Eve 6

Often lumped together with bands such as Third Eye Blind and Everclear, Eve 6 is actually closer to an American Supergrass — young, goofy, irreverent, punk-inflected and musically mature beyond their years. Now, after touring for a year behind their second album, last year's Horrorscope, the boys are itching to get back in the studio and get to work on number three. In the meantime, though, the trio — guitarist Jon Siebels, singer/bassist Max Collins and drummer Tony Fagenson — sat down with Jeff Cornell and waxed poetic on everything from mannequin heads to covering TLC and how weird it is to have one of their songs become a high school anthem.

MTV: "TRL" has been playing the "Here's to the Night" video a lot lately. How do you feel about the success of the song?

Tony Fagenson: We never expected it. It was always a hope, I guess, but just the fact that people are really digging it is great.

Jon Siebels: This is definitely the first time we've had a video do anything like this. I mean, we've had a couple of videos hit "TRL" for one or two days, but this is amazing.

"Here's to the Night" [RealVideo]

MTV: Have you guys seen how the success of this song has affected your fans in any way? Are there more people at shows, more rabid fans?

Fagenson: Pop superstardom's a bitch. Actually, this is a pretty cool story. We were down in Key West and this woman had made these mannequin heads of all of us. She came all the way down to Key West just to see us and give us pictures.

Siebels: Pictures of the mannequin heads.

Fagenson: That's pretty rad.

Siebels: She's standing outside the studio right now with 3,000 balloons that say "Eve 6" all over them.

MTV: This song's probably gonna have legs, because it came out around high school graduation and prom time. Can you talk about that and how you feel about the likellihood that the song will get played at proms and graduations for years to come?

Max Collins: It's funny, because if people really inspect the words of the song, it's very obviously not about graduating from high school. But it's cool. I think it conjures up nostalgia, whether it's school or you're old and done and you're thinking back to the party days when you were listening to Judas Priest. Hopefully, people will dig it forever and ever.

Fagenson: I will, Max.

Collins: Yeah?

Siebels: Me too.

Fagenson: I'm gonna dig it forever and ever. Eternity.

Siebels: I'm gonna listen to our record 'til the end of time.

Collins: Goodnight, bro.

Fagenson: Goodnight, dude.

"Promise" [RealVideo]

MTV: How strange is it that "Here's to the Night" is catching on and having big success right now, almost a year after the album came out?

Siebels: It's kind of weird for us, because we've been touring for this record for a year. This is our third single [from this album], and in our minds, it's the end-of-the-record process. We're already gonna do another record, but now all of a sudden, it's starting to do well again. We don't know exactly what we're going to do next, but we do know that we're gonna get in there and do another record soon, no matter what happens. But we might still take "Bang" and maybe have someone do a cool remix of it or something.

MTV: How's the stuff for the new album coming along?

Fagenson: It's still too early to tell, really. We haven't really jammed on it as a band yet. It's mostly Max's ideas on acoustic guitar right now. I have a feeling it's going to be markedly different just because all our musical tastes are broadening.

Siebels: I know that one thing we want to do on our next record is get across what we are like live. We have a really powerful live show, and I think that with our first two records people definitely get a sense of our songs, but they don't really get a sense of what we are as a live band. That's something we really want to capture.

Fagenson: We definitely want to be recording by September, October. We want to get in there and make it happen.

MTV: Do you guys play any covers in your live show?

Collins: Actually, yesterday we just incorporated some of the end section of Metallica's "One" into "Bang," and we also have Rammstein's "Du Hast" in there. [Peter, Paul & Mary's] "Leaving on a Jet Plane" we've been doing for a while, and we're sick of it.

Fagenson: We've done TLC's "Waterfalls."

Collins: Yeah, a super-fast version.

Siebels: There's an MP3 of it out there somewhere, if you look hard enough.

Collins: It was actually pretty good, but the problem was people didn't get it.

Siebels: Yeah, they didn't recognize it.

Fagenson: We were too great, basically.  

Collins: It was actually pretty stupid.

MTV: Where do you guys see yourself in a couple of years? Do you have other goals besides music, like acting or directing?

Fagenson: Right now, I think we're first and foremost musicians. You know, we're just looking forward to this next record with a lot of anticipation, and I think we're gonna improve with every record, tremendously. So if we can do that for the next 15-20 years, then we'll all become hack directors or something.