A Plea For Purging | Life
“We may have nothing to show, we may have nowhere to go, but with the heart of children we need nothing. They say we’ve wasted our lives, they say we’re wasting our time but with the heart of children we have everything. Hallelujah” I wish I could just use this space to list out the rest of the lyrics of A Plea For Purging’s track 3 “Heart of a Child” because it defines the life of anyone that has put time into this scene. A band like Plea takes a lot of heat from peers and elders for the time that they have given to us, fans that will probably never fully appreciate their sacrifice, but that is okay because they don’t need it. Anything done right is not for man’s sake or praise anyways, rather it is done for the Lord and His glory. And the guttural punishing scream of “Hallelujah” at the end of that track shows the victory that Plea still receives daily from their time in this scene. We are always honored here at Hopecore.com to get to catch up with Plea and talk a bit about their latest release. In this case The Life and Death of A Plea For Purging.
So FIRST, the question that I am sure has been keeping fans such as myself up at night… Is the title of this album, The Life and Death of A Plea For Purging, prophesying an end of your career as a band?
A Plea For Purging: I got the email for this interview 10 minutes after I finished watching Pearl Jam “Twenty.” It’s an encouraging watch for any music lover, musician, and those that still seek to create and find art in as pure of a form as society will allow us today. I have said a number of times on and off record that bands end, bands break up. Though as a blanket statement that is true, a band never ends if its art still lives on in others. Those dudes have been jamming for twenty years now. That is incredible. PLEA has been a band for just over 5 years. I can’t imagine what it’d be like to still be in this band in 15 more years but there is some hope in me that one day I will be able to be answering this question for the millionth time.
Being in a band is about as unstable a thing as there is in this world. At anytime it can break. There is an excitement in that. There is also an underlying fear in it. You work and build up this thing, pour every once of your being into it, and then it becomes its own identity and you have to sit back and see what it becomes. We are proud of what this band has become and don’t regret any of the steps taken thus far. I think we’ll keep at it as an “active” band until we can’t say that anymore. As long as the four of us are happy with the art that we are making and that we feel we are being as completely honest with ourselves and our fans as humanly possible, we will keep making music together. Who knows when this thing will be said and done? We don’t but as long as fans still hold our art dear to them, PLEA will never die.
Sidenote, your promo photo looks minus a member. Why the departure of your guitarist Tyler?
Plea: I guess not making an official departure statement for Tyler last year totally shot ME in the foot because I have had to answer this question more times than I can ever care to count. Tyler left in August of 2010, over a year ago. He met an awesome girl, Stephanie, and asked her to marry him. He realized that touring wasn’t what he wanted out of life and he went back to college. He’s in school studying respiratory therapy. I just talked to him the other day. Things seem to be going really well for him. He is coming to our CD release show next week. He is still very much one of our best friends. We are proud of him for chasing his new dreams. I love that dude.
Is this album laid out like a time table like the title suggests?
Plea:No, I won’t say that. The album really just tells the story of my life over the past five years and how that correlates to the life of the band AND how the band has affected my life in the past five years. We have lived through a lot since the conception of this band. The record tells those stories.
What did you guys try to do differently coming into this album? And what caused those change?
Plea:This record was freeing in the sense of creating exactly whatever we wanted. There was no goal, no objective to reach. We didn’t have a conceptual mold that the lyrics had to fit in. At our age, personally and as a band, we aren’t in the business of creating a product of success but creating what naturally what comes to us. As adult men, we aren’t writing songs with the goal of winning over a teenager. We aren’t begging for acceptance in the heavy music scene by lacing every song with the most “brutal” breakdowns. As we mature in life, our songwriting matures. It is only natural. This record came to fruition organically. I am very proud of it.
I love the lyric: “Who will win the battle for my soul between God, the Devil and Rock n’ Roll?” Talk to us more about this line pulled from the track “Room For The Dead.” Do you feel that God and Rock n’ Roll cannot exist in unity? Unpack your thoughts in this statement for us.
