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Community Corner

Q & A with Nick Diener of The Swellers

Read what he does on tour, how the band came up with the new album and who the bands influences were.

Fenton Patch recently talked with Fenton native and Linden graduate Nick Diener of The Swellers, which released their fifth album, Good For Me, Tuesday.

Here is what he had to say.

What influences did your parents have in driving you to make the band successful?

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"We have always wanted to make our parents proud. They bought us our first instruments and gave us the motivation to play. The real motivation while touring came from the notion that 'Wow, we really aren't good at doing anything else except playing music, so we have to make this work!'” 

Which local bands inspired you?

"When we started, we learned most of what we know from a band called South Bay Bessie. Kid Brother Collective was definitely a huge band in showing us that a local band can take off and tour for months at a time. Both have influenced us musically as well over time."

Where/with whom did you record the new album and how long did it take?

"We spent a little under a month in Fort Collins, CO at the Blasting Room Studios. We made our record with Bill Stevenson, who is in the Descendents, played for Black Flag, and produced many of our favorite albums. It was crazy waking up a couple times a week to hearing the Descendents practicing in the other room. Legendary."

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Had you been consistently writing new songs or do you wait until you know you will be recording and work on them then? 

"We are always writing. We just stop a bit when we're making all the necessary improvements and changes to make our record great."

How do you think this album compares to the last? Do you have a theme in mind when you are writing for an album, or do you wait and see how it all comes together? 

"This theme was just 'let's make a record with no filler and all timeless songs that we'll enjoy playing ten or twenty years from now.' We have gotten older, so we are better songwriters, better performers, better at our instruments, so we feel we just made a better record overall.

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What do you do on tour to occupy the time you do not have band duties? 

"Most of the time on tour is spent driving. I drive our van quite a bit, so I just listen to music and zone out. At the venues, we have a pretty tight timeline of loading in, line check, eating, playing, loading out, hanging out, selling merchandise and talking to fans, and then leaving. It's a routine that we've gotten used to."

Do you get time to explore the cities you are touring?

"We get to explore every now and then, which is a lot of fun especially on a day off. Sometimes it sucks though, like in Paris when we played with Anti-Flag, we didn't even get to glance at the Eiffel Tower. Just played, and left."

How long does it take for you to get pretty homesick? 

"I get homesick the second I leave my house, but it's the price I have to pay to live the life I do."

What was the show that you were/are the most nervous for?

"We are playing two CD release shows June 18th and 19th at the Pike Room in Pontiac. I'm most nervous for those because I'm just hoping that people will show up! Other than those, playing to around 8,000 people at a festival in Belgium called Groezrock."

Can you explain where the album name “Good For Me” came from?

"It came from some of the lyrics on the record. It can mean a number of things in a few different ways. Self-help, self-loathing, being proud of yourself.. a bunch of things. It just fits almost every song on the record."

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