It’s All Coming Alive: An interview with David Cook of My Favorite Highway

It’s Tuesday at 1:00 pm, and Elie and I are sitting in a small room at a round table with her laptop, a microphone, and lots of papers in front of us. Dave strolls in, apologizing for being late before we begin chatting about werewolves, bandannas, and Halloween costumes. “I dressed up like the dude from Chariots of Fire. I wore a white undershirt and really short shorts. But I was like, nine,” he adds, quickly, laughing, “And I hummed the theme song.”
The casual hour we spent chilling together gave us more than enough material and insight for the interview. And without further ado, we at RosesForAshes.com are proud to present our exclusive interview with David Cook.

Let’s go back a few years to November of 2004. How did My Favorite Highway begin?
I was supposed to go to Belmont University. I didn’t get in, so I was like, ‘Well, I guess I’ll go back home and live with my parents for a while.’ Will had called me, like, a week before and was like, ‘We should start a band.’ And I was, like, ‘Yeah, that’d be awesome, but I’m going to be in Nashville.’ And then that didn’t work out, and I called him back and was like, ‘Yeah, I’m going to be here for a while… You want to start that band?’

How did Brian and Chris L. get involved?
Will knew Brian and Chris at that point, and I knew Chris because we’d played together that summer. But I didn’t know Brian yet. So Chris, Will, and I got together in January and started practicing, and that’s how it all started.

And then you met Brian?
We played our first show. It was a Battle of a Bands at Will and Chris’s high school, and we needed a guitarist so we brought Brian in. And he started playing with us, and then we were like, ‘Hey, Brian, want to be in the band?’

How did you come up with your band name?
Will and I came up with the name along the way. We were in this phase where we were being really sarcastic all the time. Whenever something bad happened we were, like, ‘That’s my favorite thing ever.’ And we were driving one day in really bad rush hour traffic, and I was, like, ‘This is my favorite highway right now… That’s a good bad name,’ and it kind of stuck.

You all worked a lot with Chris Pittman in the beginning, right? How was he involved?
We were, like, ‘Chris should be our manager,’ and he was representing us at first, but… I don’t know what happened. We said it was going to happen. Then it never really did happen, and we were, like, whatever [laughs].

And you have your own cause, Make Tolls Fair. Where did that come from?
Have you guys ever watched Coldplay? Well, Chris Martin always writes ‘Make Trade Fair’ on his hand when he plays. And one day I was joking around and, like, ‘What’s an issue we have here? Oh, tolls. Tolls suck,’ cause I was driving on the toll road all the time, and they kept getting more expensive. And one day we were all driving talking about it, and we had a camera so we shot a video of Bobby improving this thing. It’s just an inside joke.

Bobby hasn’t always been your drummer. You began with Chris L., and then suddenly Bobby was playing… Can we ask what happened there?
Chris is our good friend. But what happened was, the band was starting to take off more and more, and we felt like we were going in a different direction than Chris was. He really wanted to focus on school, and we felt like touring was right around the corner. So it’s something we thought about and prayed about and felt it was the best decision at the time.

What about Andy, is he going to stick around?
Andrew’s not actually in the band. After the new record was released, we realized there [were] a lot more guitars on the new record, and we thought from an entertainment stand point it’d be better if I just sang. So we knew Andrew was a good guitarist, so we were like, ‘Let’s bring in another guy.’ And Andrew’s in school right now, so he wasn’t ready to commit full time to a band if we were touring, but he’s, like, ‘Hey, as long as you guys are playing, and I’m available, I’ll play with you guys whenever you want.’ He’s been playing with us since August. Warped Tour was his first show with us, but he’s not actually in the band.

Including Andrew, how many bandannas do you think you all own?
I’d say 17, maybe? No, 25. Andrew has a different colored bandanna for every shirt he wears - he color coordinates.

Time for a standard question. What inspires you when you write songs?
Everything inspires a song. I write songs about everything. Love, loss, personal frustration, all kinds of stuff. A lot of them were inspired by a relationship I had. One of my songs ‘You’re Making It Come Alive’ is inspired by a book by Bob Dylan, just by some quotes by him. That’s actually one of my favorite songs I’ve written just because of the story behind it.

