mewithoutYou interview
Here is more of the interview that took place at the Cornerstone 2006 Festival, which was used to write the Sep/Oct feature on mewithoutYou. I hope you enjoy getting to hear more of Aaron Weiss' words here.
Tell me about mainstage tonight. How’d it go?
Well, it was probably one of the most fun nights I’ve had with the band. It was one of my favorite shows we’ve ever played. I was kind of worried about the size of the stage and stuff. We stuck so close together. We got to play with bands. We had a good time. It was really magical for me. Much better than our first show (T&N Day).
I’ve heard the new album many times. Like it. I’m curious about the whole multi-colored spider motif. What inspired that?
(chuckles) Just like most of our writing, it’s something I saw. I’m not that creative of a person, so I don’t make things come out of thin air. I was just on tour last year and saw a brown spider on a brown leaf and it occurred to me how God cares for all of creation and how perfectly everything works. So I took it as a progression from a healthier yellow leaf, to getting older to orange, and then brittle and brown, and falling off and dying. And there being something that can fall. One of my realizations in that is that I die and everybody dies. So, it kind of has an unhappy twist at the end, but ultimately, there’s more – hope and positive and encouragement on the new record. But yeah, it’s about a spider I saw.
What do you want to tell HM readers about the album? What’s sticking out to you? What did you really pour your heart into? And what was special beyond… What songs stick out and why? What do you want to say?
Well, one special one for me happens to be the ones where we departed the most from our sound on the new album. There’s more shouting and more electric guitars. Some of the newer songs, there’s acoustic guitars and I took voice lessons to learn to pace a little better than I could before. I started taking it to the kind of music that I enjoy listening to. So, there’s a few tracks that departed pretty drastically from what people may be accustomed to. There’s quite a few, also, that stay in the very same beat as what you always expect. We’ve moved forward, but haven’t wandered too far. I think some of the new sounds that we recorded are my favorite recordings. I tried bass. We had different friends from Psalters and Anathallo and Amber that played the harp. People came together and working with them was just completely incredible. It provides so much more color and texture. Other people’s creativity… It’s really spontaneous. We didn’t tell anybody what to play. Some of the Anathallo guys – they recorded their tracks after we’d left; so we didn’t even know what they were going to do. It was a little more free. I had a lot less anxiety in my heart about, ‘What am I going to say?’ But, recording a first record, I didn’t care what I was saying for the most part I just wanted to be cool and make out with girls. With the second record, I had an experience where I encountered Jesus in such an undeniable way that I knew I couldn’t go back to singing about a broken romantic relationship that I had stepped over; but I felt tremendously inadequate. My faith wasn’t strong enough to say anything to anybody. I wasn’t sure I actually believed what I was saying or if Christianity… But with this record, I wouldn’t say I’ve resolved all those doubts, or that I’ve come to believe wholeheartedly in all the Christian doctrine of any particular denomination, but Christianity that…the love of Jesus embodied and taught and lived and the reality of God being the source of that love and the eternal light and truth – to me, there’s no more doubt about that. And so I felt more grounded than I had. An eternal sense of purpose. Not that I was trying to convert anybody to become a Christian and start going to a building on Sundays, but rather to inspire people to consider this. That they will be by this power and we understand it and call it love. And put that love into practice. We don’t always communicate that perfectly clearly, but still some talk of struggles I’ve had and confusion and some of the negative cautionary examples of ‘this is what happens when I am far from God. Don’t do this’ kind of stuff. You know, what our very name implies. That’s sort of the mantle of our band – everybody in the praise and worship, but more like, ‘I’m a pretty lousy dude sometimes. And it’s like a beacon for anybody else that’s struggling. That we can come together. People who have been disillusioned with… I’m sorry if I’m rambling.
No! Ramble!
I thought about people that have felt disillusioned by the church, but don’t want to leave God behind. Trying to find a home with them. That I believe it’s something to do with coming together and loving each other and becoming a community, sharing our lives. Sharing our joys and struggles and our finances and sharing our worship, and living in faith. Not with so much all the answers to every question, but living with the questions and exploring together why we’re. What different cultures and religions have said about why we’re here and what do we do with that? Rather than saying, “Christianity’s the way. I’m a Baptist and that’s the way to Heaven; and everybody else is wrong…” Trying to find some common ground and find…at least explore any position that other people have – whether it be downright dismissing God altogether or other beliefs. I guess I’ve gone off on a tanget, because I don’t directly deal with any of this stuff in the lyrics. But it’s all in my heart – wanting to know God much more than wanting to fit in with the Christian subculture or get a pat on the back from any youth group leader who wants me to tell his kids exactly what they believe is right and confirm whatever you’re already believing. To me, I was blinded by that love and reality in that love. And it was no longer a question of, ‘Is God real?’ But…I’m sorry. I really feel like… If you let me I’ll just go so far from your question.
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