I had the pleasure of sitting down with Juliet and Tommy Simms of Automatic Loveletter on one of their press days in New York City to do a quick interview for PropertyOfZack. The siblings and I discussed Warped Tour, their music video for “Heart Song”, as well as their tour with Valencia, and the future for the band. Give it a read!

For the record, could you state your names and roles in Automatic Loveletter?
Juliet: I’m Juliet Simms. Singer, rhythm guitar player.
Tommy: I am Tommy Simms. Other guitar player.
Juliet: Lead guitar player.
Tommy: Lead guitar player and sibling.

You just finished up a long and rather hot summer on Warped Tour. Juliet this is your second time around on the tour, so could you compare the two years?
Juliet: This was longer.
Tommy: The progress was unprecedented.
Juliet: Yes, this is true. And we had an actual record to promote and we kind of knew what we were going into because we had a little teaser of it before.

Was it a lot easier being on a bus this time as well?
Juliet: Yeah, I mean, the bus made it a lot easier, but the fact that it was twice as long was…
Tommy: It didn’t matter that we were on a bus.
Juliet: By the last two weeks, it was robotic, like Groundhog Day.
Tommy: But yes, it was extremely progressive. It was nice to watch our fans increase after our video was released. And the record came out right as Warped started, so it was fun to actually watch out fan base grow before our very eyes

Was the live set full of energy from the fans every day and night?
Juliet: Yeah.

What does it mean to you to be a part of the bigger moving festival this scene has to offer?
Juliet: It means a lot. It’s not a stepping-stone, it’s a mountain. Not a lot of bands get to do it and if you do get to do it it’s like an honor and it’s a legendary tour. It really gives you your stripes, but you’ve got to go out there and prove yourself. You will get ripped apart if you suck.

If Warped Tour 2011 is a possibility would you guys take it, maybe for a little less longer period?
Tommy: No, the whole thing.
Juliet: We would take the whole thing again.
Tommy: Without a shadow of a doubt.

Truth Or Dare has been out something like two months to the day now. Can you walk us through the reaction you’ve gotten so far?
Juliet: Great. All I’ve been getting is that kids can’t stop listening to it. That it’s one of those records that they just have on repeat on their iPod. Kids will show up to the shows knowing every single world.
Tommy: It’s being very well received.. It’s a fun record. It doesn’t leave you sitting in a genre for too long. There’s a very dynamic growth.

Are you definitely going to be a lot more stoked to get out there and play longer sets every night rather than a 30-minute one?
Juliet: Yeah, and show a little bit more dynamic. On Warped Tour…
Tommy: Boom, boom, boom, boom, pop.
Juliet: Yeah, like when I’m saying dynamically wise as songs go, “Hush” is nearing the thin line of too slow of a song for Warped Tour. We play it though because it’s a fan favorite. So I’m excited to get back to being able to whip out an acoustic guitar and do a song like that and make the show more dynamic.

This certainly isn’t yours or Automatic Loveletter’s first release, but does it seem like your first stable one in the sense that you’re not worried about your label issues?
Juliet:  Yeah, we have an incredible team now. The records out. The labels pushing us. We have our management and publicist giving us stuff to do non-stop and it really feels like it’s real.
POZ: So this is definitely the most stable you guys have ever felt?
Tommy: Music video. We have a whole team. A crew, a road crew. We have a tour manager. We have a tour manager!
Juliet: Oh my god [Laughs]. Wait; is that a hard case for your guitar?
POZ: Now you can only break the strings.
[Everyone laughs]

Juliet, in the past you’ve described Truth Or Dare as your “next chapter” rather than a fresh start. Would you say that still holds true?
Juliet: I feel like this record is long overdue. We’re already ready to record the next one. It is definitely the next chapter.
Tommy: I feel like this record is like pages out of Juliet’s scrapbook or diary. She’s been working on music. Personally, I haven’t been with her the whole time, I’ve come on and off, but watching her, I’ve seen her go through different genres and different writers, and different methods of writing and different vocal styling’s. She’s kind of had this plethora of music that was her scrapbook and she released it and it’s all out there now and it’s time for her to fill those pages up again.

