Warren Franklin

Warren: The album I made in Baraboo, Wisconsin with my friend Paul, who has a studio down there called Cave Sounds. It started off as songs I was going to use for splits with other bands, but as we were recording, I thought it would sound really good as a full length album. So, we ended up recording nine songs instead of the original four. It was a great process, and Paul, who is a great friend of mine, and I worked really well together. I also had a couple of friends from Chicago come down and play various instruments…horns, organ, banjo and stuff. A band called Island of Misfit Toys was kind of the backing band.

With Count Your Lucky Stars, Iʼve been a friend of Keith’s for a long time, and my friend Chris French pretty much made me call him and ask him to put the record out. I didnʼt want to ask because he was my friend, and it just seems weird asking your friends for favors, almost like youʼre using them or something. But when I called him I was like “Hey, we’ve got a new record” and he said “Send it to me man, maybe we’ll put it out”. He didnʼt get back to me for about two weeks so I didnʼt think it was going to happen. And, when he finally called me back the phone cut out before he could say anything. We played phone tag for a while, but at that point I was pretty sure he didnʼt want to put out the record. We finally got a hold of each other he said, “We want to release the album, I just wanted to keep you in suspense.” So heʼs an asshole for that. But, Iʼm really glad we got released on that label. There are so many bands on it that Iʼve been listening to for years, and a lot of my really close friends are on that label so Iʼm pretty honored.

Warren: Yeah. I feel like the title refers to all my friends, who are not from the Midwest. And how I still maintain just as much contact with them as I do with people who live in the city; sometimes I seem them more often. The Midwest just seems really tight knit. There’s a lot of bands that are best friends. We all get along really well. Its just kind of a shout out to my friends that are not in the Midwest because their heart belongs with us.

Warren: That song is about my brother, and wishing him the best of luck with his entire life. We hit a deer on tour, and totaled our van and it was really hard to stay positive after that. The whole tour was about to be canceled, and our friend Joey (from the “Please and Thank Youʼs”) came and saved the whole tour, picked us up after our van had been totaled and took us on the rest of the tour. So I wrote that song around that time, when we were trying to stay positive after everything had been shite. [laughts] And Jeff Shot (from the “Please and Thank Youʼs”) heʼs the one who said “Bro-Downs Know No Bounds”, he coined it, because our friend Jeff Ramirez invited Jeff (from the “Please and Thank Youʼs”) to a show in New York on Facebook and he was like “Man, I can’t make this why are you inviting me to this” and the other Jeff was like bro-downs know no bounds dude, yo!