PropertyOfZack had the pleasure of interviewing Dave Melillo not too long ago to discuss all that’s been going on in the busy man’s life. Read up to find out about Dave’s new life in the studio, the future of Nocturnal Me and his solo career, as well as his thoughts about the state of the industry and where he stands in it!

So it’s been a while since we’ve heard from you. What’d been going on?
What’s been going on with me? Well, you know, tons of stuff. We started that new band, Nocturnal Me, from the ashes of Cute Is What We Aim For, or whatever the fuck you wanna say. And that’s been really cool. We’ve released two EP’s over the extent of 2010, which is really cool. As far as my solo stuff goes, I’ve just been playing shows and, you know, trying to figure out recording things. But, the fact that Drive  Thru Records is still is in my life is just really uninspiring when it comes to releasing things. But I’ve been really on a kick man—I’ve really been into producing, I’ve really been into writing, for other people. I think that’s not only what I’m best at but I feel like where the music industry’s going—I see like a new band break up every day and you know, just from like everything; shows aren’t doing as well anymore, and I think people are finally catching on that rock music has been really bad for the past few years. Save a few bands like Paramore and you know, maybe Circa Survive—I don’t know. But I really think that I’ve been trying to get more into the pop world, and I think that’s more of uh—it’s made me happy so far.

Could you talk a little bit more about what you’re producing or writing?
Yeah, of course. One of our first projects was with this—she was 17 at the time. Her name’s Leslie Mosier. She’s from Virginia, and I don’t know she’s kind of like a combination of Michelle Branch and Taylor Swift. You know, she’s really, really sweet. But not to the point where she’s thinking about high school and stuff. She adds a little something to her stuff. She released an EP in March or April this year—it was great—and then this summer, she came to me and my partner, and we recorded a full length album. So she’s going to be releasing that a little bit later this year. Really stoked on that, and yeah, anyone’s that interested if you want to check her out it’s: myspace.com/lesliemosermusic and Twitter and stuff same thing. She has a few videos up—it’s great. I’ve been doing that. We did a band called Set It Off, I’m not sure if you’re familiar with them
POZ: I actually spoke with them. They brought that up—that you were working with them
DM: Yeah, that was really cool; I’ve been friends with them for a while so we did an EP with them. And then Zach and Kenny moved on Cartel and some other band. They nixed it. So, really stoked on that—those’re great guys. And you know, there have been a few projects in between. As far as writing goes, it’s been more that I’ve been teaming up with a bunch of different, you know, street producers, or however you want to put it. And I’ve always focused more on the melody and the lyrics, and again, I’ve been having success with that so far—knock on wood—and it’s just really great man. Like I’m a studio rat. I love being on tour, and it was great, but I definitely—my strengths are definitely geared more towards the studio and writing and being creative that way.

Is it kind of awesome to be able to do both, and frequently?
Oh, of course. I mean, touring is really great, but I’m at this point in my life where, you know, getting in a van, and touring is very—it’s not tough, I’m not like spoiled or anything like that—but it’s like getting in a van and touring, it has to be worth it. It really, really does. And for Nocturnal Me and stuff, we’ve been touring this summer which is kind of cool, and I’m sure we’ll keep touring, and you know, I’m always down—when it’s something that you love, you’ll do anything for it. So I always feel that way about touring. But I mean, at the end of the day, like I said, everything’s just changing with music, especially this genre, or however you want to say it. It’s like kind of disappearing before our eyes, just because it sucks. For such a long time, there’ve been so many bands, so many bad bands, or just so many bands that just are, you know—they care about the wrong thing or they back the wrong cause. And I think people are finally starting to catch up with that, which is great, but it’s going to be a time of transition, and I’m just trying to find my place in it all and how I can still be a musician and you know, do what I love, but you know, keep going with the industry. I’m sure that you know—you’re up on this shit man—it’s always like a constant, like, crapshoot. I’m happy and like I’ve had success so I’m just going with it at this point.

