Why can't I interview Chicago bands that are Cubs' fans? First Time of Rise Against, and now Mark of Spitalfield. Damn White Sox. Anyway, this interview gives some great insight into the music business from a band member's perspective, and Mark really seems to know his shit.

PL: Introduce yourself.

MR: My name is Mark. I play guitar and the mandolin in Spitalfield.

PL: What album do you think is most important for a band to release?

MR: I'd say that its probably a toss up between the first and second, but I'm gonna lean towards the second. Of course, your first record is going to be your first impression to any listener, but I think your follow up is going to be your most anticipated record. If your first record has made any form of waves, or even if it hasn't done very much, sometimes people are really excited to hear what you'll do next, and obviously, that band will grow a lot between releases, and I think the growth between the first and second record is probably a really good indication of what that band is gonna do in the future in general. If a band has a really strong second release, you can expect really good releases in the future. And if a band's second album is disappointing, then it might be a sign that they're on their way down creativly.

PL: Have you ever been on a tour that didn't live up to your expectations?

MR: I don't know because, going into tours, you don't have any expectations. You just don't know what to expect based on the groups that you've been on tour with. We've been on all sorts of tours; everything from opening for really big acts like Thursday and Sugarcult to being out with bands that are at our exact level or new signs who don't have an album out. Its all a building process. Every tour you do, in one way or another, is going to effect what you do next. Its like a stepping stone thing. You want to open and support bigger bands as much as you can to get exposed to their fans, but its also important to go out and headline to reestablish yourselves as a band and to see what you can draw and to really play a show for your fans. There's no tour that we've done that hasn't lived up to our expectations, but there's been some that have been more exciting than others.

PL: Are you excited about touring the UK?

MR: Yeah, I'm extremely excited, mainly because I've never been there, but also because we're going there with Fall Out Boy, who are not only friends of ours, but are also a blast from the past because we used to play with them all the time. To be somewhere new like that, not to mention being overseas, I think will be a lot of fun. That will be our first time on a bus, so that will be awesome.

PL: This is all in good fun: Say one bad or embarrassing thing about your bandmates.

MR: Laughs Bad or embarrassing. Let's see-I've got to think of something good here because they may or may not read it. I want to make sure that its not too brutal. Okay, I think Dan Lowder (our guitarist) once played video games for 36 hours straight. We drove a brutal drive across the country, that was non stop, only stopping for gas, and he was playing video games the whole time. We got to our destination, and we all went inside, and he stayed in the van for at least another half a day because he had just been playing non stop.

PL: Must have passed the time at least.

MR: I guess. There's something for Dan, do you want me to say something about everybody?

PL: Its up to you.

MR: We'll just leave it at that. I don't want them to be reading this.

PL: Is it difficult to keep in touch with bands after you've finished touring with them?

MR: Yes and no. You always think that you're gonna keep better touch with them than you actually do, but I guess it depends on what your chances are of going out with them again and what kind of contacts you exchange with them. If its just, "Email me sometime," its a little more random, where if you have their phone number you can call them whenever you want. You can leave them messages, play phone tag and text message them. We buddy up with most bands that we tour with, but we end up being better friends with some of them in the long run. We're really good friends with a lot of the bands that our on our label: Action Action, Silverstein, and our tour last Fall was with Home Grown and Denver Harbor and Halifax, and we're really good friends with all of those guys. I'd say its difficult to keep in touch because everyone is always busy, but its always as hard as you make it. You can go out of your way to keep contacts, or you can let it fall apart. I try to do my best.

PL: Are you a White Sox fan?

MR: 100%.

PL: I'm a die hard Cubs fan.

MR: Okay, let me explain this so we can see eye to eye. I've always decided that, if somebody is rooting for my arch rivals, I can appreciate that as long as they're actually fans. My biggest pet peeve in the sports world is someone saying that they're a fan just to get a rise out you, and then when you talk to them about the team, they don't know anything. I respect my Cubs fan friends that are actually Cubs fans and know about the team and will fight with me about it, because then its fun. If they're just like (In a snooty tone) "I like the Cubs because I'm from the North Side," they don't know anything about baseball.

I tell him about my plan to get Chicago bands to write a Cubs fight song in vein of "Tessie" by the Dropkick Murphys.
MR: For me personally, my dad's side of the family is purely White Sox and they would disown me if I was a Cubs fan when I was little. At an early age, I was getting White Sox jackets, shirts and hats.

PL: Are you a big sports fan?

MR: More Chicago sports in general. I follow that more than I follow the whole league, but I follow football the most (He's a big Bears fan). I follow baseball too, but its a lot harder to follow baseball because they play so many damn games. At least with the Bears, its once a week, and I can kind of get a grasp on each division that has four teams or five teams. Its easier to follow than baseball, which is just out of control.

PL: I have a theory with sports. If you have one favorite team, you have to hate every other team in their division. Do you think that in order to be a true fan of your team, you have to hate all the other teams in that division?

MR: I'd say so. Its really easy for me to talk trash on the Vikings, Packers and Lions just because thats the four teams in the NFC Central.

PL: Almost every team beats the Cubs, so I hate a lot of teams.

MR: Its tough because the Cubs and White Sox both had back to back almost good years.

PL: Whats a little known fact about Chicago?

MR: I'm gonna assume that people know this, but Chicago has the best food in the country, period. Thats my opinion, but between hot dogs, polish sausages and pizza-probably the only thing that they're lacking is sea food because we're near Lake Michigan, but we're not on either coast so we can't compete with that. I'd say that Chicago food is the one thing that I miss when I'm on tour.

PL: What was your favorite childhood movie?

MR: Ghostbusters.

PL: Name one band, besides your own, that you think all kids should have in their collection.

MR: The Promise Ring is a band that I think everybody should at least listen to once in their lives. You can like them or hate them, but I think that they're very influential to a lot of people.

PL: Do you have any final comments?

MR: Thanks for doing the interview and thanks to anybody who has taken the time to read it. I'm flattered that anyone cares what I have to say. We've got our new record coming out on March 22. Its called Stop Doing Bad Things and I can definitely say that its the happiest I've ever been with a recording.

PL: When you did guys finish recording that?

MR: A few weeks ago. The week before Christmas.

PL: Is it weird having to wait a few months from when the recording is done to when the album comes out?

MR: Its not too bad because a) we're keeping busy by touring, but there's a whole bunch of stuff that goes into it. We're waiting to get the master back, which is the final version, and then we have to get the artwork back and the promotion and samplers. I'd rather build it up than release it right away.

PL: I was trying to figure out why albums can take so long to come out.

MR: Well, it depends on the label and it depends on the band. Victory has a pretty quick turn-around, but they want to have the promotional copies ready to go a month before hand and samplers six weeks before hand, and its a lot to take care of.

PL: Victory does have their shit together, whether you like them or not, they promote the hell out of all of their bands.

MR: They shove their stuff down everyone's throats, and thats the idea. Everyone knows about them. Love them or hate them, everyone knows about them. I think its a great promotional machine.

Interviewed by RF

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