Re: Jenna and Tim Lopez - Ready For Love - Fan Forum - Discussion

[biolalyss]

Thanks for posting that picture, Litta! I love how Tim has his fingers interlocked around Jenna. So sweet! :)

[Spencer81]

Just saw Plain White T's last night! It was a good show.. There were 2 bands opening for them. Tim is very tall and slender. No sign of Jenna there.. :( but was fun to see him in person after watching the show!

[biolalyss]

Just saw Plain White T's last night!  It was a good show.. There were 2 bands opening for them.  Tim is very tall and slender.  No sign of Jenna there.. :(  but was fun to see him in person after watching the show!

I'm glad you enjoyed the show! I loved seeing them play live this past summer :) It's too bad Jenna wasn't with him, but I could tell from their Twitter accounts that they're eagerly anticipating their reunion on Sunday!

[Litta123]

Here's an interesting Q & A with Tim regarding RFL and his new music. It talks a little about what was real and what was fake from the show. It's from Scott Hudson's blog, Too Many Notes. (here's the LINK)

Because Plain White T’s guitarist Tim Lopez had so much to say about his band, songwriting, and his recent appearance on Ready For Love, I decided to put up the entire Q&A. You can catch the band, along with opener Parachute, at the Washington Pavilion on Wednesday, November 19.

Q: I promise not to dwell on this subject, but I have to ask about Ready For Love. How did you get cast for that?

A: It’s kind of a random story. I’ve met a couple of the guys who live out here in Austin that did The Bachelor. One of them, Brad Womack, did it twice. I had our A&R guy from the label out here in Austin for SXSW, and we stopped into one of Brad’s bars. We were just chatting, and my buddy Matt from the label said, ‘why don’t you do something like this, Tim? You’re always looking for a serious relationship. You’ve been married before. It would be an interesting thing to see a guy like you on a show like this.’ Almost kind of jokingly, I said he should get me a meeting. It would be funny. He did. They called ABC, and they wanted to meet me. I flew out to L.A. and took three or four meetings with them, and they passed on choosing me for that show because they ended up going with some guy who had been on The Bachelorette the years before. Then one of the head producers for The Bachelor left, and he joined NBC and Eva Longoria for this new show, Ready For Love. He told them that he had met this guy two years ago that he really liked, and that they should call me in. So I get this random call from Jason asking if I wanted to do a different reality show for NBC. I want you to come out and meet Eva Longoria, and if things go well and if she’s into you the part will be yours. So I did, and it took a long time, like six to eight months of interviewing and flying back and forth. I was also really trying to think for myself whether it was a good idea for my personal life and the band and everything. I ran it past the guys in the band, and they were like ‘ooooooh, I don’t know, man. Do you really want to do this thing?’. After awhile, they said they were going to back what I wanted to do in my personal life. We’ve spent so much time on tour, and it had been a long time since I had been in a serious relationship. Of course, you kind of go into it wondering if you can really expect to find somebody solid in a show like this? For me, it felt like summer camp. You go away and date some new girls that you’re just meeting, and see how it goes. You just throw yourself out there in the most insane way possible. So I went for it, and the show only ran like three or four episodes on NBC, and then got pushed to online. I met a great girl, and I’m still dating Jenna (Reeves). It’s been good.

Q: Meeting Eva Longoria would be worth it.

A: Yeah, she’s awesome. I’m a big fan. She’s the sweetest girl, and super funny. She was really welcoming, and we’re still good friends. It was a solid experience. One of the things that freaked me out signing up for it was whether I’d look back on it and regret it. I’m glad I took a chance on something like this. If I hadn’t done it, I’d probably look back and always wondered. It toughens you up a bit to put yourself through that.

Q: What would the punk rock version of you from ten or fifteen years ago think of you being on a show like this?

A: I’m sure I would have scoffed at myself a little bit, but I have grown, sir! I’ve grown away from my punk rock roots, and I write sweet love songs now, so why not go on a sweet little reality show?

Q: I’m just teasing with that question.

A: It’s all good. I expected to take so much crap for doing that show, and it’s not that way. I have a lot of people who love the show that will stop me in a restaurant to tell me. I have yet to run into somebody who has said ‘I can’t believe you’ve done that’.  

