If you’ve read this site in the last week or two it has been quite apparent that SDM interviewer Jill Donenfeld has been very busy. This time she interviews Evan Winiker of Steel Train.

Jill Donenfeld: So, I have Evan Winiker here from Steel Train.

Evan Winiker: That’s me.

JD: You’re in the midst of a tour right now…

EW: We are just done with it.

JD: What’s been your favorite place to play? Why?

EW: Favorite show is Chicago, but its one of my least favorite places because of the cold weather. My favorite place was probably LA only because we got to hang out with friends and warm weather and good times.

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For More information about Steel Train head over to their Website or MySpace Page.

Steel Train - I Feel Weird (mp3)
Steel Train - Alone on the Sea (mp3)

Continue the interview after the jump…

JD: Got it. And do you have any rituals that you do on tour? Something that you must do before you go on stage? Before bed? Favorite thing to eat on tour? After a show?

EW: We have a lot of rituals but I don’t now if we’d call them rituals. Like every night we rent a movie on TV usually the same one like Step Brothers over and over again. It’s the Catalina Wine Mixer.

JD: Yes. So you rent Step Brothers every night…So has anything really crazy happened on tour. I looked at your website and it’s seems like you guys have been touring for two years straight.

EW: Well for like a year and a half straight definitely. But yeah forever! This summer we did a lot of really cool festivals like Bonnaroo and we were on Conan O’Brian, which was cool. But a lot of crazy stuff. We’ve left people at rest stops. Last year we got in a crazy car accident but we are all ok.

JD: Man, that is not the crazy I am looking for. But I am glad you are all ok. It seems like you have a really big fan base. Are you guys still based in New Jersey?

EW: Yeah well we all live around here. I mean Jack lives in the city now but you know we all grew up together. I’ve know Jack since I was ten and Jon since I was like thirteen. We are all like little kids together.

JD: Very cute. Is there anything that you really miss about Jersey?

EW: Well just the feeling of being home. Your own bed. Home cooked food. Friends are my biggest thing.

JD: Well do you guys have groupies that keep you company?

EW: Oh. We are so not that band. We used to smoke weed and do all that shit years ago but we are the band that literally goes to sleep. We love to go to movies ya know. But we are like stuck at being 16.

JD: 16… so then are all you guys single?

EW: We fluctuate. Justin, Jon, and Jack have girlfriends and Dan and I are single.

JD: The J names have girlfriends.

EW: Exactly.

JD: How old are you guys?

EW: 24, 25.

JD: and you guys have been a band for a while. You’ve gone through a few different mash-ups of members.

EW: Yeah. We’ve been a band for a long time and a lot of amazing stuff happened in the beginning. We were opening for crowds of 3,000 and got to tour in Europe. But we’ve been through a lot and it’s really the people who have stuck it out who are here. Dan was our tour manager for a long time and now he plays in the band. The people who were in it before got the outside of the Twinkie and now the people who have just joined are getting only the inside of the Twinkie—the good stuff.

JD: I guess that’s bound to happen as a band evolves. When did you guys start?

EW: Well we have all played with each other for years but in different bands, like bad punk bands, not band but I mean it was a different time. We were so lucky to grow up in this scene in New Jersey where literally a type of music was being created. Emo. I grew up listening to a band like Lifetime that influenced Saves the Day and Saves the Day influenced a band like that. We playing fire stations and literally the shows we were getting were Jimmy Eat World, At The Drive-In, The Get-Ups Kids… in fire houses! Not clubs. That was so real. And to be a teenager at that time was something that was so cool.

JD: What do your parents think?

EW: They love it. They are totally supportive because they saw us go through the motions. They saw us as kids and figure out what we needed to do to be a successful band and we are at that point right now where we are transitioning to the next level.

JD: Yeah. The new CD, Trampoline seems to be full of a lot of raw emotions.

EW: Yeah. We wanted to verbalize feelings and emotions. Sometimes you want to dictate that by putting it into words. And by doing that you are almost capturing the feeling. We are sort of just documenting a three year time period of things that happened in our lives.

JD: Why the name Trampoline for the new album?

EW: We were looking for something that was really buoyant and that would bounce back. Our last record was recorded and then it came out two years after we recorded and we weren’t really happy with it when it came out. So to have something that we were really proud of we wanted it to be really different than our last record and that would sustain itself.

JD: Got it. Is there an ideal way to listen to this new album?

EW: Sober, drunk, stoned… there is something to appreciate in all of it.

Steel Train Members:

* Jack Antonoff – vocals, guitar, piano, drums
* Evan Winiker – bass, backing vocals
* Daniel Silbert – guitar, backing vocals
* Jon Shiffman – drums, percussion
* Justin Huey – vocals, piano, Wurlitzer