Spotlight Doesn’t Seem to Spoil Travie McCoy’s Flow

When a front person for a popular band decides to put out a solo album, it always feels like his or her band days are over. Travie McCoy of Gym Class Heroes, however, seems determined to refrain from pulling a Stefani and stay put with the group that made him a star.

“I don’t necessarily look at Lazarus as me going solo, per se. It was more of a side project put out on a bigger scale,” McCoy asserts from his home, lounging on his couch with his dogs, feeling lucky that he has a couple of weeks off to enjoy himself before heading back out on the road.

Lazarus, McCoy’s first “solo” album, was released in June 2010, and had all the elements of a star-making effort. A high-profile team of writers, producers and guest performers were recruited for the album, including T-Pain, Bruno Mars, The Smeezingtons and Cee-Lo Green. Still, even with all these fancy new toys at his disposal, McCoy says he still yearned to have his band around him.

“The performance part was the hard thing,” McCoy admits. “The writing and making the music is something that’s in me, regardless of if it’s with Gym Class Heroes or not. That was the easy part. The performance part was something to adjust to. Being on stage and not seeing the dudes that I’ve been playing with for years–I’ve been in this band for close to 12 years.”

However, his instincts as a performer eventually kicked in.

“Once you realize that you’re there to perform and make sure the people who paid good money for those tickets leave feeling like they were a part of something, an experience,” McCoy says, “you snap out of it. You realize you’re there to have fun too.”

The majority of the music on Lazarus would certainly seem to facilitate a good time. As McCoy’s collaborators on the project would suggest, the album certainly has a feel-good vibe (exemplified by the opening track “Dr. Feel Good,” which features Cee-Lo on the hook) and a glossy pop sheen. McCoy says he has great respect for multi-faceted artists such as Mars and T-Pain who are able to write, produce and perform, but he’s not so much enamored with the idea of being an all-in-one recording artist as he is with Gym Class Heroes’ band dynamic.

“I look up to guys like [Mars and T-Pain],” McCoy says. “I wish I had the time to do all that stuff, but at the same time, there’s this organic kind of bond musically that I have with my band… We all pitch our two cents in, and I think that’s what makes Gym Class Heroes special. You have four guys from four different backgrounds listening to all kinds of music. The common ground is Gym Class Heroes, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything.”

McCoy took the time to answer a few of our questions and, among other topics, talked about his life-changing experience working with MTV’s Staying Alive Foundation, a global grant-making organization that aims to “encourage, energize, and empower young people who are involved in HIV/AIDS awareness, education and prevention campaigns.” McCoy is an official ambassador of the foundation, and his travels to raise HIV/AIDS awareness in Philippines, India and South Africa were chronicled in the short documentary “The Unbeaten Track.” More info on MTV’s Staying Alive Foundation can be found at Staying-alive.org.

The album had a few guest appearances. How do you arrange the songs for the live setting?
Obviously, I can’t have Bruno come out every night, so we have tracks set up and whatnot. For the most part, though, when we play “Billionaire,” I can’t hear myself over the crowd. Every night, the crowd takes Bruno’s place. I’m lucky in that aspect. With the other songs, we usually just cover the ground ourselves, just me and the band.

“Billionaire” was a big hit for you. When you recorded that track, did you have an inkling that it was going to catch on the way it did?
I think it’s tough to guess what people are going to gravitate toward and relate to, or what’s going to become a hit record. It’s always up to the public, I guess, but with that song in particular, after we recorded “Billionaire,” we all looked at each other like, woah. There’s definitely something special about that song. It ended up being a smash, so I can’t really complain.

The track has a positive message. The title might suggest that it’s all about material wealth, but it’s not. I saw the documentary you did with MTV’s Staying Alive Foundation, where they sent you to South Africa, India and the Philippines. Did that have an effect on that song?
Oh for sure, and on life in general. It makes you see things in a new light. That trip changed my life in general as far as not taking things for granted. It definitely had an effect musically as well. As far as my lyrics go, I tend to write about my life for the most part–things that I see and how I feel about things. That trip had a huge effect on me, the people I met, the things I saw… I think it would affect anyone. It definitely made its way onto my record in many different ways.

