Will Pugh won’t BS you, and that’s refreshing. The Cartel frontman is, at heart, just a good ole boy and he speaks his mind. Just a couple weeks before Cartel comes to Macon for Mercer’s UC Live Concert promotion, Will talked to us about life in a band on the rise, doing stuff like MTV’s “Band in a Bubble”, a 24-hour a day, 23 camera filming of their efforts to write a new album. Signed to Epic Records, their latest is a self-titled CD that peaked at #20 on the US charts. They’ve headlined tours and played major stages at events like the Warped Tour. Their songs have appeared in movies like John Tucker Must Die, Van Wilder 2: the Rise of Taj, and on the TV show The Hills. We caught up with him between the golf course and home, getting a well-deserved breather… well, except for having to be interviewed. Cartel will be performing at the UC on Mercer campus, Saturday, April 12^th. Go to http://www.myspace.com/mercerlive for mo’ info.

     1.)    Does it feel strange that you and some high school buddies started a band and now you’re touring the globe, showing up on MTV, recording for Epic Records?

Sometimes we sit around and are like, “Is this a joke?” The way we used to talk about this in high school, the way we dreamed about it, it almost makes you wonder if we have some sort of psychic powers. We’d go to Waffle House at two in the morning, and shoot shit about how it might happen. Now we’re like, “Okay, we’re in Japan or Australia playing music. That’s why we’re here? Alright.” It’s not as crazy as it sounds when you’re neck deep in it.

2.)    What was life like before MTV?

We try not to let it all go to our heads, with the TRL stuff and the Bubble thing—it’s all pretty crazy when you go, “Wow, we were on TV for 20 straight days.” I think the fact that we’ve got each other and none of us have really changed or gotten any sort of egos is important. The MTV stuff is really—well, we’re still shocked to go to the mall and pass by somebody and you’ll just see their head turn. They’ll be like, “Are you that—” “Yeah. Yeah I am.” “You just hang out?” “Yeah, we’re not Justin Timberlake here. You wanna hang out, let’s hang out; I’m not doing anything. You wanna get a milkshake?” Before all this we were touring in vans and loading our own gear, having to drive overnight. It has definitely brought us some really cool things. Any band that tours in a van will tell you that a tour bus is fucking nirvana, man. Not having to worry about that, just sitting back to relax and showing up at the next show, it’s great. It’s the greatest perk of them all.

3.)    What’s a normal day on tour like? Does it resemble the stereotypical rock n roll lifestyle?

I think a lot of people think, “Oh you’ve got the easy life.” It’s not easy. You go away from home nine months out of the year. Yeah, I have nice golf clubs and I love to play, but I never get to. Ever. My golf game suffers entirely. Seriously though, there are several things in life you love besides music, but you sacrifice so much else to do this. I’ve had a girlfriend for seven years and we’re getting married in May, but I don’t get to see her. People miss the fact that if you do music for a living—and really do it—it’s by no means easy. It takes huge work ethic to make it happen.

4.)    And you have to contend with never knowing how the public’s favor may sway, that you might not be popular next year. That fear has to weigh on you, right?

We live and die off of everything we write. Even show-to-show. You’ve got 2000 people who’ve come to see you and you blow it, they’re going to be like, “Well, I’m not going to go back to see them. They weren’t any good last time. I’m not going to spend $20 next time.” It is this consistent pressure. That’s where it really does get hard. The only real way to survive the whole gauntlet of touring and recording albums and such is to let that creative side flow through.

5.)    How did you get pulled into that Band in a Bubble experience?

The label was aware that we were working on our second album, and they came to us and said, “Okay so Dr. Pepper’s doing this thing…” At first we were kinda put off by the whole corporate thing. We thought it’d be really cool if our fans would be able to get an in-depth look at the recording process. I think everybody has this big misconception of band life. They’re like, “Get me backstage.” And I’m like, “Dude, seriously, it’s just a closet with a bunch of dudes on their computers. There’s nothing going on back there.” Same thing with the studio. “It must be cool hanging out with P. Diddy and—” The studio is busting your ass for twelve hours a day. It’s long, it’s boring, and at the end of the day, you have just a little bit more of a song to listen to. We thought it’d be cool to really involve the fans, to be able to capture everything we were doing. We didn’t want to be those guys that passed it up, and let some other band do it so we’d be the ones who were like “That’s really cool. Why didn’t we do that?”

