INTERVIEW: Cody Carson – Set It Off

SET IT OFF are band enjoying the most successful point in their career so far, and there are few who are more deserving. Grateful, appreciative, and genuinely humble, the band have worked non-stop to earn every ounce of their success, and they’ve earned a fiercely loyal army of fans in the process. Having just released their most sonically versatile and musically jaw-dropping album to date, the band embarked on their sold-out Midnight World Tour in support of the album. Ahead of their sold-out Manchester show last month (read our review here), we caught up with frontman Cody Carson to talk all things SET IT OFF.

Your album Midnight has been out for a couple of months now, what has the response been like?

Cody: It’s been phenomenal! It’s the best-received record we’ve ever had and it’s not just showing in sales or charting, which obviously you want to see, but the ticket sales to the tour and seeing the reaction live, just the overall buzz and response is overwhelmingly exciting. For this album, it felt like it had to be a comeback record in a way, not that we ever left really, but we just want to see this really click and take off and we’re watching it happen and it’s really nice.

Over the course of your career you’ve evolved and changed your sound into something really unique, what was the writing process like going into the new album?

Cody: It’s changed a lot from the beginning. It started with me in a dorm room with Garage Band and then Dan [Clermont, guitar] and I became partners. Then we went from this pop sound to a darker sound, then a darker sound to like this merge of the two, then leaned really poppy one record, and now we feel like we’ve found the perfect balance. It’s just a constant, real effort of learning how to grow and become better writers and better versions of ourselves. What I think is unique about us is that, if you’ve been with us since day one you’ve literally been a part of our growth process – seeing us learn how to do different things and apply different things to songs. That’s why we really feel like we have such a firm connection to our fanbase, like we know we’re not perfect, they know we’re not perfect, it’s all about this actual real bond and that’s a massive part of it.

Midnight is your first release on Fearless Records, you’ve worked with them briefly in the past on Punk Goes Pop and Punk Goes Christmas, did that have anything to do with the switch?

Cody: It wasn’t so much influenced by Punk Goes Pop, although any time we did get involved with any Punk Goes… thing it was always a very smooth process and they were really easy to work with, and we were always proud of the response we would get on those features. It honestly just came down to communication when we started having talks with other labels. They were very real with us the entire way through, there was never any discord because we always said how we felt, and they always said how they felt. We knew that was going to be a really good step forward, they aligned their ideals and their thoughts with our ideals and our thoughts – it just made total sense. We’re really happy that we went with them.

So do you feel like you’ve found your home with Fearless?

Cody: Absolutely!

Do you have a particular favourite from the album?

Cody: On this one, it’s kind of a three-way tie, and even then I could pick more. I really like the song Different Songs, I’m really proud of the lyrics in that, I think metaphorically they’re really sound and also everyone’s been there before. I’m really proud of Happy All the Time because that’s probably the most outside-the-box song we’ve ever done and I think, not to sound too braggy, but I feel like we did a really good job trying something that we’ve never gone for before. We got to work with Scott from ISSUES on that one and he got to just tear up the bassline, we got to have a gospel choir in on it, I just love the message in it. It’s one of those songs where, I’ll never usually listen to our own songs to get me out of a tough time because that’s kind of weird, but that is actually one of the only songs that I feel has the power to get me out of a funk. It came from a really genuine place, not that any of them don’t, but I think it came together really well. The third track would be Unopened Windows because it’s just a really personal song to me.

Looking back to the beginning of 2018, you wrote and release the track Hourglass Love in quite an unusual way, what can you tell us about that process?

Cody: We were talking when we were putting the album together about trying to find a way to release that, but legally it was a nightmare because we’d have to track everyone down and find a way to accommodate everybody, set them up with BMI or ASCAP – basically there was just too many hoops to jump through. So creating the new symbol as an hourglass was a nod to everybody that was involved on that and that we’re thinking about them. Zach [DeWall, guitar] was actually heavily involved with creating the concepts for our weekly YouTube videos and that was one idea he had: to get on the livestream and kind of bring them into our world of how we end up writing a song. We felt confident we could do it within an hour and it really came together, everyone seemed to really like it, everyone was really involved, it was a really collaborative process. It was just fun. It was fun to get everybody in on the behind-the-scenes in the most literal way possible.

SET IT OFF have taken part in a few full runs of Vans Warped Tour, it’s notorious for being gruelling, what was that experience like for you guys?

Cody: I think we started doing it at just the right time. When we first started we got two weeks of it, we were in a van, and talk about gruelling. We were on the stage that apparently wasn’t even that legit of a stage. We only got wristbands not laminates, so we didn’t get food, we didn’t get water, and in order to survive on that tour we made a system where for each CD you sell personally, you get a quarter – so you had to sell enough CDs in order to eat, that’s how you’re eating. I remember the first day, we went to a Walmart to get all our stuff and as we were pulling out, the back door of our van ended up meeting our trailer and bent in half and the window exploded. We had to just bend it back and just keep driving because it was like an 18-hour drive that night, we knew none of us were going to be sleeping much that night because it was going to be really difficult to make that happen. So like if we could get through that, in a van, in the summer, for two weeks, we were like we can do this in any way, shape, or form. We were out there hustling every day and I think that’s what helped Kevin [Lyman, Warped Tour] take notice of us. We would always work really hard at our music, but we’d also work really hard at helping people get to know us. Then the Kevin Says Stage happened and we tried to take full advantage of that, and from there on he started putting us on the main stage and the rest is history.

