While the move from the O.C. to The Hills doesn’t seem too far a drive, the path band Rooney took between destinations was quite the winding road.<\/p>\n
Now an independent band – it shed its major label deal with Geffen Records \u2014 Rooney\u2019s quartet of Robert Schwartzman (vocals\/guitar), Taylor Locke (guitar\/vocals), Ned Brower (drums\/vocals) and Louie Stephens (keyboards) has a new single on The Hills several years after its cameo on The O.C. introduced the pop-rock outfit to a fervent fanbase. The Los Angeles band is sporting a new album (Eureka) and a nationwide summer tour which includes a month of dates with Hanson. Brower, who aside from drumming and singing is also a model and actor, and in January added a new role: father. He sat down to discuss Rooney as it enters its second decade of existence:<\/p>\n
You have an album coming out and you\u2019re embarking on a nationwide tour. It\u2019s a pretty good time for the band.<\/strong> Not to mention you had a son born earlier this year.<\/strong> How so?<\/strong> An interesting aspect about Eureka is you were on your own, but of all the Rooney albums this one best incorporates all of the members in writing and producing songs. How did that work out?<\/strong> Were there any songs you struggled with?<\/strong> And this was all done in what was formerly a garage, so Rooney is back to being a garage band again.<\/strong> The story of Rooney is a good one to tell up-and-coming bands. A decade in, and as a first person witness to what happened, what’s the best thing you\u2019ve learned after all these years in the business and what would you tell new bands.<\/strong> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While the move from the O.C. to The Hills doesn’t seem too far a drive, the path band Rooney took between destinations was quite the winding road. Now an independent band – it shed its major label deal with Geffen Records \u2014 Rooney\u2019s quartet of Robert Schwartzman (vocals\/guitar), Taylor Locke (guitar\/vocals), Ned Brower (drums\/vocals) and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1476,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[165],"class_list":["post-1475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature","tag-rooney"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1475"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1477,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1475\/revisions\/1477"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
It’s an exciting time. It’s been a little while since we’ve gotten in the cycle again.<\/p>\n
That’s also been very interesting but in a different way.<\/p>\n
It changes the way I look at things \u2014 it\u2019s not completely about me anymore. But you know I\u2019ve always been the caretaker in the band. I\u2019m the eldest. People always ask \u201cAre you like the dad in the band?\u201d and I say \u201cNo, I\u2019m like a big brother\u201d but now that I have a real kid, I\u2019m definitely not their dad. I\u2019ve got problems of my own.<\/p>\n
It was kind of a tricky adjustment to make. I started getting interested in songwriting again – we were all in different bands where we were the band leader \u2014 but we work great as an ensemble. Robert is a great songwriter, but the other guys are capable also. As far as the production, we learned a lot from all the different producers we\u2019ve worked with. This was a chance to finally take all the knowledge we accrued and put it together. We were trying out different producers and not getting the sound that we wanted \u2014 it always seemed to be too slick or too raw \u2014 and with this record we captured a good balance of the two that presents the songs in the best way.<\/p>\n
No it all came together easier than we thought. We were kind of fighting a little bit and not going great before we started the record. We started to work with John Fields, who produced our last record and he\u2019s a great guy and producer, but he has become really popular since we made our last album. He\u2019s had a huge string of successes in the pop world and was really into that, and we were growing more toward wanting to be a band \u2014 an ensemble where you can hear the band \u2014 and that was the polar opposite of the way he has grown as a producer so it wasn\u2019t working. We were struggling internally because I think he wasn\u2019t helping mediate very well. Then we worked with a guy named Mitchell Froom and cut a song with him, and he had the total opposite effect \u2014 he embraced the band and enjoyed working with all of us and it was a good experience and it brought us together. We decided to try and make our own record because our demo production was getting really good. The moment with Mitchell Froom was important \u2014 it set us on the right trajectory to get together and make a record.<\/p>\n
Literally. I spent so much time in the garage in the early years \u2014 we worked in one for the first three years \u2014 but it feels good, it\u2019s not overkill. We have all the equipment we need and acquired a lot of great gear over the years. We started collecting that stuff early before it became cool and expensive and now we all keep a studio at home.<\/p>\n
We made plenty of mistakes, we try and learn from them, but you have to make sure you have a good team around you. People only care as much as you do about the details. We tried to do all the merchandise ourselves and we finally are working with a good company and they\u2019re really doing cool shit for us. Sometimes you need to let go and sometimes you need to hold on tight\u2026. What we\u2019ve always wanted to do was put out music frequently and then tour a little while and then put out more music. I think that\u2019s important these days, but we\u2019ve never been able to do it because there’s been so much politics surrounding the band with the big companies and expectations. But I\u2019m hoping we can keep on, and that can be the key to our future. In some ways it feels like we\u2019re right back in the beginning now that we\u2019re out on. It\u2019s really exciting \u2014 and a little scary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n