AP Web Exclusive: A Conversation with Panic At The Disco’s Spencer Smith

December 27th, 2008 | filed in: Interviews, Live In Chicago, Spencer

Panic At The Disco were sort of busy in 2008. They parted ways with a punctuation marker and arguably managed to shake the sophomore jinx, delivering the highly anticipated follow-up to 2005′s ridiculously huge breakthrough, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out. Pretty. Odd. was described by at least one observer as “ignored by fans and critics alike,” but it seemed to do all right, garnering positive reviews from AP and a few of those competing magazines that shall remain nameless. It also spent more than four months on the Billboard chart and is currently certified gold. Not to mention, you can see (and hear) a whole swath of fans emphatically singing along to the material on both the compact disc and DVD portions of their new live package, the modestly titled …Live In Chicago.

Brian Shultz recently spoke with drummer Spencer Smith to talk about bizarre video featurettes, the politics of press, and how the band managed to hold out on a live offering despite exploding early on.

Have Panic been entertaining offers to do live albums for a few years now?
It was more just a band decision that at whatever point…”if you want to do it or not.,” We wanted to do something at some point, so we just decided to record it in Chicago.

Did you want to be cautious about doing a live album too early in your career, since you only had one album [A Fever You Can't Sweat Out] out?
Definitely. That was the thing. The whole time touring on that record, as soon as we got to a point where we could headline, it was still a little bit strange because we only had 12 songs to play. We ended up needing to put some of the other things onstage to try and put together a bigger show. But now, at least we have two albums of material, [so] it just made sense. To do it any earlier than that would seem strange. And at the same time, we didn’t want to do it too early [during] the second record’s [touring cycle] just because you want to have that time to [let] people [get familiar] with the songs and figure out the best way to play it live and everything. All that kind of stuff went into thinking about when would be the right time.

Why Chicago over your hometown of Las Vegas, or anywhere else for that matter?
The idea of recording a show in Vegas–there were a couple reasons I can see why we wouldn’t do that. It is a cool town, but because we’d only played a few shows as a local band before kind of gaining more popularity basically from the internet, we didn’t really feel like we had some local following, because we didn’t. We’ve always fell in kind of randomly with whoever was on the internet at that time looking for new bands. We ended up having people that probably heard our band before some people in Vegas did. Also, Vegas shows, you always have friends and family, and whenever you get a lot of people you know in the audience you never feel like you’ve had one of the best shows that you’ve done. But at the same time, we chose Chicago, which is kind of strange because [bassist Jon Walker] is from Chicago, so he did have a lot of family [there]. But I guess that was three to one against Vegas for Chicago. [With Chicago] shows, the crowds have always been really supportive of our band, so it just seemed like a good place.

Do you miss having that opportunity to build a local fanbase?
Yeah. I think more than that, we just wish that there was a little more camaraderie among the other local bands in Vegas. It’s been a long time since we’ve been home for a long enough period to kind of figure out what’s going on in the local music scene there. At least when we were kind of coming up and starting to play a few shows, it just seemed like every band was kind of out for themselves. [There was] this weird jealousy of everybody else [being] too substantial. It was just a little weird so I think that’s why we didn’t really have any local following or anything and why Vegas just seems like another show on the tour. But it’s fine. Whatever. Can’t go back now, I guess.

Although the stage setup for the show is somewhat elaborate, it’s definitely a stripped down show when you compare it to your more theatrical performances.
I think if we could’ve done the stage for that tour exactly how we envisioned [it] in our head, it would’ve been a little more elaborate. But [we were] coming from the last tour we had done off Fever–[it] was the biggest tour we’d ever done; we were playing arenas in some places. It’s amazing to play for that many people and everything, but it’s just kinda strange because you’re in an ice hockey arena or basketball place that’s not really built for concerts. When we were doing the first tour [for Pretty. Odd.], we didn’t want go back and play big theaters and things. Just smaller places because it’s a different thing. It’s a lot more fun for us. That kind of limits you, though, with the production and what you can do, but with having another album['s worth of songs] to play, [it] just ended up leading to us [doing the live album]. The focus of the show was still the music we were playing and the focus, when people came to see us, never slipped into being more about the production value and what we were actually doing. So it was gonna be the first time we were playing these songs in front of people, we just decided it would be better to just make that the focus and attention rather than having three or four people coming on stage and doing crazy things. Yeah. I don’t know. Like I said, the last tour [before the one on the DVD] we did of the U.S., we had a little more production, so it’s probably something that were a little limited by the venue, but at the same time it was probably a better vibe and style to film.

