Performing Live

SS: So you're going to be performing the day your album is released. Have you ever put on a show on a release day before?

JM: I think we did that on Continuum. The show at Roseland. The great part about going out on a new tour and having a new record out is that you sort of relieve the other tunes of their duty and having to be the record that you have out. It's almost like I can take the songs from Continuum now and repurpose them in other ways because they're not on deck. It's going to be fun. Nobody wants to come to the show and hear "Waiting on the World to Change" or "Say" the way that it was performed on the record. So it's really fun, you get to play new songs and you get to repurpose the old ones so that they're new.

SJ: Oh yeah, because if the audience isn't moving, we're doing something wrong. If we're playing "Moving On and Getting Over" and everyone's not shaking their thing, we're not playing right. Something's got to give. We got to do something.

JM: I have to wait five or six songs to calibrate how the audience sounds, volume-wise. So if you're in one room where it's really easy to hear the crowd, you immediately equate that crowd as being really into it. Especially the next night when you play a room that you can't hear the crowd as well, so then you go, Oh they hate it. By the way, I'm embracing this new thing called self-doubt. I like it. There's some texture to it, I like self-doubt. And then I'll be like, I got to put in an oldie. And it's not until I put in an oldie and that doesn't sound loud either, then I go, Okay it's just a quiet room, I'm sure they're going nuts.

Q: Do headphones on the stage during the performance make the contact with the audience limited?

A: Not at all! I've got a pair of stereo mics that pick up everything around me. And I'm getting the front-of-house feed. I'm *IN* the live recording!