The Cab is every FBR's fan guilty pleasure. Their catchy lyrics and harmonies will remind you of the 90s - in a good way. This quintet from Las Vegas has reached a tremendous amount of recognition through their debut album "Whisper War." After finishing their first headlining tour, they are now opening for Panic At The Disco, Dashboard Confessional, and The Plain White Ts in the Rock Band Live tour. We caught up with pianist Alex Marshall and drummer Alex Johnson during their New Jersey stop of the tour.

Cristina: So … The Cab
Alex Marshall: Yes Ma’am
Alex Johnson: THE Cab.
AM: We are two members of The Cab. You have Alex Marshall and Alex Johnson. I play piano…
AJ: …and I play drums.

CC: So how would you describe your band?
AJ: I think we’re a group of five kids who all enjoy doing the same thing.
AM: Five musicians from Las Vegas, Nevada and Seattle Washington. We are all influenced heavily by different genres of music. We like to put our five art pieces together to form our own genre of music – which myspace calls “R&B-mo”

CC: So what are some of these genres that you all fuse together to form The Cab?
AM: I am influenced heavily by piano based rock, and some pop stuff.
AJ: I am more of the punk rock side. My favorite band ever is Blink 182 so I’m into more of that stuff. I mean, everyone has such different musical taste…
AM: Ian is heavy on classic rock. Our singer is all about r&b, the soulful stuff. And then, Cash is in on the piano stuff as well.

CC: How do you guys feel about all the N*Sync/Boy bands comparisons?
AJ: It’s definitely not an insult.
AM: I think sometimes we get that because our singer (Alex Deleon) likes to sing soulfully – which is boy band like. We have a lot of harmonies on our music. But our instrumentals are much more in depth than that.

CC: I remember when the record came out there was a lot of hype around it. Most people liked it, but some were kind of surprised.
AM: It’s different. It’s definitely different than what people hear.

CC: There was a lot of anticipation surrounding “Whisper War.” I know Blender said you were going to be huge and you didn’t even have any material out…
AM: …was it Scarlett Johansson that we were right in front of her or right after?
AJ: yeah somewhere around there…
AM: I don’t know but she’s pretty hot. So whether we were right in front or behind her it was just awesome. I think we were between her and in front Britney Spears.com or something
AJ: She’s pretty hot too.
AM: Yeah um that was pretty cool.
AJ: You gotta be pretty hot to be hotter than BritneySpears.com

CC: Did that make you all nervous at all, releasing such a different-sound with such anticipation?
AJ: We obviously liked it and we had fun making it.
AM: I guess some people write music for other people. Some people write it for themselves…
AJ: We did it for everyone.
AM: We didn’t push it, we didn’t force it. We just write what we feel when we feel it.  So if you’re happy with your music and the stuff you put out, you can find people that enjoy it. It’s a great feeling if they are, but you should just be happy with what you put out. It’s like your art piece.

CC: Before your album came out, you went on these tours you all referred to as the “you hate your life tours…”
AJ: I think a lot of the tours we did before was just trying to make fans for ourselves so we could sorta have a fan base when the CD came out. We still see kids that we met during the Cobra Starship tour. It was important. I mean we were on that tour four months before the CD came out.
AM: That and I also think that when you record a record like that touring is a good way to not only develop fans but practice and grow as a band. After recording the CD we needed to practice and touring was our way to do that.

CC: You just finished your own headlining tour…
AM: It was fun. We were playing the smaller type of stages and people were there to see us which was pretty cool.

CC: Now you’re playing an arena tour with Panic At The Disco…
AM: This is the ultimate fantasy.
AJ: We’re super fortunate and lucky
AM: yeah we gotta be lucky.
AJ:  I think the best part for us was the catering. Probably ‘cause we’re in the catering room now. But they rotate meals everyday and when you’re used to going to the gas station it’s nice.

CC: *laughs* Nothing to do with playing with some of your favorite bands…just food
AJ: Well food is important
AM: Well, that’s one aspect of it. But the food is good
AJ: Panic is like our family. They’re really nice guys. It’s amazing that they decided to put us in a tour like this.
AM: I’ve been listening to Dashboard Confessional for years. To hang out and tour with him is amazing. It’s like now they’re not fake people, they’re our friends.

CC: So let’s talk about your fans…
AM: Our fans
AJ: We have great fans.
AM: We have a fan that flies from Canada to every tour. Wherever we are she comes and it’s awesome. She’s basically our friend now. We’re lucky
AJ: A lot of our fans feel like they know us – I don’t know if it’s like that with every band or because we’re younger.  We really try to spend time with them. I know on this tour it’s hard. I know most people are probably saying we’re such sellouts and what not. But honestly our van is parked behind like three sets of fences.
AM: It’s not like the usual venues that we play where they can just walk out the door and we’re right there.
AJ: You have to get through like six security guars…
AM: Yeah we can’t even get back to our van because all these people come up and are like “got you credentials?!!!” “where’s your pass?!?!?”
AJ: If I want to go outside and talk to fans, I might as well go put on my jogging suit  and go run a mile ‘cause it takes you that long to get there.
AM: It’s crazy that people say that we’re “selling out” because they don’t know how it is behind the curtain. So it kind of sucks and I wish I could explain it to them. But with bigger bands like Dashboard and Panic, it’s not that they don’t want to go out and sign. Like if Brandon Urie walked out, he would probably get raped. They can’t go out there, they’d die.
AJ: And if you have a group of like 60 kids, you can’t just say hi and take a picture with one person. If people don’t want to make a 3 hour sacrifice to talk to everyone they automatically become the asshole. Which I personally don’t understand. The fans that truly know us know that when we can hang out with them, we do. I would like to think that we make an effort to do that. And next tour we’ll probably go back to the smaller venues, and we’ll be doing that again. So I have no idea why they would even say that…
AM: That and kids probably think we’re in a bus…no we’re still in our van. So when you’re on a bus tour the drives are longer – minimum six to ten hours. So we leave the venue at midnight if we’re lucky. Then we have to drive all night to check in at the venue at 11 am. So this just repeats until we have an off day. By the time we get to the venue we have this schedule and we honestly have no time …

CC: So you mentioned future tours for a bit…what are you guys doing after this?
AJ: After this tour, we’re doing two weeks of Plain White Ts. Then we’re home for December and a little bit of January.
AM: Then we’re going overseas to Japan and the UK. We went to Japan in September and it was amazing. 

CC: So you’re touring? Opening?
AJ: Yeah we’re opening for Matchbox 20

CC: yeah right…
AJ: No just kidding.
AM: I don’t even know who we’re opening for.
AJ: Yeah we don’t even know. But it should be incredible.
AM: It’s fun. To get off a plane in a completely different country and play there. The fans in Japan were crazy. We had people waiting in our hotels, all they long.

CC: I don’t mean this in a bad way but they actually liked The Cab that much?
AJ: Oh yeah.
AM: I knew what you mean, it was weird. We did not expect that at all.
AJ: We got there as an opening band and we were happy just to play there. We played two packed shows in Japan. They knew every word to every song.
AM: The fans there, they jump. Doesn’t matter if it’s a slow song or a fast song, but they jump the entire time and they clap and freak out. As soon as you’re done they clap and then they go completely silent and stare at you.
AJ: Yeah we’re excited to go back.





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