Returning to the Warped Tour scene this year with their pop culture, style, and talent was Grammy Award nominated rock band, Relient K. I have been a fan of the guys since my freshman year of high school in 2001 and after their five album releases, I was excited to hear that they had released a new twenty-six song EP and would be promoting it on tour this summer. Below is my interview with singer and song-writer, Matt Thiessen, and bassist John Warne.

D: I am with Relient K at Warped Tour 2008. Can you guys introduce yourselves to the readers?

M: Hi, I’m Matt Thiessen.

J: Hi, I’m John Warne.

D: Congratulations on your newest EP you just released. How does Nashville Tennis & The Birds & the Bee Sides differ from other releases?

M: This is more of something we thought to do for our fans for the summer. We knew we weren’t ready to put out a new record yet. We had a bunch of the Bee Side songs sitting around so we decided to put together thirteen songs on each. Hopefully the twenty-six songs together made it something worth purchasing; it’s something to give our fans to listen to for the summer-time.

D: And you guys did a scavenger hunt for your fans; can you tell us a little bit about it and whose idea it was in the first place?

M: I think our record label thought of it. They told us to come up with clues to direct people to a website so we didn’t really know what to do. John came up with the idea to do a magic eye puzzle.

J: Which was probably the worst idea because almost nobody got it.

M: Maybe we’ll do a couple more spontaneously.

D: You guys make a lot of pop culture references in your songs. Why is that?

M: I don’t really know.

J: It’s the rapper in you, I think.

M: It’s always fun to give a nod to something that people are familiar with.

D: How has being in the music industry affected your faith?

M: I think it’s connected with people who are smarter than us, people who are good leaders, and people we can look up to. With other bands, people on record labels, over the past ten years my faith has definitely become stronger because of the people I’ve come across and the lessons I’ve learned. Honestly, the music industry itself hasn’t really had any sort of effect on it, any more so than going to college or choosing a new career or selling paper in cubicles. It’s all a part of growing up.

D: If you had to choose one of your albums to play for the rest of your life, which one would it be?

J: Our next one.

M: Yeah, good choice!

D: Why is that?

J: I feel like the best is always around the corner. Whatever is the latest thing that Relient K puts out is my favorite.

D: In 2004, a book was released known as The Complex Infrastructure Known as the Female Mind. [A line taken from the song, “Mood Ring”]. What is it about and why should we read it?

M: Okay, well you shouldn’t read it, first of all. It’s something we like to sweep under the rug. A publishing company approached us, threw a couple of coffee table books from Urban Outfitters down on the table, and said “Check these out; we want to do something similar and quirky that would appeal to your fan base. We were like, “yeah, we’d love to do something like that. They ended up hiring an author who wrote about 95% of the book. The excerpts that I had spent hours writing for the book we’re turned in but didn’t make it. Even the touches that we tried to put on it didn’t even make it in there. It has nothing to do with us; they just used our names to put a book out there. It’s not a bad book, and it’s not a bad publishing company, it just has nothing to do with us.

J: Maybe some day we’ll write another book.

D: So Matt Hoopes has had his signature Reliant K for over ten years now. Do you guys know how many miles are on that car?

M: I don’t think it’s been drivable for six or seven years. It probably has about 180,000.

D: Charlotte STYLE is a lifestyle magazine, and one of our emphases is in fashion. If Relient K owned their own fashion label, what would it be called?

M: Expensive Clothes. That would be our brand name so it’d be like “What are you wearing? Oh, I’m wearing Expensive Clothes.”

D: Very clever. I like it. And for our last question, when everything is all said and done, what does Relient K want to be remembered for?

M: At the core of it, being a good influence on people.