Popular Underground Magazine: What's in your CD player right now?
PETE: I have a mix CD and its got the Cure, new Blink song, Arches of Loaf, Bjork. So a wide range of stuff.
Patrick: Right now, I've got this Randy Neuman, best-of, a Tears For Fears best of and and a crapload of Elvis Costello stuff.

If you walked outside the venue and found $20 on the ground, what would you spend it on?
PETE: Twenty hookers! No, I don't know what I'd spend it on.
Patrick: I'm the nerd that would immediately look around to see if anyone dropped the 20 bucks. I am that lame, but if I actually had to spend it, I'd probably just blow it on records.
PETE: I'd plan on blowing it on toys or CDs or something, but I'd probably end up spending it at a gas station.
Patrick: Buying weird drinks, nachos and burritos?
PETE: No I have this weird thing where I buy two drinks that I want to experiment with. Like, I bought chocolate carmel milk and then one safe bet.
Patrick: This kid has the craziest metabolism you've ever seen, where he won't eat for like two days, then he buys a box of doughnuts and eats it in one sitting. What are those pink balls with the coconut?
PETE: Yeah dude, they're like Snowballs.

How do you guys stay healthy?
PETE: Ah we don't.
Patrick: Every-so-often we get bananas and stuff backstage.
PETE: We try to stay healthy.
Patrick: Whenever you get those, it's kind of like the mad rush where it's like, "Cool, I'm not going to die if I eat this!"
PETE: I subside on peanut butter and jelly.

Despite the "two robots made out of solid gold" that help out, Fall Out Boy are extremely autonomous when it comes to hauling their stuff on tour. According to Pete and Patrick, loading and unloading their own equipment is what helps keep them in shape.

What's your favorite food to eat while on tour?
PETE: Probably Taco Bell. I like Taco Bell, but we're usually eating gas station burritos and everybody in our band is like super into gas station nachos for some reason
Patrick: DEL TACO!
PETE: Del Taco's the shit! We can't get it always though.

It's decided upon that Del Taco is primarily a west coast thing.

What are some of your influences both musically and in life in general?
PETE: Musically, I guess me personally is like Green Day, old British stuff like the Cure and the Smiths. I don't know; a lot of hardcore. In life, I guess just the people - everybody around - you can't help but be influenced by everybody around you.
Patrick: I was into a lot of singer / songwriter kind of guys when I was a kid and my dad was like a folk singer in the early 70's.

How important are friendships within the band?
PETE: I think it's the most important thing. The reason this band functions the way it does is because of the friendships. Everybody knows (like bands that have been around) that when dudes leave, it gets weird or whatever. I think that would happen [with Fall Out Boy]. When people leave it gets weird. There's a certain vibe - there's a certain thing that would be lost.
Patrick: That's what this band is. We couldn't really be a band if we weren't friends. We're all way different dudes, but we all come together. We all come together and this is what happens because we're friends and this just happens to be the one thing that we all happen to be into. We're all into way different music and stuff, but it all comes together on this level. So if we weren't friends it just wouldn't even happen.
PETE: You've got to be friends with someone if you're in a van with them 24 hours a day.

With that said, do you guys ever fight?
PETE: Oh yeah, every single day.

About what?
PETE: Like the most petty stuff. I can't even tell you. We are notorious for arguing opinion and taste. If someone will say, "We played a bad show tonight." We will argue that person to death. But that's just their opinion. What comes up a lot is people's taste in music. You try to get people to admit they like stuff, you try to get people to admit that they hate stuff and usually it's like, that person just doesn't hate that, but you just try to get them to. My dad is a Philadelphia lawyer, so I argue like it's nobody's business.

How important are friendships with the other bands that you tour with or you meet along the way?
Patrick: That's another part of it. That's like any job, but it's a different day. Those [other bands] are kind of like co-workers and if you get along with them everything runs smooth. We rarely run into bands that we didn't like as guys.
PETE: Like Metallica or Guns N Roses: None of us are at that level. I think it's less important than the actual friendships in the band, but it's definitely important. Sometimes you meet bands that you don't vibe with. Not necessarily that you hate or something, but your lifestyles are so different or what you're into is just so different that it just doesn't work and you probably don't end up touring with them again. But you try it. There is plenty of bands that you totally love. There's bands where, like, I'm not into their music or I'm into their music because I love them as people. Or I'm into both. In Chicago, we definitely have a circle of bands that performs our scene that's really good friends [with us].

