Philadelphia band Modern Baseball are currently touring Australia as part of the Falls Festival and will be playing their own headline shows. We caught up with singer and guitarist Brendan Lukens to talk about the tour and their impressive new album Holy Ghost.

SCENEzine
How was 2016 and getting to tour with Brand New?

Brendan Lukens
It’s been a pretty crazy year honestly the tour with Brand New was definitely been the peak of that. Jake and I listened to Brand New growing up so it is a huge honour to play with them every night. They are all very sweet down to earth people.

SCENEzine
Congrats on your newest album Holy Ghost are you stoked with how it turned out?

Brendan Lukens
Oh yeah we are really, really happy and super, super proud of Holy Ghost. It was definitely an enormous group effort to finish it. It sounds so good. We are all very proud of it.

SCENEzine
Was it cool to see the bands vision come to life for the video clip to “Wedding singer”?

Brendan Lukens
Yeah we’ve always been really connected to all of our music videos. Our director is a big part of our band family. We always 100% trust him he’s been with us forever. He really understands us and what we are going for. “Wedding singer” video was wild that thing looks amazing.

SCENEzine
Our favourite track from Holy Ghost is “Just Another face” do you remember the writing process for that song?

Brendan Lukens
It didn’t take long to write. All the songs for my half of the record we wrote and recorded in five days. I was sitting on some of that song musically for a while and when we got to the writing process I knew that I wanted it to close out my side. We didn’t necessarily know who was going to do what side yet. I really am connected to that song and I really enjoy playing that song.

SCENEzine
Is it surreal to think a lot of people use your music to help them through dark times in their life?

Brendan Lukens
No because I do that a lot with bands so I figured if I do that other people must be too. It’s definitely weird that it’s our band but it’s super flattering and honestly very empowering. We have a really strong fan base who are really kind and loving.

SCENEzine
Your back in Australia around New Years Eve to play Falls Festival is the tour just an excuse to escape the American winter?

Brendan Lukens
Yeah (laughs) we are finally getting out of all that snow.

SCENEzine
Do you have any favourite memories from your last Australian tour?

Brendan Lukens
I think meeting Camp Cope for the first time. We’ve kept in touch and they are such wonderful strong women. Honestly they are wonderful role models and great people. Being able to play sideshows with them is going to be so great.

SCENEzine
What do you think of the Falls Festival lineup?

Brendan Lukens
It’s so diverse and honestly a lot to take in no wonder it’s been going on for so long. Your bases are covered (laughs). There’s some real crazy people playing. Childish Gambino, Donald Glover is a Star Wars actor now (laughs). MoBo gets to play with Lando. Also we get to play with our friends Violent Soho.

SCENEzine
There seems to be a divide with your fans where the punk emo kids think you belong to them and the hipster indie kids think you belong to them. How do you feel about this?

Brendan Lukens
We belong to everyone. We kind of go through phases of styles of songs we are writing so I don’t think we’ve ever thought of us in any particular genre. We definitely fit the construct of the base of rock (laughs).

SCENEzine
Do you remember how the song “Fine, Great” came about?

Brendan Lukens
I remember being really pissed off at the general vibe of my friends at the time. Our relationships felt fraudulent. I remember also feeling like I want to write a really simple song that I can play and have a fun time singing (laughs). At that point out of the whole group I wasn’t that good at my instrument so that was a huge basis for my song writing if I could sing it and play it at the same time then cool.

SCENEzine
Do you get a huge thrill out of playing “Your Graduation” live?

Brendan Lukens
Yeah that song is super fun. As we’ve toured more and more with bands we can usually do fun things with that song. It’s relatively easy to play so you can teach it to someone pretty fast. We will have people come up and fill in on drums or switch instruments it’s a really fun song to play. On the Brand New tour people were freaking out over it, it’s really cool.

SCENEzine
Has there ever been any confusion with your band name that had people thinking they were going to see something Baseball related rather than a rock band?

Brendan Lukens
(laughs) No one in particular has ever come up and told us that has happened. But we do have a lot of twitter people tweeting us thinking we are a Baseball account connected to MLB, ESPN or some crap like that. Which is always really great to re-tweet (laughs).

SCENEzine
Lastly can you leave us a message for your Australian fans who are excited to see you?

Brendan Lukens
We’re stoked to see yall and Camp Cope rock.

(Interview by Christian Ross)