What’s the story?
Basically, it’s just talking about how Bob Dylan, when he was starting out. Every band he was playing with would get taken away from him. Like, someone else would hire that band away from him. And he was really frustrated with this, where he was in his music, and he was playing this show at a local convention center (I’m probably screwing up this story completely). He was really frustrated and felt like no one was paying attention to him. And then this big famous wrestler at the time named Gorgeous George came in wearing this huge fur coat with his whole entourage of other wresters and beautiful women. And he came by the stage where Bob Dylan was playing, and Bob thought he saw him say, ‘You’re making it all come alive.’ And Bob Dylan said that in the midst of his frustration and discouragement, ‘That’s what I thought I saw him say, and it doesn’t matter if he really said or didn’t say, it’s what I needed to hear.’ Sometimes that’s all it takes to motivate you - when someone recognizes you doing the thing just for the sake of doing it.

You’re Making It Come Alive seems to be pretty personal.
It was a time when I was really frustrated. I wanted to get out of Virginia… that song, for me, is just about escaping.

It sounds like you write a lot of the music. Do other band members contribute?
If someone’s got a good idea, we take it, and we write with it. But most of the time I write the songs - the music, a melody, then lyrics.

Are there any occasions where one of the other band members has contributed significantly to a song?
For ‘Worst Way to Retaliate,’ Brian wrote all the music for that one and then brought it in. We thought it was kind of fun so I took it home and wrote a melody and lyrics.

We’re curious about our namesake, Roses For Ashes. Where did it come from?
I didn’t really write that song… It was from my old band, ‘Instance of This,’ in Pittsburgh. My friend and I both sang lead vocals, and I kind of helped him write that song, but he wrote way more than I did. When My Favorite Highway first started out, we didn’t have a lot of songs so we used songs from my old band.

What is it about to you?
I think the song is just about growing up, the frustrations of growing up, and realizing life won’t be as easy as it was when you were fifteen.

The big question is when are you going to get signed? Last summer you played a whirl of showcases.
Yeah, we played a showcase for Capitol in LA, and we played a showcase for Epic and Virgin in New York. Capitol wasn’t interested at the time. But we got great responses from Epic, but when they took it to the president of the record company, they passed because they said we sounded too much like Cartel. And Cartel’s on their label so I guess they didn’t want to sign us. But we’re still shopping through a lot of different labels, and our lawyer’s in contact with a bunch of different record companies. The nice thing about record labels is they always change their staff around. So you just wait a little bit, they switch around, and then you go back. They don’t remember who you are.

Are you holding out for a major record label?
I guess you could say we are. We have some larger labels interested right now, and you’re not supposed to say who they are cause that can kind of blow things. We’ve had a lot of major labels interested, and we want a major label deal. We feel like that would fit us better. But we’ve had interest from a lot of smaller indie labels that I’m sure you guys are familiar with, and if the major label thing doesn’t work out, we’ll probably go that route. But right now we’re pretty confident the major label thing will happen.

And of course, the other big question is when will you start touring?
Right now that’s hard to do, because it involves a van and a trailer, and that costs a lot of money. It’s something we want to do. But instead of going out and getting on the road, and playing really small shows for nobody and no money, and burning ourselves out, we feel like right now the best thing to do is play shows on the weekends in different states. It’s easier to do. And Bobby and Andrew are in school, and it’s hard with them being at school to be on tour. I think once we get signed or sign with a booking agency that can get us legitimate tours and stuff like that is when we’ll start touring real, full time.

There are some people dying for you to come to the West Coast...
Jacqueline?

Yeah.
[Laughs] She’s nuts, she’s flying to the Jammin Java show. She’s great, she’s hilarious, I talk to her all the time.

Do you guys have any traditions or pre-show rituals?
We’ll drink Throat Coat sometimes. Brian, Andrew, and I will always warm up our vocals. We go in the back and do scales and pray. That’s pretty much it. We get anxious because we hate waiting to play so we start freaking out. We don’t get nervous any more - we just get anxious to play.

Bands breaking up seem to be the rage right now. Transition, Acceptance, and now This Day & Age. What are your thoughts?
Being in a band is really frustrating; it’s like a marriage, just being married to five people at the same time. I know Transition was together for a long time, and I’ve never met a harder working band. I grew up with those guys. I used to play with Transition, my old band used to open for them before Dan was even in the band, when Steve used to be the lead singer. Those guys worked so hard, but a lot of bad stuff happened: their booking agency dropped them and their label was having financial problems, stuff like that. That’s really frustrating for a band, when you’re trying to make progress and you’re not getting anywhere, and you’re losing ground, and losing money. Sometimes if it’s not working out, bands just call it quits. Like with Acceptance. They got bumped up, they got signed to Columbia or whatever, but they weren’t selling records, and that’s frustrating too.

Does it bother you?
It’s just kind of how bands work, I mean I hope My Favorite Highway will be a band forever, but eventually, you know it has to come to an end at some point. It doesn’t last forever. And if you think about it, the songs live on forever. It’s just the name that ends. The music lives on.