Author: Emma Loggins
Date: 2008-07-25


Interview:
We had the honor of sitting down with Tom Higgenson of The Plain White Tees to talk with him about the band's latest album, their web series on ABC Family entitled Meet Me In California, and more. Here's what he had to say:

How does it feel being part of basically the new media revolution with combining the music and the Internet and TV and everything? You guys are kind of on the forefront of it with this project.

T. Higgenson: We'll we've kind of gotten lucky with that now and in the past. Like when MySpace first came out we jumped on it right away, and we were actually one of the first bands that Tom himself ever put on the front page because they saw us play at Warped Tour or something and he put us up there. Before it was all corporate and people would pay for the front page; it's a big advertisement.

So I don't know, somehow we've just gotten lucky with Internet presence and just kind of being at the right place at the right time. With the ABC Family series we definitely feel the same way. This is a huge deal for us, and it's perfect timing. We're recording a new record, we're about to go on tour and support it, and just to have that documented alone is amazing let alone putting it online for this Web series. It's just a really cool idea and, like I said, we're just lucky to be a part of it.

How did the relationship with ABC Family come about to start with? I know you guys did the stuff on Greek.

T. Higgenson: Yes. I think ABC they're partners with Disney. They wanted an actual band to be on the show Greek to be a part of the show and they met with a lot of bands, and we happened to be one of those bands because of the connection through Disney. I guess we were just the band that they picked and it turned out great for both of us, because that was before "Delilah" blew up or anything.

So they were taking a risk with us and we were taking a risk because we had only seen the pilot. If the show would have bombed it would have sucked for us. But we both thought it was a cool idea, we both liked each other, and we went for it and it worked out. So I think through that connection is how this webisode came about.

Did filming this series change the recording process for you guys at all or did it present any challenges?

T. Higgenson: You know not at all. It was actually really nice. It's all being filmed by someone that we're pretty close friends with, and he did some documenting when we did our last record. He kind of hung around the studio once in a while and shot some video. But this time, obviously, he was there every day and just really in our face with it. But we're very comfortable with him, so it worked out nicely. It wasn't like there was some camera crew with people we didn't know living with us or anything like that. It was just a friend of ours with a lot of skill and a good camera kind of doing it. So we were very comfortable.

Like I said in my last question, it was cool that it was documented. And even if it wasn't for ABC Family or a series I would have loved to have him there anyway just so that we could have those moments and those memories and kind of put it together for ourselves. So the fact that this is actually being seen by other people and done in this webisode thing I think is really special - it was really cool.