On Sunday at BottleRock Napa, MOD SUN returned to the stage for the first time since changing up his sound and since he released his latest record Internet Killed The Rockstar. We caught up with him to chat his latest musical direction, excitement to be back on stage, his upcoming film Good Mourning With A U, Travis Barker and much more.
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"When I started doing music as MOD SUN I was always told if I could match the energy I bring on stage onto an album I'd be good to go. Up until this album, it's been kind of an uphill battle for me. I guess the lack of real drums is one thing that completely adds a different energy. This is the first MOD SUN album that I have live drums on. It's a whole different energy once you add that backbeat to it. The whole antithesis was I need to capture my live show onto an album. Yelling at the top of my lungs. Performing while I'm recording. Standing up and yelling!"
On returning to the stage, it hit him that he was about to perform these songs for the first time ahead of his upcoming headlining tour. "I'm not that artist that's like 'let's not give my day one listeners what they want. They obviously want classic MOD SUN, they don't want just new stuff. With that said this new stuff has been my biggest release yet."
MOD's latest song "Down" once again features Travis Barker on drums and he touched on how the drummer has been thriving over the past year, "Let's just be real, that's a beautiful thing that he's back on a plane. In the last year I feel like it was an important time for artists who internalize things. This might be a time in your career where things really slow, or really speed up. There wasn't much in-between. I think you just had to make the choice. If you didn't find people who wanted to work all day and push you to do that. It is a testament to who surrounds you and your group of friends."
Two of the busiest people over the course of the pandemic have been MOD SUN and his best friend, Machine Gun Kelly. The two just wrapped filming on a film that's been years in the making called Good Mourning With A U that features both as actors alongside Pete Davidson, Megan Fox and Dove Cameron. MOD directed the film and he discussed the grueling pre-production process and the incredibly rewarding filming process of the film. "It's a different level of responsibility. We just wrapped this movie two days ago and now it's the second part of the monster, post-production, scoring. Kels and I are super on the pulse of everything. He's the lead and I play a character that ended up jumping off the pages and becoming one of the leads. It was supposed to be more of a side character, but I came in swinging. I was really, really serious about doing great acting. I had to bring it. My character turned into a special role. The next part of the process is going to be fun, but it's a lot of work. It's more of a monster than making an album."
MOD SUN's headlining tour kicked off this week and runs through October 3rd.
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