PropertyOfZack was lucky enough to sit down during the Bamboozle Roadshow to talk with Brandon and Mike of Mercy Mercedes. The guys we’re nice enough to talk about their frustrations with all the roadblocks of releasing their new record, the Roadshow, and future tour plans. Check out out, it’s a good read!

For the record, could you state your name and role in Mercy Mercedes?
Brandon: Hey, my names Brandon. I go by B-Real and I play guitar.
Michael: My names Michael. I play drums.

The Roadshow is coming to an end, how has your time on it been?
Brandon: It’s been great. It’s had its ups and downs. Mostly ups, but we’ve been settling a lot of things with our record coming out and stuff like that and getting all that finally revved up. So it feels good. We had a great show today and we’ve bonded with a lot of great bands. I guess every good thing has to come to an end so we’ll come home and get a lot of things done and we’ll be back on the road again.

Have the fans been pretty consistent throughout the whole tour?
Brandon: Yeah, for the most part. I’d say all the great shows have been on the east coast.
Michael: Yeah, definitely the second half of the tour I feel was a lot stronger than the first half. That little break that the B Stage had for about 9 days because of some cancelled shows… that kind of sucked, but it was kind of like a halfway point in the tour, but from where the tour picked back up in Milwaukee…from then on it’s been pretty solid. Much more so than the first half.

It’s been said that the album will be released in July. Is that a definite?
Brandon: Yeah, it’s kind of been pushed back a little bit. It’s kind of up in the air whether it’s going to be late July or early August. It’s not too much of a big difference we just had some label interest and stuff like that. There’s just a lot of things to sort out when you put out an album. Most kids don’t realize it. I know I wouldn’t if I hadn’t been in this business for a while, but we wanted to get this album out like a year ago and we’ve just run into so many things. So we’re finally getting it wrapped up and we’ll have it out as soon as we can.

How were the writing process and the recording process for the record?
Brandon: It was a lot of fun. For the first day me, Michael, and Nate went down there and Mike comes down and knocks all the drums out and we get things worked out as far as how we kind of hear the drums going. So he knocked it out and then our bass player came in and he got everything done in like one day. And then me and Nate stayed down there kind of writing more songs in the studio and then Michael came back down to help us write “All I’ve Ever Known”. That was really cool. Pretty much me and Nate were down there for a long time, but we got it down though. We’re proud of it.

Not too long ago Nate mentioned that you guys might be recording an EP in November, is that confirmed?
Brandon: It was kind of more along the lines of a b-sides thing. It’s not anything to be taken too seriously right now because we’re really putting all our main concern into putting the album out and who’s going to be releasing it.
Michael: And it also could be an acoustic EP. We got some songs that we’ve restructured acoustically and we laid them down.
Brandon: Yeah, we actually did record…
Michael: We’ve thought about releasing it as an EP.
Brandon: We kind of already recorded an acoustic EP just for fun and we were gonna release it as some bonus tracks if you bought the new album, Believe It, on iTunes. But then that kind of turned into the option of releasing it separately. After we get Believe It out we’re gonna have things moving a lot smoother than they are.

You mentioned talks about who’s going to put out Believe It…
Brandon: Yeah, we’re in talks with some people right now. When we did the whole thing with Militia Group and stuff and parted ways with them like, we’re just really not ready to rush things I guess you could say because we’ve already done this before. We’re in talks with some labels and right now it’s more along the lines of if we want to release it on our own without a label or sign with a label as opposed to what label we’re going to sign to.

After tomorrow there’s nothing on the books for touring yet. When are we gonna see some stuff?
Brandon: Well we have a great booking agent. His names Andrew Ellis. So he has the power to get us on some pretty sweet tours, it’s just all a matter of the full-length coming out. I guarantee you, as soon as the full-length has a release date you’re gonna start seeing some tour dates on our web pages and some stuff like that.
Michael: Most definitely.

So in the next year would you guys like to hit Europe?
Brandon: Oh I would love to hit Europe. I’ve never been and I’ve always wanted to go.
Michael: Japan too, brother.
Brandon: It’s probably gonna be one of those things where its later in the next year because we’ll probably be touring the United States a lot with that new album coming out. And then yeah, I’d love to do a European tour. It’d be awesome.

When exactly was Believe It finished?
Brandon: Believe It’s been done since…
Michael: February, right?
Brandon: It’s been done for a good while. I’d say it was done tracking in February.
Michael: But by the time it was mixed and mastered it was May.
Brandon: We’ve had a bunch of roadblocks with this album. And finally we had our newest member, Ben Carter, come into the band and we’ve been friends with him for a long time. He was in a band called A Mile After. So when he joined the band he kind of entered the whole mixing process with us and he actually helped out a whole lot and changed a lot of things around and gave us that extra ear. But I’d say Believe It has been done, ready to go, for about two months now.

Has it been frustrating at all with all the roadblocks?
Brandon: Absolutely. I mean, we’re just some guys that grew up playing music in local bands that dreamed of playing on stages like we’re doing now. It’s still like awesome that we’re doing that, but guys like us? We just want our fans to hear our music, you know? And when you have to go through crap like this it sucks. It’s going to make us stronger as a band and we’re already getting through it all. Hopefully we won’t have to deal with this stuff anymore.

And regarding the Roadshow: There have been controversies and there have been appearance issues, but is it cool touring with bands like Good Charlotte and the older bands?
Brandon: Oh, are you serious? Absolutely.
Michael: Dude, Third Eye Blind…
Brandon: Well, Third Eye Blind first of all is my favorite band of all time. I’ll tell you this; some of the coolest dudes I’ve met were in bands like Good Charlotte. Benji sat down one day and we were talking to him about our whole situation with our music business stuff and he gave us like a pep talk. He’s a rad dude.
Michael: Deano, the drummer, he’s a rad dude. Such a rad dude.
POZ: Yeah, I just spoke with him; he’s a really great guy.
Michael: Super rad dude. Great drummer, great guy. He’s standing right over there right now.

So as soon as the album comes out you guys just want to tour, tour, and tour?
Brandon: Yeah, absolutely. That’s all we’re gonna do, I guarantee it.
And the new songs that you guys played today, have the fans been reacting?
Brandon: Oh yeah, they love it. You can obviously tell. We’ve done some interviews and ever since then you can see more people are singing along even though they’ve never technically heard it.

Thanks so much for your time, is there anything else you’d like to add?
Brandon: I love your shirt. blink-182’s one of my favorite bands. We’re just out here having a good time and we’ll continue to do so.
Michael: Rocking this world one torn at a time.