Unemployed Architects will appear tonight on WEFT Sessions at 10 p.m. The Bloomington-Normal foursome can be heard over the airwaves at 90.1 FM or streaming online at weft.org.
Vocalist and lead guitarist Tyler Sweitzer was kind enough to answer some questions via email. Believe it or not, none of them are actually unemployed architects. Also, they’re drawn together by their love of Kings of Leon.
Smile Politely: Will you go with your standard lineup for the program?
Tyler Sweitzer: Well, usually we play about half and half between covers and originals, but for this we are going to stick to almost all originals, with a few tracks that we have never played live before.
SP: Have you played for a radio show before? Any complications or advantages that you expect?
TS: I guess you could say that this is our live radio debut, so we really aren’t sure what to expect.
SP: How does the songwriting process work for you?
TS: It’s always different. For our older stuff most of it I, Tyler, wrote for an acoustic guitar and then integrated it into the full band feel, but lately we have all been partaking in the song-writing process.
SP: How would you describe your sound for someone who’s never heard your music before?
TS: New age/Ambient/Acoustic Rock
SP: Was there a moment when you realized that you wanted to be a musician? How did that come about?
TS: Well for me, when I was little, I was listening to a mix tape my brothers made for me on my paper route…I was listening to a Dave Matthews Band song (can’t remember which one) and in the middle of the song it just hit me, that that was what I wanted to do. And this was before I even played guitar, but I’ve known since then that that’s what I am going to do.
SP: What’s a singer or band that you’ve been compared to that you don’t think is representative at all, and why not?
TS: Someone once said we sounded like U2. I laughed a little bit. I didn’t really see a connection. Then the next time I heard a U2 song and I heard a slight similarity with their lead guitar parts and our lead guitar parts, because sometimes we use similar effects, but other than that I myself would never say we sound like U2.
SP: What is the greatest album of all time? Why?
TS: That’s a really difficult question to answer. I don’t know if I can tell you the best album of all time, It’s even hard to narrow down a favorite between us, because our tastes in music are all very different, but one band we can all agree on is the Kings of Leon and I can’t just pick one album. All their albums I can listen to all the way through and not hit a bad song.
SP: What was your favorite band when you were in junior high?
Blair Steffens – lead guitar – says he was a blink 182 fan in junior high.
Kevin Lyons – bass – says he was also a blink 182 fan
Derrick Griffin – drummer – says he listened to the fugees a lot in junior high
And I myself – Tyler Sweitzer – would have to say I was a big Dave Matthews Band fan
SP: Are you a full-time musician or do you have a side gig?
TS: We all have jobs and we all go to school, so we each have a couple “side gigs”.
SP: What do you like to do in your spare time?
TS: We are all really into music obviously, so that takes up a lot of our spare time. Other than that we are all very different people. We all like to watch The Office…
SP: How did the name of the band come about?
TS: When we first started playing none of us had jobs for a really long time and we like to think of ourselves as architects of music. We always sit around and talk about all these ideas of things we are planning on doing eventually, so I guess we thought it was appropriate.