Train’s Jimmy Stafford, Scott Underwood & Pat Monahan – HuffPost 10.28.09
Mike Ragogna: In some ways, Save Me… sounds a lot like a return to your earlier work, was that intentional?
Jimmy Stafford: That was kind of our goal. We took some time off between the last album and this one, and coming back into it, we felt like we wanted to win back our core fan base, and also reach out to a whole new base of fans. We thought the way to do that was by doing what got us here in the first place. Just strip it down, make this record be all about the songs, putting them out there, and hoping people dig it.
MR: Naturally, there’s been some growth in the process?
Pat Monahan: We made a lot of changes internally with band members, we made a lot of personal changes in our lives, our business relationships are different–we’ve got a new manager. No one who was with us in the beginning is with us today, and it became a soul search about what it was we wanted out of this band. I think that the best way to put it is we stopped wondering what the band could do for us and started wondering what we could do for the band. That was a big step for all of us as human beings. It was like “Hey man, I want to contribute” and it was “Let me help” instead of “What can I get out of this while I can get it.” We really became proud of what it was instead of “This band’s not cool enough, not big enough…” Whatever it wasn’t enough of stopped.
MR: How do you feel about this album’s material?
JS: I think it really is a great batch of songs, and I think it’s our strongest record as far as songs go.
MR: And it has a really positive attitude, like in “Words” whose chorus goes, “When words keep you from feelin’ good, use them as firewood, and let ‘em burn…”
Scott Underwood: I’m a big fan of Pat’s broken heart love ballads, and I think that’s his best writing. He knows how to put those words together, and he really seems to have a bit of hope in them all, even though it might be a sad song. There always seems to be the idea of “I’m heartbroken, but there’s something beautiful about it.”
JS: There’s a ballad on there called “This Ain’t Goodbye” that Pat wrote with Ryan Tedder from One Republic that’s an incredible song. The production turned out really nice on it. That’s one where, in the studio, Ryan had done such a great job making a demo of it. It took a few tries, I think we had three different piano players attempt it before we got it to San Francisco where our old friend Jerry Becker, who tours us with now, finally laid the piano track down that ended up on the record. (Ryan) did such a good job on the demos that it was tough to beat.