Q: There’s a lot of debate about what is real or staged on these types of shows. What can you add to the discussion?

A: I feel like I was very, very well represented on the show, and I feel like what you see is what you get when it comes to me. In truth, now that the show is over and they’re not going to run another season, I feel like I can tell you what happened. I knew who I liked on the show early on, and that part of it is real. The story of Jenna and I is very real, but with a show like that you can’t just say ‘well cool, I found her’ in week three. So there are other parts of the story where I was dating some of the other girls, who were very sweet, but they make it look like you’re torn. That part was actually very hard for me to do. I felt like I was being a little bit dishonest, but they’re trying to produce moments. At the end of the day, they only pick what you give them, and you can put your foot down on most things.  

Q: Ok, let’s talk about music. What artists influenced you back when you were first learning guitar?

A: I would say that from junior high on, Tom Petty has been one of my favorite writers, and a big influence, but it’s taken me a while for me to get to a place where I can actually let those influences affect the writing. When I started with Plain White T’s, the band was in a different place, and the bands we could all agree on were like Jimmy Eat World, The Strokes, and stuff like that. Even those things barely crept into our sound. The band has transformed quite a bit from the band that was on the Warped Tour. I think we mixed in a lot more heavy, distorted guitar back in the day than we do now. As you get older, your musical style and influences change. I grew up going to a punk rock show every week, and that no longer influences my playing. at this point, every time you write a song you look to yourself and ask whether it’s something that can live on for decades. That’s a tough thing to stack your songs up to, but I think that’s why our biggest hits resonate with people as they do. They’re so simple, and classically-written. They’re the ones where you’re not letting the musical styles of the day influence what you’re doing. ‘Hey There Delilah’ being on just an acoustic guitar and a vocal could have been written in the 30’s and still would hold up.

Q: While there have been a lot of punk-ish bands that have crossed over, few hit as big as you did with “Hey There Delilah”. How much did life change when that track hit?

A: I think that was the point where you go ‘thank God, I think I can do this for a living’. We had been touring in a van, and had probably just made the transition to a tour bus. The band was probably still in debt when we had ‘Delilah’ hit, and it just gave everybody that cushion where we could breathe. As long as we were consistent, and write songs that people like, we could do this for a career. I think it changed everything in that regard. It’s terrifying on both ends. It’s terrifying when you don’t have a hit, and it’s terrifying to follow it up. You just wonder if you can continue. Luckily, we have come up with songs that have worked since then.

Q: Did that song’s success create any pressure when it was time to record a followup?

A: I think the way that it’s all kind of fallen into place has been really fortunate. When we went in to record Big Bad World, which was the followup to ‘Delilah’, Tom had written a song called ‘1, 2, 3, 4’ shortly after we had released Every Second Counts, the record with ‘Delilah’ on it. When he turned in that song to me, I felt that it was good that we had that song in the bank. I felt confident in that song, and we just need to figure out how to surround it with other good tracks. That’s how it worked. ‘1, 2, 3, 4’ was a big song, and became the followup to ‘Delilah’, and it was relatively in the same vein. When we did the record after that (2010’s Wonder of the Younger), I wrote ‘Rhythm of Love’ on my own, and I had not at that point had a song where I sang lead vocals be a single. I wasn’t feeling any pressure. I just thought I’d write some tunes for this record, and see how it goes. That song came and became the first single, and worked really well for the band. For this album (the upcoming From the Night On), after having ‘Rhythm of Love’ I felt like it’s my sophomore effort of writing of writing singles for the band, and I did struggle a little bit. I had success with ‘Rhythm’. How do I follow it up? It took a long time. I sat on the couch and held a guitar for a long time. It’s really weird. When everything is going really well in life and you’re comfortable, I feel like that’s when writing songs is difficult. What do I say that people are going to latch onto? I’m playing a lot of golf, and I’m wakeboarding a lot, but I can’t pen a song about either of those things. It took awhile, but I feel like you have to spend some time living in between records so that you can pull something from real life. It can’t all be golf and wakeboarding, so I had to put myself back out there. I went home to Santa Barbara and ran into an ex of mine at a bar. That’s all it took. The new single that we have out, ‘The Giving Tree’, is about that very night. You run into somebody that you used to feel very strongly about, and you watch them go through the motions. This girl in particular had really messed me up in our break up, and she was with somebody new, and yet she was hanging around me in the bar and flirting a little bit. I kind of looked at that situation and thought about how she was going to hurt this person the same way she hurt me. People aren’t changing, apparently, or learning. It’s like the giving tree, where people give and give and give, and she just takes and takes, leaving people decimated before moving on. That’s what it took - just going out there and living again. I’ll have to remind myself of that before writing the next record.

