M&D: You [JD] mentioned DJing and you [Michael] also do a lot of DJing — I wanted to know how you're drawing from that, and your other musical and art projects, and putting elements of that into MEN...maybe you could even talk about some of the things you might be leaving behind in starting this project.

JD: Well one thing for me is, DJing helps me to understand what people want to dance to, and what people feel free to, so I think that's one big thing. I also feel like I'm leaving behind a lot in terms of doing what I want to do, and not being afraid of working in certain genres.

MO: I think that this being a guitar heavy band, for me as a guitar player, it's fun to include that in a song that's electronic-based, that's dancey, that's got beats. So...that's cool. (laughter)

GBT: I think it's an opportunity for us to take a lot of different things that we've all done to this new place. It feels really expansive, and there's a lot of opportunities to explore things. We talk about making a whole different set that would be a very different energy/experience. I think there's a lot of possibility with what we might do.

M&D: How crazy was it launching a tour without really having played (live) as a band before?

JD: I felt like it was the most natural thing ever, I don't know why. A while before we did it I said, "Ok, this is how we're going to do it, I swear this is the best way to do it" For a while I feel like you guys were like....

GBT: “We should really play a show, a show for our firends before we go,” and JD really resisted.

MO: Our friends were like, “What, you're going to play in France before you play in Brooklyn? What the hell...”

GBT: But it was...it was perfect. It was really great to play for strangers. We had been rehearsing for months, just the three of us...so it was incredible to just be on the stage, and figure out our positions and our relations with one another already on the stage with an audience, all together there in that moment. It wasn't as predetermined, you know?

MO: ...It was an easier ground for us to develop as a band rather than in a place feeling all the pressure of friends, reviewers, bloggers, etc.

JD: Well, also our shows were 100% queer, and almost all of them were promoted by queer people. So a lot of the people at our shows were queer, and that was really amazing. I think that in the States, there isn't the same kind of thing.

M&D: Yeah, from what I see around, I don't feel like you're being billed as a queer band. I mean, it's not like doesn't come up at the end of the paragraph, but it's not what people are hooking into for whatever obvious (or not so obvious) reasons.

MO: It depends, some times it is...tonight feels like a queer party.