Mastodon Jeremy chats with NovaFM

Hear the interview here: www.novafm.com.au

If you’re brave enough to venture
down the back of Paramore’s tour bus, you’ll be lucky if you can get
around without trampling on – and getting your feet tangled in –
frontwoman Hayley Williams’ dirty clothes.

“It’s really messy because Hayley’s stuff is everywhere right now,”
bassist Jeremy Davis tells NovaFM, as the band cruises through
California on their way to San Jose.

“We’re at the end of the (Honda Civic) tour and when you get to about
a week left, you start to care less about everything. You can’t be
bothered going and getting clean clothes – or cleaning up, and you start
to wear the same clothes.

“So the back of the bus has some
couches and a table, tonnes of Hayley’s dirty clothes, a guitar, a flat
screen TV and some mirrors.”

This doesn’t really sound like a glamorous tour bus setting – or
hygienic approach – that you would expect from a band that’s reached
gold and platinum record sales in more than four different countries.
And this is exactly why Paramore differ from other artists that have
soared to the top of global music charts.

Just because the Tennessee quartet can talk the media talk and walk
the paparazzi walk, their rise to fame hasn’t changed who they are. In
fact, Davis says the foursome carry out their day-to-day the same way
they did when they first got together.

Considering the huge amount of success they’ve had – including writing one of the lead track for 2008’s massive blockbuster Twilight,
touring with No Doubt across North America, and being hailed as one of
this year’s hottest arrivals on the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards red
carpet – this sounds hard to believe.

“It’s how we were raised,” Davis explains to NovaFM. “We all have the
same friends we grew up with, we still hang out with the same people,
we still act the same way and we’re still interested in the same things
we’ve always been interested in.

“I guess with us being from Nashville – the music capital of the
world – it’s just so normal to play music. We’ve made something out of
our band but we don’t think it’s cool to be famous, and we don’t feel
like we’re famous. We just love playing music and we’re stoked we have
the opportunity to play for all of our fans. It’s an exciting thing for
us, and that’s the reason why we do it.”

Lucky for Paramore, they get just as big a kick out of their tunes as
their fans do. But it doesn’t stop there. At this year's MTV Video
Music Awards, the band was shocked to discover how many other
high-proifle wanted a piece of the Nashville group.

“It was nuts, to be honest. We were walking around and met so many cool people – and those people came up to us
this time. We met people like Lady Gaga. Normally you have to go up and
deal with security but a lot of people came up to us,” he says, quite
obviously still reeling in awe from the huge music event.

“It was pretty crazy to be sitting in the crowd hearing our band’s
name, or Hayley’s name. I honestly heard it so many times that night, it
was a surreal feeling.”