Did I hear you mention that you’re still under contract with Drive Thru?
Yeah, uh, probably until something fucking happens. Those guys are notorious for ruining people’s careers. Think about some of the best bands, man. I loved The Starting Line. And even though The Starting Line kind of made it off of Drive Thru and started to do their own thing. Still, every band that has been touched by Drive Thru Records or any artist—there’s a stigma about it. Or there’s just like this—they kind of have like this touch of death, you know. And like, it’s sad and unfortunately I wasn’t able to steer clear of that. But you know, in stead of me feeling sorry for myself for blaming them for their incompetence, I’ve just been trying to move on without them. Because I know I can. And I feel like I’m young enough, I have enough get-go; I’ll make my own opportunity. They’re not going to stand in my way.

It’s easy to forget Drive Thru’s even around. We haven’t even heard anything about them in ages.
I talk to Richard all the time, and he always expresses how they’re not like really interested in even running the label. So, that’s the number one thing, I think, that really rubs people the wrong way about Drive Thru. They’re very arrogant because they’ve had some success in the past. You know at this point, they don’t really give a fuck about their label. They don’t care about the artists that are on their label. It’s more of uh—they have access, you know what I mean? They sign certain bands and they know that they can get something out of them. And they just kind of suck everyone dry until they get what they want. And I’m speaking like a total asshole, and you know, they know the story too. I’m sure if anyone asked them, are you stoked on your label….That’s how you know. I mean, they have one or two bands they kind of like that they also manage. At this point, they’re kind of just done with it.

So, focusing on Nocturnal Me a little bit—like you said, you released you second EP back in June. How has the reaction for that been?
I mean it’s been great. I don’t think that myself, Mike, and Jesse—I don’t think we’re looking for a specific kind of reaction. Especially coming from Cute Is What We Aim For, that was like again, a completely different time, 2005-2006, when like things were just really starting off with the scene and people were really into it and stuff like that. And now transitioning to Nocturnal Me, we want it to be something completely different. We want it to band that can be around and be an actual band. And like that whole wave of even like Linkin Park and stuff. I mean, Linkin Park is still releasing stuff and that takes a long time to build up. And now, rock music sucks, and there’s just no venue for it. Any label person I talk to always don’t want to sign bands anymore. I’m really not sure why—there’s a bunch of politics involved—but for us, I’d rather do our band exactly how we want to. I don’t want to be at the beck and call of anyone else. So that relates to the reaction because I’ve been very happy with it because we just make music that we really love. We’re happy to be able to get it out to people. We’re happy to be able to perform, and honestly, at the end of the day, that’s what it is.

Are you in the works of writing or recording anything more for the band?
Yeah, of course. Well, I guess we released that EP in June or July, and we have plans to get back in November to record another four or five songs. And we’re going to keep doing that man. We’re going to just keep releasing EP after EP until we see another opportunity that presents itself. So we’ll see. November we’ll be recording and then something will come out either early next year or the spring or something like that.

Nice. So you just want to have another one or two EP’s out next year?
Well I mean I feel like making albums is really ridiculous now. I don’t think even big artists don’t really release albums or albums do as well. I’d rather—we’re still developing a sound. And as I said, Nocturnal Me is going to be like an epic journey throughout my life. Like I always want that to be where I go to do exactly what I want to do with my music and tell everyone to fuck off. So you know, all of these EP’s are almost like an experiment as well. The first one was very reminiscent of Cute Is What We Aim For a little bit, some of the other stuff that we had done before. The second EP progressed a little bit. We all got kind of in a funkier vibe; we’re trying to streamline it a little bit. And this time around is going to be even more compressed, packaged, more of our vision. You can do that when you’re dealing with four or five songs. When you’re like writing 12 songs, it’s so much of commitment that sometimes the experimentation all gets lost. So I think EP’s are definitely the way we’re going to go until maybe another opportunity presents itself.

Could we see any tour dates within the next few months for that, or are you guys just going to wait off until you have something else released?
I mean we had some dates with Craig Owens last year, and if there’s an opportunity, a good tour, that we could go out on and have a great time, that’s what I want to do. But it’s not like—I don’t know, I don’t think bands need to tour anymore. Maybe that’s a really stupid thing for me to say but I just…Back in the day, the model was get in a van, sell your t-shirts, sell your CDs, and that’s how you get popular. With the advent of MySpace, Twitter, and all these ways that you can get to people without being right in front of them, you can do so much more work from home, and you can really connect with people and not be right in front of them and again it saves you a lot of money and time. And to be honest with you man, people aren’t going to shows. So I just feel like my time could be spent better. You know, we’re like homies with Anarbor, so if they wanted to bring us out on tour, that would be amazing. That’d be a really fun opportunity, but I’m not going to go out of my way just to make up a tour date so that I have something to do with my life, you know?

