Circa Survive ended their tour last month with a sold-out show in Philadelphia, PA. Before they hit the stage, Katie Krzaczek had the chance to sit down with Anthony Green to talk about the new Circa album, his own work, Will Yip, Lana Del Rey, and more. Read up below! by Katie Krzaczek

You’re from the area. How is playing a show—a sold out show, at that—here different from anywhere else?

Anthony Green: There’s a familiarity to being in Philadelphia. I talk to people all the time when we travel about, you know, “You’re from wherever, Bumsville, Pittsburgh,” and they have this, like, “This is where I’m from, yeah I love this town.” I say I’m from Philly—I really grew up in the suburbs of Philly—but I grew up going to shows here, going to R5 shows here, more specifically. Going to the Church, going to Kill Time and the Stalag.



Philly also has its own kind of fan when it comes to music and art and sports, just everything. They’re a little bit more passionate. They’re a little bit more wild. They’re easier to lube up: when you come out [on stage], right away they’re going crazy. They’re very giving; they come and they’re just ready to give all this energy to you. You know, maybe that’s just a hometown thing, but I think it has a lot to do with just this city being a passionate, crazy, wild place. I definitely get the feeling like I’m home here, and people are proud of you being from their city, whether it’s a sports team or a band. Our little community in Philadelphia is really proud of us, and we’re really proud to call them fans and to have them as part of our community. We have a mutual respect that’s elevated and accentuated when we get into a room together, and we just know it’s time to fuck shit up.



Good Old War has been a big part of that Philly community. Over the years, you’ve become good friends with the band, so how will Tim Arnold’s leaving the band affect your solo work? [Good Old War have served as Green’s backing band on his solo projects and the corresponding tours]

AG: I’m not 100 percent sure what the future of my solo music is going to be, but the music I’m working on right now is very minimalist compared to Young Legs and Beautiful Things. There isn’t a great amount of instrumentation; it’s really just an acoustic guitar or a single piano and lots of vocals. So I wasn’t really sure if I was going to have a band play with me on this record. If I was to tour again with a full band, it might be time to change it up. It might be time to add or subtract people. I love Tim Arnold so much from the bottom of my heart, and I want to continue to play music with him. I would love to do another solo tour where I have some of the guys from Good Old War and Tim Arnold in the band still, but I just don’t know how it looks yet. I’ve been so tunnel visioned on Circa, and I even have other projects that are pretty intense going on kind of simultaneously; I’d love to do something with Saosin after the Circa record. So that’s, like, a year or two down the line. I’m not really thinking of anything but Circa at the moment, but I do have a bunch of solo songs that I’m working on while I’m doing this, and I just don’t hear a full band vision with most of them. Tim Arnold and I will for sure continue to work together, though. Whether it’s solo or we’re talking about doing a full length High and Driving record, just him and me. We’ll figure it out.

Outside of working with the guys in Good Old War, you’ve done a lot of collaborations: Nate Ruess, Chino Moreno and Sam Means [formerly of The Format], most recently, with the Blue Jeans cover, which was very unexpected.

AG: Yeah, I got a lot of flak for that [laughing]. I love Lana Del Rey, but there are a lot of people that don’t. I got a lot of bullshit from hardcore fans asking, “Why would you do that?” but, you know what? That song is awesome. [Fans would say] “It’s so mainstream. Why would you do a mainstream song like that?” And I’d say, just because a song is liked by a lot of people doesn’t make it bad. If that were the case, you’d end up hating a lot of people, like the Beatles and Bob Dylan and Bob Marley.



Any idea of who you’d like to work with in the future?

AG: Fuck. It’s such a difficult thing to day. I would absolutely love to do a song with her [Lana]. I know that won’t ever happen. I know 100 percent that won’t ever happen because I just don’t think she would ever do that, but I absolutely adore her voice. I think her voice is just something so unique and weird, and I really like it for how weird it is. It’s so hard to think about who I would want to do stuff with because I just don’t do that. The stuff with Chino and Nate just happened super organically because we sort of knew each other. And the Nate song came about before the fun. record even came out and they were like the biggest thing in the world. It was just like, I love that dude, and I love The Format.



I don’t really go out looking for people to collaborate with. I only kind of work with my friends, people I know. I don’t even have any friends that I don’t work with. I can’t think of one person that I hangout with that isn’t involved in music or involved in what we do. Like, my best friend outside of the band is Will Yip. He’s my best friend in the world, and he’s produced the last two Circa records and my solo record. He’ll be my producer forever. Outside of my family that I’m blood with and my in-laws, I have no friends that I don’t work with.



Would I love to do something with someone like Thom Yorke or St. Vincent or someone awesome like that? Yeah, but I just don’t see that happening. I feel like those are the types of people, like me in a way, that just don’t do stuff unless it’s with their friends.



Speaking of Will Yip, he’s posted that “Circa Survive is about to blow your mind” and that “This record is a game changer.” What do you think makes this record a “game changer” and what is so “mind blowing” about it?

