 2008 and we went to Chicago and we played 3 albums in 3 nights so we had an album per night and that was a lot of fun and fans were asking us if we would ever do it again and if we would ever do it again and if we would do it in different cities. It seemed like an just an enormous undertaking just to do the one but luckily we teamed up with LG and they are sponsoring this tour and they are allowing us the ability to play in more than 1 city. So it’s 7, which I think is a pretty good jump from 1. It’s going to be 14 shows and back to back. The reason to do this was for some reason we had the idea before our last record came out and we recorded our 5th record and we don’t now exactly if we’re gonna put it out on a label or ourselves but it’s gonna come out in early 2012. We thought that we would do this now while we can before the record comes out. This is going to be the last time that we do all of these records until maybe we do 5 albums in 2 ½ nights or something like that.
Are you going thru and doing the 1st 2 albums the first day, etc. in order?
We haven’t talked about it and the tickets went on sale and we never explained anything but I think that’s what the people that bought tickets are expecting us to do. I don’t know but I think that would make the most sense. I’m gonna say that’s what we’re doing.
Did you guys have any say in the 7 cities that were selected?
I think it was a combination of us and LG – the sponsor, so we kind of figured out. They wanted something and then we wanted something so we basically worked it out so that we are both happy.
It sounds like it is going to be sort of a whirlwind tour. How do you keep your energy up on the road?
I just sleep a lot. I try to rest as much as possible. I like to read and since I lose my voice easily, I’m not supposed to talk. When I’m around humans I tend to talk way too much so I tend to hide a lot on tour and read and that sort of shuts me up.
So you kind of go into silent mode?
It’s gonna be tough. I’ll especially need to do it in between those two shows
You should carry around a dry erase board or something like that.
I was thinking about that. I used to have notepads and markers but then nobody could read my writing so I’m gonna have to figure out something new.
How did your vocal lesson turn out?
I think I had a break thru to be honest. Something happened and I don’t really know what it was but I’m hoping that I can recreate it the next couple of weeks. I have to kind of retrain how I’ve been looking at singing. I was like 90% there and I keep losing it and I don’t know why that is. She said I was tensing up too much when I was trying to do stuff and I have to get out of my way and then I’ll be able to hit the notes.
Can you tell us who the vocal coach was?
Her name is Lis Lewis.
What make you fly from Minneapolis to LA to go to this lady?
She’s amazing. I’ve been to a bunch of other people and she was the only person that I’ve been to that hasn’t tried to make me sing a certain way. She was just saying, “Do what you do and I’ll help you make it work.” The singer of The All American Rejects told me to go see her. I saved up. I came out here and I’m just not gonna look at my bank statement for the next month.
Was it a 1-hour lesson?
1 hour! That’s why I came all the way here! I really want to do a good job on the tour though. People are spending a lot of money to come see this and I want it to be good. I don’t want to be the one fucking it up for everyone so hopefully that will be somebody else in the band. I don’t know who that will be but as long as it isn’t me then I’ll be covered.
In addition to music, you make short films. Tell us a little bit about that.
I’ve made short films since 2006. I was going to film school when the other guitar player Josh sought me out. I was working at a video store and just going to school and he asked me to be in a band with him, which eventually turned into this band. I didn’t want to. I decided at 19 that my music career was over and then slowly but surely we kept playing music and I kept having to miss classes and I couldn’t graduate and I had to retake classes and whatever. But that’s how it finally got started and then in 2006 I had some time and I had some credit cards and I figured I’ll just make some movies because if I’m funding it then it doesn’t really matter and I can just do what I want. I made 4 films and 1 of them I would say is good.
What’s it about?
The one movie that I did that I’m really proud of was called “Make a Wish.” It was just about a mother and a daughter and the mother is a tyrant and the daughter is just a kid. The mother won’t let her eat something because it’s fatty and she’s just terrible. It’s a really cute story about the kid and her mother is quite evil. That wasn’t a very good description; I don’t know how to sell these things! Most of the things that I do are just people talking and observational situational sort of things that urk me.
What was your involvement in the “Godkiller” series?
In 2005 we recorded an album called “Commit This to Memory.” We were recording this album in Los Angeles and one of our old tour managers told me that our friend was a filmmaker and he was having auditions for this movie that he was making and that I should try out. I’m not an actor; I just did it on a whim because I thought it would be fun and I did it and I was horrible and they called me back and they said that they wanted me to be in the movie. I went back and talked to them and I was convinced that it was actually a reality TV show about bad actors that they were fucking with and so that it was all a joke but it ended up being a real thing. I can’t remember the name of the movie that he made but I had to turn it down because I was working on a record but we kept in touch. He sent me “Godkiller” like 4 years later and I just did some random voices on my computer and sent them back to him and he really liked it. I was super excited because he had Lance Henricksen in it and I really dig Millennium that TV show and just Lance and I thought that’s so cool. I never got to meet him or do anything but my name and his name are on the same thing on IMDB.com. Matt Pizzolo is the director and they just finished the graphic novel for the 2nd movie where the character that I play is some sort of punk kid that gets into shit way over his head and it’s sort of a sci-fi crazy futuristic apocalyptic sort of thing. In the 2nd one he’s a bit older so I don’t have to sound like a 12-year old boy.
You had to before?
Yeah it was really hard! I’m not a good actor but somehow they made it sound really good. It was fun and it was an experience but I’m pretty much up for doing whatever.
Where did that air?
I think people can find it on Netflix. I was at Comic Con in 2009 for “Godkiller.” I felt bad for the director because he had all these actors that were in the movie that did the voices and this is something that I didn’t know about it but you have signings at certain times and you make money doing signings. I would just always sign whenever so I had kids coming up to me asking me to sign stuff next to people that wouldn’t sign stuff and I guess they got mad. And I got to meet Margot Kidder. Nobody was talking to her. There was a sign that said Margot Kidder and there was no line and I was like, “Are you for real?” I talked to her for a little bit and she said that I was a weirdo but I was like a good kind of weirdo. There is the strange psychopathic kind of weirdo and then there’s the good weirdo!
Click here for more information on the upcoming Motion City Soundtrack tour.
Words and interview by Nicole Pajer. Photos by Dustin Downing
Dustin – these are amazing