You must have some good stories from all that time on the road, are there any that stand out in your mind?

Cody: That van one is definitely one! The funny thing too is that the person who destroyed the van door had to go out and find a new door for it and it was my van at the time. They had to go to a junkyard and the only door they could find that would fit my van used to be on a taxi, so it was an orange door with sun-bleached markings from where the taxi lettering used to be -that was really funny! God, I remember the Warped Tour Prom Night, the first time we ever did Prom was a wild one. Dan made a wizards staff out of beer cans that was taller than him. I remember that I was so drunk that I started slamming these cymbals from the BBQ band with my hand and tried to become my own drummer. I broke my ankle in the second song of a set and I had to finish the song. The funny thing about it is that I was trying to mimic and mock someone in the front row that was not having it and was like “I’m not gonna jump”. So I jumped off the stage, in between the barriers, and landed fine – that’s like what? A ten-foot jump? And landed totally fine. I get on the barricade which has like a one-foot step and I grab this girls hand and start jumping with her and laughing, and eventually like, she didn’t really get into it, but I could tell I made an impression, although she still wasn’t getting into it. So I was like “Ok, screw it, I’m getting down”, so the one-foot jump down from the barrier is what broke my ankle. It’s always like the least cool jump, I was jumping off cabs throughout the set which was an even taller jump. But yeah I had a pretty bummed ankle for the rest of that tour.

SET IT OFF have a really unique social media presence, especially on YouTube, is it important for you to connect with your fans that way?

Cody: I think the biggest thing for us is that we just want everyone to know that there’s no level of separation between who we are as people and who they are. We don’t ever want to come across as untouchable. We would always get preached that from the get-go like; “Well you can’t go out and talk to everybody because then you won’t seem untouchable”. Like why do we have to be that way? Why can’t we just be kids who wanted to start a band and who love what they do? We just happen to find the same stuff funny as you do, we get hurt the same as you do, and we have to go through the same life stuff as you do. I think that’s important to us that we get to showcase our sense of humour and who we are genuinely as people through YouTube and through our sense of humour on social media – it’s a nice platform for you to just be yourself, so we just try to take full advantage of that.

Do you have a moment in your career so far that you’re really proud of?

Cody: This tour is a huge one. Having the whole tour sell out before it even started and having it happen right at the beginning of releasing a new album. You never know how it’s going to go, and to have it chart – like, I still forget that we charted as the number one alternative record on Billboard, so to have that and all these streaming numbers and views on YouTube, and see it all come together, it’s like we’re back, we’re here, we’re ready to go. It was just this overwhelming excitement, so that was definitely a huge one.

What was your first “Oh damn we’ve made it” moment?

Cody: Oh man, I’ll never personally go “we made it!”. I think the only way I’ll think we’ve made it is if we sell out a headline arena tour. I feel like that’s like a “wow, we’re doing it” situation, especially if it’s not on the support of just one single and it’s because of a whole album, all the work we’ve put in, and just being who we are – because there is a difference. If you have a huge radio single you can ride that to something like that, but if your radio single goes away and you don’t have a follow-up, all that can go away. So I want to know that we can do something like that standing on our own two feet. But I think a better way to answer that, that first moment where we’re like “oh we’re starting to do something here”, god that’s a hard question to be honest with you. I think one of the first times we felt it was when we found out on Warped Tour; “Hey, Kevin’s bumping you up to main stage today”, we were like “wow, he believes in us”. Any moment that we can feel respected or that someone believes in what we’re doing is something you’ll never forget. So that was something really huge for us.

What do you like to do away from music on your off days?

Cody: Honestly? Video games. I’m a huge video game fan, we all are. Honestly, touring can be such a gruelling thing, so I treasure relaxation so much. When I’m home, if I can go get a massage, if I can stay at home and just play video games, read through Motley Fool rule breakers reviews or watch TV, I will never take that for granted. Time with my family, my friends, my girlfriend, my dog, anything like that is something that I really try to enjoy to its fullest.

Do you have any particular goals or milestones in your sights for the future of Set it Off?

Cody: Definitely want a single on the radio, doesn’t matter what kind of radio station, just a single that gets rotation internationally, that would be an amazing feeling. I really would love to play as the featured band on Saturday Night Live or any nighttime television show, we’ve never been able to do that on a large scale like that. But honestly, just to have consistency album-to-album and tour-to-tour for the rest of our career would be an amazing feeling.

So with the album having only just been released, it’s probably too early to talk about the next one…

Cody: Well actually not really! We’re actually already trying to get back into the studio and start writing any moment we can. With the momentum that we’ve garnered through this record, we don’t want to let it slip out of our hands. We’re really excited with what has been created here and we want to keep it going.

What can we expect from you in the near future?

Cody: The funny thing about it is, I actually have no idea. Whenever we go in to write for the next record, every time we’ve tried to go in with “we’re gonna do this”, you will fall flat on your face. You need to just go in and write the best songs you can. What you’re feeling at that time, what you’re inspired by at that time will shine through and hopefully, everyone will vibe with it as well.

To wrap things up, do you have any parting words for our Distorted Sound readers?

Cody: Hi, we’re SET IT OFF. We’d love to have you as a part of this family, so please check us out anywhere you can. If you have heard of us, thank you for sticking with us and staying by our side, we will not let you down. We love you.

Midnight is out now via Fearless Records. 

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