6.)    How many songs do you go through while you’re working on an album?

No, we typically don’t run through too many. When we see a song coming together really quickly, we normally take that as a sign, like, “Okay, this is going to be good.” For the last two records, we haven’t written more than two songs that didn’t make the record. We don’t really have this whole wealth of songs. People ask if we’re going to release a B-sides album, and I’m like, “Sure, yeah. It’s going to be real short though.”

7.)     Where do you want to take the music you’re making?

A lot of bands try to progress and do something different on the second record, and I think we kinda went, not too far, but further than people were expecting from us. We showed that we aren’t just a pop-punk band—maybe a little too much because we didn’t really include any pop-punk songs on the record. Some people were saying, “This is not a Cartel record.” We’ve developed a relationship with our fans. When they come to a Cartel concert or buy a CD, they buy it for a certain reason. I think they understand that we’re fun-loving guys and we want to have a good time, but that we have some real stuff going on in our music too. We realize that most of them followed with us on this last record but a few of them didn’t. You owe it to your fans not to just jerk them around.

8.)    How’s the material for the next record shaping up?

We’re not really going back to the stuff on Chroma, but we thought we wrote our third record second, as far as the scope of things. We grew up a little too fast. So we’re trying to go back and find that in-between that still has all the energy. We want to continue to have fun playing live, playing these riffs and just hanging out. So we’re trying to get back to more energy in the music.

9.)    Between commercial demands and the expectations of fans, does the band ever find itself fighting to keep its integrity?

Yeah, you’ll read the message boards sometimes and they’ll be like “Your second record sucks.” And you want to be like, “Oh yeah, where’s your record? You can’t even play guitar or sing.” It’s hard not to get defensive about it. And it’s hard to keep that balance because you’ve also got a label who obviously wants to sell records. A lot of times, it really is hard to go, “Is this what I’m writing because I really want to or am I writing this because I want to continue to perpetuate our whole circumstances?” Trying to keep that all going is a little bit of a tug of war internally but when it comes down to it, if you really enjoy the things you’re creating, it doesn’t really matter what the purpose is. Obviously we’re not writing this “just because”—this is our jobs now; we have something we’re trying to achieve.

10.)                        Do folks give you a hard time because you like to do things like eat and have a place to live? Seriously. You referenced this being a job, having those qualities. Is that what gets folks upset?

Sometimes you feel like a sell-out because a song is catchy. But what we’ve always felt is that we grew up listening to hooky, catchy music, and that’s what we always enjoyed. It’s what we’ve played from the very beginning. Being commercially viable, I don’t see as a bad thing. If you have the knowledge to be able to manipulate that side of things while still being able to achieve certain things artistically then it really just becomes kinda fun. Like you’re painting by numbers but you get to choose what colors. It ends up being a nice little game you play with yourself.

11.)                        I know you grew up in Conyers, but I was wondering if you’ve ever been to Macon before?

I’ve been down there a few times. Actually, I played basketball in a state finals game one year. It was eighth grade or something. And my nephew actually goes to Mercer; he’s on the golf team.

Chris: You seem too young to have a nephew that’s in college.

Will: Yeah, my dad’s old as hell so he’s my sister’s kid. He’s like three years younger than me.

Chris: Tell me about the basketball thing some more.

Will: We had a state final there, but we lost. I had 21 points though.

Chris: I’ll make sure that’s in there so people understand you’re a well-rounded human being.

Will: Yeah. I do lots of things. I used to be a sports guy but I gave it up to play music. I’ve been playing golf longer than I’ve been playing guitar so that was kind of tough to give up. I was on the golf team in high school, but because practice was conflicting with the band schedule, when the season was over, I didn’t go back. I figured I wasn’t going to be Tiger Woods anyway. I was actually pretty good before I quit, but now I come home and I’m feverishly trying to get my handicap down in between all this other stuff. When I blade one out of bounds after driving it 300 yards, that’s when I wish I’d stuck with it. But when I get back on stage, I know I’m doing what I love.