A Conversation with Twenty One Pilots’ Josh Dun – HuffPost 11.25.13

Mike Ragogna: Josh, last time we spoke we talked about Vessel. Let’s talk about the album a little more, but also let’s talk about what the heck is going on since I interviewed you last. What’s this year been like? You had an album, you had all these great airplay songs. What’s going on in your head now after all that?

Josh Dun: It’s all pretty crazy. A lot of times I think back to even as far back as the first conversation Tyler and I ever had was this interaction where before we were playing music we were discussing visions and plans and ideas that we both had for music. The first time we connected we were on the same page and everything. We talked all the time and once we started playing music together we would play in front of ten to thirty people together, and that’s in our hometown. Then we tried to build the show into something people would talk about and tell their friends and bring their friends to. Now we’re in Houston, Texas playing at a House of Blues with over a thousand people tonight coming to the show. We constantly look at each other like “How did these people hear about us. How do they know about us?” So it’s been awesome. We’ve been partnering with some other people, a label and people who are professional about booking shows and working with somebody that can create this album that we have and make it sound exactly how we envisioned it from the beginning. It’s such a cool thing. Now we’ve put together a show that I think both of us are very proud of and it’s something that anyone can come to and be proud to be part of. Without people there it would be a truly embarrassing situation where Tyler and I would play our instruments in a room full of nobody. So it’s been a great year.

MR: How do you look at the fans? How do you look at the people that are coming to see you now?

JD: It’s interesting because I try and be very aware of other bands and how other bands are becoming known. You know, how is it that a band gets on the radio? We’ve learned a lot over the last year and a half about how this stuff works. Like how does this program director decide that they want to play this band? We’ve been traveling around the country, and we’ve been doing this particular tour for a few weeks now, probably like three weeks now, and there are radio people that will come to the show and if they were on the fence or didn’t really want to play the song–afterwards they will come up to me and be like, “Yeah we’re absolutely adding your record, we’re real excited to work with you,” and I think it really shows that this is all really about the experience live. Going back to what I said before, it’s really accredited to the participation and involvement of anybody in the room at the same time. I say that because it’s something that we’ve been intentional about from the beginning because the way that we look at it is that we want to do something that we would want to be a part of in the way that we would want it to be done. Whenever I go and watch shows, there’s always stuff that I come away from thinking “I wish they would have done this” or “I wish I could have had a part in this” or “I wish I could’ve said this.” So the way we think about it is, “How would we wanna see a show?” What’s cool is when you’re putting on a show, you can do it however you want. I think now we’re in a generation that people really do want to be part of a concert and feel like they’re part of the experience, so we’ve created an environment where people feel like they’re involved and people can take ownership over it instead of sit there and spectate and watch these “rock gods”. I think the era of that is coming to an end a little bit. And now you see people jumping on board and making the best of a situation or experience. That’s when it becomes something, it feels a little bit magical. I don’t know. There’s something crazy about a room full of people that are like-minded and experiencing the same thing all at once.

MR: What is it about Twenty One Pilots that separates you from most of the bands with what you can offer your fans and that you can offer music in general?

JD: I love that you brought that up. And I think when it comes down to the very core of it, we’re two guys who are just completely normal guys. There’s nothing different- we go through so many of the same things that everybody else does and I think at the end of the day, some days are worse than others for all of us, and some nights are worse than others. The concept of nighttime is weird even in music–in songwriting–there’s a lot of people who write about nighttime and from a perspective of really trying to mask pain, insecurity, depression. A lot of people come at songwriting with the approach of “let’s stay up all night and dance the night away or get drunk. Let’s fill up on, like, girls or whatever.” I think that the approach in songwriting that we take is very different from the perspective of nighttime. It’s acknowledging that a lot of us feel that the night is the hardest part of the day. It’s when you’re alone in your room and it’s time to go to bed, and you’re trapped in there with your thoughts and your insecurities and your depression and you have thoughts to hurt yourself. I don’t think covering it up with dancing all night is going to solve your problem. When you think about that and you start to come to peace with being alone then you can start to think about and discover hurt. Then, when you get in a room full of people who think that same way and who are also aware of that, it becomes a really cool thing. The things that stand out are content and a little bit of honesty. Another thing when you get into a band is also a little bit of a level of insecurity being on stage and potentially trying to be something that they’re not, and we really try to not do that. So those are just a couple things.

MR: Everything you’re working on is headed in the right course, would that be an okay thing to say? What are you looking for towards in the future? What is it that you ultimately want to do?

JD: That’s a really good question. I think that honesty is something vulnerable. Going back to Tyler and I’s first conversation we ever had, it was crazy because we were really up all night talking about what we wanted out of music or life or whatever. It was a super vulnerable conversation, especially because we were both strangers at the time sharing these wild ideas and visions. It’s hard to do sometimes, but I think to answer your question- what we really want to do is to be able to share this music and this message shamelessly with as many people as possible. So we’ve teamed up with people that agree with that and believe in the same thing and are working on Saturdays to do that. So as far as plans I think the best way to share this with people right now is to travel around the country and the world and simply play this show. So we’ve been pretty much been doing that for about a year and a half and we’ve already got stuff planned until winter 2014 I think.  And we actually have a bus now and I get on that every day and go “wow this is awesome”. The fact that the bus has a little studio that we’ve been working on new ideas and music. So while traveling round and playing this show, we’ve been focusing on new material. And whenever we get to go back to this in a professional situation where we’re focused on recording music, we’re both very excited about doing that. I think that through traveling and playing shows, the goal is to have people leave that show and tell their friends and their family. That’s how it’s been from the beginning is people telling one another and I think that’s the most organic and true form of marketing there is- people turning something on to their friends and sharing it. Word of mouth is the best way to do it and that’s how we’ve been approaching it.

MR: What advice do you have for new artists?

JD: There’s a lot. From the very beginning, if you’re a new artist… We didn’t know what we were doing and I don’t think there’s any true formula for any specific band. But what I will say is that the very simplistic approach that we took is “let’s save as much money as much as we can.” So as a result, we both had full time jobs during the week and on the weekends we would go throughout our home state instead of touring and spending a bunch of money on hotels and gas. We would do that and then as far as recording we would record on a computer in Tyler’s basement. So that’s the advice that I would give, to try and save as much money as possible and try and make your live shows as unforgettable as possible so that people do leave and talk about it and bring their friends back in the future. That word of mouth is the most organic and true form of marketing and if you can get people to do that, that’s your best bet.

MR: What are the immediate plans for Twenty One Pilots right now?

JD: Just to keep playing shows all over the place. We got shows pretty much until the end of the year and then we shut down for Christmas and then start back up in January. We’re going oversees with Paramore to Australia and New Zealand and then we go to Europe to headline for three weeks to a month. We come back, we go to Mexico, and then we got stuff in the Spring. So it really is that we just continue to play and hopefully hit as many cities and places as we can.