Adam Pfleider
04/15/10, 01:51 PM
Pressure from the industry around an artist can be enough to make them crack. What if a majority of that pressure comes from within? For Ace Enders, that seems to be the case. To relieve such pressure, it's always best to get to a spot where you feel the most comfort creating. Enders recently sat down to talk about his new I Can Make a Mess Like Nobody's Business album, The World We Know, and how the creative process has been for him over the past few years. If you haven't guessed or known, the fans have been a great help.
Why is your solo stuff back to I Can Make a Mess Like Nobody's Business after Ace Enders and a Million Different People?
The best way I can answer that is it is more of the feeling and vibe of the record and where I'm at right now and where everything is at. For me, it just feels right. I can't explain it. You do something for so long, I don't know, it just feels different. [Sometimes] you can't accomplish what you want to accomplish unless everything aligns up right. I know it's silly. It's just a name, but it really does make a difference going into it. I think that's artistically for me, doing this, it's such a freer project, it just allowed me to create in a different way.
You say "freer project." Do you feel like you were tied down working on A Million Different People?
I think there was a little bit of pressure. It was a weird transition for me. I love what came out of it. Coming out of The Early November, everyone sort [geared] up saying, "This is going to be the one where you break out. This is going to be where you make your career," and all that stuff. That's a lot of pressure. I did some things I wouldn't normally do going into a record. Not that it left a bad taste in my mouth, but it definitely made that project feel like something specific. Unfortunately, it was not 100% where I wanted to be.
Personally, hearing The World We Know brought me back to my first listen of the first self-titled. The background noise, the flow as one piece - which I find very interesting that you released the album as one track on Amazon. Was that the idea behind doing that?
That was the idea, for it to flow as one piece, [to] not make one song a single. That's one thing also I wanted to try and stray away from, was making a song be a single. I would rather the whole thing be a piece of work, rather than separate pieces of work.
For you, was this coming back to a more comfortable song writing venture?
Definitely, because I'm not saying I'm not comfortable writing a certain way, with a purpose for each song...this way was a lot more free, without pressure. It was a way to create and have songs without choruses. I know that I can do that in any project, but it just feels different. It just feels right.
Is that a pressure you felt with The Early November and A Million Different People?
No, with The Early November, it was just that everyone as a whole was not clicking. I could have been like, "I'm going to continue to do this, and everyone can kind of do what they like." But at that point, I wanted to get out of that, because I didn't want there to be that bad blood. It was so tainted. The whole feeling of it was just not fun.
Was there any pressure with your new projects to live up to The Early November? I mean, the first I Can Make a Mess album was around the same time as The Early November, and I believe it was before The Mother, The Mechanic....
I actually recorded that record a month after The Room's Too Cold came out. It was just shelved for a couple of years.
But doing these other projects, and detaching from The Early November, do you think there's a lot less pressure, or more pressure on you with people wanting you to break out, etc.?
I guess I put a lot more pressure on myself when [The Early November] broke up. I put a lot of pressure on the band myself. The last record was a triple disc that messed me up for a long time. At that point, I wanted to do something artistic. I listened to it, and I would do a thousand things different if I had the opportunity. I put a lot of pressure on myself then. The Room's Too Cold was supposed to be a piece that flowed. I think it did, but we just didn't have the time to take that approach. I've always taken that approach to put a lot of pressure on myself, because I'm lucky enough to do this. This is my job and I want to do it to the best of my ability. I want to do something that's just not the typical "here you go." I'd be lying if I didn't look at Absolutepunk or something like that, and see people saying, "Why don't you do a normal album?" That's not what it's about. not about getting to the next thing with me. I want to be able to go to sleep at night thinking, "I have a career and I'm not taking advantage of the art." For that, I put a lot of pressure on myself to do that as well. The whole thing with A Million Different People is that I love that record, but it is missing that one little spark that I tried to go a little bit more polished with that. That's probably where it lost its edge.
Do you feel like you found that with this new album?
I definitely did.
Do you feel like you didn't have that opportunity with [I]When I Hit the Ground because there wasn't pressure from yourself, but everybody else?
It was nuts. There were a lot of weird things that went on, that should have happened differently, that didn't. I recorded an entire record that cost a lot of money that got scrapped. Then I was having problems with label issues, so I put up [The Secret Wars EP for free]. I self paid for When I Hit the Ground to get done. It was all very rushed. A hectic hectic thing. Because I had a bad taste in my mouth from the whole thing, I think all the pressure came out because we were like, "We have to do something!" It was so hectic. Everybody expected me to come off The Early November and be like, "Here we are. This is it. The real deal." It didn't happen like that, because no one was happy with what was happening. It sat in limbo for quite a long time.
Because of that experience now, not only as a songwriter or an artist, but someone who puts so much pressure on himself, are you no longer going to approach something like that again?
I could say so. I know what I do. I know what I want to do. I know I'm not going to be a millionaire. I know I'm not going to be the biggest band in the world. I KNOW this for a FACT. What I'm going to do is going to do what is right. Too many people disrespect music for what it is. That's why the music business is failing, because too many people put focus on just one song. I get it. I get why people do that. I get why people don't view it as an art anymore. That's all fine. I can't live like that. I didn't even look at the numbers for the first week sales of [The World We Know]. The first day sales were a 1000. Somebody told me that. Great. That's awesome.
But, in the end, is it all worth it?
