PropertyOfZack Interview : : Moving Mountains

On November 8th, 2009, I was given the pleasure to interview Gregory Dunn from Moving Mountains on the last stop of their tour opening for Straylight Run. For anyone wondering, Greg was an extremely nice guy and answered all of my questions, and your questions with extreme detail and care. So thank you Greg, everybody enjoy the interview!

For the record could you please state your name and role in the band?
Greg: My name is Gregory Dunn, I sing and play guitar in the band Moving mountains

So a year ago you guys were playing hometown shows around Purchase, NY and doing mini tours throughout the country and in recent months you’ve toured with Thursday, Say Anything, and Straylight Run…
Greg: Yeah, it’s been crazy.
Zack: Did you expect to be anywhere like this?
Greg: No, every like year interval you look back and you’re like, “holy crap, I totally didn’t see that coming.” Yeah, this last six months have just been insanely good for us in terms of touring and exposure and legitimizing ourselves. It’s been awesome.

A year ago on online forums you guys were building up your name, and then I was reading an interview interview with Max Bemis and he named you guys as one of this favorite bands…
Greg: Yeah, that’s actually how we got on that tour. I noticed that Max was talking about us, so I emailed him and I was like, “Dude, that’s so crazy that you like my band.” And he was like, “Dude, I love your band.” So I said we should tour and he was like, “yes.” And it was so surreal and so awesome I was so thankful and grateful that he was willing to take us out on tour. We were so excited.

Which of these three tours (Thursday, Say Anything, Straylight Run) have been the best for you?
Greg: They’re all different. The part of the Thursday tour was just the most stressful, and most surreal experience. Just because Thursday was the band that motivated us to even be in a band. They were the band that when I was a kid I was like, “holy shit, music is so much more than just music.” So that was really insane and definitely the craziest experience of my life, just those couple dates with Thursday. Say Anything was just so much fun, because they’re just the coolest dudes, and it was so much fun every night. It was such an insane surreal experience. And this Straylight tours been cool, just because it’s been our home market. It’s almost nice to come back to these 200 capacity venues and be nice and up-close and intimate, in our hometowns, which we haven’t done in a couple months. So yeah, they’re all awesome in different regards.

It’s the last day of the Straylight tour, should there be any pranks?
Greg: Unfortunately we haven’t been on this tour long enough. But on the Say Anything tour, we had like the Blame Canada theme song blasting through the speakers when they went to play. 

I had some fans turn in some questions…Going out of the country anytime soon?
Greg: Um, we get offered and asked all the time, more often that we get tours here in the States. And we really wanna do it; we might do it next year. We just wanted to tackle the US first; we hadn’t even toured the West Coast until about a month ago. We’re gonna stop touring after this and write a new record and see where that takes us.
Zack: Full length release?
Greg: Yeah, we’re doing a full length for the first time with all four members. We’re so excited to start writing.
Zack: Will it be similar to Foreword or what?
Greg: No, we want to do something different. I don’t really know yet because we haven’t started, but I have a bunch of ideas. We don’t want it to be similar to Foreword.
Zack: Should we expect a completely different sound?
Greg: No, not completely different. We sort of want to stray a little bit away from these like 10 minute, long, unnecessarily, theatrical songs
Zack: You guys can’t really play too many in a set.
Greg: Yeah, that was one thing. On the Say Anything tour we were playing 20 minute sets, only playing four songs and we’d have to even cut down some of those songs because they were so long. We just want to make like a solid 8 or 10 song record, with good song after good song with no filler.

In 2010 do you guys have any more tours set up or are you just gonna go home and relax?
Greg: We kept getting offered stuff, but we really just want to get back and start writing.

Some more fan questions, would you guys ever record any live stuff?
Greg: Yeah, it’s funny you ask that. Tonight actually, we were offered to have our set recorded but we said no ‘cause it cost too much money. But that’s one thin we really want to do, not just audio. But we want to have a really good recorded set of us playing live because I think our live aspect is so different from our record, and I want people to see that just as much as they would listen to us on a CD. If there’s any like artistic college students who want to do it for free, you should hit me up [Laughs].  

The biggest fan question was, would you reveal the meaning behind “Sol Solis”?
Greg: “Sol Solis?” Um, wow, I haven’t thought about that in a while. Its funny, people always come up and ask these really in-depth questions about Pneuma and it’s been so long. It’s like; it’s going to be a tough question.
Zack: A couple people asked that one actually.
Greg: All I really remember is being really depressed and while I was writing lyrics, feeling really stupid and selfish that I was talking about girls and stupid things. So I just assigned different figurative attachments to different things. So the sun represented something that was literal to me, and “Sol Solis” is another way of saying sun. In the grand scheme of the record the sun was the representation of something in my life at the time, and that song is the pinnacle of the record. It was about one of my first actual relationships, and how crappy that can be. Dude, it’s so weird. People always ask me and I’ve so far detached myself from it.
Zack: It’s definitely a fan favorite.
Greg: Yeah, it is. Dude, I met this girl last night at the show who came up to me and was telling me her explanation of the record and it was the first time anyone has ever like hit it straight on the head. She took from the record exactly what was meant to be, that happened to me. And it was so weird, it was so strange.
Zack: That must’ve been a great feeling.
Greg: It’s the first time it’s happened. I met this one guy in Arizona who was a pastor at a church and it was a non-denominational church, so it wasn’t like Christian strict, but he was like, “we recite ‘Ode We Will Burry Ourselves’, I print it out and hand it to people.” By all means I am not a Christian nor am I someone who loved God at the time of that record and these people are reciting it at church. That’s a totally different interpretation, but that’s awesome, so by all means take it. But yeah, “Sol Solis,” I don’t know. I guess its just about falling in and out of love, and the hardships of all that cheesy stupid stuff.

And to finish up, John Nolan, is he a pretty big inspiration to you guys, since you’re on this tour right now?
Greg: Yeah dude, Straylight’s awesome. One of my friends mentioned that he was friends with Will, the drummer of Straylight and I was like, “I have to meet him and be friends with him.” So it’s been so cool. John Nolan’s a cool dude and the band rules.

Well, thank you so much. Anything to add at all?
Greg: I’m tired and I’m excited to go home tonight.