INTERVIEW: Pierce the Veil’s Jaime Preciado on the value of artistic meaning

Photo: Pierce the Veil includes, from left, Mike Fuentes, Vic Fuentes, Tony Perry and Jaime Preciado. Photo courtesy of Jonathan Weiner.

The members of the buzzed-about rock band Pierce the Veil are gearing up for a tour in support of their new album, Misadventures, which recently premiered at #4 on the Billboard 200 chart. Jaime Preciado, bassist for the band, is a busy man nowadays. He has been working with the other members of Pierce the Veil — Vic Fuentes, Tony Perry and Mike Fuentes — every day to prepare for the tour, which begins Sunday, June 5 in Las Vegas and winds its way through Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, New York and Dallas, among other American cities.

“Yeah, we’ve been working pretty much every single day either with the dudes or personally here,” Preciado said recently in a phone interview. “I have a studio here at home and just kind of getting ready for the tour, getting all the bells and whistles for the show ready to go. It’ll be a fun one for us.”

Misadventures, a driving force of an album on the cutting edge of hard rock and alternative rock, is a followup to the band’s last album, Collide With the Sky, which confirmed Pierce the Veil’s status in the music industry with more than 400,000 albums sold.

“Something happened with that record [Collide] that everyone started getting into, and it had pretty good success,” Preciado said. “For us, we were still kind of growing, and that record was a huge growth spurt for us. … We just kept getting these tours, and we just kept playing. It was one of those things where we didn’t want to stop playing shows, and people didn’t want to stop coming to them. We just kept playing.”

The playing continued for years, but eventually the band members came together and decided that a new record needed to be cut. They went into the studio with Dan Korneff, the same producer behind Collide. They camped out in Long Island, New York, and stuck to a set schedule over the course of two to three months. The plan was set, but then creativity got in the way.

“We went in there with a plan, but as we started making the record and recording and stuff, we kind of fell into a couple of detours along the way, and that was kind of like a precursor to what the album was going to be all about it, having this set plan and it not going that way at all,” Preciado said. “So hence the title, Misadventures. It kind of took us on this crazy journey to complete, and it took us a good amount of time.”

When Pierce the Veil make a record, the music-making is a collaborative effort, with everyone chipping in to enhance the song. The lyrics are left to Vic Fuentes, the vocalist.

For Preciado, the best attribute of the new record is the fact that the band put so much time into its creation. It’s not a selection of random songs put together haphazardly. Everything that is on the record, he said, was given immense thought and has a reason for its placement.

“Every note, every word, every part of the music is there for a reason, and that for us was a huge part,” the bassist said. “That’s how we just made music. We’ve always done it that way. It always has to mean something to us. When we play it, you have to feel it. … It’s kind of like a time capsule for us. We kind of take a snapshot of our lives when we were making this record and all of the stuff we liked and put it into these songs, and I think you can tell with this record, every song is different. Every song has its own place. Every song has different characteristics, and I think that kind of shows how we were when we were making it. I think for us, it’s definitely a milestone.”

Preciado said one impetus for recording Misadventures were the fans, who were asking for new material. He said they were “diving down our throats” for the record, but the band let the creative process play out.

“We didn’t want to get rushed,” he said. “We wanted to put out stuff that we wanted to put out and that we felt that it was ready and final. Fortunately enough, we did that, and we didn’t sacrifice anything. We put everything into it. Obviously once you do that and you’re happy with the record, then obviously what it does numbers wise, that’s also amazing, too, but I think at the end of the day, you want to put out something that you’re happy with first.”

The success of Misadventures firmly cements Pierce the Veil’s status among burgeoning rock bands on the scene right now. Their tour features a host of sold-out dates, and the band promises to play every song off the new album at each gig. Preciado said that decision is something they’ve never done before and something they may never do again.

Other than the full-album setlist, there seems to be several special qualities to the Misadventures tour. For one, the gigs are in mostly intimate venues, and Preciado is looking at each show as a celebration of the long-awaited new material.

“It’s like, hey, we get to show you this new record that we spent so much time on and also this record that you waited so patiently for,” he said. “It’s like a ‘70s move, you know, where back in the day that’s what people would do. If Led Zeppelin put out a record, they would play that record on tour.”

Pierce the Veil touches upon several sub-genres in the world of rock. In fact, it can be difficult to pinpoint their unique sound and influences. At times on Misadventures, Preciado and company sound firmly alternative; however, then they break out into an assaulting barrage of guitar work that blasts the ears heavier than most other bands on the radio.

On the album’s opener, “Dive,” the band opens with a hypnotic and dizzying array of sounds followed by lyrical jumps from Vic Fuentes. All the while, Preciado’s bass is thumping along, providing rhythm for the frenetic energy on display. Another selection, “Bedless,” is slower and more contemplative. “Song for Isabelle” is a fitting conclusion, bringing everything the band has to offer to bear in less than five minutes.

“At the end of the day, we just want to make something that we like,” Preciado said. “We want to play music that we feel comfortable with, that we enjoy. It’s also got to be fun to play live, so whatever they want to label us as, I guess that doesn’t really bother us. I don’t think it ever has. I know some bands it definitely hurts them when they get called a certain label or whatever. For us, we don’t mind. I don’t think there’s ever been a discussion about it, like, hey, what kind of music are we, man?”

For Preciado, the bass wasn’t always the instrument of choice. He began his musical career by playing trumpet in school band; however, he eventually learned how to read and write music. That knowledge has helped him in Pierce the Veil and other projects in the studio.

At one point, he joined up with Perry in another band while in high school. They eventually met the Fuentes brothers and started Pierce the Veil a decade or so ago.

“I went to school for audio production, too,” he said. “So I guess knowing kind of how to play a little bit of everything really helped in the studio just to get by. Now I’ve been doing that with the band and setting up our live programming stuff and doing stuff for shows. It’s been really good. We’ve been having a lot of fun with it, and having somebody I think in the band that has that kind of knowledge is very beneficial to us and the upcoming shows.”

At one point in the band’s career, the four members got together and made a promise. That understanding has catapulted them to album and live-touring success, and it keeps Preciado energized for more.

“If we’re going to do this, if we’re going to be in this band, we have to be like 100 percent about it,” Preciado remembered about the promise. “That was one of those conversations that I’m so glad we had because it kind of put everything into perspective.”

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

Pierce the Veil begins its Misadventures tour in Las Vegas Sunday, June 5. Click here for more information.