FMMF: We Talked To Modern Baseball
By Garrett Bower, Staff Writer
As Modern Baseball continues to arrest the hearts of anyone with ears, riding high on the waves of emo revivals and pop-punk parties, it is sometimes nice to revel in the journey thus far. ACRN recently pulled bassist Ian Farmer away from band practice to chat about playing the first edition of the Fashion Meets Music Festival, weird gigs and peaking with verified Twitter status.
Are you guys back in Philly for the time being?
Ian Farmer: We are! We’re actually just having band practice right now because we’re going out for the weekend and playing Fashion Meets Music Festival.
Everyone’s getting pretty excited to play the fest?
Yeah, it’s gonna be awesome and then we’re playing a super cool after show with The Menzingers which I’m super stoked about.
And for your earlier set, you’re in the same time slot as O.A.R. and Local Natives, which is kind of huge.
Yeah, that’s what I heard! [laughs]
Does it make you guys a little nervous to have to compete?
Uh, honestly, most of us would probably be at the O.A.R. show anyway. [laughs] So some of us are kind of bummed but, I mean, we aren’t ever really worried because as long as there is anyone there then that’s cool. Playing so late we’re already a bit nervous but we’re the kind of people that when we get nervous about how many people show up, we just kind of lower our standards about it and don’t really [worry]. It’s not like, “Oh man! No one’s gonna show up,” it’s like, “Well, if anyone shows up, it’ll be awesome.” [laughs]
That reminds me of the editorial Evan Weiss did awhile back, that shows with low numbers are a kind of rite of passage, although you guys seem to be well past that stage.
We’ve definitely had some really bad shows. Not bad--I’d say more awkward than bad because they’re really usually fun. We had one show, one of our first shows we were playing was at some weird bar in South Philly and there were two people who paid for the show and those two people were our very best friends. This was our second show and we ended up headlining and the guys who booked the show played in the first band and left before we played. [laughs] And then afterwards, the dude from the bar was like, “Yeah, yeah, we’ll pay you but, like, we’ll send the money to you later.” We’re like, “You’re not going to pay us, we didn’t expect to be paid, why are you even bringing it up?” That was probably one of the only shows where morale was kind of low. We’ve had other weird ones but basically when no one shows up we just have a ton of fun. We just do whatever we want which is kind of what we do anyway but we take it to the extreme and just goof off more.
Modern Baseball definitely seems to have mastered the line between that fun sort of goofiness and being a serious act worth consideration, which is not an easy task. Is that a conscious effort or does it come more naturally?
There’s not really any sort of image that we collectively try to present. We’re just kind of ourselves. We’re all just really goofy dudes and we just love playing music together. So when we’re up on stage, it’s like four goofy friends playing music together. We love being goofy and we also love playing music so we take both of those things very seriously.
At your show in Cleveland on The Wonder Years tour this past spring, it seemed there were fans who went as wild to see Modern Baseball as they did for any of the other acts. How does it feel to play shows and have kids as excited to see you guys as they are to see bands that maybe you looked up to coming up?
It’s really incredible. We never really expect it but it is definitely welcome. On that whole tour, we were very surprised the whole time that, although we were the first of five bands opening up for The Wonder Years, Fireworks and Citizen and Real Friends were all shooting up like crazy [Editor's note: I'm sure Ian meant they were gaining popularity, not using hard drugs] but people were there to see us. Even with all the people that were there, there [would be] a bunch of kids at the end of the night who would come up afterwards and be like, “Man, I’m really bummed. I was coming to see you guys,” and either, “I was still coming through the doors because the lines were so long while you guys played,” or “I didn’t know that you guys were playing early.” We were like, “Wow!” [laughs] That’s really the first major tour we did that wasn’t in basements and DIY spaces. So to see that so quickly is completely unexpected, it came out of nowhere and that’s really cool.
Now having been through the wild summer of touring, does everything still feel as surreal as before setting out on that big tour, or has it leveled off a little?
I mean, it’s still just as surreal and crazy as it was back then. I don’t think it will ever really stop being that way. I know I do and I know I speak for the rest of the band, we all feel so incredibly fortunate and lucky to do all of this. Every time we open our eyes again, it seems like something really cool and new is on the plate for us. You know, Spraynard is one of our very favorite bands and when we first came to Philadelphia, we would go see Spraynard what seems like every other week. They’re a band that we collectively love and now we happen to be going over to the UK with them! I’m so excited because one: I’m going overseas again, which--travelling is like the coolest thing in the world. Two: I get to do it with one of my favorite bands and I get to hang out with them all the time and three: I get to see Spraynard every night for like 10 days which is awesome! [laughs] We’re playing with the Wonder Years and The Story So Far again. And something that is coming right up and that I also can’t believe is happening but we’re going on tour with I Am The Avalanche and Beach Slang. Two incredible bands, I Am The Avalanche is a band that, you know, is literally Sean [Huber]’s favorite band. So yeah, it’s crazy. I’d say we’re settling in a bit but it doesn’t change at all just how insane everything seems to us.
Have you gained a greater sense of community meeting all of these bands you’ve looked up to? Has there been one group that you were blown away by them reaching out to you?
[laughs] Me personally, I have a very, very low bar for that. It kind of happens a lot. An embarrassing amount, so I won’t go into too much detail about that. I mean, to be playing with The Get Up Kids at the after show at Riot Fest is, you know, absolutely incredible. That’s a band that we’ve all listened to for a long time. It’s just wild that they might want to have us on a show. The same with Taking Back Sunday! Not to mention, all the favorite bands that may not be the biggest but that we were into beforehand. Like You Blew It! The first time we played with You Blew It! we were like, “Holy shit!”--I’m sorry if I can’t say that-
No, you’re cool.
Well, to reiterate, “Holy shit! We’re playing with You Blew It!” [laughs] We told them about it and they thought it was really funny because they were kind of like, “Wow, we’re playing with that band Modern Baseball. That’s really cool,” and now we’ve gone on tour twice. There definitely is a sense of community that you get, not only from all these bigger bands that I can’t believe we’ve toured with or played with or whatever but it seems like everyone who’s in a band--if you’re in a band too or if you’re involved in music at all, it just seems like a very welcoming place. You know, music is just one of those things-however corny it may be--I truly believe that it brings people together.
Modern Baseball just debuted the video for “Pothole” on Entertainment Weekly. How does that sort of recognition feel?
To be honest, I didn’t even know that Entertainment Weekly even premiered videos. I always thought of them as some sort of huge entertainment industry publication and when I found that our video was gonna be premiered I was like, “Wow, really?” That’s nothing that I ever would’ve imagined happening. I personally felt like wow, this is kind of like a real thing. What were doing is, you know, not to say that it’s all for nothing because it never felt that way but I can see that it’s actually going somewhere for real. [laughs]
How’s it feel to be Twitter verified?
It was really funny when that happened! We had just played in Boston so we were sleeping at the Run For Cover office and we woke up in the morning and I’m just scrolling on my phone because I didn’t know what else to do and just as people started to wake up, I found it. I just started freaking out, like, “What!? What did-!? Who check-WHAT!?” I started freaking out and we all saw it and we immediately texted Jeff [Casazza] from Run For Cover and told him that, you know, we were out. We were done. There was nothing more that we could do. He convinced us to stay in the game. [laughs] In that moment, we very much felt that there was nothing more that we could accomplish. Especially for a band that sings about Twitter so much. [laughs]