Although your two studio albums are pretty different, it seems like you did a good job trying to seamlessly intertwine the songs in the set. Was it challenging to strip down those older songs or did it just come naturally?
That was a big thing for us, trying to figure out what we wanted to do, because we kind of felt that [if] we just went back and forth, it would be a weird feel and maybe too jumpy and too spastic. We kind of settled on doing something where at some point we’ll play two or three or even four new songs, and then do two or three old songs at the same time. It worked out well, and that [was] another change [for us] as the tour started. The set list probably changed three or four times throughout the first week, but then once you get to the point where everybody’s happy with it, then it just becomes a lot more natural. It took a little while to figure it out, but I’m glad that it seems to have worked out well.

What’s the deal with that weird, 15-minute MTV “On The Road” thing in the bonus features?
Basically, during that tour–right at the end of [it], we did this thing with MTV…[I think they did it with] 51 bands or something and [they showcase] a different band each month. We basically get together with them, tell them the concept or theme of it, and that was our theme–that we were driving home from that tour in California to Vegas, and along the way, we stopped at different kind-of-famous spots that have been in movies and stuff. They wanted to get a couple things from Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. It seemed like a cool concept, [and] we play some of the songs acoustic. But at that time, we had never done the songs acoustic; we had never learned them. So the two days leading up to us [were] just us trying to figure out [how] we’re gonna do all these songs. So I think we were a little bit rough on those, but maybe it’s a good thing for the bonus feature. Probably only half the people [who buy it] will ever go to [the bonus features]. [Laughs.]

Was that your own VW bus or was it something the network rented to you?
Oh man, I wish that was ours. It [belonged to] some guy who restores [vehicles like that] in California and they found it. We showed up in Barstow, which is halfway between Vegas and L.A. and they had it there in the morning. We were like, “Fuck, man, this thing is awesome. Wish I could just drive it home.” But there was no AC, so the whole time we were driving, we’re just sweating our asses off and there were like three camera guys and the four of us in that little thing the whole time. So it was fun, but I don’t know if I’d want to drive that thing everyday.

During some of the tour footage during that documentary, there’s a part where it seems like three-fourths of the band–the other three guys, not you–are told some “bad news” by their tour manager that they have to do another interview. You kind of get the impression that they hate interviews. Are you in the same boat?
No. It’s not that we hate interviews. We hate certain interviews and certain interviewers. They make it bad for anyone else who’s gonna interview [us], because you go into it where you’re a little bit frustrated already. But the thing is, sometimes we’ll do an entire interview and nobody will ask about our music. It’s really strange. Reading interviews about a lot of bands that we like, especially from 20 or 30 years ago, it seemed to be a lot more about the musicianship and the music. Sometimes it gets frustrating. At the same time, there are certain people we love to be interviewed by because we’re just, for whatever reason, [comfortable] and can say anything we want to say or answer questions that are interesting to answer. It’s a love/hate thing.

There’s a lot of news about how you may already be releasing another album next year.
Yeah, I think one of us said that. I mean we’d like to. We’ve been trying to write as much as we could on tour. We’ve got a little bit of time off now; [soon] it’ll be the beginning of the year and we’re going to be focused on writing the material [and] hopefully putting out a record as soon as we can.

Would you want to return to the same studio where you did Pretty. Odd. or are you looking at different producers and different scenarios?
You know, I don’t know. As far as the studio, we’re always kind of open to go [anywhere]. We’ve only been to two or three nice studios, really, and there’s great studios all around the world. I think we’d probably work with [Pretty. Odd.'s] Rob [Mathes], our producer again. We just really work well with him. [But] we aren’t certain of anything.

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