T3M: We last saw you when you were touring with Flyleaf. Were you the target of any of their notorious on tour pranks?

MG: Bigtime.

EA: (laughs)

MG: They took out this band that they are good friends with from the beginning, called Resident Hero. Great band, three piece like us, and great guys. They opened the show up. They had been on tour with them before, and I remember them telling me that Flyleaf would do pranks. We had never really heard of that. Throughout the tour, they were doing pranks on each other... like the tour manager for Flyleaf would take out the battery charger of the Resident Hero's van, and put it on the stage while they were performing. They were like 'what's going on?' Then they realized it was their battery charger from their van. They went to these extreme measures to prank them. The most random things.

T3M: We saw some of that on their video blogs.

MG: The big prank came at the end of the tour. They usually do it at the end of the tours, because everyone leaves. We had been on tour with them for two months, so we had got to know them all pretty well. The last show of the tour was in Anaheim at the House of Blues. The night before was Kill Hannah's last show in Vegas, and they pranked Kill Hannah pretty good.

SM: They got us better.

MG: The last day, we were halfway through the set...

SM: The last three songs.

MG: The guys from Resident Hero, and some of the Flyleaf crew were wearing basketball uniforms, but like cheerleader basketball uniforms... really short shorts... basically like basketball players out of the seventies... really short shorts and fros. Then Luke [Agajanian] came out with a chair and a net. He stood on top of the chair and put the net out like he's the basket. And they cane out and started dribbling and playing 2 on 2. They were playing around Shim and Emma, and he got in and tried to block them and stuff. And this is all during a song up on stage, and there's 1500 people screaming. That was just the beginning of it.

SM: During the second to last song, 'Pitiful', they came onstage and basically stripped the stage of all of our gear.

MG: They took my drums. I was down to my bass drum and snare and a high-hat.

SM: And they took my equipment offstage and scattered it throughout the building.

MG: They put baby powder on my drums so when I hit on them it was all over. The biggest thing came at the end.

SM: In the last song where I sing 'one, two, three, four', they used that as their cue to drench the stage with silly string.

MG: It was probably a hundred bottles of silly string. Everyone was loaded with two.

SM: It was great. It was a beautiful way to finish the tour.

T3M: Those are the memories that you'll never forget.

MG: That was insane. I think Flyleaf's the best at pranks.

SM: I'm looking forward to the Evanescence tour. I heard they do some cool stuff.

MG: Really?

SM: Yea, it's crazy.

T3M: Any more near-sharting experiences onstage?

MG: Oh no.

SM: We can skip that one.

MG: It's gross, you don't want to know. (to Shim) I can't believe you wrote that on the blog.

SM: It's true.

T3M: We went to the Warped Tour over the summer, and it seemed like every kid there was wearing a shirt that read 'free hugs' on it. How does it make you feel that something you worked on has exploded into huge thing?

SM: Very lucky. It was not meant to be a movement or a marketing tool. Which is probably why it turned out to be such a gift to so many people. Then people started using it when they would forward it to their friends. That was their gift to their friends. I think we're really lucky to be in a band that got to have created that. What we create now, anything after that has such a positive energy behind it.

T3M: Do you think many people realize how Free Hugs started?

SM: A lot of people come to us and say 'how did Juan Mann put your music in his video'. It's always kinda fun to say 'actually, I made the video, for him'. I don't think it's really relevant where it came from anymore. The fact that it exists is the point.

T3M: Emma, where did you learn to play the bass like that?

MG: Aliens came down... she's not human.

EA: I actually started out playing guitar when I was about sixteen. I think the reason why I started was because I was living in Japan because my parents moved over from Australia. I really didn't make any friends, because of the language. So I was home a lot, and I had to do something, so I got really immersed in Silverchair. Then I started playing guitar. When I went back to Australia to go to school, I met Shim, and then started a band. Since he played guitar and sang, I moved over to bass. I just kept playing it. I think a lot of people who play music have this thing called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, where they just keep doing it. There's something in their head to keep doing it over and over. I used to do that. I used to come home from school, or work, and for hours just keep doing it. I didn't think it was very normal, but I think that's why I played it a lot. And then I started to really love it.

T3M: Do you ever encounter any problems with male egos when it comes to your bass playing skills?

EA: I don't think so. If there are, they haven't mentioned anything.

MG: They're jealous of course.

EA: I looked up to a lot of bass players, like Victor Wooten, who are technically amazing. I only try and be like that. You'll never get to a stage where you're happy. You're always striving to get more.

SM: The more you want, the more you want.

T3M: Is there anything you'd like to add before we wrap it up?

SM: Check out our MySpace. Come to a show, and tell everyone to come out to the shows if you enjoyed it. We always have a really good time at the shows, and that's why we're doing it.

T3M: Thank you.

EA: No problem, thank you.

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| 09.20.2007 | Interview by Kristen Pierson |