Words by Jasmine Phull
Photos by Felicity Ieraci

Nashville Tennessee plays home to Miley Cyrus, Jack White and Keith Urban. It also houses Paper Route – a quartet that consists of Chad Howat , J.T. Daly, Andy Smith and Gavin McDonald . This may come as no surprise until you hear their music. Paper Route is an indie rock band that loves their ambient electronica. Their songs are ethereal and poppy all at once and they are the last thing you’d expect to come from the hometown of Keith Urban. Nevertheless respective members of the melodic band can lay claim to: almost running over the blond-tipped country star himself and to serenading Jack White with a Neil Young rendition. The band’s major debut, Absence, was released in 2009 on Universal Motown , a label they graciously share with one Miss Lindsay Lohan. But all of this is irrelevant. What you should know about Paper Route is that in order to correctly pronounce their name it is necessary to flex the jaw as if roaring like a lion. ROOOOOOOOOOAT. Their music will stop you in your tracks and enlighten you but it most certainly will not take you to a higher place. With all these Christian Rock references member, J.T. Daly sets the record straight and tells ‘SUP Mag that Paper Route is ‘the furthest thing from a Christian Rock band; we ask too many questions’.

So the pronunciation of your band name was a surprise. I didn’t realise I was saying it wrong until I watched a Paper Route interview.
You guys say root, right?

Yes. I could have been talking about a whole different band.
I’m not sure if England has ‘paper boys’ but it’s essentially the same thing and we all used to have that job. In Canada, that’s not even a word. We played in Montreal, we said Paper Route and the audience laughed. As if it was something we had made up.

That or you were speaking a different language. Your debut album was recently released on Universal Motown. Do you know any of the other artists on that label that aren’t exactly…
Our style? There’s about 30-40 of those.

You know Lindsay Lohan’s on there?
Oh I know. I love her. She’s one of my favourite artists and we used to date.

Really? Oh great well there’s an exclusive. Can we print that?
Yeah, of course. Wait. Is Paris Hilton on Universal Motown?

Not yet. But I heard they were going to sign her.
Good. Well I’ll produce it.

How’s the label treating you? They’re quite well established yet they don’t seem to be too intrusive.
I think it’s been good. They let us make the album that we wanted and we didn’t really change anything. We still did everything ourselves.

So you finished the album before you were signed? They didn’t have any qualms.
They did want us to bring someone else in to mix the record, but we ended up doing most of it ourselves.

You’ve toured with quite a few bands: Paramore, Phantom Planets, Passion Pit who recently remixed your song ‘Tiger Teeth’.
Yeah they did. We toured with them right as they were ‘exploding’ and we just hit it off. We talked about mixing some of their stuff and vice versa.

Quite a few of your songs have appeared in a number of movies, TV shows and even advertisements. I have a list: In 2008 your song appeared in various episodes of One Tree Hill.
That’s one.

Your song last time appeared in the show Nike’s Human Race
That’s two.

And three is…Do you know who Whitney Port, from the show ‘The City’, is?
Omigod…

I thought you were going to say no!
I know her because she kept emailing us saying: ‘You’re my favourite band’. I didn’t know if we should email her back or not cause MTV’s The City is not really our cup of tea.

You’re not into the whole fashion foray?
[Laughs] She’s a sweetheart but it was a little outside of our ‘circle’.

So, did you email her back?
I think we did.

Wow, it must have been a momentous occasion if you can’t even remember.
Yeah, I think I passed that ‘baton’ onto someone else.

Okay and finally number four do you know what I’m going to say?
No I have no idea. Have I ever kissed Whitney?

What? No. I’m talking about your songs that have appeared in shows but since you brought it up: Have you ever kissed Whitney Port?
No, I haven’t.

Well I’m assuming if you didn’t even want to email her back, you wouldn’t be kissing her. Anyway number four: Your music was in the film 500 Days of Summer. How does having your music in so many different movies and shows affect the band? Does it widen your fan base?
Absolutely, especially because I didn’t even know shows like One Tree Hill and The City existed. So it was a great cross-pollinisation of the fans and those that were becoming aware of Paper Route. We see ourselves as a very cinematic band; our songs are written around visuals, so it was encouraging to see our songs being used in things that we would have never expected. The 500 Days of Summer scene was so beautiful.

Did you like that movie?
I did.

Because your song was in it?
[Laughs] It was heavy.

You produced and recorded the album Absence without any outside help. How was that? Because there’s always one or two people in the group who are a little more…
Involved?

Bossy? Did heads clash when it came to decision making?
Oh absolutely. A band works like a family and there’s a group dynamic and all families are a little psychotic. Since we all write we’re heavy on the purist vision. When too many people start getting involved it starts to lose its integrity. And I think that may be the weakest part of the album Absence; maybe too many people had their hands in some songs. Are you familiar with the documentary on ‘Trying To Break Your Heart On Wilco’?

No.
There’s a scene where the guy that’s being kicked out of the band, says that Jeff Tweedy, who is basically the only remaining memory of Wilco, told him that ‘every circle has to have a centre ‘ and he says that he is the centre of that circle, because they were all hitting heads too much. I think there’s a lot of truth to that and I think that we adapted that into our song writing process but the ‘centre’ just shifts per song.

How long did the album take to produce and record?
We had just been recording for probably two years and we weren’t planning on making a specific record. We were just recording tons of songs. Out of those sessions we released an EP.

Your music is a culmination of so many different genres including: pop, rock, indie and electro but there’s one more that I’ve heard on a number of occasions: Christian Rock. What are your thoughts on that? I know that when Evanescence’s album Fallen was being highly lauded as Christian rock and claimed as their own, the band themselves weren’t too happy.
I don’t know why there is a genre of music with a religious title on it. I don’t know if I’ve ever fully been able to grasp why that group has to claim whatever they can as their own. Maybe in an attempt to gain any sort of integrity with their art, they’ve tried to claim anyone that wanders outside of their bubble.

How do you feel about being labelled Christian Rock?
I don’t mind. I grew up in a very religious family and my musical choices were very much limited, so I understand. But we are the furthest thing from a Christian band; we ask too many questions.

And you drink and you smoke. So much debauchery.
Yeah. I got into a fight with our bus driver Andy the other day. We were punching each other in the face and I wiped his blood all over the window. But seriously so much of what Paper Route do is in pursuit of truth and any hope that can still be found in faith or God and that will always be the case but we are the furthest thing from a Christian band.

You guys are from Nashville. Your sound is probably the last thing people would expect to come from Nashville, Tennessee.
Indeed.

But you’ve certainly ticked the Nashville box in other areas: One of you almost ran over Keith Urban. You’ve seen Jack White on a number of occasions.
I sang Neil Young to him by accident.

Well there you go, that’s the second box ticked but what everybody really wants to know is: Have you met Miley Cyrus?
[Laughs] I haven’t. I’ve met Taylor Swift though.

Oh ok. Almost the same but not as slutty.
[Laughs] Yeah. She was at the last show we played at in Tennessee. She had like an army with her: everywhere she went it was like the Red Sea parting.

So is there a collaboration with Miley Cyrus in the near future?
Well you know, she asked but I told her I’m super busy with producing Lindsay’s album.