What's one of the most beneficial things you've learned from watching other bands or interacting with other bands?
PETE: One thing is, you pick up on a band's professionalism. Just how they go about doing things. Like really literal stuff, like this is how they load their equipment on, this is what they do, tape this thing here. Older bands, you pick up on that and they show you. We're out with Less Than Jake right now and it's like this surreal experience, cause these dudes have been doing this forever and they give you advice. Even now, you learn by example, which is what we try to do. At the same time, I think it's really easy to see what not to do. When people fight on stage in other bands, I'm like, "Wow, I bet that's what it looks like if we do that." So I'm like, "Note to self; do not do that."
Patrick: Game faces are a big thing. Some of the bands earlier on in the bill, you can see them fight, but you never see the headliner fight just because they've been doing it for so long.

How long have you guys been a band?
PETE: It's like two years almost.

What do you attribute your growth to?
PETE: I don't know. It doesn't make any sense to me. Just people who believe in this thing. As dumb as it sounds, we're not some critic buzz band. It's real people who are actually into it and believe in it. I think it's measured in a person by person thing [so] every time you go somewhere and you see more than one person singing the words, that's way cooler to me than making sure that we're on the radio in some town.
Patrick: I think people can see when you put yourself into it. When you can actually see it. If your first priority is to be famous, it's kind of obvious, whereas if your first priority is enjoy yourself and play well, I think people get more into it.

How important do you think the Chicago scene is (or was) for you guys?
PETE: It's a weird thing. It's crazy how much our friend's bands hooked us up. We would play shows every weekend and we were seriously one of the crappiest bands I've ever heard.
Patrick: We owe a lot to those dudes helping us out. There's a lot of bands that are currently out right now that paid a lot of attention to us.

What are some of the other labels that were looking at you guys? Because on your website it said that labels from L.A. to New York were showing interest in you. Can you talk about that?
PETE: (Laughs) Ah yeah, I mean to an extent. We talked to Drive-Thru, we talked to Victory Records, we talked to the Militia Group and then some bigger, like majors and stuff like that. The thing is, Fueled by Ramen just happened to offer us A) People that totally believed in the project and B) a contract that couldn't be beat. I have nothing but good things to say about the other labels and the bands that are on them.
Patrick: Some of those labels are nearly as much friends with us as Fueled by Ramen.
PETE: This is what it was: We sent our demo out to a bunch of people and nobody cared at all. It's kind of a feeding frenzy when one label finds out about it, then everybody freaks out. The one label usually that does that - and this is to their credit, not to everybody's credit else's credit - is Drive Thru. As soon as everybody finds out that they're talking to a band, everybody in the independent music scene jumps on that band.

Do you think that Internet downloading of music is going to bring down the music industry or is the Recording Industry Association of America RIAA just over doing all this right now?
PETE: I have a funny opinion on it. I think that we wouldn't be the size that we are and we wouldn't have the growth we have without Internet downloading. Honestly, our distribution wasn't that great. When you have a kid's buzz, rather than a critic's buzz where people just like you, that's what you need. You need this medium to get it to people. I was talking to a guy who works at our label, and he was like, "Artists don't go platinum anymore because of this downloading," and he was all worked up about it. Rather than the RIAA suing kids and doing that, I think there's a million things that the industry can do.

Evidently this issue was very touchy for Pete. He went on a vocal tirade about ways to boost CD sales. He was so worked up that his quotes were almost incomprehensible. He suggested that including a DVD or better art or something that the fans can have as an incentive to buy the CD may help boost CD sales. He also said that the time between albums for some bands is too long and people look for alternative ways to get the music.
PETE: The kids aren't your enemy. They want the music. You've got to figure out a way to deliver it. That's one of the biggest problems, they treat them like they are the enemy. That's a personal opinion. The things that I really like, the artists that I respect, I download and then I buy. People are pooping out these singles... I don't know... I'm just...

Again Pete is so emotional over the issue that he can't put together the words to describe it.
Patrick: I think it would be pretty ridiculous of a band like us to criticize it. [Downloading] is the reason that there are people at our shows. It's not the entire reason, but it's a huge reason. There was this thing like two months before our record was out we'd play places and kids would know the words. I'm like "The only way that's even possible is because of the Internet."
PETE: Yeah, I mean, it's a bum out because you have this package and this way you want to deliver the record and that's a bum out and you want to do that, but listen, you package it and you do it right because they're going to buy it anyway.
Patrick: On the one hand, you're kind of bummed out that it's out there but at least it's out there when someone wants it. You're lucky that someone is even listening to it.

