States

PropertyOfZack had the chance to sit down with Mindy White and Stephen Laurenson of States just last week at their first ever show in New York City and their second show of all time. Mindy, Stephen, and I discussed the reception to the band’s debut EP, their writing for a full-length, label possibilities, and much more. Read up and enjoy!
For the record, could you state your names and roles in States?
Mindy: I’m Stephen Laurenson and I sing.
Stephen: I’m Mindy White and I play guitar.
Mindy + Stephen: We are States.

So, just two days ago you guys played tour first show in Nashville. Can you talk about that first experience?
Mindy: It was awesome. My mom was all over the place. It was a home show, so we had family there.
POZ: Hayley and the Relient K guys too right?
Mindy: Yeah, we had friends there too. It’s so cool to see that support because we always go to their shows. It’s kind of nerve-wracking because they’re really good friends of ours, but honestly, having Hayley in the crowd was like, “Well, here we go. We have this girl with angels in the throat watching me sing.”
Stephen: Angels in the throat?
Mindy: Yeah dude, she’s awesome. It was great though. For us, I think it was the best feeling in the world to have the first show and to have people around you that love you.
Stephen: Both Mindy and I live in Nashville and it was just awesome to see that kind of support from friends and family. Even the turnout. I think we were all just pretty excited.
Mindy: Pretty shocked. Nashville is a really bad market for shows and no one really goes to shows.
Stephen: I set my expectations kind of low. It felt great; I had a lot of fun. Definitely had some hiccups, but for the first show I couldn’t have asked for a better one.

How did it feel up there compared to your previous bands?
Mindy: Amazing. It’s like sleeping and then like partying. Now we’re partying.
Stephen: It is. Both of our previous bands were a little more mellow.
Mindy: Nap time. It was great. We had fun up there. We work so well together. Besides the music difference it’s just like working together as a band. It’s so much more fun.
Stephen: I think we’re all just suckers for pop music. We loved being in our previous bands, but I think we’re doing things a little different and maybe a little bit more fun; upbeat. It’s a blast. It’s a lot of fun.

Tonight kicks off the real start of the tour in Manhattan and then you guys will be going out with Anberlin for a few dates. How did those shows come together?
Stephen: Our management also manages Anberlin and we’ve been long time friends with Anberlin. We’ve known them for ten+ years. It kind of fell together. They had a headline tour for their new record and one of the opening acts couldn’t make a couple of dates and we were doing this, so it just worked out.
POZ: Those will be a lot bigger venues so those will be great.
Stephen: Yeah, those will be some really cool ones. One of them is the TLA in Philadelphia and I think that might be my favorite venue in the country.
Mindy: This way I can crowd surf all the way back to merch as soon as we get done. I don’t even have to walk.
Stephen: And there’s a philly cheese steak place across the street. I’ll probably eat there for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It’s so good.
Mindy: There’s a vegan place out there that I’m going to that has vegan chilly steaks. Chilly steaks? It’s a new thing. Philly cheese steaks.

There’s only six songs on the EP, so will we be hearing a lot of unreleased stuff?
Mindy: We’re going to play the six songs twice. We’ll have twelve. I’m just kidding. We’re playing some new songs and we’re doing one cover that we can’t say what it is.
POZ: Justin Bieber.
Stephen: Dangit, it is! We’re playing three or four new ones and then a cover.

How has Line ‘Em Up been received so far?
Mindy: That was another thing. I think we didn’t really set any expectations for that because we were kind of scared, kind of nervous. We didn’t know what to think about it, we just wanted it to do what it was going to do and it stayed on the top of the charts on iTunes and Amazon and we were just blown away. These are songs that we recorded in Brain, our guitarist’s, apartment. We did it all on our own, we didn’t have any label or a publicity. We don’t have that help. We did it all on our own so that kind of really showed us our fans are so loyal. It means the world to us because we couldn’t sell it without our fans obviously. It was amazing.
Stephen: These were demos and we were like, “Let’s track these. These sound decent. Let’s put it together and make an EP out of it.” I remember going to bed and thinking, “Man, it would be really cool to sell enough for the charts, but it probably won’t go anywhere.” When I woke up it was like 50-something and then it started climbing. It blew me away. It was awesome. It was great.

What were some of your influences for some of the tracks? I can definitely hear some Metric.
Mindy: That’s a great thing then [Laughs]. Metric is one of my favorite bands ever. I love Emily Haines. I’ve listened to every type of music ever, but my favorite to sing to has been pop music. I grew up loving N’SYNC and Britney Spears, but I never wanted to do the cheese ball, like written for me lyrics. Coming together with these guys, the music is so much cooler than regular pop-rock music, so I think it’s completely different. I think it’s different than a lot of stuff that’s out right now.
Stephen: I grew up pretty much solely on The Carpenters and The Beatles, so I just always had that kind of pop sense. I definitely love the previous music that our bands got to make, but I really feel like this is some of the stuff that I’ve always wanted to write. I love it.