Like you said, you haven’t always been there, but now that you are on stage every night together is it definitely better to have a piece of home with you?
Juliet: Yeah, it makes it a lot easier to do it.
Tommy: And it’s like really warming for other people to see too.
Juliet: Yeah, like, “Oh my god, I wish I had a relationship like that with my sister or brother.”

Sometime in July the music video for the first single, “Heart Song”, was released. I’m sure that spun quite a few heads, but was it fun to make?
Juliet: It was fun to shoot and it’s getting the exact reaction.
Tommy: That’s what we wanted. We wanted to spin some heads.
Juliet: We wanted to shoot you straight through the heart.
Tommy: It’s kind of a statement. We’re a rock ‘n roll band.
POZ: Perfect for Warped.
Juliet: Not to put down any other female fronted bands out there, but we’re not a female fronted band. We’re a band that happens to have a lead singer with tits.
[Everyone laughs]
Juliet: So, I take us out of that category because that’s not what we are.
POZ: There’s certainly a lot of that on Warped Tour this year.
Tommy: It’s not a gimmick, in other words for us.

Automatic Loveletter will be heading out on tour with Valencia in the fall. Will we see another single being announced for then?
Juliet: I mean, right now “Heart Song” is what we’re pushing. Hopefully, we’ll see.
Tommy: We’ve been talking about maybe recording some new demos and recording a single before the next record comes out. But there’s plenty of singles. This whole record is singles. It’s hard to choose a single. It’s just such a strong record.

How did the tour with Valencia come together?
Juliet: We found out that they were going on tour and thought that it’d be awesome, so.

Will more dates be announced then there are at this point?
Tommy: In December. They’re gonna take off, they have another tour, and then we’re going back out with them in December.

Will you guys just keep touring throughout the fall and winter?
Juliet: Yeah, I think that’s the plan.

Is it too soon to start heading out of the country for tours?
Juliet: No, there’s been talk of going over to Japan. That’s something we’ve discussed.
Tommy: We’ve had offers from European bands and stuff too, just nothing solid yet.

Like you said, Truth Or Dare was sort of a scrapbook you built over time. Since all of that is out now would you definitely want to start writing again soon?
Juliet: We already have been.
POZ: When would you like to hit the studio?
Juliet: Probably some time late next year.
Tommy: So we have time to release it before Warped Tour.

So new songs are a definite possibility in the not too far future?
Juliet: Yeah, I assume that they’ll want us to do some recording late next year or in the fall.
Tommy: She’s always writing though. Like you said, when we’re on a normal tour we have a longer set time and she’s able to pick up an acoustic guitar and sing a lot of newer song that these kids maybe haven’t heard and they’re just stuff that she’s working on or just something that she’s finished writing. There’s a couple that I hope that you play. I hope you play “Black Ink Revenge”. It’s so great to see her go up there.

You’ve obviously written most of everything in the past by yourself…
Juliet: Well yeah, I feel that this last record, Tommy and I actually co-wrote three of the songs on it, and I did some other collaborations.
Tommy: A lot of the record was just written by her too.
Juliet: There’s songs on the record that I wrote by myself.
POZ: But will the next record be more of a band effort or the same?
Juliet: I think it’ll be the same type of mixture.
Tommy: Nobody has a chip on their shoulder about it. We just want a good record.

Now that things are stable for you guys, what would you like to see in next year or so?
Juliet: Yeah, honestly, building our fan base, touring as much as possible, getting on some good tours would be nice.
Tommy: Just to continue. We’re on some great momentum; I think that the snowball is getting bigger, so just to continue to do that. Let gravity do its job.
Juliet: Like rain, in a really dark rainy cloud.
POZ: Rain screws New York City.
[Everybody laughs]

Thanks so much for your time, is there anything else you’d like to add?
Tommy: I am awesome.
Juliet: Yes he is.