Jake Luhrs was this week's guest on the Bad Christian Podcast.
Jake comes on the show to hang out and tell some tour stories, talk about heavy music, explain what Heart Support is and he also gets mad when talking about church
This interview was originally gonna take place at the January 19th stop of ABR’s headlining tour but Jake was busy that night so Matt was cool enough to answer some questions over email for us.
How hard was it picking the setlist for the tour? I know it can get tiring playing the same songs over and over again. Looking over the setlist for this tour, you have the crowd favorites like “Composure” and “Meddler”, etc.
Picking the set-list for a tour is usually a collective effort as a
band. As the headlining band we have the opportunity to play a longer
set and include songs that we wouldn’t regularly be able to play due
to time restraints. We want to include the crowd favorites as well as
the more obscure songs that we don’t regularly play live.
With that in mind, what’s a few songs that weren’t in the setlist that you would’ve liked to play if you had more time?
I am very happy with the current set-list but if I had to include more
songs I’d want them to be Indonesia, Redemption, Speech Impediment,
and Pangaea.
In my opinion, “Poor Millionaire” and “40 Nights” are two of Leveler’s strongest tracks. Can you give us the background of both of these tracks?
Poor Millionaire is a song Jake wrote about someone who, physically,
might look like they have it all together. Spiritually however, this
person is a dry as bones. 40 Nights is a song about living in the
moment and the importance in not taking a single day for granted.
This life is a gift, nothing lasts forever.
I noticed 40 Nights has the line, “Respect is something that you’ll never see. Everything you write all sounds the same.” Who is that directed toward?
It’s a lyric directed towards society as a whole, not at anyone in particular.
Another song, Leveler has the line, “8,064 hours of conspiracies. 200 months which brings me 17 years of lies and betrayal.” Could you explain this for us?
The lyric is about an experience Jake had that he felt inclined to
write about. It’s a song about forgiving someone who wronged you and
the numbers address a specific timeline he’s referring to.
You guys played Warped Tour last year on the Main Stage; are you playing the tour this year?
We have not confirmed for Warped Tour 2012. Suffice it to say, we are
going to be busy touring the world most of 2012.
What are the best run venues from a production and band point of view?
I think one of the best venues in the world is AB Club in Brussels,
Belgium. The catering is amazing, the sound is phenomenal, and the
city itself is incredible!
Last question: what’s one book and one band you’d recommend to anyone that listens to ABR?
I’d recommend ‘Mere Christianity’ C.S. Lewis and the band Bethel Live,
a worship band from Reading, California.
