Woodies Recognize Bands You've Never Heard Of - And A Few You Have

By: Stephen Ortiz

Posted: 11/13/07

Queens-based MC Pharoahe Monch once said, "It's better to go wood in the hood than gold around the world." What Monch meant by this was that it's better to have the respect and love of the people than to sell records. This is what the MTVU Woodie Awards are all about. Drawing from the roots of indie tradition, the Woodies is the award show for the passionate connection between the audience and the music, not about the biggest stars or the best selling artists - although Linkin Park are up for two this year.

In its fourth year, the Woodies are the place where you'll most likely find your next big artist. Artists like The Killers, Death Cab for Cutie and most recently, Plain White T's all can look back and thank the awards show for helping them become who they are today.

In a recent phone interview, The Daily Campus had the opportunity to look into the minds of some of this year's nominees - singer Travis McCoy of the hip-hop/rock group Gym Class Heroes; singer Max Bemis of alternative rock group Say Anything; Meg Frampton, lead singer of indie rock group Meg & Dia; and guitarist Brad Delson of rock group Linkin Park.

"I learned to keep my zipper up."

Gym Class Heroes are big. So big that their next album features a medley of artists including Busta Rhymes and production by Cool and Dre, but not big enough that Travis McCoy, front man and master of the mic of the group, forgets where he came from.

"I won a cameo in a Jadakiss music video on [MTV show] 'DirectFX'," McCoy said. "If you sneezed, you missed me."

Nominated for Woodie of the Year, the Geneva, N.Y.-based group have emerged well beyond their humble beginnings and have experienced theur first taste of fame.

"Biggest lesson I learned on the road? I learned to keep my zipper up," McCoy said. "Not to be vulgar, but when you're touring, you can make a big, messy, entangled web meeting people, if you know what I'm saying. It was like, 'Wow, it's a smorgasbord! All these girls, this is awesome.' I got over that real fast. I realized I needed to have a little more respect for myself. I want girls to have to work for this, I don't want to just throw it out there."

The long road to stardom culminated in a win this year for the Best New Artist Award at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards.

"When they said we won, the whole booth exploded," McCoy said. "We put in a lot of hard work. It was a victory for not only us, but for the fans too."

Gym Class Heroes are currently on tour with Fall Out Boy on the Young Wild Things Tour, and will continue working on their new album once that wraps up.

"We're deep in production. We have seven or eight tracks done," McCoy said of the new album which is still untitled. "People won't expect this, we want to surprise people. It's gonna be a lot more sexier."

"I wouldn't say I'm a dick.

I'm more of a control freak."

Recently, Say Anything released their third album, "In Defense of the Genre," a 27-track, two-disc set, featuring 23 guest singers. Here's something most people don't know though, the band has gone through seven different band members on those three albums.

"I wouldn't say I'm a dick, I'm more of a control freak. I warn them when they join the band," said Max Bemis, lead singer of the band. "It's 50-50 between bad terms and people leaving to settle down or go to school. We've had some sketchy incidents."

And all those guest spots?

"We felt that we wanted to make a statement that the music we're surrounded by is worthwhile," said Bemis. "We wanted to include our friends and the people we respect in the music."

Say Anything found its success with smash single "Wow, I Can Get Sexual Too," and is nominated for the Best Video Woodie for the same track.

"MTV has been really, really important," Bemis said. "We thought we would be that band that their video played once in a while, but the video took off and MTV they played it a lot. People would tell us you couldn't turn on the TV without seeing it."

While the present is bright for Say Anything, the future seems like it could only get brighter.

"What's can you expect from us in 2008? A lot of touring," Bemis said. "And a side project band between me and Chris [Conley] from Saves the Day, and a few other guys from Saves the Day."

"It took me forever to

figure out The Beatles."

Meg & Dia, an indie rock group named after the sisters and founding members of the band, love books. They love them so much that they base most of their music off of literature they've read in the past.

"'Monster' was written about 'East of Eden' by John Steinbeck and 'Indiana' is from a book by the same title by George Sand," said Meg Frampton, lead singer. "'Rebecca' is written about another book called 'Rebecca' by Daphne Du Maurier."

But that's not the only place inspiration is found for the Viral Woodie nominated band. Frampton cited the immediate music around her as influences for her band, bands from Saves the Day to Maroon 5 to Cursive.

"I've been listening to older music lately," Frampton said. "I just got into The Beatles and it took me a while to figure them out because I'm so used to production of the 21st century but then it hit me and they've been a big influence."

The band hopes to keep things moving into next year.

"We're gonna be making a new record, we already started working on it," Frampton said. "We're finding our sound and trying to figure out what it is we want to say because lyrics are really important to us. We're hoping to go up to some cabin in Utah and find peace and record and have the record out by summer. Then do it all over again."

"There's music I hope

no one ever hears."

There was a four-year gap between the release of Linkin Park's 2003 album, "Meteora," and their return with a whole new sound in 2007, "Minutes to Midnight," which released with only 12 tracks. Now that's not saying that the Agoura Hills, Calif.-based band wasn't hard at work. In that span, they toured the world; they hooked up with Jay-Z for the mash-up album "Collision Course" and Mike Shinoda, the group's MC, put together side project, Fort Minor, and their debut album "The Rising Tied."

But there's one thing Linkin Park never wants to do and that's the same thing twice.

"We try not to repeat ourselves. With 'Reanimation' and how we remixed the whole album, people asked if we were gonna remix the next one," said guitarist Brad Delson. "We said no, but then we ended up doing the 'Collision Course' with Jay-Z, and people wondered if we were going to do another mash-up. The answer to that would also be no. We're still gonna look for other ways to collaborate with artists outside our studio album in the future."

How to avoid being the same band every time? Enter Rick Rubin. Rubin is known as one of the most diverse and talented producers in the industry today, and if Linkin Park wanted to make changes to keep things fresh, he was certainly the man to hire.

"With 'Minutes to Midnight,' we really didn't want to make it a trilogy. We were proud of the sound we created with 'Hybrid Theory' and we developed even further with 'Meteora,'" Delson said of their albums. "With this, we wanted to reinvent the sound of the band. We spent a year and half in the studio writing over 150 songs. Rick Rubin was a huge influence and forcing us to be as open as possible."

Many of those 150 songs were developed into later stages, such as "Qwerty" which was released on the "Linkin Park Underground 6.0" EP, but the band has no solid plans yet on whether they will be releasing them in any special edition or re-release forms.

"There are definitely some songs that didn't make 'Midnight' that were great songs that didn't warp as well as the ones we chose in the context of the album. Hopefully those will see the light of day at some point," said Delson. "Then there are ideas that were started that were never fully realized as songs that we hope to work with. Then there's a final category of music that I hope no one hears. With the experimentation was a lot of trial and error."

Contact Stephen Ortiz at

Stephen.Ortiz@UConn.edu.