You're relatively young in your career as a band, what do you see as some of the obstacles or hurdles in the future?
PETE: One of the things is when you have growth there's growing pains. There's people who want to keep you the band they can put in their pocket and the band that nobody knows about. It's really tough because on one hand these kids are your friend and these are the people who believed in you when nobody else did. And on the same point you want your music and your ideas to reach a grander audience. First and foremost before we're in a band, we're fans of music and I think that all of us can agree that music over the past couple of year has fucking sucked. It's like polished turds. I think it's important for bands like us and even contemporaries like Taking Back Sunday or even New Found Glory or whatever, that actually have something real to say and are real people and have honest music to get it out there. These people have put in the work and have sat in vans and gone out and earned kids and earned fans, but it's hard. We try to offer something to those people, we try to have a connectio n.

Pete is again getting worked up, but this time it's about connecting with fans. He discusses stage barriers and that they drive him insane, but knows they are necessary. Evidently at a secret Halloween show that Fall Out Boy played at the Arlington Heights (Illinois) Knights of Columbus, the stage collapsed due to the fans stage diving onto the stage, yes, onto the stage.
PETE: We try to go to the kids and make sure that it's interactive and make sure that they're singing along. There's definitely obstacles where you want to keep it personal.
Patrick: Everyone gets scared of the whole... I don't even know if I should say this term, but the thing that gets thrown around is SELLOUT. The thing is, there are some bands that are going to sell out, but...
PETE: (Interrupts Patrick) Those dudes weren't even there from the beginning! And everybody knows the bands we're talking about. We don't even need to say it.
Patrick: He just mentioned Taking Back Sunday (points at Pete). If Taking Back Sunday ever signed to a major label, it wouldn't be because those dudes wanted to sell out, because as far as I can tell, those dudes care more about [the music] and it's their passion. A band like us, we're not looking to change stuff. We're not looking to do what someone else tells us to do.

Online in your bio, you (Pete) were quoted as saying, "We never thought we would have made it this far." What were you anticipating to have happen?
PETE: (Laughs) You don't even know. I was in a hardcore band at the time and [Fall Out Boy] is the music that I'm into. I grew up listening to the Descendants and Screeching Weasel, so I was like "Yeah, we'll just jam on this." We would just go into [Patrick's] basement or our drummers basement and it was like total goof around. There was no plan. Every time something happened, there was no ulterior motive. It was like, "Wow, we're at the Metro right now, this is really insane. Obviously now, this is what we do and we tour full-time. We have an incentive to push. I have no idea how we got to where we are now. We spent 200 days in a van, I can tell you that.
Patrick: I was excited when we played at the Fireside [Bowl, on Fullerton in Chicago]. It's not like something that we had all charted out. Our biggest goal at the time was to not suck.

What do you want listeners to take away from your music?
Patrick: I think people connect with it. I think there's something cathartic in it, cause some of our stuff is kind of happy and some of our stuff is kind of angry. You get out of it with like, "Oh, there's is someone else thinking this." I'm sure it's cool for Pete to look and see that someone actually listened to what he wrote and that someone is connecting with him. And it's cool for them to see that someone else was thinking something similar and articulated it that way.
PETE: I think it's important that people walk away with not only the lyrics, but to have ownership of this as well. Like I said, we started with no expectations. We don't write songs for the radio, we don't write songs for this or that. We hope people feel like they own it as much as we do. I want people to understand that we're just people who are trying to grow up and trying to figure everything out and that's what we write about. It's not like this is how this is, it's more like this is what's going on right here.

What's next for you guys?
PETE: After the tour (with Less Than Jake) we're going to go home and write for a little bit, we're going to play some sparse dates with Catch 22, maybe do a headlining tour in January, head overseas, the write our new [album] and record it.

What would you be doing if you weren't in the band?
PETE: I think I'd be dead. I'd probably be a guy who worked at a bookstore or a movie theater, trying to be a writer, but I would obviously just be a guy working in a bookstore. It would clearly be me not doing what I wanted.
Patrick: I was working at a vinyl record store when this band started. I would not have moved from that. I loved that job. I would definitely be a total vinyl, nerd, rock snob.

What are some of your guilty pleasures?
PETE: (Laughs) Justin Timberlake. I watch Lifetime [TV-Station]. I don't know if you're into that.

Lifetime movies? The sagas that go on for like all day?
PETE: Yeah, I'll be into those things like it's nobody's business. When I'm home, I watch a million. I think that channel is so amazing.
Patrick: There's this thing where if you get Lifetime Movie Network, he'll stay at your house.

By: Adam K. Zakroczymski III - Senior Editor / Founder

Photos By: Adam K. Zakroczymski III - Senior Editor / Founder