I saw that you were taking in the local flavor as well on that trip, seeing local bands and things like that. Did the sounds you heard stick with you when you went into the studio as well?
Totally. “Billionaire” sort of has an island vibe, like a reggae feel. Other songs have percussive elements that I heard in Africa, even. It was sensory overload. Being there for a good cause, but also being privileged enough to check out the local music scenes.

You’re working on a new Gym Class Heroes record now. How is that going?
Yeah, we started working on the record a while ago. We’re deep in the process now. We’re looking to put it out by the end of the summer. We have about 30 demos–when I say demos, it can mean songs that are pretty much complete, partial songs, jams that we might pull certain ideas from. There’s a lot of material that we can pull from, but after this tour I have coming up is over and the smoke settles and we get back together and start working on the album again, it’s going to be awesome. We just had a week-and-a-half session in New Jersey, and we put it up on Ustream with the sound off so people could watch what we were doing. At the end of the session, we’d play an old Gym Class song, just as a gift to the viewers for hanging in and checking us out. That’s one thing about Gym Class Heroes as well that keeps our fans stoked is that we try to stay as close to our fans as possible, be it via the Internet or at shows. We have a really cool relationship with our fans.

I saw that last year you were arrested in Berlin for tagging the Berlin Wall. I guess if you’re going to get arrested, that’s a pretty cool way to do so. Was that something where you said to yourself, “When I get to Berlin, this is what I want to do?”
It wasn’t anything that was premeditated. I’ve been writing graffiti since I was 7 or 8 years old, so I just saw an opportunity and took it, and unfortunately, I got caught and paid the price. But it is what it is. It was funny, because the next day there were pictures of kids in front of the piece I did. I guess in a sense, I made my little mark. At the same time, it was no disrespect to my German fans. The Berlin Wall is a huge piece of history. I was told by someone that it wasn’t illegal. There’s graffiti all over it, so I had the mindset it was fine–until I got arrested [laughs].

Travie McCoy will play Ace of Spades on April 1. Also appearing will be Donnis, Black Cards (Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy’s new band), XV and Bad Rabbits. Tickets can be purchased through McCoy’s official website, the aptly titled Traviemccoy.com or Aceofspadessac.com.

Gym Class Heroes’ Disashi Lumumba-Kasongo on His Quiet Life in the Spotlight

Often the inception story of Gym Class Heroes revolves around its founding members, drummer Matt McGinley and frontman Travis McCoy. It’s the fabled story of high school friends who met in gym class, started a band and kept at it despite rotating members, until they received the Pete Wentz seal of approval. They started the band, so they get the fame, right? Read the biography on the Gym Class Heroes Web site and it’s McCoy and McGinley who won the MTV Best New Artist award.

Before their breakthrough record Cupid’s Chokehold had teenyboppers singing a Supertramp melody while their parents suffered acid flashbacks, Gym Class Heroes was down a guitarist. The band was in upstate New York, Ithaca to be exact, recording with Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy. The missing piece was in town as well, attending Cornell University, but fussy with the academia status quo.

Disashi Lumumba-Kasongo has a name that challenges promoters, reporters, industry execs and fans alike, to a point that he tries to make them more comfortable by shortening it to “Sashi.” His name derives from the African Congo. “I’ve heard so many variations of my name,” he said. “Luckily I had plenty of practice with explaining my name growing up that when I joined a band I was used to it. Lately though, I’ve overheard people using my name in conversations and it always surprises me when they pronounce it or spell it correctly.” But, do not call him “D.” “That’s the only thing that irks me,” he said. “There was this one lady who couldn’t get my name and said, ‘I’m going to call you D.’ I feel like that’s disrespectful because she decided to just not put the effort in.”

Two years prior to joining GCH, guitarist Disashi’s pop-punk band played a show with his future band mates, unaware that the impression he made that day would lead to a life-changing phone call. “I was no longer playing regular shows with that band when [Gym Class Heroes] called,” Disashi said. On the same day he joined the band in the studio, groundwork for Cupid’s Chokehold was laid down. GCH previously spent several stints on Warped Tours and built a respectable fan base in upstate New York, but the inclusion of Disashi on guitar seems tantamount to the pop success it would achieve with one song.

With McCoy rapping and singing lead vocals, GCH was already pushing rap/rock boundaries, causing headaches for record store clerks trying to categorize their albums. The band’s aversion to narrowing its scope or ruling out genre influences forced Disashi to jog his memory for inspiration. “Learning how to use the different styles I had learned over the years was the biggest challenge,” he said. His previous band played with a heavier edge. Disashi said he had to learn how to play “clean guitar.”

