April 9, 2007
The Farm League – Mike Saffert

C = Cath, M = Mike

C: For the record, can you state your name and what you do in the band?
M: My name is Mike Saffert and I play guitar in The Farm League.

C: Can we start off with a brief history of The Farm League? I know you guys have been playing music together for a while now, but what made you decide to officially become a band?
M: I’ve known Dave, Charlie, and Jolly for years now. I met them back in high school – I think we were sophomores. Our school had about four different towns going to it, and I didn’t really know anyone from my town that was into punk rock or anything like that. I eventually met Dave and Charlie - they had a band, which I thought was pretty cool. One day they needed a guitar player to fill in for their guitarist, who couldn’t make a show. I ended up playing guitar for the show and they ended up kicking him out and having me join the band full-time. Then we just kept playing in that band together and throughout high school.

Back when we graduated, we all started going off to college and the band we were in just fizzled out and dissolved for a little bit, and that’s when I joined Hidden In Plain View. From then on I was just doing Hidden In Plain View full time. I left college, and they all started a band together called Rydia, named after a Final Fantasy character actually –laughs-. They opened for us once when we played at Rucker’s, which was pretty cool.

Over the summer Hidden In Plain View had a lot of time off, and Dave and Charlie had been writing some songs together and started recording them. After I got back from recording with Hidden In Plain View, I was hanging out with them in the studio and they were just like, “Hey, got any ideas for this part?” and I said I would see what I could come up with. I ended up recording some stuff on some of the songs that they had, and they kept on joking with me about how they were going to steal me from Hidden In Plain View. I kept writing with them and we kept recording more songs and it kind of just went from there. Eventually we got a bunch of songs put together that we planned to eventually put out (we have them up on our Myspace and Purevolume).

Then Hidden In Plain View broke up, so it’s what I’ve been doing since then. We practice twice a week and we write and record as much as we can, around our work schedules. It’s a kind of busy life in New York City, but we make time when we can to play shows and stuff.

C: Who thought up your band’s name, and what was the inspiration behind it?
M: We didn’t have a name for a long time – we couldn’t think of anything that we liked. Charlie and I were sitting around somewhere and we saw in the paper, on the sports page, something about some farm league team. Charlie was like, “Well that sounds like a pretty cool name,” and I was like, “Yeah, that could work.” We asked Dave and Jolly what they thought about it and they said, “Yeah, it works. We can’t think of anything.” So we figured that was it, The Farm League sounds good.

C: The Farm League has some songs online that are part of the `Shuffle EP`. Do you have plans of releasing this EP to purchase? If so, when?
M: We do. We actually have another song that we recorded, that we’re going to put on there too. We just have to remix everything first and then we have to see what Drive-Thru thinks of it as well. I’m still under contract with Drive-Thru, so I sent that out to them this week to see what they think about it.
C: That was actually part of my next question too.
M: -laughs-.

C: You guys are currently unsigned. Are you looking to sign to a record label right now?
M: Kinda sorta. We all work full-time in New York City and it’s tough now. After doing Hidden In Plain View for so long, I saw how long it really takes before you can even make enough money to scrap by. We would like to sign and put out records, but as for touring, I’m not sure that it’s something we would pursue as of right now. We’re just starting to get our lives on track and be financially stable. It kind of sucks, because the 9-5 can be a bit of a drag, but you’ve got to pay the rent.
C: Is there any chance you might sign with Drive-Thru?
M: I’m actually still signed to Drive-Thru, me personally. It would depend on what they thought of the songs, and if they even want to do something with them. Then it’s what we as a band would want to do – if we would want to take it on full-time or just keep it something that we do on the side for fun. There are a lot of different things that could happen with it. I guess we’ll just have to worry about that when the time comes.

C: The Farm League's sound is pretty different from what Hidden In Plain View had produced. Had you always had plans on working on a mellower project or did you just decide that it was time for something new?
M: Personally, I’m into much different music than what we played with Hidden In Plain View. I’ve always wanted to do something else musically – I’ve even been writing songs on my own over the years. But yes, I’ve always wanted to do something different. That’s why in The Farm League we have a lot of different sounds with the new songs. Some have a bit of a country feel to it, some have an older indie-rock feel to it - a little bit like The Promise Ring or Texas Is The Reason. Some of the songs sound like Limbeck or The Format. I don’t know, we’re all over the place. We’re not really trying to find “our sound” because we don’t want to limit ourselves to any sound.

C: Is there any chance that you may work with any of your former bandmates from Hidden In Plain View in the future?
M: That’s always a possibility. There are no plans for it as of right now, but I would definitely not rule it out. Chris and I have talked about getting together and jamming just to write some songs here and there. Rob’s doing The Pilot and I would be all about doing some work with him. I’m not sure if Spencer and Joe have any plans musically for the future, but I would definitely not rule anything out.

C: What do you think of the music industry today? Would you change anything if you could?
M: To be completely honest, the music industry today is absolutely sickening. It’s a bad, bad place. Major record labels are scraping together their last resorts just to get record sales, because record sales are completely down. No one buys records anymore. Let’s say you do a search on Myspace for people who have Taking Back Sunday in their profile. You come up with 10 million results, but they’ve maybe sold a few hundred thousand records. Figure how many people listen to this band who haven’t even bought the record. I guess one thing I would do is have people start buying records again. I wonder when it happened where people just lost the desire to own the actual record, because I still get excited for it. I’m actually guilty of it too because I don’t buy CDs anymore, I buy vinyl because I just prefer the sound quality. But I love holding the piece of music, looking at the artwork, and reading through the lyric sheets. MP3s are definitely convenient, I’ve got a 60-gig iPod, but it’s so much more impersonal.

C: Why is music important to you, and when did it become important in your life?
M: Music has always been important in my life. I was fortunate that my parents have an amazing taste in music and they passed that down to me. I was raised on The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, all those great bands from then. They just made me feel that this was something special. Music put me in a different place and I knew it was something that I wanted to be able to do someday. Eventually I got a guitar and started learning all of The Beatles’ and Green Day’s songs, and I just went from there. I never thought it could be something that I actually could do – it was always something I wanted to do. But music has always been a very huge part of my life. It’s great because I’ll go home and visit my parents and me and my dad will just sit in the kitchen talking about Simon & Garfunkel, Peter Paul & Mary, different shows he has seen, and me wishing I could have seen those shows. It’s cool too because I get my parents into music. My mom is absolutely in love with The Shins, Belle & Sebastian, and Death Cab For Cutie, and my dad is really hooked on Steel Train.

C: If you were stuck on a deserted island, what 3 things would you bring with you and why? And no boats or things that could get you off of it.
M: No boats? Okay. I don’t even like boats. I would definitely bring an acoustic guitar with the best unbreakable strings that never go out of tune. I’d probably bring my Blackberry because I’m addicted to this little device. I guess I’d bring my record player and with it, my record collection. Can those go hand in hand?
C: Sure.

C: If you had to state 1 sentence why people should listen to your band, what would it be?
M: You should listen to The Farm League because… I don’t know. I have no idea. People should listen to us if they like us. There are so many bands out there that you could be checking out and you should check out every band you possibly can.

C: That was my last question. Any closing statements?
M: Check out our stuff on PureVolume and Myspace. We’ll be playing some shows soon in New York and maybe New Jersey, and be on the lookout for a possible release pretty soon.