In our next Band Spotlight, we chat to Nathan Hardy, vocalist for US alt-rock standouts, Microwave about new music, the state of rock and more.
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S] How are you guys doing today?
Pretty good. We flew overnight last night from Atlanta to London and we weren’t able to sleep on the plane so we’re deliriously tired. My eyelid is swollen.
S] What specific experiences can you recall leading up to the writing of ‘keeping up’?
We went on tour with the Dangerous Summer in February and I got a really bad sinus/upper-respiratory that stayed with me for a month. We were driving through a blizzard for like a week of it too. It was a particularly trying tour. Also, the last few years has been difficult to stay afloat financially. Don’t make a rock band if you want to be able to afford health insurance.
S] How do you look back on the success of ‘Much Love’?
It took a while to catch on, but two years after it’s release, I feel really good about the response. Both headline tours that we’ve done in the US since the record came out were successful. We’ve gotten to do several really cool tours and meet lifelong friends.
S] As a follow up, what is your attitude to success as a band?
It’s an interesting time to be in a rock band. If any one of us were to start a SoundCloud rap project, we’d probably have a larger fanbase after a few weeks than we’ve developed over our few years of touring as a band. That being said, we’ve enjoyed the many awesome experiences that our bands’ relative success has afforded us.
S] What would you say to other emerging bands who might be inspired by your success?
Write a lot of music. Rock music needs more artists that focus on songwriting and really immerse themselves in their craft because they love it. Trying to put out a handful of songs and then grow your band through touring doesn’t make sense anymore. We have the internet.
S] What have you learned about yourself through the music that you’ve made, from the band’s beginning until this point?
A lot of times I recognize how I feel about different things in the process of writing about them. I’d say, among other things, I’ve ascertained that I’m a hopeless nihilist and I’ll never be done searching for things to attach meaning to my life.
