EMPIRE! EMPIRE! (I WA A LONELY STATE) were recently interviewed by Try Hard Zine.
Hello Empire! Empire! (I Was A Lonely Estate) could you introduce yourselves and state what you do in the band?
My name is Keith, and I play guitar, bass, drums, sing, and whatever else we decide to do. My wife Cathy also plays guitar, though I can’t seem to convince her to sing anymore. I think the last time she did it live was like 3 years ago, haha.
Short and simple, how did you all come together to form this band?
I started this as a solo project while recording a band Cathy and I were in called Anna Flyaway. It broke up, and we decided to make this a full time band. We already had an entire ep recorded, so it was a nice jumping off point.What’s the story behind your very unusual but very catchy band name? What attracted you to the idea of having a long name?
Ah, thanks for calling it catchy. It’s overly wordy, haha.- I admit it. When I started recording under this moniker it was never meant to be anything more than a solo project, so I felt the freedom to name is something very ornate and elaborate. It reminds me of the time my friend and I had started a project called “I Shall Strike You Down From Where You Stand”, which was a line from some fantasy book I was reading at the moment. Empire! Empire! is less ridiculous, but not that much so. In all honesty, given the chance to rename it, I would. It’s not that I don’t like it, per se, it is just that it is a nuance. I hate telling people the band I’m in- it’s bad enough to try and describe the sound after that. The average person’s responses to my answers are almost always met with glazed eyes, so nowadays I just say “Empire! Empire!” and that I play “indie rock”.
Go here to read the full interview.
