Title Fight hit New York City on the second to last date of their headlining tour with Touché Amoré and PropertyOfZack had a chance to catch up with the band. Ned and I discussed their headlining tour, the response to Shed, how they recorded Shed, touring plans for the future, and much more. Read up and enjoy!

For the record, could you state your name and role in Title Fight?
I’m Ned, and I play bass and sing in Title Fight.

Your headlining tour is just about coming to an end now. Can you just discuss how the dates have been?
We started off in Philly on May 19^th with Touché Amoré, The Menzingers, and Dead End Path, and it’s been us four the whole time. We went across the whole country and it’s been like six weeks now. Today’s the second to last day in New York City, and it’s probably been the most successful tour we’ve ever done and it’s been the most fun we’ve ever had on tour. All the bands are really cool, and all the shows have been insane.

Tonight’s sold out. Have a lot of the dates been close to full capacity?
There have been a fair amount of sold out shows, which has been really surprising to me. All the shows have been packed and there really hasn’t been a bad show. I can’t complain about any of that. It’s been really great so far.

Is it just rad that eight months ago you guys did the Senses Fail and Bayside tour and now you can clearly see that the band has grown substantially with this tour alone?
We spent the whole last year doing support stuff, and it was really cool to play big venues, but at the same time, shows like tonight are what we’re interested in. Shows with no barriers. That stuff was all really cool, but at the same time, we spent all last year doing that and hoping it would pay off, and we really couldn’t tell until now. We really busted our asses last year touring, writing, and recording.

How many new songs off of Shed are you playing?
We do five. It varies place by place with fan reaction. One song will go over awesome and sometimes it seems like nobody has heard the new record yet. It’s cool though. It’s fun for us to play new songs. We were playing the older songs for two to four years. To  be able to play something new is refreshing to us.

Shed leaked about a month early. Did that hurt morals?
It definitely did on the first weekend. We got notified that it was out there and we were trying to shut it down at SXSW. We tried our hardest. By like Sunday the whole record leaked and it kind of sucked. People are going to download it regardless. The fact that people heard it and liked it was cool. At the beginning I was very upset, but two days after that I stopped caring because people were excited about it.

How has the reaction in general been just considering that the band has grown so much since its last release?
There’s been a mix review, but for the most part, it’s been really positive. We put a lot of hard work into it. I try to stray away from message boards. I’ve seen some of it and I laugh it off. Some people can’t believe we went in this direction, but I don’t know what their problem is with it.

What was the writing process for the record like?
We’ve always had a full band writing process. We’ll come with a riff or a lyric and build on it from the bottom up. We all have our own ideas and input and we literally spent about a year writing the record. It was a lot of us trying every single possible method, and it was aggravating at time. Personally I think the songs are the best we’ve ever written and I’m really happy with everything. I don’t think we would’ve gotten the product that we got without spending that time. We could’ve rushed it or taken more time, but I think the way that we did it was perfect.

Did you enjoy your time in the studio?
Yeah, it was really cool. We recorded at Studio Four in a suburb of Philly. It’s literally a legendary studio. He recorded all these cool bands and Aerosmith, Bob Dylan, and all this crazy stuff. This guy was running the studio for so long, but then this 23 year old hardcore kid started working there and said he wanted to help his friends out, and we got in. It’s the craziest place we had ever been to. We recorded with Walter from Gorilla Biscuits, and he is honestly a person that I look up to. Working with those people in that place was the best we could have hoped for. We did the whole record live besides some overdubs, and the vibe was really easy going. In the past we’d record five songs in two days and I always freaked out. This time we sat down and relaxed a little. It was a more laid back experience. It was really a lot of fun and very serious at the same time.

The band announced it signed to SideOneDummy, and people didn’t totally expect that move. Why’d you end up choosing them?
We had a lot of options on the table. We never expected that. We had talked to so many labels and so many people, and it was cool and flattering, but we started realizing what was cool and what was bullshit. We had spoken to a bunch of different people and we didn’t even want to meet with SideOne, but we met with them and it just clicked. They were cool guys. There’s a small group of people rather than a huge office. We know everybody there and they’re all cool. It just made sense for us from that first meeting. We sat on it a little bit, and it was still the best option.

Was it weird to get away from the whole Run For Cover scene?
It definitely was. Jeff is a great guy and runs a great label. We didn’t want to make it seem like we were better than Run For Cover. We wouldn’t have done anything without him. Bands like Transit and Tigers Jaw are our friends too. It’s definitely a weird thing even a year later. A bunch of bands have left Run For Cover and are doing things, but have come up through Run For Cover. It’s cool to see Jeff getting attention too.

Following this tour you guys are heading overseas with Basement. How stoked are you for that tour?
It’s cool. We’ve only went to Europe once, and it was in the winter. It was cold and the weather sucked. I’m excited to go in the summer and actually be able to just hang out and not be freezing. I think the shows will be cool. We’re doing a lot of fests. That’ll be really cool. The guys in Basement are our good friends too. Just to get the opportunity to travel to a country overseas is so cool.

In September the band has an Australian tour, but will there be US touring in between?
We just announced that we’re doing the Fuck Yeah Fest in LA. That’s right before we go to Australia. That’s really the only US stuff. That’ll be really cool though. We’re working on the fall now. We’re doing Europe again actually.

Are there any plans to release any smaller splits or 7”s this year?
We actually did that Generation thing today and we got the soundboard from that. We also did a Daytrotter session that came out cool. Nothing’s set in stone, but we may do something with that. We haven’t really talked about it a lot. We’ll see what happens. We’re definitely interested in writing new songs already. It’s not going to be another three years. We’re going to try to tour as much as we can off of this record, but we’re going to be writing and getting everything prepared. We were pretty unprepared for writing a full-length, but now we know what to expect.