SDMA Winners Series- Chris Motionless of Motionless In White
Scene Daddy writers reached out to winners of our 2020 Scene Daddy Music Awards to publish this interview series. We started with Scene Daddy of the Year and Best Vocalist Chris Motionless, as his band Motionless in White cleaned up seven awards this year:
“Scene Daddy of The Year” and “Best Vocalist”- Chris Motionless
“Best Bassist”- Justin Morrow
“Best Drummer”- Vinny Mauro
“Best Live Band”- Motionless In White
“Album of The Year”- Disguise
“Music Video of The Year”- Another Life
Motionless In White have arguably had one of the most successful years of their career in 2019 with the release of their album Disguise. I’m happy to say that I got the chance to talk to Chris Motionless about what the band has planned for the future and how unbelievably thankful he is for the continued support from fans with the state of the world currently in disarray. We also talked about the making of the “Another Life” music video and what sounds the band is looking to bring into their next album.
How have you and the rest of the band been doing with all that is happening in the world? Find any new hobbies or any way to keep your mind busy when not working on the new album?
It's been mostly music. One of our friends is a big Call Of Duty fan and he has kind of turned us onto playing games so that we can all hang out and play online and you know kind of replicating the tour scenario of hanging out and playing video games together. I don’t think anybody in the band has really done anything new, just kind of taking care of stuff in our lives that we have been putting off for so long.
Do you think that this pandemic lockdown and protests have helped or hindered the writing/recording process of the next album? In what ways has it helped? In what ways has it made it more difficult?
I’d say that there are some silver linings to all of this and it's one of those things where we have a lot of time and it's amazing to have that kind of time. We would not have started writing this early so the fact that we just can and have the freedom to do it at our own pace has been awesome. I think it's making the record better in that if we feel stuck on a certain song we can put it away and come back to it months later, which is sometimes what we do, but sometimes if we feel like a song isn’t going right initially we just work on another track and that song gets pushed back to another time. Now we get to really explore all options with each song and not feel like we’re under a rush, it’s amazing.
I usually like to travel and work with my producer friends across the country. I work better when I’m working with friends and just enjoying and having fun writing music. I definitely write alone sometimes but it's just more fun for me to do it with people that I enjoy working with. So that has definitely hurt me in that I’ve been mostly sticking to working at home or working with two guys that live close to me. But as far as California and Colorado, it's kind of just been a waiting game until they feel cool with me coming out there and vice versa.
I don’t like the idea of trying to write music over like a Skype/Zoom call or anything like that, it feels so disconnected. If it comes to that then I’ll do it but for right now thankfully it's not a rush so we’re just gonna wait a little bit longer.
How did it feel to win so many awards? What does Disguise mean to you and why you think this album resonated so well with your fans?
I think it’s awesome that we were able to pull off winning so many awards. I think it's actually hilarious and kind of ironic that we won so many of them, obviously due to our fan base coming through and helping making that happen, but then we didn’t win the Most Dedicated Fanbase. I’m just happy we have fans that came out and wanted to support the band and vote for us especially during times where things are heating up in the world and people can put their attention elsewhere.
The album is a huge album for us. It's the most personal and deeply-seated record that we have emotionally for me. So to see that fans supported [Disguise] at the level that they did and that it was able to reach so many people on multiple levels, not just being musically interesting to them or lyrically, it was kind of the whole package. They have really let us know that and the fans have come out in other ways, whether it be shows or helping push our song on radio and stuff like that. You can definitely tell the love and support and we’re very grateful for that.
It seems you guys are always pushing your sound forward, building on what you’ve done on the previous record. What do you want to be able to do with the next project? Anything you want to expand on, perfect or experiment with?
I have to say that if there is one thing about the last record that I would change or add to is that I wish we had one more heavy song on the record. I have seen a few people say that as well. We actually had a few in the bank but we just didn’t have the time to finish them.
With this record I would like to see a little more balance between the more rock radio type of stuff and heavier stuff that we do, just to give it more balance. As far as experimenting with any new stuff, both Ricky [Olson, Motionless In White guitarist] and I have been writing stuff that feels very cinematic and very straight out of a movie or a video game, which has been kind of unexpected. It kind of sorta happened and we both unknowingly were doing that in our music that we were working on alone. Once we started working together and sending stuff to each other it was kind of just like, “Woah.” So I guess we’re both in the exact same spot. Everything so far has this very large theatrical, cinematic, movie score, video game score aspect to it that I think is, maybe, going to be really prevalent in the record throughout.
Do you think that you guys playing video games have had an impact on what you’re working on or has it just come sort of naturally?
I wouldn’t say necessarily the video game aspect. Just maybe the fact that every record we add a little bit more of that stuff and it seems like it's time to really take the full leap into trying to get it in the songs, maybe where we would have been afraid of it elsewhere. There are some songs on the last record that have it and it made the songs bigger but others we just didn’t know how to approach that. Now we are just really going to make an effort to do that in all the songs.
We know you guys were scheduled to go out on a bunch of tours this year in support of Disguise. We are still curious if you were able to get on a tour right now to show off Disguise, who would you bring out for support if you had your pick?
I thought the excitement around the Knocked Loose tour was really cool and the concept was really awesome to have them and us on a tour together. I’m not the kind of person who thinks that it's such a far-fetched, wild idea. I always find myself thinking bands that fans don’t think mesh well together, I think they do. I don’t see the nuance or subtle differences that fans do. I just think that music is awesome and if it's heavy, it's heavy and it can go on tour together. They’re obviously very heavy and we have heavy stuff, so why wouldn’t it work? I really want to see that through. So let’s just pick up the Black and Blue tour where it was left off.
How do your concepts for music videos come to life? The "Another Life" video was such a moment and really brought the song to life. Is it usually a team effort? Do you have a vision of what you want your music videos to be when you are writing?
Some of the songs kind of just write themselves. There are some songs where it is basically describing visually what you’d see, so those are easy ones. But some songs like “Another Life,” that was actually a team effort. We were on tour last summer and we all sat in a room and I had this general idea that I really liked and imagery that I thought the guys would like, so we sat in a room and kind of came up with this concept and it worked and fans loved it.
It's nice to win one. I feel as if our music video for “Brand New Numb” did not go over very well so we really wanted to make sure that “Another Life” ended up getting fans back on board with our videos and it did and I’m glad we all had a part of it. That was our take on a Tim Burton film, trying to make a Tim Burton film as a music video for ourselves.
What can fans expect next from the band? Any possible collaborations in the works for the album?
I haven’t really spoken about this at any length yet but we are going to release a few one-off projects throughout the rest of this year. I don’t want to give away what they are but we are going to be releasing two songs at once pretty soon this summer. They’re not new songs, but you’ll hear it when it comes out. And then I don’t know when it is going to come out but I think we’re gonna do a cover song to help give fans something in between when the record comes out and now. There is so much downtime, let’s do something that we know we can do. So that’ll be cool. Just stuff like that to keep fans engaged and interested and having something to enjoy from the band now without being able to see us tour.
And finally, what would you like to say to your fans who voted to get you guys to win these seven awards?
We all know who the most dedicated fanbase is! It might not have come through in the results but we know and thank you! It was nearly a sweep so it's just insane to see. Fans of ours are so dedicated and so die hard and it's awesome to be that kind of band and to have that kind of fan base that is going to support you that way. So, just thank you and again we know who the most dedicated fanbase is!