Rolling with the Gym Class Heroes

J’Adore jumps on the tour bus with Gym Class Heroes’ drummer Matt McGinley

By Mz. Limitless

Similar to the mix-matched patchwork of a quilt, there is no single genre of music that you can use to classify the creativity produced by Travis McCoy, Matt McGinley, Disashi Lumumba-Kasongo and Eric Roberts – collectively known as the Gym Class Heroes. The Heroes have an eclectic sound synergistically infused with reggae, rap, pop, rock and “emo” intonations. The group has made their way from being an underground and seemingly obscure band from New York, to headlining for Mr. A Milli himself, Lil Wayne.

While on tour with Lil Wayne, T-Pain and Keri Hilson, Heroes drummer Matt McGinley shook loose from his demanding schedule that includes him rocking Calgary, Alberta, Canada to give us some insight into the band and the vigorous life as a Gym Class Hero.

J’Adore Magazine: So how is the tour going?
Matt McGinley: The tour is going good. It’s winding down, but it’s been a really, really awesome tour for us and a really big opportunity for us. This is probably the largest tour that we’ve been a part of. I think even with the success we have had up to this point, I still consider us to be pretty small and to a point, an obscure band, so to be a part of a tour like this is an amazing opportunity for us.

What is life like for you when on tour?
It really depends on the tour. If it’s a headlining tour for instance, it usually involves a lot of press, a lot of obligations and not a lot of free time. Usually, my eyes are kind of sagging because I’m tired all the time on headlining tours. On a tour like this, when you’re playing support, it’s kind of cool. Playing in these big arenas, it’s like once you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all. They all look the same. You’re usually parked underneath the arena in a dimly lit parking garage. There is a lot of free time and days off on a really big tour like this because it does take a lot of people to keep a really big tour like this running. It’s definitely interesting.

You have been on tour with Lil Wayne since December. What has been the most hyped city you’ve stopped through so far?
I gotta go with New York City to pledge our allegiance to our home state. There have been a lot of really good shows. Minneapolis was really good to us. It’s just awesome playing in front of these crowds. For us, it’s very different to go from headlining a show of perhaps two to three thousand people a night to 20,000 people a night. It’s certainly taken some adjustment, but we think we’ve really found our groove on this tour and every show has been consistently awesome to us.

I know the tour stopped here in Atlanta, Georgia on December 31, 2008 for a New Year’s performance. What was it like to perform on New Year’s Eve?
Oh, it was awesome. It was really fun to be a part of the tour in Atlanta. We got really drunk afterwards. So, that’s really all I remember.

The original Gym Class Heroes included you, Travis McCoy, Milo Benacci and Ryan Geise. There hasn’t been much mention of why they left the band and were replaced by Disashi and Eric Roberts. Can you speak on that situation?
When we first started Gym Class Heroes, we were just a bunch of really young dorks from New York. We had ambition to make awesome music, but we never really had the focus of doing it as a career. After we recorded the Papercut Chronicles, which yielded such songs as “Cupid’s Chokehold,” we kind of realized we were sitting on top of something bigger. That’s when the opportunity came to work with Fueled by Ramen and tour full-time and whatnot. For Milo, it was about not being able to fully commit because he was still going to school. It was a natural parting. That’s when we brought Disashi in. He was a friend that we knew locally from other bands. With Ryan, he toured with us for maybe half a year or so. Then he just kind of realized that maybe full-time touring wasn’t really his thing.

Do you still keep in touch with them?
Yeah! Actually, I talk to Milo all the time. Milo’s in a new band now called Ra Ra Riot. They are doing incredible. They’re a really good band. They have an album out so I talk to Milo pretty frequently. I talk to Ryan semi-frequently, although I did see him last summer in Portland. We’re definitely on really good terms with the former members of the band.

Leading up to you actually being signed with Decaydance Records, what was it about the Papercut Chronicles that caught owner Pete Wentz’s attention and ultimately led him to sign Gym Class Heroes to the label?
As in touch as he is musically, Pete is a savvy business dude as well. I think when he heard Gym Class Heroes it kind of struck him because, musically, Gym Class Heroes is fairly ambiguous. For instance, we could sit just as well on a tour with Fall Out Boy or the Warped Tour, as we could on tour with The Roots or Lil Wayne. There are not a lot of bands out there that can honestly hang in the many different musical settings. I think Pete instantly recognized that and saw what we were creating was honest, quality music, but it had a broader appeal than what we were getting at the time. I definitely give a lot of credit to Pete for being open to taking a chance on a band like us. With anything new, it’s always a gamble and I think we were no different.

How did it feel to win the MTV award for Best New Artist when you had released your first album six years before?
It was awesome, you know. I’ve been watching the VMA’s since Nirvana was performing on them. Even though we had been working at Gym Class Heroes for so long, I can understand why the masses — the popular commercial audience — considered us new artists. To the MTV culture, we were new artists that year. It’s always awesome to receive praise or recognition for what you’re doing.

