Bradley Hathaway: Well, I started by writing one day, first of all; writing poems. And then, I knew some bands from relationships I had by running a venue, like Josh Scogin from The Chariot. So, Josh needed a venue to play at in my town, and I said, "Yeah, I can book a show for you... and, um, can I go on tour with you and do poetry before your set on that same tour?" And I did little poems for him and he was like, "That's awesome; sounds great!" So, I went on tour with The Chariot, just like that, and I delivered water to get on Main Stage at Cornerstone to talk to Blindside and ask if I can go on tour with them. They said yeah, and the rest is history.

Bradley: It just happened. What was spoken turned into music. There was no conscious decision, there was no effort. Just one day the poems became full of melody that required them to be sung. So, I just followed the melody.

Bradley: Well, originally, I think was really influenced by the whole hardcore/punk scene; just the idea of expressing and educating and standing up for something. So that kind of translated into me even just doing poetry in the hardcore scene. It's like, "Why can't I? I'm punk; why not?" But, today, it's Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Cash... lately, an artist named Sam Baker has influenced me a lot, for sure.

Bradley: Well, A) It was shorter-- we spent about nine days on A Mouth Full Of Dust. This one, we went in on Friday, and we left on Sunday afternoon. It was shorter; also, the songs are just different. There's a lot of experimenting, kind of long, drawn-out, more vibe-oriented songs on A Mouth Full Of Dust, and this one was just a little more to the point and simple. Also, there wasn't any expectation or pressure. Not that we had pressure, but we might've put some on ourselves with A Mouth Full Of Dust, making it so intense; whereas this one, it's like "You know what? No one bought A Mouth Full Of Dust, and I don't think anyone's going to buy this one either, so let's just have fun and make a record that we like." And we've always done that, but this one was even more free of this not having expectations-- there was no hope of people listening to it in the way that we thought A Mouth Full Of Dust was going to make us something, you know: "Oh, people are going to hear this, they're going to love it!" This one's like, "We love it, and we don't care."

Bradley: It's not necessarily one story, per se, but it's four songs that seemed to fit well together on an EP. Each of the songs have their own story and it's pretty clear what they are; it's very narrative-oriented. Ultimately, they were songs written over a period of a couple years. There's plenty of other songs we had, but these four songs were saying they wanted to be together on that EP.

Bradley: Every conceivable role. There's not really a separation, to be honest. As a Christian, as a Believer, that influences every aspect of my life, and the same for my art. No difference.

Bradley: School's great. I love it.

Bradley: Yeah, well, you know now that I've just started getting into it, and your Mom as well. For those of you at home, Garrett's mother is an English teacher in high school, and she told me to read Pride And Prejudice, and I said "Boring." She said, "No, you have to read it because it will teach you dialogue." So, I read Pride And Prejudice. I like it; I don't love it. Right now, I would say John Steinbeck and Carson McCullers are the two most inspiring works of literature that I've read. Those are my two main writers. I've started reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is The Night in the last week, and that's blowing my mind with how beautiful that is. I'm just going through the classics, basically. Particularly American literature; I like American literature of the South.

Bradley: I honestly have no idea. I never thought I would be [at Cornerstone Festival]. I don't know where I'm going to be in one year. Long term goals to me are... I don't have any. The only long term goal I had was to pay my house off in ten years, and that's not going to happen, because I just don't have any money anymore. So, truly, I don't know. Hopefully married, making love to a woman, and living in the country somewhere, but as far as career or whatever... I'll be writing songs, I'll be making albums, I hope to be touring, but I really don't know where it's going to go. One day at a time, now.

Bradley: Nope.