Blank Page Empire

Here’s my interview with Ryan and Nate from the promising young band out of Minneapolis, Minnesota known as Blank Page Empire.

Give me a who’s-who of the band.

Ryan: Nate plays guitar, I sing, Jeremy (Becky) plays bass, and Tim (Tool-Man) plays drums. We also currently have a fill in second guitarist, Zach.

Alright, so what’s the back-story of the band? How did everybody meet?

Ryan: Nate and I came from a former band and wanted to keep goin’ at it. We posted “the blind lead the blind,” right away along with a legit myspace background and pictures. We wanted to start off on the right foot immediately. Nate and I being the music dudes in our former band had to figure out the business end of music. It was rough at first but we got the hang of it. We met up with Jeremy through his wife, who basically is the reason Becky’s in the band. So, thanks Tracey! Tim answered our blog about a guitarist at the time. The minute he walked in the room, I had a man-crush on him! We found out he was an amazing drummer. And right now Zach is filling in until either he becomes a permanent member or we find someone who will stick.

Nate: Essentially Ryan and I were in Nihilio and as the foundations of that band were crumbling we decided we really felt called by God to make music together. We always had a certain vision for the music we wanted to make and how we wanted to make it, and it seemed like in our previous band there was always a power struggle over the direction of the band. So Blank Page Empire gave us the opportunity to start from square one and actually play the music we really wanted to play, which is something we feel is absolutely imperative to be a successful band or artist. From there I just started writing until I had settled on a quintessential sound for what would eventually become Blank Page Empire. After I had completed a few songs I turned them over to Ryan to start writing lyrics and melodies. Once we established our sound we started auditioning members and the process was easier than expected. Jeremy aka Becky was someone I knew because our girlfriends are really close friends. And Tim contacted us through myspace and everything really clicked with both guys.

What’s the story behind the band’s name?

Ryan: I wish we had a story behind the name, but honestly it was the only name Nate and I agreed on. We had a couple of names before it that weren’t sticking, until we realized that all the songs on “How To Start A Fire” by Further Seems Forever were all for the most part great band names. Blank Page Empire was the best, and my personal favorite song on that record.
Christian band, Christians in a band, or other?

Nate: We view this band as a ministry. We feel that God called us all individually into music ministry and we really want to minister to people through our words and music. Not necessarily by preaching onstage but more importantly by our actions on and off stage.

Ryan: I always dread this question. Mostly because its kind of a double negative. If you say Christian band, your implying that Christianity can be a genre. I know what most bands mean by saying they’re a Christian band, but to your average non-believer it comes off as saying that God is a genre or sales-pitch. And if you say Christians in a band, Christians usually call you out for not representing Christ; both of which we’d rather not use to represent this band. We are a ministry, but our ministry, at least for right now, consists of hanging out with kids after we play and straying from preaching with words as much as we can without misrepresenting Christ.

Share a little bit of your personal testimony.

Ryan: I don’t know how to answer this question, but if I could sum up what I’ve learned about being in a band and being a Christian as an individual, I would hope that I practice sincerity. This record lyrically, was written about how I felt like the prodigal son for the past two years. I was so, I guess, dry and apathetic about things. And I was really fed up with how the church was representing Christ. Probably as everyone else is that’s in a band. The problem was I was just stewing in my depression and in my own thoughts that I kind of got trapped. And even now, I’m struggling with my own mind. But music is like God’s therapy to me, a way for me to get it off my chest. And in the process I feel I can relate to people a lot more than if I had it all in order.

How would you describe the band’s style of music?

Nate: I’m really terrible at describing the sound of my own music, but I guess I would have to say we are trying to be a really heavy indie rock band. We take a fairly progressive approach to our song writing and a lot of our songs have linear structures without verses and choruses. Instead we try to incorporate musical motifs to tie multiple parts together and in some cases on the record musical motifs will reoccur in several songs. With all of our songs we try to tell a story and we’ve been tryin - Indie Vision Music