There were some video clips from www.onloq.com where the band was performing in Baltimore. The topic of discussion was the importance of maintaining your hustle. Being that you are with a major label now, does the band feel it is still as important to self-market?
I think it’s important. I think there are ways to do it that are like hella cheesy and provide little results. Then there are really effective ways of marketing yourself. One example is when you go on Myspace and you see some rapper who’s left a comment and it says check me out or listen to my music, and then they’ve copied and pasted it like a hundred times. That’s a way of self-marketing that is wack. Things like booking your own tours and going out and really going at it is a lot more productive way of self-marketing. That’s kind of how it worked for us, initially. To get the ball rolling for us, it was all about touring and going out after we would play and selling our own merchandise, talking to fans and taking pictures. It’s more about meeting the fans who were going to buy your record when it comes out.

So then is it safe to say that the video blogs and social network sites you established for yourselves were instrumental in creating your fan base and maintaining your buzz?
Definitely! I think the initial success we had before we had a hit song of any sort was because we had a really good following. That was strictly from touring eight or nine months out of the year and really hanging out and extending ourselves to our fans. We connected with them and talked to them to show them that we are just normal people like them.

Speaking of being normal people, do you feel that you can still interact with your fans or do you feel that your new stardom makes you less approachable?
Yeah. Not much has changed in that regard. When we do headlining shows, we still make ourselves approachable. If a fan wants to meet us or take a picture with us at a headlining show, chances are we can make that happen. We do what we can to make ourselves available to our audience. We try to do cool things like post videos online from our tours for our fans to check out. They are then able to see what we’re up to and see what goes on behind the scenes. We try to maintain the courtesy that we’ve always tried to show our fans.

As far as the music industry goes today, is Gym Class Heroes looking to make any specific impact?
The music industry as a whole is nothing that we’ve been centrally focused on. First and foremost, it’s about making music that we believe in and music that pleases us. Through doing that, we’ve been able to gain a lot of fans that identify with that ethic. So for us, I think it’s about making quality, honest music and we’ll continue down that path regardless of whether the music industry slumps or not.

How do you feel about the lyrical content of music that some artists are putting out today?
I can’t speak too negatively on a lot of the music that’s coming out because every year I continue to hear more and more diversity in the music I listen to. For instance, like two years ago, hearing Amy Winehouse for the first time I realized I was hearing something special. Each year I’m constantly being put up on artists that offer something new and inventive. With Gym Class Heroes, I like to believe we were one of the artists that came in with that approach. We weren’t just trying to mimic other artists we were influenced by. We were trying to bring something new to the public here in the realm of music. I think with each year I see more and more artists taking that approach. Santo Gold, Julian from The Strokes and Pharrell doing songs together is an example of how open musicians, as well as fans, are becoming to music.

Well aside from wanting to create honest, quality music, what other aspirations do you foresee pursuing in the future outside of being the drum man for Gym Class Heroes?
I think it’s important to keep balance in your life with whatever you do. I’ve even been working at getting my degree online and doing a lot of other stuff that I think brings more balance to my life, so I’m not too consumed by one thing. I think that’s why I can afford to go back to school, because I have a bunch of free time when I’m not on stage. I think even if I were working a desk job in a cubicle somewhere, I would still have that desire to encompass other things in my personal life just to stay sane. I think when doing music, especially, constantly doing this can drive a person bat-shit crazy quickly. I think it’s important to find other things that make you happy. Find other outlets to use your free time.

You mentioned that you were going to school online to get your degree. What type of degree are you working on?
During the creation of Gym Class Heroes I was going to school for music initially. When we decided to do it full-time and when we got signed, I dropped out of school. Basically, Boston University is helping me to get a continuation degree. This way I can get my Bachelor of Arts degree in Interdisciplinary Studies, which I think is a broad liberal arts degree. Essentially, I think it just means I’m getting a degree in study hall.

Now for the question that we all really want to know: What’s in your playlist?
I’ve been listening to this guy Fred Hammond lately, who’s a gospel artist. J. Moss is another gospel artist that I’ve really been into here recently.

So are you into Christian hip-hip as well?
Not really. If it is hip-hop that’s good, it’s good, you know what I mean. I don’t know that being Christian hip-hop would sway me on it. In terms of gospel music, there’s so much energy and chaos, but beautiful chaos. It’s something that I’ve really been into lately in terms of a musician and especially a drummer. I have Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, Cold War Kids, Arctic Monkeys, Maroon 5, The Shins and TV on the Radio in my playlist. I have a pretty wide variety of music I listen to. I can speak for everybody in the band when saying everyone has pretty eclectic taste in the music.

For more info on Matt McGinley and the Gym Class Heroes, visit www.gymclassheroes.com.