Interview with Glass Mansions (SXSW 2016)

This four piece powerhouse blew me away when I found them playing on 6th street a few years back at SXSW. I was on my way to a meeting, but left them a note, thinking of a female fronted stage I was doing on the Warped Tour that coming summer, that I might have something for them and to give me a call.

Here I am a Warped Tour performance and a few years later, a huge fan. Although they have been through a name change (from Death of Paris to Glass Mansions) they are the same mix of pop and edge I first found and loved on 6th street. How they end their own bio says it all, “We don’t believe in 9 to 5s. We don’t believe in settling, and we sure don’t believe in molding to an idea based off someone else’s expectations. We believe in rock ‘n’ roll, breaking the rules, and creating your own reality.”

Glass Mansions: “Oh is that on”

Music4Breakfast: “she’s been covertly recording”

M4B: “I was half recording”
GM: (laughs)

M4b: “so you guys have been on tour for a while, how long have you been on tour?”

GM: “forever” “March 3rd so like 2 weeks, I think, yeah, so this is the smack dab middle of our tour”

M4b: “What was the best thing that happened on the whole tour, the coolest story”

GM: “coolest story…well, we’ve had some crazy mis-adventures, that are great stories but at the time it was kind of terrifying, yea, we uh, I won’t say the city, but we almost got kidnapped by our sound guy”

M4b: “What?!?”

GM: “That was very strange, he led us on a 45 minute tour through the city”

M4b: “oh my god”

GM: “To a dead end road, that was interesting. That made for a good story, um, oh and then, another night, after the bar had closed, we were hanging out with another band, just kind of chit-chatting, this woman literally came to a screeching halt, 2am, all the bars had shut down, everything was quiet, 2am, the woman pulls up in a pickup truck, she jumps out of her truck and just starts like going off, like, do you know the good word of Jesus, and by the way have you ever heard of planet x, every power plant is built on a fault line, it was like every conspiracy theory like wrapped up into this really crazy 20 minute conversation. We kind of like timeline our tour based on crazy events”

M4b: “you guys stayed for 20 minutes?”

GM: “She stayed for 20 minutes, we didn’t really have a choice. We couldn’t even get a word in because it was like rapid fire. I mean it was just spouting like stream of consciousness. It certainly wasn’t the first time she had given that speech. yea. She also gave us a CD to take home and we were kind of pumped to listen to it, and we got into the van and.. apparently it’s a DVD with four and a half hours of this shit, conspiracy theory..”

M4b: “Wow”

GM: “Yea we will have to wait on that one, pamphlets, annotations, the whole nine. It looked like the plans for the death star.”

M4b: ” that’d be good crazy rubbish for in-between songs on an album”

GM: “yea, ha ha, I’m holding onto that one, that one’s a gem”

M4b: “so, wait, what happened with the dead end street guy”

GM: ” so basically he got out of the van, and we quickly locked it and got the hell out of dodge. It was really scary though because at first he only wanted me (Blake) and him to go park our van uh.. and.. and there was no parking, huge city, with our trailer, and uh.. just strange circumstances around the whole thing. We decided not to stay there for the night anyway, we had the whole band and we were leaving and he just jumps in the van. He did he says, oh by the way, you guys are giving me a ride home, right? And we’re like ok, we figured, he lives around the corner somewhere. But no, he lives 45 minutes. away. We keep driving, and then we keep driving.. and then he’s like well we’re here, were totally at my house, and so I was like ok, let me stop and let you out, he’s like man, this isn’t really where my house is, you know, we’ve got to keep going a little further. Yea, at that point its like.. uhh..

M4b: “yea, that’s scary”

GM: “We didn’t really bring him to an actual house.” uhh.. (Jayna) this is the problem when you ask us a question, you get intimate detail.”

M4b: “no this is awesome, it’s perfect”

GM: “No I mean like, Yea, we kind of timeline our tour by, uh, road stories, kind of like from weird to weird to weird. But like I guess (to really weird) but I guess on a positive note though, we’ve been playing a lot of cities for the first time, and we’ve been really well received, a couple of places the people knew the words, and that was exciting. It’s been a great tour so far. One of the coolest parts has been getting to meet all of these new bands that we’ve played with, getting to hang out with them, drink with them, and like get to know people from all over the states really, ya know, yea, it’s a fuckin blast, just hanging out, and keeping up with them”

M4b: “that probably answers my next question which is what was your favorite part of the tour”

GM: “saint louis.. i don’t even remember saint louis.. Saint Louis was really fun, because it was like a festival kind of situation, and all the bands, we knew none of the bands in the whole scene and we just became like instant family there. It was such a tight knit community of people in bands and fans of the bands, I mean there were people from Utah, people from Alaska, people from like the east coast, and it was just really, really fun, because we all had this kind of commrodorary, that a lot of us were on the road. Yeah, it was really welcoming for sure.

well, and being here at South By, this is kind of just in the middle of it and going out of it, this ends up being a highlight, this is our third year playing here, and its always, just the best kind of crazy fun.”

