Say Anything and the Sound of Growing Up

By Matt Beshear
Staff Writer

It happens so many times, with so many artists: the art takes a backseat to the drama. Whether it’s Courtney Love, Kanye West, Pete Doherty, Amy Winehouse or a host of others, so often an artist’s personal problems get more press than their music.

Say Anything frontman and main songwriter Max Bemis used to be one of those people. From drug addiction to problems with bipolar disorder to online battles with peers, Max has been through it all. Luckily, with an excellent new album, spots on major tours and festivals and a new wife (Sherri Dupree of Eisley) he seems to have left those things behind.

Following the release of their 2004 debut, the punk masterpiece “…Is a Real Boy,” Max and Say Anything hit the road to promote the disc and later signed with J Records. They followed it up with the release of the sprawling double-disc “In Defense of the Genre,” the record where Max really pulled away from the pack and left his emo peers in the dust.

Packed with biting, confessional lyrics, punk guitars and sad songs disguised as happy ones, the first two records are as good as it gets and are equally carried by Max’s unique vocal phrasing. “Freddie Mercury is a big influence on my particular style of singing and Chris Conley from Saves the Day,” Max said in a recent phone interview. “In terms of weirder stuff, Johnny Cash was big for me and comedians like Woody Allen. I like to think there’s an element to the band that’s comedic and it’s almost like performing stand-up comedy rather than singing a song. I think that has a lot to do with the talking and yelling, but not in a traditional screaming metal or hardcore way, its just a lot of me screaming shit out.”

In November of last year, the band released its self-titled third album. Their most mature and concise album to date, “Say Anything” is the sound of growing up and a tale of redemption

“All our records have a theme and are tied into the story of my life. This one was about becoming a man and taking charge of your life. Coming out of the last one, which was a really dark record about drug addiction and abusive love and mental disease, I think that’s the kind of record I needed to write. It’s directly tied to the fact that after all that shit I finally reached my lowest point and had to change my life and a lot of things happened out of that including meeting Sherri and taking control of my disease and my bipolar disorder, and that’s all reflected in the music.”

Fresh off playing Bamboozle, the band is hitting the road as the opener on the Angels & Airwaves tour. “We’ve known them for a while going back to when we were a small band and Tom (DeLonge of Blink 182 and Angels & Airwaves) said a lot of nice stuff about us in the press,” Max said. “We met up when they came through on the Blink tour and we gave Tom our new record, and he really liked it, so we submitted for the tour and things kind of came together.”

On the records it’s mostly Max, but on tour there are five other members on stage, with Max leading the crew minus his guitar. No strangers to headlining their own shows, it will be interesting to see how they scale down the set list with four albums worth of material to choose from now and a ton of people showing up just to see them.

“As an entertainer, everything I do is affected by the audience, whether you’re writing a song or choosing a set list and knowing where its going really affects what you do.So when we’re making a set list, it becomes how are we going to win over new fans and how are we going to satisfy the people who came to the see Say Anything, it’s a mixture of both of those things.”

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If You Go

Who: Say Anything w/Angels & Airwaves
Where: The Venue at The Hub
When: Wed April 14 7:30 pm
Info: 701.478.4827