Sara: What would you change about the current music scene?
Val: What would I change about the current music scene… how do you define scenes? I mean there is like most popular? There are so many different scenes. I don’t mean to be difficult but…
Sara: Like what’s going on in the music business, industry type
Val: industry-wise I guess I wish it would revert back to a time when a label would cultivate an artist’s career over a series of album instead of just a one shot and then your dead kind of thing. Just more patience but, the thing is they need to make money that’s their goal, their business so that might be wishful thinking to make them be so patient. It’s all about making money right this second so maybe I wish they would just, hire people who really care about music and at least that way they would push better music on people other than shit because I believe that people buy whatever is pushed on them you know?

Sara: And kinda on that, there is a lot of negativity surrounded your pervious label situation…
Val: [laughs] by whom?
Sara: Just in general, I know they were kinda not very nice… do you think anything positive came out of it?
Val: Yeah, I mean I have my control back that’s positive and that’s the thing I hated losing the most is not being able to do whatever I wanted to do. It’s kinda hard to be true to your art when there is a force telling you what you can and can’t do. The positive it gave me so much more confidence cause I just don’t give a shit anymore. I kinda saw the pot of gold on the other side of the rainbow. Now I don’t have to like lose any sleep anymore about ‘oh wouldn’t have been cool if I was this place or there’ I kinda know what is there. I just sleep better at night over the whole thing.

Sara: How do you think you’ve changed as a musician from being on a major label? Like from then to now?
Val: I always try to write… my goal has always been to write music that is both catchy and full of content which is kinda seems that in the music business either stuff is really poppy and doesn’t have anything to say or it’s really eccentric and it’s got great lyrics and it’s really groundbreaking but it’s not accessible so I’ve always want to make some sort of hybrid of that where people could instantly sing along like it’s pop music but be tricked into actually find the lyrics mean something to them… wait what was the question?
Sara: How do you think you’ve changed as a musician from..
Val: Yeah so that’s always been the same, I just probably got… I’m back to where I started I kinda went a little away from myself when I had some many voice telling me what to do. I would say the last record was probably a compromised version of me and everything before and everything after is just like I’m back I’m more confident now then what I was doing to start.

Sara: Basically, you went into the woods for 2 weeks alone. What was that experience like?
Val: It was amazing it was like I always new when all this shit was going down with the label that I had a record in my mind and I was just waiting to get it out of me. As soon as I found the place and got there it was insane stuff just like poured out like it was kept in there forever and I would just wake up and write a couple songs a day and just sit there and read and drink. It was really a weird time to kind of to trust myself again. I wrote 30 songs in that span. I definitely want to do something like that again for the next record. Every day life is so distracting and that you kinda get lazy sometimes and cut corners with your songwriting or whatever it is you’re doing but when you are in the middle of nowhere and your only goal is to write you are just so much more focused.

Sara: Is there any chance that we’d hear b-sides that weren’t on Sunlight Searachparty?
Val: Yeah, actually I’m releasing my first b-sides record soon, in a couple of months. There is going to be a few b-sides records but the first is going to be the stuff that we actually recorded in the woods. It’s going to be 11 tracks that didn’t make the record and we never re-recorded, it’s going to be the actual recording from that house. I’m pretty excited about it. You’ll hear stuff that is much much more catchy that got cut because I didn’t want… I was looking through songs of a special quality on their own.

Sara: How is Sunlight Searchparty different than Slow Down Kid? And I guess 15 minute Relationship
Val: Well, I mean, Slow Down Kid the first one was much more of me and closer to Sunlight Searchparty but the re-release that Epic put out was just a compromised, watered down, there were too many hands in the pot. Too many cooks in the kitchen. How is different? I don’t know Sunlight Searchparty is better how’s that?
Sara: Yeah I don’t know I like them both. So
Val: I don’t want to give the sense that- I put my heart into Slow Down Kid but it wasn’t-there were just too many things that were in my head besides the music that’s all I want to say. There was like fear of failure, fear of letting certain people down, that indecision of myself of who to listen to and should I listen to anyone. That’s why I feel strongly about the latest one. It’s just more confident no one had anything to do with it in a negative way.

Sara: What made you decide to record Sunlight Searchparty live?
Val: Part of… it all happened in the woods when the band joined me. We did them live and it was just so much fun. And I realized that the performance of the songs were just as much a part of the songs as the song itself and if I was going to give these songs justice I should record the way where it feels most invigorating. I think that I just wanted to carry that good feeling over from the house in Woodstock into the studio. We went through some painstaking process to recreate that vibe of trashiness in that house.

Sara: What do you want your listener to take away from Sunlight Searchparty?
Val: I hope, I don’t know I just hope it kinda make them feels things that you don’t let yourself feel all the time. I like music to be a reminder of things in life, whether it’s happy or sad or good or bad I wanna just feel that… I wanna feel something really. I hope it just makes people feel.

Sara: Sunlight Searchparty was a really long awaited and anticipated CD, are you happy with the end product?
Val: Yeah I am. I’m really happy. I put a lot of time into not only the songs, but the sequence and the artwork, and the movie that comes with it so it’s really like... it’s my baby. I’m happy with how he’s growingSara: 2 months or so ago, you got number 1 on the g-rock countdown, you beat out like The Killers and Evanescence, what was your reaction to this? It was pretty up.

impressive?
Val: It was laughter actually. Partly because Epic never sent me songs to radio, so I was on my own and I got my first little bit of radio play. I thought it was funny. It was also sublime. This was the station that I grew up listening to. It was good that they finally support it. As far as beating out those other bands I think it was just more about fighting for the underdog a local guy and people just suddenly had a reason to vote instead of these kinda mega-bands. I don’t know if you feel sympathy for those kinds of bands.

Sara: What are your goals as a musician?
Val: Um, I just want to be considered authentic and hopefully by the time my career is over a bit ambitious or a talented, like constantly grew on each record or did something new. I always just want to have passion in my music or else I’d be doing something else.

Sara: What are your plans for the upcoming year?
Val: Well we just shot two videos. The first one has been out for a while but, the second we are pretty excited about, it’s pretty special it’s been getting a really good response from the people that have seen it. We are going to push that to a lot of place. We are starting to get on the rode a little more, it’s hard to do without label support, we haven’t got the money. In April we are going to the southeast for a couple dates. I don’t know… just trying to pass along the music to as many people as possible.

Sara: What bands are you currently listening to?
Val: I just bought the new Bloc Party and I am really into that. That would be my answer.

Sara: Do you have any good jokes you’d like to share?
Val: Good jokes? I just heard one... oh I think it was. No, I don’t, I don’t have any good jokes. I’m sorry my friend’s a good joke teller. I’m not.

Sara: That’s kinda it do you have anything to say to the World Wide Web?
Val: The World Wide Web. I think it’d be cool if we had a World Wide Web, I think it’s a good idea I think someone should invent it.
Sara: Yeah? Okay?
*laughter*
Val: That’s a joke. Well thank you I mean, I appreciate everyone listening and being so supportive as the negative as you say washes away and thank you for doing the interview.
Sara: Thank you for taking the time.