The Appleseed Cast returned to New York City on April 28th, 2011 on the tail end of a six-week tour.  A band with nearly 15 years under their belts, The Appleseed Cast brings the listener a more polished, mature emo sound — the guitars are at the front, and the vocals are peppered in along dramatically building solos and very powerful transitions. Founding members Christopher Crisci and Aaron Pillar put on a great performance alongside local New York favorites A Great Big Pile of Leaves and Two Lights. I spoke to Aaron from The Appleseed Cast before the show to talk a little bit about what the band has been up to.

Can you talk a little bit about the name The Appleseed Cast and how you came up with it?
We initially called ourselves “December’s Tragic Drive” back in 1997 — that’s actually the second lyric off a Sunny Day Real Estate record. So our label who put out our first record was like, “I’m not gonna tell you what to do, or what not to do. But you’re going to get pigeonholed for the rest of your life.”  So, we had about three days to figure it out — we threw some stuff around, but to make a long story short we had a website with a green apple on it. It was a weird image, so we were like, “Appleseed.” That’s awesome and that sounds cool. Oh wait, it’s a Japanese anime movie. And we didn’t want to get in trouble, so we came up with The Appleseed Cast. If there is a secret meaning to it all, Chris [Crisci, the other founding member] has never let me know.

How is the tour going? I believe you guys kicked off the tour at SXSW.
Yes, that’s where we started; we were down there for a couple of days.  That was a lot of fun. I think not playing would probably be pretty cool, but it was really crazy, way too many people for my taste. Couldn’t get into anything. But it was fun. We stayed outside of town at a friend’s house. Then we did the West Coast — it was cold and rainy the whole time. I won some money in Reno. Now we’re on the East Coast part, which is nice. It’s closer, the drives aren’t as long. You can hit all the Atlantic coast cities quickly.

What about playing regular shows, compared to festival shows — what is your preference?
Regular shows. The festival thing is really fun, and we’ve done a few from time to time. But it’s definitely kind of strange. I could see where, if you were doing it a lot, all year long, it would be great — [you can make] better money and not be [on the road] as much. The last one that I was at I got to catch Cap’n Jazz play, so that was pretty cool. So I can’t complain.

What about your secret recording compound in the middle of Kansas — can you talk about that, and what the recording process is like?
Well it’s Pro Tools for the most part. I mean, we have a bunch of little pieces of things that we record at our own houses. We record basically in Chris’s basement. He works out of a community college in Kansas City, so we get to use that space for some drums and stuff. The process is that we usually get together twice a week for two or three hours. If it’s rehearsal for a tour we try to mess around. If we have time we’ll write, if someone has an idea. There is stuff that’s on the new EP that’s live; a lot of that is live with some overdubs. There is a song on the new EP which is a 14-minute-long jam and that’s all recorded live. I really dig it — it’s low-fi, but it sounds full.

The Appleseed Cast has been together for close to 15 years. How do you think your sound has changed throughout the years?
Well, I think we got a lot better, which is funny, because it seems like the better I get, the more I want to do. But at the the same time I [can be] sloppier sometimes. You know, [trying] new things, making noise. We both have a lot of love for making noise. Judging by where the new stuff is now we’re definitely trying to capture the “live show” experience in our recordings.

What’s coming out next? I know you are releasing an EP named The Middle States. What’s the deal with the name?
The Middle States EP is out June 4th. It’s talking about the Midwest. There are a lot of assumptions about the Midwest that we hear sometimes; not even that we’re ass-backwards, but sort of like it doesn’t really matter. Whatever decisions that are made in the big city are obviously more important, and, in some ways, I think there is a lot of truth to that. There are a lot of things that happen on the East and West Coast that don’t happen in the Midwest. But people will also be very surprised about the super high quality of life, and there’s a ton of cool shit to do. And half of our friends all moved to Williamsburg and then moved back, or live in both places. Everybody we know always comes back. This is kinda of our way of saying we represent the middle states.