Live-Metal.Net - Interviews: Flyleaf

Flyleaf’s Lacey: Making the most of her opportunity

December 20, 2009

One of the rare bands to find favor with Christian and secular music fans, Flyleaf rode that crossover appeal all the way to the 1 million mark in album sales of their self-titled debut. Due to a relentless touring schedule, it took four years for its follow-up to be unleashed. Memento Mori, released in November 2009, was worth the wait, showing a band that has matured as both songwriters and musicians. Having just completed a U.S. tour of the kind of small, intimate venues in which they began, the band’s singer, formerly known as Lacey Mosley, now credited simply as Lacey in the new album’s liner notes, called in to chat with Live-Metal.net’s Greg Maki about Memento Mori, the responsibility she feels to the Flyleaf fans and more.

Live-Metal.net: The title of the new album, Memento Mori, I know its roots go back to Ancient Rome. How does that apply to this album and the songs on this album?

Lacey: When we finally figured out which songs we were gonna put on the album, we looked at the track listing as a whole and saw this kind of theme come out of the messages. It’s just over and over again that life is short and precious and we should make the most of the opportunities that we have here with the people around us—their lives are short and precious, too. Then right towards the end of our writing, in the band a lot of people had just had people they loved pass away. And it just seemed really fitting for what we were going through. We went to Afghanistan and visited troops there, and it kind of drove the point home further. When we were there, we met and talked with a bunch of the troops, and one of the guys that I talked to was killed two days after we were there. So it just kind of stuck with us and struck us. When we got the phrase—we got it off of a painting that we liked when we were trying to figure out art for the cover and it was a painting by Hans Memling, and that was the phrase that was written under the painting and it fit in with it in every area. Everywhere we looked, it just sort of fit in.

How did the writing and recording of Memento Mori differ from making the first album? Did you feel pressure because of the success that you had?

Not on the band’s side. We didn’t have pressure as far as success. It doesn’t inspire us to write, to try to sell records. That’s not why we do it. We write in response to life and that’s just what happens. The difference in this writing process from the first record was that in the beginning we had regular lives and jobs and we did it for fun and got together in [drummer] James [Culpepper]’s garage and wrote our CD that way. But this one was done while we were on the road. A lot of the songs were written when we were on tour with Korn and on tour with Stone Sour and the Deftones. So it was all written in between touring, which I think is the biggest difference.

Four years between albums, you toured and got to see a lot of the world, meet fans, you got married. How does all that stuff affect you as a songwriter?

Well, I guess it’s inspiring. Tour is not always a creative environment. It kind of gets repetitive and you go to bed exhausted, especially if things are going good and you always have interviews and meet-and-greets and just a whirlwind around you. But when you hang out with creative people here and there, like touring with those guys on the Family Values tour and stuff like that, you do get inspired and you want to go back and make music.

What kind of amazes me a little bit is how the songs were written over a long period of time but the album really seems to flow and have continuity musically and thematically. How were you able to achieve that?

It was a miracle. [laughs] We didn’t do it on purpose. It’s funny because there’s something about Flyleaf. The five members of the band are completely different personality-wise and completely different in the tastes we have for music. So when we get together, it’s pretty crazy what comes out because it’s something we all like and it comes out of our hearts. But there’s not a lot of music that we all agree on outside of it. [laughs] We’re all different. I think that those different influences come together and make what Flyleaf is. If one person wasn’t in it, we’d definitely miss their influence.

Your lyrics are obviously very personal. At some point in your songwriting process, do you think about the audience and how your lyrics might be interpreted?

Yeah, I’d say that’s something that is at the front of my mind with everything we do. It’s kind of a big weight to carry sometimes because you can’t please everybody and everybody’s gonna have their own interpretation of it. But as far as us doing what we can to try to say what we mean and make sure the influence is gonna be something that’s not gonna be negative, some of our songs that we write from our hearts, they stay in our bedrooms and they don’t get out because of that. So the influence that we have is really important. My little sister is 17, and when we write, I think about how she’s gonna hear what we’re writing and how it’s gonna influence her—and that’s really obvious because she’s my sister and I love her. But then when we get on the road, there’s a sea of 17-year-old girls and it’s just the same feeling. I care about how they’re gonna interpret it and I care about the issues that they’re dealing with and how this is gonna influence the decisions that they’re making and all that. I do think about that, probably way too much. [laughs]

When you were younger, were there musicians that you looked to in that way?

Yeah. Yeah, I really studied Metallica, Pantera and Nirvana. I don’t think I was always influenced in a positive way by the way they lived their lives and what I learned about them. I think the greatest influence that those bands had was that it was so poured out, like just poured out from who they really were. Their heart was poured out in their music and that was something that I didn’t hear in pop music, which my mom listened to from the time I was really little. The first time I heard Nirvana, I just thought, this is something that’s real, it’s way more real than anything. And then Metallica lyrics, it just felt like there was depth in it that I didn’t find in other music. And then Pantera, it was just all emotion and I think that was the good thing I took away from it because I wanted to write music that you could understand what it meant without having to hear the lyrics, that you could feel it and understand it by the way the music sounded. But other than that, knowing about Kurt Cobain’s drug use made me want to find out what that was like, too, and it kind of took me down a really bad road.

It seems like Flyleaf fans have connected with the band on a really personal level and probably because of that kind of thought that you were talking about putting into your lyrics. When you meet fans, what kinds of things do they tell you about how your music has affected them?