M4b: “it’s definitely insaine. Where are you guys going next? After South by”

GM: “San Antonio. We’ve got a few more showcases here, then we go to San Antonio, Houston, Beaumont, all the way back down the bottom, pretty much I10 east all the way back to South Carolina. We have like another week and a half. Yea it’s always funny because by the time the end of the tour comes, we are like in the zone, like it seems like it ends too soon, ya know. Like when your finally like ready, its over. ”

M4b: “What’s the biggest thing you guys are working on right now, when you wrap up the tour, what’s next?”

GM: “Well, we um, we started shooting a music video for our new song, Matches, that we put out to kick off the tour, so, we are going to finish that up, and put that out when we get back home, um, and then release some more new music, then finish recording an EP, then go on another tour, the whole cycle begins again, we’ve been so busy the past couple years, were trying to tour more, then we had the name change, and now that that’s finally settled, we are back to touring more.”

M4b: “so how has that been with the name change?”

GM: “Well honestly it really sucks for the people who have been following us for, ya know, years, it’s the point where its all the sudden, boom, by the way, this is totally different, and I feel like there’s a mutual, kind of, strange feeling about it, and, there’s nothing we can do, we’ve decided to do this, we are going to move forward with it, but at the same time it is very jarring, ya know, it’s like 5 years and ehh this is probably the right thing to do. I think we started posting, letting everyone know something was going to happen that we were going to have a change, but I think that a lot of our fans were surprised that we were going to do the name change, but um everyone has been really understanding, and welcomed the new name, and I don’t regret it at all, I think we made the right decision, I think it was the right thing to do. It’s so funny because even we are still getting used to it, like even during our shows, we will catch ourselves almost saying the wrong name, we’re like no, we’re Glass Mansions now. (Jayna) And yesterday I was trying to login to our Instagram and it wouldn’t let me in and I’m like this is totally the right password what am I doing and I put our old name in just out of habbit. So I guess social media stuff has been a little weird, just getting the word out to people. We’re still trying to make sure everybody knows. Its a transitional process, you know, it’s going to take a little time, but we’re hoping after doing this tour and putting the single out under Glass Mansions, it’s setting in for everyone including us.

M4b: “So back to the beginning, how did you guys get your start?”

GM: ” (Jayna) Umm.. well.. I guess.. Blake and I were in a band, and then we started this band, and after that we were introduced to Patrick, I had a mutual friend that worked at the coffee shop where I worked, and he was bad ass, so we brought him in and we ended up doing an acoustic tour, and went through a bunch of drummers, and John joined the band like a year and a half ago. I guess we all have different musical backgrounds. We found him on craigslist.” “(Patrick) How could you say no to this face”

M4b: “So two more questions, since the blog is music4breakfast – we wanted to know what jam you wake up to in the morning, and what’s for breakfast?”

GM: “ahh..” “well you gotta ask John, John’s been cooking a lot on this tour.”

M4b: “John’s the chef on this tour?”

GM: “sort of, he’s very innovative in his cuisine, he’s got this thermos, a camping thermos, that he can put rice or mashed potatoes in, and he goes to a gas station, puts hot water in from the coffee machine, lets it sit for a few minutes, bada bing, bada boom, he’s got like steak and potatoes, and we’re eating taco bell. Yea. So. Yeah, breakfast looks like, Tacos, we eat tacos a lot. Generally any kind of burrito or taco configuration, is I’d say 75 to 80 percent of the intake, with the other 20 percent being cheeseburgers. And John eats steak for breakfast, when he can make it, I had some it was good.

And you were asking what we listen to or something?”

M4b: “yeah in the morning, what do you like to listen to?”

GM: “Silence (laughs), we did listen to, there was complete silence in the van driving to Austin, cause we knew like we weren’t ready yet, for Austin. It’s that calm before the storm. No, we listen to, we try to find like 80’s stations on the radio, and like classic rock. (Patrick) It’s mainly when I’m awake in the van, all I’m hearing is R&B and Hip hop stuff. (Jayna) that’s when Blake’s driving. (Blake) I’ve been searching for the elusive down song down in the dm that i’ve been trying to play for these guys, literally 5 rap stations in 5 different cities and I haven’t heard it and I was wondering what that song is, but I haven’t heard it yet, but I’m still trying to listen to see if they play it.”

M4B: ” So you’ve sort of already answered my last question, who’s the cook in the band, we do artist recipies.”

GM: “So I have to say the only one in the band who has done any cooking on this tour is this guy (John), like I said he’s gotten pretty innovative. Like making rice and putting sauce. Yea, we’ll go to to different fast food places and he’ll mix it up with a little bit of rice, a little bit of soy sauce. But he’s been wanting to try the innersteak. Bascially, its taking a steak and wrapping it in tin-foil and then we’re going to put it on the engine block of the van, then we are going to drive a few hours and cook it.  We’ve also thought about tail pipe baked potato.”

M4b: “I hope you don’t die trying that (laughing), So that’s it thats the end of the interview, thank you guys”