Interview with Armor For Sleep lead singer Ben Jorgensen

Right out of the suburbs of New Jersey, USA comes Armor For Sleep. This four piece band led by lead singer and lead songwriter Ben Jorgensen has been around for about five years now. In that time, the group has released three studio records and garnered quite a respectable fan base along the way. The band’s brand new third record Smile For Them is set to be released next month, one day before Halloween. Currently, the band is in the midst of a very long U.S. tour called “The Sleeping With Giants tour” along with The Academy Is, The Rocket Summer and Sherwood, with one Canadian stop in Toronto on November 9th. Recently we spoke to the band’s lead singer Ben about Armor For Sleep and the brand new studio album. Here’s what Ben had to say:

You’re currently on tour with The Academy Is, The Rocket Summer and Sherwood on the Sleeping With Giants tour. Are you pleased with how the tour has gone so far?
Ben: Yes! The tour’s been lots of fun. We were recording for so long that it’s been really awesome to hit the road again and start playing some of the new songs.

Armor For Sleep has been together now since about 2002 and originates from New Jersey. How did the members meet and a band come together out of it?
Ben: We were all friends in high school and we were all in different bands (Nash and PJ were actually in the same band). After high school I wanted to start a band and I knew their bands had pretty much broken up so I asked if they wanted to join my band. From there, we made an album and hit the road!

Your brand new album is called Smile For Them and will be released on October 30th. How do you feel about the new record and how do you think it’s different from your last two releases?
Ben: Smile For Them is much different than our last two records. What To Do When You Are Dead was a very introspective album about a guy stuck between life and the afterlife. Smile For Them is pretty much the opposite. It’s turning the lens around so to speak and observing everyone else in my life. It’s an album about how weird it is to be alive in our celebrity obsessed, reality TV-based generation. It’s about heartbreak in the twenty-first century.

Originally, Smile For Them was suppose to be released October 9th before being pushed back to the 30th and on your official website it offers the release of Kid Rock’s new record on the 9th as a reason for the pushback. Is this a real reason or should we take this a mere example of Armor For Sleep’s sense of humor?
Ben: Haha! I wish we actually pushed back the release date because of Kid Rock’s album, but yes this was a joke. It’s only three weeks anyway so no biggie!

On your first two records, there was a kind of dream or afterlife concept to them. Do these themes recur on Smile For Them and if not, what are some of the major concepts on the record?
Ben: This one deals more with real life. It was written in a dazed state of mind, so in some ways it is from that perspective, but it’s about looking outside of that bubble.

I read that you worked with producer Ben Gross on Smile For Them. First of all, is this true? And secondly, what was it like working with Ben and why did you decide to go with him?
Ben: We went out to L.A. to hang out with Ben Grosse and record some music. We ended up going back to New Jersey and not using what we did with Ben, but it was a cool experience. He worked with Marilyn Manson and Filter so we were very excited to work with him. He’s a very talented guy.

What was the writing and recording like for Smile For Them? How many songs did you write and actually bring into the studio for the recording of the record?
Ben: This time around we wrote more or less seventy songs for the album. It was tedious, but we knew we wanted to make something we could be proud of forever. We just kept writing and writing until we knew we could make the most concise and vast record we could.

What is your personal favorite song on Smile For Them and why?
Ben: My personal favorite is a song called “Lullaby.” It’s about a relationship that I was in for four years that fell apart during the recording of the album. It’s just really personal to me and I don’t feel like I ever told that person how I felt, so whenever I sing that song, I feel like I’m talking to her.

A remix version of your song “Remember To Feel Real” found its way on the soundtrack to the movie Snakes On A Plane last summer. How did getting the song on the soundtrack come about and do you feel it helped spread the word about Armor For Sleep to new fans?
Ben: That was just a really cool experience… to be part of a movie soundtrack. I think our fans were excited that our name was getting out there to other people who might not have heard about us before.

What’s next for Armor For Sleep? What does the band have planned for the rest of the year and 2008?
Ben: We just want to get this album out to as many people as possible. I feel like this is our moment and I feel like we’re ready.  [ END ]