Have you two been in bands before The Pale?This is it. We have been playing music since we were little kids.Do you think your music is shaped because of your relationship or because you have played together for so long?Never thought about it. A little bit of both. It's a tough thing to stick to, everybody is in a band. For every band that makes it, there are twenty other bands that probably deserve it and don't. I think having someone else that shares that and has a family tie is cool.How did you come up with the name The Pale?We did a demo tape when we first started and at the time we didn't have a name yet, but we had all the song titles figured out. One of the song titles was "Beyond the Pale" so we just shortened it and didn't really think about what it meant or anything like that.Do you ever write something, maybe even subconsciously, and think that sounds like somebody else?Yeah. Every once in a while you're like, "I just wrote the coolest song," and you realize you just rewrote someone else's song. Sometimes you're like, "this song is great." That definitely happens every once in a while, although I think that happens almost all the time to the degree that you take an idea and make it your own is what gives you your own voice.Every band has their unique song writing process. What's yours like?Gabe will usually have a melody and a good idea for a song and then we'll get together and flesh it out. Every once in a while he will come in with a more complete idea and here's what I heard on this or that and we do that sometimes. I suppose over the last 10 years I have contributed one and a half songs or so. But they are the best one and a half songs.They are the hits. He'll pop out of my room once every five years and say I just wrote our next hit.On a completely different note, what's the best place you've played?Last May, we got a chance to play at a festival at The Gorge in Washington. We played at "The Right Next To Where You Park Your Car Stage" outside of the gates, but it was cool. The cool thing about it was that we bought tickets for the show. Coldplay headlined, Flaming Lips, My Morning Jacket, Pedro, Deathcab, J5 - just a bunch of amazing bands. It was the first time our little pass meant anything. Before is just got us in with the pizza. It was like "do I really need this thing?" So we got to meet the singer from the Flaming Lips and see the shows up close. I was totally star struck it was great.Do you recall your first laminated pass, even if it didn't mean anything at all?We've played a lot of kid's camps and stuff like that. The ones that we've saved are the ones where our names are spelled wrong. You're like "you spent a lot of money on these didn't you?" We've played a lot of cool places with a lot of cool bands. The thing I like is when the stage is high enough that you are a little bit above so that the people in the back can still see the band, but not so high. Just so that you can hang out with everybody and if you step away from the mic people could still yell at you ... we are hoping to be playing stadiums soon.Do you notice any type of fraternity among up and coming bands such as yourself?We've been able to be part of a really cool community in Seattle where it's genuine and we are looking out for each other and we have been able to play some cool shows where our friends in bands have helped us out.Do you think there is something cool about being in an "indie band?"For me it's like we are so young, we're just kind of babies. We don't really know what we are doing thus far. But as far as it goes now, to a certain degree, we can do what we want, or at least what we want to do the most, is lining up with what everyone that is supporting us wants. Whereas maybe if you are on a major [label] and they have hundreds and thousands of dollars invested in you, as opposed to say 20 thousand, there is a lot more pressure to get exposure. Hopefully we can build something up so that as it progresses we can still be in charge of how we get presented. But getting signed and being distributed and having a promotional company is weird. It is new to us.
