NAME: Matthew MurrayAGE: 18HOMETOWN: Villa Park, ILOCCUPATION: Student at College of DuPage and Lead Singer / Guitarist for Hotel Ahead. Hotel Ahead will be playing an acoustic set with Lucky Boys Confusion at Chicago’s Beat Kitchen on Friday, May 30.
I’ve been with Hotel Ahead for about two years or so.
Pinning down who our influences are is hard because there is such a wide range of bands we draw from. A lot of bands nobody has ever heard of: Phoenix, The Anniversary. But I guess also Ryan Adams and Jimmy Eat World.
For the record we’re about to release in July, the songs were written surprisingly quickly, though not in a bad way. It wasn’t the kind of thing where I had to come home and write this song because I had to, more like if I was playing around with my guitar and in a matter of about half an hour the song was basically done. Only two of the songs really gave me trouble. “Days in the Sun” is more like two different songs that just happen to work well together, though it was a lot more tedious to write. “Friday Night” is a lot like that, basically made up of two songs.
These days, writing is a lot different. Colin [Wright] and I sort of sit down and work out songs together. A lot of the time, I’ll be sitting in class and a melody will come into my head, and I’ll stop paying attention to whatever else is going on, and the whole song pretty much comes together. It’s funny: recently, songs have just been coming together at times when I don’t have a guitar in my hands.
As far as getting the band off the ground, we’ve had a lot of setbacks. In the past two years, it seems like it’s been about us having something going for us, then something happens and we have to start from scratch again. We just recently lost two members; they weren’t really going where Colin and I were. I can go into that, but the important thing is that we’ve got a fresh start. The past few years have been rough, but always fun. We have so much planned for the future, and that’s kind of what I’m focusing on.
You have to give up so much if you’re going to pursue being in a band full-time. Like, [with] school, I’ll probably not be going back next semester so I can work on the band. We don’t have a label to back us, so everything has to come from us. It’s really all about taking a risk. Not that many people are going to believe in us, and honestly, making it as a band is kind of farfetched. It’s just going to take giving up a lot and having ambition. If we’re going to become a touring band, it will mean not working as much and being broke all the time.
People always say the record industry is terrible, that record sales are the lowest they’ve ever been, but I see it as just the opposite. In the ’90s, it was all about bands like the Backstreet Boys or whoever else, getting all of the record sales. Nowadays, sure, a single band might not make that much money or sell as much, but that leaves room for bands like us to get heard.
It’s definitely about making music and not about the money, but, unfortunately, there’s always the business side of it too.
I’m really excited about the shows we’ve got coming up. We’ve got a lot of shows booked for this summer, so you’ll be seeing a lot of us around, and we’ve got the record coming out in July. We’re playing an acoustic show with Lucky Boys Confusion, which should be really fun, and our new drummer, Jim Ratke, might be playing light percussion. Also, in the next couple of weeks we’ll be announcing who our new bassist will be, so keep a look out for updates from us on our MySpace.