Life speeds up when you have a hit single. Disashi admits it’s a welcome change, one of those good problems, to be constantly touring in front of hundreds to thousands of fans. But with the release of GCH’s fourth studio album, The Quilt, attention toward the band was less about the music, more about McCoy’s affairs.

With the spotlight fixed on McCoy and his breakup with pop star Katy Perry, the rest of the band was free to create without distractions. “Whether it’s people I’m meeting for the first time or people I haven’t seen in a while, they’ll be like, ‘Oh, I’m surprised you’re down to earth,’ or say things like that,” he said. “They do expect you to act a certain way, but that’s the overall perspective of how this industry works.”

Outside of GCH, Disashi quietly works on his solo project Soul. Soul is still in the bedroom stages, with Disashi acting as a one-man band. But Soul is not a backup plan should GCH dissolve; instead, his solo work suffers from a commitment to his band mates. Two of The Quilt‘s most critically acclaimed songs were originally meant for his Soul project, but once McCoy heard “Live a Little” and “No Place to Run” Disashi was coaxed into giving up two of his coveted babies. “At the time that I wrote those songs, they were my songs,” he said. “It was tough to give them up once Travis heard them, but it’s a cool thing that I was able to share these special songs with my band and play them every night in front of our fans.”

In reviews, The Quilt is often negatively critiqued for a lack of cohesive flow as purely hip-hop tracks featuring Busta Rhymes and The Dream, drenched in bravado and deviancy, are followed by power pop songs of urgency. “One thing that is challenging in working with other producers is we have our own thing going,” he said. “But I do think when we focus as a core group, it’s when we’re at our best.” While the singles that broke GCH into the mainstream were not fully appreciated until a year and an album late, the marginal success of the The Quilt and its singles, coupled with Disashi expressing no plans to push another single, suggests a band ready to move on.

My talk with Disashi interrupted a pre-show nap in Connecticut, but after some light conversation he snapped out of his groggy state to discuss the group’s plans after its college tour. “For the next record we’ve already started writing together,” Disashi said. “It was cool to have some other producers on the last record and have songs I had written myself. It was cool to go all different types of places, but with this next one the best way to start is writing songs together, as a band.”

Between tours, GCH retreats to where it all started, upstate New York, living together, demoing and writing new material in an old church basement. Disashi described the output thus far as “organic.” He said they hope to have next record out by mid-2010, but Disashi is not making a concrete quote on that due date. Along with rejuvenating his hit-making band, he’s pushing his Soul project out of the bedroom and onto the stage. Disashi said he has a drummer ready to go, but is still filling out the other members.

Returning to his almost-alma mater, Disashi often crosses paths with former Cornell classmates, most of whom are now alumni. Four years into Cornell, he left to be a full-time musician. When he runs into old college friends, Disashi notices the hesitancy of approval in his aberrant rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle over graduating from a prestigious Ivy League university, but it doesn’t faze him. He has an MTV Best New Artist trophy to acquit him of regret. “When we won the VMAs it was like the whole world was watching us gain acknowledgement,” he said. “Now, everyone can see I’m not just goofing off. Well, I have been, but now I’ve been rewarded for the band.”

Recently, Gym Class Heroes played as backing band for Onyx and DMX for the VH1 Hip Hop Honors ceremony. “DMX introduced me to hip-hop when I was younger, so it was a trip to meet him,” he said. Most would not think DMX, who barks when he raps, could be described as polite, but Disashi said it with earnest that each time they practiced with DMX, he made a point to greet each band member. “The most striking thing was rehearsing for the show,” he said. “There were only eight or so people there, but his energy level, you would have thought he was playing for thousands at Madison Square Garden.”

During the rehearsals, Disashi realized he needed batteries from the Target across the street. He strolled into the store conscious of his incognito, comforted by it. Minutes prior to his errand, he was playing alongside with living legends of hip-hop, but in Target he’s still another casual shopper in need of batteries. “It was funny because I was thinking about how much I value the freedom to be out and not get bombarded,” he said. “But as I was leaving the store, a guy came up to me and said, ‘Hey, I know who you are.'”

