Meg and Dia Frampton were latecomers to the music game, but they’ve been making up for lost time with their band, the aptly named Meg & Dia.
“We’re in a really good place right now,” Meg Frampton said in a telephone interview. “We just play our music, and we love it. We’re just really the five of us as people on stage, feeling the music.”
The band, formed by the sisters in 2004 when Meg was in high school, is currently composed of the two sisters, drummer Nicholas Price, bassist Jonathan Snyder and lead guitarist Carlo Gimenez. Meg & Dia is signed to Warner Bros. Records and is currently touring the U.S., landing in St. Louis at Fubar tonight at 7.
Meg, raised in the town of St. George, Utah, with her sister, became interested in music when a friend introduced her to a type of music she had never heard before.
“I was just going to a conservative high school in a really conservative little town,” she said. “I went to a local Indie rock show, and, even though the music was really bad, it was my first contact with live music like that.”
Since then, the band has undergone a number of membership changes and has been amassing fans that follow Meg & Dia through their MySpace and frequent tours, but it wasn’t always that way.
“I definitely remember making our own flyers and handing them out,” Frampton said. “We set up our own tours, playing at little coffee shops.”
Part of the process of establishing Meg & Dia on the national music scene involved networking with music industry insiders, at all levels.
“We tried to make a lot of contacts, even the really sketchy ones that you don’t think will go anywhere,” Frampton said. “They usually become the ones that get you places.”
When the band signed with Warner Bros. Records, however, the band really began to take shape.
“I definitely think we’ve stepped up a couple of levels, professionalism-wise,” she said. “We’re starting to feel like a real band.”
Perhaps only a few bands owe more to this Internet age than Meg & Dia. Gimenez, was found by the band through videos he uploaded to YouTube, playing guitar covers of Meg & Dia songs.
“We started to watch this little Filipino man jamming out to all of our songs,” Frampton said. “At the time, we were really crunched for other players. In my head, I was like, ‘This is never going to work,’ but he’s just been great ever since.”
Additionally, the band, set to begin its third stint on the Warped Tour, was booked on its first Warped Tour through the influence of Tom Anderson, creator of MySpace. A fan of Meg & Dia had been using the band’s MySpace page to spam visitor’s pages, and complaints had been submitted to the MySpace administrators, prompting Tom to send them a message.
“Tom from MySpace got a hold of us, and he was like, ‘I was going to delete your MySpace, but I like your music, and I have this record label. I’d like to work with you guys,'” Frampton said,
Though she initially deleted the message, friends encouraged her to make use of the contact. The band was already signed to Warner Bros. Records at the time, but Anderson booked them on their first Warped Tour as the MySpace band three years ago.
As the band has grown and membership has changed over the years, Frampton has found herself eager to reinvent the band’s sound.
“We always have catchy, poppy melodies,” she said. “I think now I want to be more music oriented. I want it to be more Indie or more unique.”
Though excited about the future, Frampton is nervous about taking the next step.
“It’s going to be like starting over,” she said. “Hopefully, it will work out.”
For directions to Fubar, visit www.fubarstl.com
For more information about Meg & Dia including a list of tour dates or to hear a sample of their music visit www.meganddia.com or www.myspace.com/megdia.
