Exclusive: Hot Chelle Rae interview

Hot Chelle Rae made a visit to Scranton Saturday to perform at Springfest May 4.  

The Nashville, Tennessee band was able to give an exclusive interview to answer questions about their career and lives. The following is a Q-and-A with Jamie Follesé and Nash Overstreet from Hot Chelle Rae.

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Q: Ok. Are you excited to be performing at the University of Scranton?

Nash Overstreet: Absolutely. Not just because we're massive fans of The Office, but Scranton's always been good. A lot of fun here, good fans, so it's gonna be a fun day.

Jamie Follesé: Super pumped. I've actually never spent a lot of time here. We kind of drove around this morning. Got to check it out. It's really beautiful and it’s going to be a really fun show tonight.

Q: Where are you all from? And where did you meet?

Nash Overstreet: We're originally from Nashville. We met through this music store, I was working in high school and his dad [Jamie's Dad] was a customer I guess. And then when the band was getting started his older brother Ryan and I started writing songs and kind of putting some pieces together. And the rest snowballed from there.

Jamie Follesé: I was, you know, 12, watching them rehearse together. Thinking to myself, I really wanna be in this one day and it's just so happened the one piece that they ended up getting rid of was the drummer and so all worked out ok.

Q: Where does the name Hot Chelle Rae come from?

Nash Overstreet: There is a combination blend of things, but the fun version is this moment of me getting catfished by some girl who took a bunch of supermodel’s photos and made accounts for Snoop Dogg and Pete Wentz and Taylor Swift on Myspace and found me. Being nobody—we hadn't even started the band yet. I was 17 and [she] starts catfishing me. This lasts into the band. And we've kind of attributed the name “Chelle Rae” to be her legendary immortality.

Q: That's crazy. What’s your favorite song to perform?

Nash Overstreet: I mean, I'm gonna go with the obvious answer. “Tonight Tonight” is a blast. It's always fun to have everybody jumping along, singing along. Sometimes we even get a bunch of people on stage with us turns into a nice little party. If everything gets messed up it's the last song of the set, so you know it's a good time every time.

Jamie Follesé: His answer was cheating. But I'm going to go with “I Like It Like That.” Which is kind of also cheating, but ok.

Q: If you had to define your music with genres, which ones would they be and why?

Nash Overstreet: Man, this is a constant struggle for any artist and any band. Everyone wants to know what genre you are and it's you know, we play pop music. We write pop music. It's pop rock because there's guitar and drums, but at the end of the day we just like experimenting and playing with whatever makes the song the best.

Jamie Follesé: Yeah. Genres, are a thing that can kind of pigeonhole you a little bit. So we try to just have fun with our music and wherever it takes us is where it goes. Which is nice.

Q: What advice do you have for anyone who wants to pursue music as a career or just music in general?

Nash Overstreet: Work with people who are better than you. Who have a lot more experience. Ask questions from anybody you can. Do it a lot and often. Don't be precious. Just bombard the world with what you make and somebody might hear it and it might snowball into something else.

Jamie Follesé: Get ready to proudly fail. A lot and be prepared. Just keep going and persevere when it feels like it's not going well.

Thank you Hot Chelle Rae for your Springfest performance. Thank you Degy Entertainment for approving the interview.

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