Q: The upcoming record is called American Nights, and the press release indicates it’s a bit of a change from previous albums? Describe how so.

A: We’re sharing a lot more songwriting. On the last album, I had two songs. On this record, I have four. We’re coming from very interesting places. I went on a reality show„ and figured out how to fall in love again. In the past year, Tom went through a pretty tough breakup, and he’s kind of learning how to get back in the game. There’s a song called ‘Should’ve Gone Back To Bed’, which is about him getting back into the dating world and struggling a little bit, and my songs are about finding contentment in relationships again. Most of the songs also kind of fit the American singer-songwriter style. Tom has a song called ‘American Nights’ that kind of feels like it comes out of Springsteen’s mouth. We’re kind of allowing our influences to creep in more. I’ve got a little Tom Petty, and there’s always a little bit of Beatles in our stuff.

Q: When does it come out?

A: We’re shooting for January or February.

Q: Tell me about the video for “The Giving Tree”.

A: That was a really fun experience. The director is Jason Koenig, who did the latest Macklemore videos. I loved his work. I met him at my parent’s house, and he’s my sister’s husband’s best friend. He was going to be the best man in their wedding, and I had never met him before when he walked into my parent’s house. He sat down on the couch, and we started talking about what we’re doing. He’s primarily a photographer, and was showing me some of his stuff. I told him about the song, and how I wanted to make a video for it whether it was the single or not. We went and hopped into my parent’s car, and I played him the song. He loved it, and said he’d love to make the video. We started riffing, and by the end of the day had an entire treatment for it. We then spent 3 ½ days up in Seattle just grinding it out. I had never made a music video like that. I didn’t sleep the entire time. Everybody who was working on it was working for free because there was no budget for it, and it became like everybody’s passion project. We just stayed up all night, and shot all day. I laid on the ground for 25 hours being body painted by some huge man, and ended up with a really beautiful piece of work. I’m really stoked with the end result, and it was really great to work with somebody who was an artist when it came to making videos. He’s just won a bunch of VMA’s, and I feel like we’ve got a shot for those types of things with this one, too.

Q: Are you playing songs off the album on this tour?

A: Yeah, we will. We’ll probably play most of the songs from the EP, and probably two or three from the new album, and mix in all of the old hits and some deeper cuts. It will be a good mix.

[tigertiz]

Who was the Bachelorette guy that was going to be cast?

[Litta123]

Who was the Bachelorette guy that was going to be cast?

I'm not sure, but given the two year window prior to filming RFL, I would guess it to have been Jake Pavelka. It would make sense because in that season I think the producers were really trying for either Reid or Kiptyn with no luck. So maybe at one point, they considered someone completely different as a possibility. But, like I say, it's just a guess.

[biolalyss]

Thanks for giving us that interview, Litta! I found that link randomly a couple weeks ago and wondered when the interview took place...

[Guest]

Wow, they totally should have gone with Tim over Jake!! But then Tim would not have met Jenna.

Have there been any hints about an engagement coming?

[dw_a_mom]

Love the interview! He really seems like a great, grounded guy. How odd for a rock star, lol! There was a rumor about TB considering a rock star at some point, so maybe it was actually a true rumor, wouldn't that be something? But they are sticking to their formula and probably always will. The meet ups with others help generate buzz, but I don't think they have the bravery to actually go against formula.

[provenceguy]

Wow, they totally should have gone with Tim over Jake!! But then Tim would not have met Jenna.

Have there been any hints about an engagement coming?

They're together with Tim's family in Santa Barbara for Christmas, so fingers crossed...

[Litta123]

Sweet birthday message from Jenna to Tim, posted on her IG.

[biolalyss]

Thanks for sharing that, Litta! I just love these two together and wish them all the happiness in the world in 2014!

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