I Am Music Tour w/ Lil Wayne, T-Pain, Gym Class Heroes, Keri Hilson

ARCO Arena
Monday, March 30, 2009

It was 7:20 p.m. and already smoky inside ARCO Arena (not from a fog machine) when the stunningly beautiful R&B singer Keri Hilson took the stage wearing a sexy little black outfit. Hilson’s debut album, In a Perfect World, debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s R&B/hip-hop album chart last week and made its way to No. 4 on the Top Album chart. The smash hit single “Turnin’ Me On” has been on top of the Urban Radio Charts for over six weeks, so it’s no wonder why the crowd was so excited to sing along when she busted into the song at the end of her short but energetic set. After a round of thunderous applause, Hilson scurried backstage to continue partying, saying she was in a “Celebratory mood,” presumably because of her recent success.

Gym Class Heroes took the stage next and completely changed the energy in the building with their full-band set up and non-traditional indie meets hip-hop sound. Two jumbo screens, one on each side of the stage, were turned on, giving those in the nosebleed sections a much clearer view of frontman Travis McCoy doing an incredible job getting the crowd involved. He briefly poked fun at his celebrity ex-girlfriend Katy Perry and got a good laugh from the audience right before going into their hit song “Cupid’s Chokehold.” “Take a look at my girlfriend, ’cause she’s the only one I got.“ Oh, the irony! Before the end of their set McCoy confessed his love for Sacramento claiming that Deftones are one of his “favorite bands ever.” The band closed with the song “Cookie Jar,” a very dance-y, synth-riddled number that got the entire crowd shaking their stuff.

As T-Pain was set to take the stage, it was apparent things were about to get crazy. Everyone was on his or her feet and the props on stage had a very circus-like vibe to them. After all, T-Pain is knows as “The Ringleader,” amongst his peers (take that, Britney Spears). As the first song started, the crowd erupted and two white-masked little people ran out and started doing the “two-step” dance alongside T-Pain and his other back-up dancer. It was quite entertaining and also somewhat creepy. Most of the songs T-Pain performed were shorter versions of the originals, which allowed him to pack countless hit tunes into his allotted set time. At a couple different points throughout the performance T-Pain did his best to prove that he can do more than sing through Auto-Tune by playing other instruments such as an acoustic guitar, keyboard and an electric drum kit. Unfortunately, his drum solo was nothing to brag about. It was too long, off beat and awkward. T-Pain did prove to be an extraordinary hype-man, though, doing everything in his power to make sure the crowd was warmed up for Lil Wayne, aka Lil Weezy, aka Weezy F. Baby, aka Mr. Carter, AKA”¦you get the point. Probably the coolest part about T-Pain’s set was at the very end when he confessed to the crowd, “I do not give a fuck how you get my music! Just get it!” After a few bows, he left the stage and made way for the night’s headliner.

By the time Lil Wayne’s set time rolled around it was so smoky inside the arena that one could hardly see across to the other side. A quick glance toward the stage made it obvious that the layout and lighting set-ups were on a much larger scale. An acoustic drum set, bass, guitars and keys were heard being sound-checked behind a giant white curtain, confirming that Lil Wayne would have a full band behind him and not just backing tracks. Before he came out, his band (which included a very talented female bass player) played a rather heavy rock intro.

When Lil Wayne finally made his entrance, it was in style. He was rocking a black leather jacket, signature sunglasses and as soon as he appeared he jumped up like a kangaroo and upon his landing a huge explosion went off and flames shot into the air from multiple spots on stage. It was quite an epic introduction and the performance didn’t slow down much after that. “Mr. Carter” was the set opener and proved to be a crowd favorite, along with other songs like, “A Milli,” “Mrs. Officer” and “Lollipop.” A couple different points throughout the set Lil Wayne announced, “I ain’t shit without you,” as he pointed out into the crowd. Crowd interaction was a key part of the performance. Like T-Pain, Weezy grabbed a guitar a couple times and basically pretended to play, but he wasn’t really fooling anybody.

After bringing about two-dozen different performers out on stage at different points throughout the set including T-Pain, Keri Hilson and the entire Young Money family, Lil Wayne was ready to wrap up the show. During the encore song he shot huge fireballs out of a flame-thrower that looked like something straight out of a video game. It was indeed a hot ending to a smoldering performance. Some of the last words Lil Wayne’s spoke before he left the stage were, “You all just made history because you witnessed the best rapper in the world.” Hey, at least he’s confident!