They usually say that it helped them a lot through really tough times. A lot of people say, “My parents got divorced and it really helped me through the divorce.” Or “My friend died in a car wreck and it helped me through that.” Or “I was really suicidal and depressed because of all kinds of things and your music helped me through that.” There’s a million directions, but it’s always something really heavy. I’m just so thankful that something I went through and got over and wrote a song about helped somebody else get through, get over it enough to come there and have a smile on their face and hug me and thank me. I’m so thankful for that because if we can help somebody get through something, then they can also help somebody get through something and it just keeps going and hopefully it’ll make the world a better place in the end.

A couple weeks ago, you wrapped up a U.S. tour. Was it fun to get back into those smaller venues again?

Oh yeah. They’re a lot more our style, I think It feels more like home, more like the way we started. We like going on the big arena tours and stuff, but we feel like we’re on somebody else’s stage. It was really neat to have that feeling, that familiar smell of stale beer and cigarettes. You just walk in and your allergies flare up because it’s so smoky or whatever. [laughs] That kind of thing is kind of a sweet memory of when we first started.

Especially early in the tour, before the album was out, how did it feel to play the new songs live?

It was the same thing. It was like when we first started. It’s hard to read the reaction, except that we’ve already done it and we’ve seen that it’s a good reaction. But whenever they just stand there and stare at you, sometimes that’s not good. But when nobody’s moving around and everybody is just staring, and then you get a big cheer after it’s over, you know it was a good thing. That’s kind of how the new songs were. There was a couple crazy fans, which is so encouraging, that somehow knew the songs better than I did. [laughs] I don’t even know how they got the lyrics and the words. I asked one kid, “How did you know the words?” He’s like, “Well, I saw there were snippets on your Web site and I just listened to them over and over and over, and I only know those parts.” [laughs] That’s just crazy. Our fans are crazy.

Of the new songs, which are the most fun to play?

I think “Chasm” is the funnest one. It makes you want to dance and slam dance and mosh and bang your head in a cool way. It’s something I love about Pantera that we don’t have as much in our music, which I was really thankful for in that song. It’s my favorite.

I saw online the Shockhound video where at the end Pat accidentally hit you in the face with his bass.

Yeah. [laughs]

I’ve seen you guys play a bunch of times and it gets pretty crazy up there, but how often does something like that happen? I hadn’t seen that before.

When we first started, it happened all the time. It was just part of the show almost. Pat would get really upset and feel really bad about it, so he would take his bass and slam it into his face until he cut his forehead. It got so often that he wouldn’t have to do it very hard and it would just bust open an old scar. I’d get so mad at him when he’d do that because I’m a girl and motherly. I’m like, “What’s wrong with you?! You’re gonna need stitches!” I’m trying to help him and he’s like, “Get a camera! Get a camera!” [laughs] Because he cut his face and he’s happy to be a boy and bloody and gross. [laughs]

Now that you guys have a few years of touring under your belt, what is it like to take a newer band—like on this past tour, Paper Tongues—out on their first tour and kind of be like a mentor for them?

Oh, well, in some ways we were mentors, but in most ways they were mentors to us because those guys are just a really awesome, wise-beyond-their-years group of people. We were so excited to tour with them. When I heard the CD the first time, they just instantly became my new favorite band. So I was a fan already when they came out, and I was watching their show every night. We think about that. We were the first tour they ever went on and so we took really good care of them. We let them ride our bus because they were in a van, I think, at first or an RV—I don’t know, it was really crowded because there are so many members in the band. So they were on our bus all the time. We just let them eat our food or take naps on our couch or whatever they needed. They went on tour with another band and they came out with us again after they went out on a few other tours, and they were like, “Man, you guys were so nice to us. We didn’t even know. Everybody else was so rude.” [laughs]

Anytime I read an interview or see an interview with you or anyone in the band or watch you play live, I’m really struck by how gracious and thankful you all seem to be. Especially you as the singer and center of attention, how do you stay so humble?

I just feel like I’ve seen a lot of people change for whatever reason, even the nicest people, I’ve seen them change and I’m always looking for that in myself. I’m always looking out for that. I think that the more amazing life gets, the more amazed I am by how far we’ve come. Somebody asked me one time, “What is your response to selling a million records?” And when I think about a crowd of a million kids that bought our CD or hoped to buy it somehow or even just liked the music, it just overwhelms me a lot. I came from a really poor background, six kids and in the middle somewhere and just feeling like I was in the way a lot. So to think about a sea of a million kids that bought the CD and sing songs that we wrote in my bedroom, it just makes me want to curl up in God’s lap and say, “Wow. Why? Who am I?” That’s the way I feel.

You’re just on your second album, so you’re still a young band. But years from now, when it’s all said and done, what do you want to have accomplished?

I just want to have done what I was meant to do. I don’t know what that is always. I don’t think it’s always this glamorous. A lot of times people will see that as success. I see it as miraculous in its own way, but I just feel like that doesn’t measure success. It kind of bums me out sometimes when people think about me and they immediately start talking about music or immediately start talking about Flyleaf. That’s really just a really small part of who I am. I like music, but it’s not my favorite thing in the whole world. It’s not. It’s really strange that I ended up here, but I feel like this is what I’m supposed to be doing. So that’s why I’m doing it, but not because I love music so much. I just feel like it’s what I’m supposed to do.

Is there anything you’d like to add?

We update our Facebook. Sometimes when we go on tour, we’ll go through a town or something and take pictures and put them up on Facebook. If anybody wants to know about anything, then they can find out about it on there.