Yes, absolutely. So do you always write for your solo stuff or are you focusing on that at certain times?
As an artist, I’ve been really into YouTube covers. I think that people know my name enough, they know that I’m not a complete jackass when it comes to music. I’ll be completely straight up with you: When I’m looking for an avenue that I haven’t had access to yet, I really feel like I need to validate myself as songwriter before people will be able to you know—I was a 16 year-old kid, I got signed to Drive Thru, I released an EP. I’ve done so many things up until here, I feel like the next thing that I have to do has to be very significant, if that makes any sense. So that’s really what I’m focusing on. And what I’m writing: I’m just writing songs, trying to write the best songs possible. Regardless of if they’re for Nocturnal Me or if they’re fucking for Lady Gaga. I’ve released a few of these tracks on my Tumblr under the name D Blaaq, which is kind of just a penname I’ve come up with. And again, that’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve been getting into sessions with different artists, different producers and stuff like that. And you know we either work for an artist or we just make songs that you know have potential. We just all  get together and try to write the best songs possible. And I’m hoping that that will lead to me being able to work on some big stuff. Because I feel like that’s what it’s all about right now. I can release EP after EP like my own stuff, and I can release stuff on iTunes. I see a lot of artists that I have admired, a lot of solo artists especially, even like a guy like Ace Enders. He’s amazingly talented and he does such a great job, but no one fucking appreciates him. And not that I don’t want to be stuck in that—as much as I do this for myself, I want to be successful. I want this to be my living. And I want to do it in a really big way. So maybe it’s me not being content, but I’m really shooting for the moon here, and I mean, honestly man, at the end of the day, I want Justin Bieber to be singing my songs, I want Derulo to be singing my songs, and that will let me do whatever the fuck I want with my life.

Last year, solo wise, you did a short tour with Straylight Run. Was that kind of cool?
Yo, lemme tell you dude. That was probably the most surreal like two or three weeks of my life. Because like I remember being in high school and just like, so totally jamming to Straylight Run. That was like my band for a hot second. And you know the guys came to us and they were like, “Hey we just need an acoustic opener on the tour blah blah blah” and you know, I rode in the van with them, so we were really close. And I thought, these guys are older than me they’re not really going to be that warm or open. They were like family man. They really helped my out. We got stuck in Missouri for Halloween. And then for three or four days the van broke down and honestly though, we had a great time, and again, it was surreal. Being a kid who listened to Straylight Run and then to be like, “I’m driving their van and I’m on tour with them and we’re cool” and stuff like that. It was even more so because I know that John’s kind of doing his solo stuff now and I know him and Shaun went back to Taking Back Sunday for a little bit, so I feel like I was part of the last hurrah for Straylight Run. Man, that makes me really really happy. It was a great experience. 

Will you continue to do solo shows every now and then?
I would do a solo show every day if it were the right opportunity. I just played a show at The College of New Jersey, and I love playing at colleges. I’ll tell you—because people actually sit there, they listen, they interact with you, it’s like: that’s what I want to do. I do enough on my own time with writing—I have enough to occupy my time where I don’t need to jump in my car and like tour the country to justify me doing something. So like, any opportunity I get I always pursue it. I’d love to play a solo show every day, but you know, it’s just what it is. I’ll always be playing, and I’m very accessible—I’m on Twitter and I always update people with what I’m up to and playing shows and stuff like that. So all you gotta do is follow me. Or, uh, I’m a loud motherfucker so I’m sure you’ll find out one way or another.

So is there anything else we should expect in the upcoming future?
Well I’m definitely active on YouTube so check that out. I try to post a few covers a week or original stuff like that. I definitely have thoughts to sooner or later get an original album of my original material out. I want to do it on my own terms. Again, I’m a little but stubborn like that. So that’s coming, and I always have shows, but hopefully there are some real big things that I can start talking about in the future. But for right now, I’m just trying to survive like everybody else. And I think I’m doing okay right now.

Awesome! Well thanks so much for your time!
Likewise.