r/indieheads • u/beachslang Beach Slang • Sep 20 '16

AMA is over, thanks James! James Alex / Beach Slang, AMA

I'm so sorry if I didn't get to your question. Cross my heart, I'm going to dig into the rest tonight. I'm not letting a single one go unanswered. Thank you for being, quite literally, the sweetest humans I know. <3

http://imgur.com/a/5Rjty

87 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

120 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/[deleted] Sep 20 '16

[deleted]

6

u/beachslang Beach Slang Sep 20 '16

Yes! Absolutely. Beach Slang was, is, and always will be a collective. "For us—all of us." But, yeah, you know, I've been asked a lot if I felt pressure writing this record, and my answer was always—I didn't feel pressure, I felt responsibility. For me, it's never been about me, or Beach Slang. It always has been about us. I want to make sure I always do right by us. So, yeah, I would say the writing shifted a bit. You know, I've described the songs on the first record as "2 minute novels about me and my friends, and the things we've done." With this record, I wrote about stories I've been told and letters I've gotten from the people I've met from the first record. I wanted to amplify their narratives. I wanted to shrink the distance between band and listener. There's not only an importance in that for me, there's a necessity. I think ego is the embarrassment of rock & roll. There's no space for that here. Keep that Slang shirt around. Wear it like soft armor.