I believe you guys went to Florida to record, how was that?
Mindy: It was awesome. It was hot.
Stephen: I like Florida people, but I don’t really like Florida that much. It was fun. We just tracked everything in an apartment with about 500 bucks worth of gear and a couple amps and mics and just did it in about a week or two. We tracked drums out of a studio. It was really fun. It was just the three of us for the most part. It’s just fun to get to wake up in the morning and hang out and be like, “Let’s track some stuff.” There wasn’t any pressure. There wasn’t a deadline. We didn’t have a label be like, “Let’s hear the singles.” We just got to write some music.
Mindy: I really liked going out to the car and warming up and then making sure that the thermostat was off. It was funny, but so personal. When I listen to that record now, the magic that Bryan did to it, it sounds pretty awesome.

You guys obviously wanted to give everybody a little taste, but are you writing for a full-length?
Stephen: Yeah, we’ve been writing a ton for the past several months and we have a bunch of new tracks. The EP, three of four of the songs were literally the first things we ever did.
Mindy: Experimentation.
Stephen: I feel like we’ve gotten a little bit more of our sound that we want. I’m really excited. We’ve got a fair amount of ideas and we’re gonna spend the next month or two after this run writing a little bit more and then hopefully in early January go into it. We’ll probably do it a little different this time though. It was fun doing it on our own, but I think we want to incorporate a producer and do it on a little bit more of a traditional route.
POZ: Is a late spring release possible?
Stephen: Late spring, early summer.
Mindy: We’ll shoot for that.
Stephen: Earlier the better, but it just depends on how things move.

I think I read that you guys recorded some acoustic tracks too. Might we see those?
Stephen: Yeah, we did a couple acoustic tracks and threw them on some thumb drives for a couple contestant winners for each one of these shows and they can do what they want with it. We don’t really have plans on releasing them, but if they want to leak them we’re totally cool for it. I always thought it’d be a cool thing to go to a show and get exclusive music. They might wind up on the internet or we might leak them eventually. I think I actually like one of the versions of the acoustic songs better then the actual version.
Mindy: Stephen’s going to leak them [Laughs], so if anybody wants them, just look for Stephen.

As soon as the project was announced people automatically started discussing labels. I’m sure you’ve obviously been in contact, but is there any shopping happening?
Mindy: I don’t know. I feel like at this point, no offense to them, but I don’t know if there’s anything out there right now that’s worth it at this point.
Stephen: We’re not throwing out any ideas. If the right people came along and we meshed, sure, we might go along, but it’s been fun to be our own bosses. I think we don’t really have a clear path set for this. We’re willing to go where it takes us.
Mindy: I want to work with someone, whether it’s a label or not, who’s as passionate as we our about the music. I don’t care who they are, where they’re from, our how much money they’re going to give us. That stuff obviously matters, but I just want someone to care. You can be on the best label with a ton of money, but if the people don’t care you’re not gonna get anything from it.
Stephen: They also don’t know how to market you. There’s some really awesome people who work for big labels and we’ll see. Unfortunately it’s dollar signs. People say, “Is this marketable?” and then it becomes that way. If we find people that are passionate about us and are music lovers, I’m into the idea.

Might we see scattered dates towards the end of the year at all?
Stephen: Maybe a few.
Mindy: We just got an offer today.
Stephen: We’ve gotten an offer. We might. I think our big focus is just writing. We really want to do a full-length. If they’re shows that are worthwhile then we might jump on. There might be a couple. There won’t be any touring until probably spring of next year.
POZ: And then should we just expect constant touring?
Mindy: Oh yeah, we’re going to be touring full-time hopefully. We even talked about maybe going overseas first. This was kind of like the tour for the EP. I think we might go straight overseas.
Stephen: Copeland used to go overseas and the response was always amazing. Kids are just so awesome in Japan and Australia and stuff. We definitely have a lot of kids say that they’ve gotten the EP someway and love it. We’d love to go overseas at some point next year. We’ll be touring as much as possible after we track our full-length.

What’s been the biggest shift from Copeland and Lydia to States?
Mindy: For me, one, I’m not sitting at a piano and just singing really falsetto soft stuff. I’m moving around the stage and belting stuff, so it’s a lot different in that sense. It’s also different in writing. In Lydia there were two guys who primarily wanted to write all the music. On Illuminate, our last album, I was able to do a little bit of writing, but not much at all. In this band it’s like we came together and everyone has an equal share. Everyone has ideas and it’s just awesome. It’s actually how it’s supposed to be. It’s a huge 180 being in States.
Stephen: I think for me, I jumped on the Copeland bandwagon, not late, but in ’06, so I had about four years with them and Brian and Aaron were much of the writing force behind Copeland. I’d write my own parts, but in terms of songs and stuff not much. So I definitely love being able to write and be a little more creative on that side. Just the music styles different and playing live is a totally different feel. I’m still playing guitar but,
Mindy: It’s more fun.
Stephen: It is. I enjoy this a lot. I loved Copeland, but I have a lot of fun playing this for sure.

Thanks so much for your time, is there anything else you’d like to add?
Mindy: Come see us, and freaking thanks to everybody who supported the EP and are just now finding out about us. We’re stoked to come tour everywhere.
Stephen: Check us out on www.Statesmusic.com.
Mindy: And Twitter, @Statesmusic. All those social networks.