Of course. It's all worth it. I have people like the group of fans that made this bound book for me. All these letters. A real legit book. It's the moments when you may not feel this is worth it, but then tt's the moments when you see those things that sort of wakes you up. You say, "You know what, this is why I do this, because it effects people in some way somewhere." That it may help someone in a way that they said, "I was going through a rough time, and I didn't know if I was going to make it. You helped me." Hey, that's more than I can ask for.
Why is your solo stuff back to I Can Make a Mess Like Nobody's Business after Ace Enders and a Million Different People?
The best way I can answer that is it is more of the feeling and vibe of the record and where I'm at right now and where everything is at. For me, it just feels right. I can't explain it. You do something for so long, I don't know, it just feels different. [Sometimes] you can't accomplish what you want to accomplish unless everything aligns up right. I know it's silly. It's just a name, but it really does make a difference going into it. I think that's artistically for me, doing this, it's such a freer project, it just allowed me to create in a different way.
You say "freer project." Do you feel like you were tied down working on A Million Different People?
I think there was a little bit of pressure. It was a weird transition for me. I love what came out of it. Coming out of The Early November, everyone sort [geared] up saying, "This is going to be the one where you break out. This is going to be where you make your career," and all that stuff. That's a lot of pressure. I did some things I wouldn't normally do going into a record. Not that it left a bad taste in my mouth, but it definitely made that project feel like something specific. Unfortunately, it was not 100% where I wanted to be.
Personally, hearing The World We Know brought me back to my first listen of the first self-titled. The background noise, the flow as one piece - which I find very interesting that you released the album as one track on Amazon. Was that the idea behind doing that?
That was the idea, for it to flow as one piece, [to] not make one song a single. That's one thing also I wanted to try and stray away from, was making a song be a single. I would rather the whole thing be a piece of work, rather than separate pieces of work.
For you, was this coming back to a more comfortable song writing venture?
Definitely, because I'm not saying I'm not comfortable writing a certain way, with a purpose for each song...this way was a lot more free, without pressure. It was a way to create and have songs without choruses. I know that I can do that in any project, but it just feels different. It just feels right.
Is that a pressure you felt with The Early November and A Million Different People?
No, with The Early November, it was just that everyone as a whole was not clicking. I could have been like, "I'm going to continue to do this, and everyone can kind of do what they like." But at that point, I wanted to get out of that, because I didn't want there to be that bad blood. It was so tainted. The whole feeling of it was just not fun.
Was there any pressure with your new projects to live up to The Early November? I mean, the first I Can Make a Mess album was around the same time as The Early November, and I believe it was before The Mother, The Mechanic....
I actually recorded that record a month after The Room's Too Cold came out. It was just shelved for a couple of years.
But doing these other projects, and detaching from The Early November, do you think there's a lot less pressure, or more pressure on you with people wanting you to break out, etc.?
I guess I put a lot more pressure on myself when [The Early November] broke up. I put a lot of pressure on the band myself. The last record was a triple disc that messed me up for a long time. At that point, I wanted to do something artistic. I listened to it, and I would do a thousand things different if I had the opportunity. I put a lot of pressure on myself then. The Room's Too Cold was supposed to be a piece that flowed. I think it did, but we just didn't have the time to take that approach. I've always taken that approach to put a lot of pressure on myself, because I'm lucky enough to do this. This is my job and I want to do it to the best of my ability. I want to do something that's just not the typical "here you go." I'd be lying if I didn't look at Absolutepunk or something like that, and see people saying, "Why don't you do a normal album?" That's not what it's about. not about getting to the next thing with me. I want to be able to go to sleep at night thinking, "I have a career and I'm not taking advantage of the art." For that, I put a lot of pressure on myself to do that as well. The whole thing with A Million Different People is that I love that record, but it is missing that one little spark that I tried to go a little bit more polished with that. That's probably where it lost its edge.
Do you feel like you found that with this new album?
I definitely did.
Do you feel like you didn't have that opportunity with [I]When I Hit the Ground because there wasn't pressure from yourself, but everybody else?
It was nuts. There were a lot of weird things that went on, that should have happened differently, that didn't. I recorded an entire record that cost a lot of money that got scrapped. Then I was having problems with label issues, so I put up [The Secret Wars EP for free]. I self paid for When I Hit the Ground to get done. It was all very rushed. A hectic hectic thing. Because I had a bad taste in my mouth from the whole thing, I think all the pressure came out because we were like, "We have to do something!" It was so hectic. Everybody expected me to come off The Early November and be like, "Here we are. This is it. The real deal." It didn't happen like that, because no one was happy with what was happening. It sat in limbo for quite a long time.
Because of that experience now, not only as a songwriter or an artist, but someone who puts so much pressure on himself, are you no longer going to approach something like that again?
I could say so. I know what I do. I know what I want to do. I know I'm not going to be a millionaire. I know I'm not going to be the biggest band in the world. I KNOW this for a FACT. What I'm going to do is going to do what is right. Too many people disrespect music for what it is. That's why the music business is failing, because too many people put focus on just one song. I get it. I get why people do that. I get why people don't view it as an art anymore. That's all fine. I can't live like that. I didn't even look at the numbers for the first week sales of [The World We Know]. The first day sales were a 1000. Somebody told me that. Great. That's awesome.
But, in the end, is it all worth it?
Of course. It's all worth it. I have people like the group of fans that made this bound book for me. All these letters. A real legit book. It's the moments when you may not feel this is worth it, but then tt's the moments when you see those things that sort of wakes you up. You say, "You know what, this is why I do this, because it effects people in some way somewhere." That it may help someone in a way that they said, "I was going through a rough time, and I didn't know if I was going to make it. You helped me." Hey, that's more than I can ask for.