AG: Well, it’s the first record that I’ve ever written completely sober—actually, the only other thing I’ve ever written sober like this, not on anything: not drinking, not smoking weed, not on any drugs or anything, was the Saosin EP. My whole career, I’ve sort of had this fog over my head, whether it was with a substance or whether it was with alcohol or something. So this is the first Circa record I’ve ever written completely sober. I wouldn’t say that that’s why it’s a game changer, but for me, everything from the lyrics and the melodies that Will and I wrote together and the music came so easy and so naturally.

There’s this thing that happens when you’re writing music where it’s like catching a fish or something. You’re like “Oh my god!” and everyone’s there and high fiving and you can literally feel it. Sometimes that happens to a certain extent and you’re like, “yeah this is great, right?” But for this record, all of these songs had multiple moments where we were like, “Holy fuck! That is awesome! What if we did this? Holy shit!” where you’re just really excited. I know people say that about their records all the time. For a lot of bands, it’s like, “Oh we’re gonna put out a record, we just signed a record deal” or “We’re gonna do an independent record.” But for us, for this one, all of our lives were falling apart. All this crazy shit was going down. It was addiction stuff. It was divorce stuff happening. That’s why we decided to go in the studio. It wasn’t like, “Oh hey, we just got a bunch of money, let’s go in the studio.” It was like, “Hey, shit is going down. We need to get into the fucking studio and work.” It just felt right. Never in our career did we write a record this quick. We went into the studio with song ideas—the structure, the melodies—but nothing was written really ahead of time. It was fragmented, and everything kind of came together on the spot out of more of a necessity than there ever had been. There was just a really, really powerful sense of urgency. Everybody used it as an experience to get away from what was really haunting them. And everybody had something really haunting them. I definitely don’t want to make this record about a divorce or a drug addiction. I decided going into it that I’m not going to make this about going to rehab or trying to piggyback it off of what we were doing. I don’t want to use that as the story of the record, and that’s why I won’t really get into it. It’s just like, shit was going down, and instead of running away from it and being terrified, we decided to go in and just work.



You were out with Saosin for the reunion shows before this Circa tour. When can we expect to hear anything coming out of those brief studio sessions we got a peek into?

AG: It’s so hard to say. I want to do the Circa record due diligence, and then we’ll see when the Saosin stuff happens. Those guys all have full time jobs. I have like, six full time jobs: I’m a dad, I’m like a full time chef, I’m a masseur, I have another baby coming, plus the Circa record. We definitely are gonna do something. It’ll just kind of be once the Circa train wants to make a pit stop.



With Circa, you guys are very intent on keeping your fans up to date with Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc., but obviously not every minute of the tour can be documented. What was the worst or the strangest thing that happened to you guys during this run?

AG: Steve [Clifford] and I got into this dumb fight about leaving a bottle that I pissed in in the van. It was right before our good friend and videographer came out, and I was really glad he wasn’t there to capture that because we were both just acting really childish. But it lasted like 20 minutes and it was over. It’s just one of those things that happens; the dynamic of a band is difficult to understand for anybody who isn’t in it. It’s like a family, but on acid. We have a videographer on this tour, and he’s been capturing a bunch of stuff from backstage and the live shows. We just have fun together. There’s a fun vibe for us being on tour, and it’s super proud to capture some of that actually happening and some of the stuff that goes down when we’re just hanging out. I think a lot of people, when they’ve been doing it for 10 years, it’s become like a job, but for us it’s still just hanging out with your friends, playing music.



Over the past year, you’ve worked with almost every group you’ve been a part of: Saosin, The Sound of Animals Fighting, Circa, as well as worked on your solo stuff. How do the experiences with each group differ?

AG: Everybody’s different in all the groups. The guys’ personalities in Circa are different than the guys’ personalities in Saosin and the guys in the Sound of Animals Fighting. Circa I would say is my main project, so I’d say things are a little more serious when it comes to Circa. With Sound of Animals, Saosin, my solo stuff, it’s a little bit lighter. I’m not as concerned; they’re not as goal-oriented as Circa. There are things I want to accomplish with Circa: I want to do bigger tours with Circa, I want to take Circa’s music to more people. With all the rest [of my projects], I’m pretty happy to do whatever and just have fun. They’re not necessarily goal-oriented projects. That’d be the main difference for me, but I have fun with all of them. They’re all great dudes. I’m just so lucky to be a part of so many awesome, active music projects.

Do you see yourself slowing down any time soon?

AG: No. Actually, I feel like I have more time now, which is strange, because I also have more responsibilities than I’ve ever had in my life. I feel like when you’re getting fucked up, even on a recreational basis, time just sort of slips away from you. Being sober, I find that my stamina when it comes to working is a lot greater than it had been before. I have a lot more time for some reason…I’m able to work more when I make the time. I’m able to actually manage my time so that I’m able to wake up, be with the boys and do my thing when I’m not on tour and then work on some music. Being able to manage your time, if you can do that, you can do fucking anything. I actually just feel this sense of urgency like I said with the record. I just want to do as much music and produce as much as I possibly can while I’m alive and while I’m young and while my brain is still relatively in tact.