An Interview with Casey Sullivan of The Model Pilots

New England natives The Model Pilots, featuring brothers Casey and Michael Sullivan are ramping up for the release of their full length LP titled Action. The album was produced by Edward Peifer and Conrad Bauer and is being released by Xact Production on February 8, 2011.

Type 3 Media: What prompted you guys to move from New England to Los Angeles?

Casey Sullivan: We had to be in Los Angeles to make this happen. We had a lot of experience on the East Coast, playing at a lot of live venues. We’ve always been serious about this and we needed to make a serious change.  Los Angeles is now where we are making those moves.

T3M: What part of Massachusetts are you from?

CS: We’re from Lawrence.  It’s about 25 minutes north of Boston.

T3M: Your new album Action is coming out in February.  What was the experience like putting that together.

CS: We are constantly writing and we’ve been writing together for about eleven years.  We’ve been compiling material for the model pilots over the last three years.  In New England we were compiling material for an album we released titled Fly.  This album was half compiled on the East Coast and the other half while here on the West Coast.  It’s action packed and full of energy.  It’s a fun record front to back.

T3M: How do you compare working in Los Angeles with working in New England?

CS: The professionalism across the board is up.  You are working with producers and professional musicians that have the hours logged in.  They have the passion and the drive to be doing it.  It’s definitely congruent with the drive we have for our own music, so it really works hand in hand.  We are very professional and everyone we work with is also professional.  It’s really cool.

T3M: You mentioned that you’ve been writing with your brother Michael for eleven years; how do you keep that relationship strong ?

CS: It’s just like any brotherly relationship.  We went through years and years of fighting, but we’ve been able to calm that nerve over the last couple years.  There are always outbreaks that happen whether you’re at home or writing a song at practice, but it’s something we can control.  The many frustrations that come with working with your sibling make everything that much better.

T3M: You label your music as something called “fashion rock”; explain to me what that is.

CS: It’s rhythmic, it’s got a fresh new tone, it blends with electronic sounds, it takes classic songwriting with a retro feel and a retro guitar and it really blends them all together.  The driving force fashion rock is really rhythm and vocals.  You’re always going to hear some sort of explosive rhythm from Mike and our vocal arrangements will always be interesting and unique.

T3M: The first single from Action, “The Hollywood Romance”, was recently released.  Where can people find it?

CS: We have all the online networks.  For live streaming go to myspace.com/themodelpilots, or can go to our record label xactproduction.com.

T3M: Do you have any tour plans in the works?

CS: You should see us on the East Coast by the beginning of next year.  We will be showcasing in Los Angeles starting in December.