Who's in the current lineup and what to they do?

Lauren: Fid - guitar/vocals
Lauren - guitar/vocals
Mikey - drums
Tim Burke- bass
Beavie, Walter, Leroy - pawclaps

You guys are touring down to the Fest this year with the Gaslight Anthem, how did that come about?

Lauren: We've known the guys in the Gaslight Anthem for a long time and they invited us onto those shows. We're glad to have the opportunity to play some larger shows with our friends and I'm excited to be on the tour, if only for a handful of shows. I think their tour is separate from a normal Fest route, so we're going to have to drive from Chicago to Tampa for the pre-fest show at Transitions.

Is this the second year you've played the Fest? What do you like most about it?

Lauren: This is actually our fourth year playing the Fest. The past two years were probably two of the best shows we've ever played. Having so many people from other states all in one place makes for an amazing crowd. Seeing friends from around the country and getting to hang out for a whole weekend is easily a major highlight of my year. It's like a big family reunion…and Radon.

Tim: The shows at Fest are more of an added bonus to me. I love fest because it's makes our whole world that much smaller. We're lucky enough to be from the New Jersey/New York music scene and there are more bands than you can shake a stick at for us to see and play with. So when Fest rolls around on top of all of our buds from home being around, we get to see our friends from the rest of the country and in some cases, the world. Everyone's just there trying to have a good time. Last year Fid and I wound up putting up our (now) friend Daniel from Manchester, England a few days and then we let him stay in our house for like 4 days after we left for tour. We didn't even know the dude, we just knew he was like minded kid who needed a place to crash and hoped he wouldn't steal all our stuff. That sums up fest to me perfectly.

That's awesome. Tim, my band stayed at that house with Daniel and Jay Insult I think a couple days after you guys left after we rolled out of the sketchy place where we were originally supposed to stay and ran into them at a bar, then a few days later in Gainesville at an after party/show, Daniel went out of his way to help us out with finding a place to stay at like 3 am. Who are you guys excited to see this year at the Fest?

Lauren: To reiterate…Radon. Also, Cheap Girls. "Find Me a Drink Home" is one of the best LPs I've ever heard. Old Growth, from Portland, is this great indie/southern rock-y band that I can't get enough of and am very excited to see.

Tim: Without trying to sound like a commercial, Cheap Girls, They write the catchiest songs ever. Also, since they haven't played since April, I can't wait to see Cheeky again. Now that The Ergs! are gone they're one of the few bands that still get me dancing at every show. Also, FUCKING SNUFF IS PLAYING!

I think I counted 14 releases on your MySpace that you've released since 2006, and you manage to tour semi-regularly, and some of you also play in other bands, how do you balance all that with day jobs, relationships and other basic aspects of life? What do the members do for a living outside of the Measure?

Lauren: Well, we definitely record more than we tour, and it's our personal lives and jobs that have kept us from touring as much as we would have liked in the past. It's difficult to balance everything but I think we've been doing a better job of that lately. I actually quit my day-job as a graphic designer and now work completely freelance, partially to be able to tour more. I'm self-employed at this point and being able to work while traveling, with a band or otherwise, makes touring a lot easier for me now.

How did you get interested in graphic design and how did you go about pursuing it as a job? How does doing it freelance compare to doing it as a regular day job?

Lauren: I majored in Illustration in college, and graphic design is a good way to actually get a job and make a living at visual communication. After graduating I did art direction and layout work for a bunch of magazines, both music related and otherwise. It made a lot of sense at the time, and I still volunteer to do layout work regularly for Razorcake. I've been able to combine all the drawing stuff I do and graphic design into something that lets me be self-employed, which is pretty amazing. It's pretty stressful and definitely took me a lot of work to get to the point where I had enough clients to quit my day job. But it's incredibly rewarding, gives me a lot more time to work on my own projects, and obviously affords me the flexibility to tour. I feel like I have my own life now. It's really awesome.

Tim: I go to college somewhat regularly, I would have graduated by now, but I'd always rather tour than study. Some things can wait. On top of that I do random man with a van jobs and work terrible part time jobs and all of the other bands I work in are side projects to this one so The Measure' always takes precedent.

What are you studying and what got you interested in it? How has being in a touring band affected your education, aside from prolonging it?

Tim: I go to school for Geography. A lot of people think that Geography is just studying maps to know the locations of all of land masses and the names of rivers but it's way more involved than that. It's more knowing why things are than where they are. There are a lot of outside/unseen forces that are responsible for shaping the world that most people don't take into consideration. I guess, more specifically, my concentration would be food studies and mainly, access to food.

If anything, I'd say that touring has given me a lot of opportunities to talk to kids with similar interests, which is great because it's sort of a rare thing for me to find. Even in a scene with a such a large Vegan population, most people just don't take the time to learn everything that goes into their food.

Fid: I play in some other bands and bar tend at a pretty sweet place in Greenpoint. And Mikey here, Mikey just makes every band he's in get better, no?

Mikey: That's correct. It certainly doesn't pay, though.

Lauren, you had open heart surgery directly after playing Insubordination Fest in Baltimore this year. Was that something already planned or related to something happening at the fest?