Plea:Rock n Roll is heavy man. It’s emotional. It’s spiritual. It’s crazy that some strings and wood can evoke such emotion in people. The right combination of chords and drum beats can make you smile, make you cry, and even scare you. When you really think about it, it’s a huge monster that pushes the notion that music is just as powerful as the grace of God and the evil of Satan. You can claim to worship one but unknowingly worship another. Diving head first into this “industry” is scary, man. It can get pretty heavy on the soul dealing with the reality of consumerism, art, religion, and how to balance it all. You can get lost in it all. I’ve gotten lost in it before. I think I have a pretty clear view of what it all means now, at least the Rock n Roll part. I’ll never really understand God and the devil til, well you know.
You guys always seem to carry a cynicism within your lyrics towards the fraud of religious Christianity. Why does this topic frustrate the easy going members of Plea so greatly?
Plea: Man, to be honest. This whole concept is somewhat behind me now. I mean yeah, I still have skepticism here and there. I’m still a cynical turd sometimes but honestly I don’t have all the answers. I’m not the end-all, be-all of what is right and wrong. I had some strong words to say on that last record. I don’t regret saying any of them. I was really questioning a lot of people back then. I was really questioning myself back then. In the end, we all gotta try to love each other and build up each other. I’ve done my fair share of tearing people down. I’m sure I’ll continue to do so, it’s human nature.
Sorry if that didn’t answer your question exactly.
No, that was great. Tell me about the message behind the song “A Fight For Peace.”
Plea: I’ve been through some heavy stuff in the past year. My mother shot herself in the face. My “father” died after 30 years of his chemical suicide. I have a lot of demons inside of me. I have a dark closet full of emotions that plague me. Although not everyone can relate to my situation everyone has some demons. Everyone has that closet that they hide their questions, emotions, and fears in. While I was dealing with all of this internally in the last year, a good friend of mine starting blogging his story. Ryan Rado is a figure head in the Nashville music scene. He has helped break some of the bands you and I love into the music industry. He’s one of the friendliest dudes I’ve ever met and I’m pumped to call him my friend. To kids that don’t know him but know of him, they might think he’s THE MAN (which he is.) But that dude has struggles none of us can relate to. Living with tourettes and OCD for most all of his life, Ryan has some demons I know nothing about dealing with. After spending his life on and off meds, Ryan started a quest for his inner peace, with a new treatment/technology. I can’t really explain much about it but you can hit up his blog: www.ryanrado.com to read up on it and his personal experience with it. Anyway, I started following his blog, as he talked about the things that plague him and his quest to get past it all. With every post, I was able to understand his story more. I was able to see that although our circumstances are very different, Ryan and myself are both fighting to find peace inside our blurry, chaos-filled brains. I’m so lost inside myself that I forget that everyone is dealing with something. We are all living in this same place, going through the adversities that the world throws at us. I don’t know your deal. I don’t know what you’re going through but we’re all fighting and hopefully we can get past ourselves a little bit to help each other fight their fight.
So here is a question that we have yet to dig into with bands but I think needs to be talked about. You touched on it for a second but I want to get into it a bit more. You guys are six years older than when you started this thing and no doubt you have changed as people with time and life on the road, and the list goes on. So as the age and time gap continues to grow between you and your audience how does that make you feel? What are the thoughts that have been rolling around in your head?
Plea: The members of PLEA are all around the age of thirty. On average, our fan base is comprised of 16 year olds. We spend over 200 days a year in random venues hanging out with kids that could very well be young enough to be our children. That is a wicked weird thing to think about. Its kinda creepy saying it out loud. Touring in a band that has a younger audience somewhat puts your life on pause. My other thirty year old friends have wives, children, homes, and cars. I have a motorcycle, a computer, and a pretty sweet girlfriend. We are at this weird disconnect with our peers but also with the fans that come out to our shows. We have put ourselves in somewhat of a limbo. We have all grown to realize the position we are in in the last year and are making steps to get a grasp on our own lives. We have all taken a step into adulthood. Some buying houses, some getting married. This natural evolution surely draws the divide between us and our young fan base a litter wider, for sure. We are lucky enough to still be somewhat relevant and to understand what is going on in the “scene” around us but with every year there’s a chance that relevance and knowledge grows more dim. We’ll see how that plays out. Ask me this question next record cycle.
Deal. What is on the horizon for Plea?
Plea: The same thing we’ve always done. Burritos, shows, hanging, motorcycles, more shows, songs, records, tacos, and friendship.
God bless you guys.
