UN: I'm almost certain that The Prisoners Dilemma will be a new name to some people, so let's start with a bit of an overused, but totally relevant question. Can you tell us how you guys came together to form TPD?

Travis: Three out of the five of us have known each other for quite a while. Robert and I have been in school together since sixth grade and being that David is his younger brother, we have all had about ten years of being friends. Ernie, the vocalist, responded to an add that we put out in November of 2002. We met up with Ronnie in a similar way when he stepped up on drums for us that next June. Although we started this musical journey when we met Ernie late in 2002, we really didn't begin to find our own music until Ronnie joined to round out the group.

UN: Was is the demo that you guys recorded that got Indianola interested in the band? How have things been working out with the label?

Travis: We recorded our first demo in February of 2003 and made some headway with it on sites such as mp3.com and such. Indianola first found us through this, but to be honest, I don't think that demo was truly representative of us; I can't imagine that Indianola was blown away by it no matter how hard I might try. Later that summer we went on a short tour of some western states with the band Odd Project who were talking with Indianola at the time and when we returned home we went in to record a second demo that we could be proud of. It was this demo that we recorded in October of 2003 that Indianola Records became interested in. We had intended it as just a demo, but they wanted to put it out as a full-length record and we were happy to oblige. Things have been great with Indianola so far. Matt and John, who run the label, are both great guys and seem to care about us beyond just being another band on their label. It sounds corny, but it honestly feels more like a family than just another record label.

UN: Does it seem like things have been coming together pretty fast for the band? The demo was released just last year, and now you have your debut full-length album out. Some bands seem to be around forever before they have the chance to be heard, but everything came together very quickly for TPD. Do you think the fact that the band is original helped people take notice more quickly?

Travis: Things have come along faster than any of us could have expected. We still have a very long way to go, but I never thought we would be even at the point we are right now if you would have asked me a year ago. Sometimes I wish we would have had more time to develop our music before releasing a record, but hopefully we will still have time to do that as we go. I hope that what brings people to notice us is the resulting sound that we get from really enjoying what we are doing. One of the things that we all have in common in the band is that all of us really love creating music and care about what it is that we put together. I like to think that comes through and attracts people to our music.

UN: Handshakes, Hello and Goodbye is the bands debut album, and I'm utterly shocked that a band this early in their career have written an album so mature. How long did the songwriting process take for the album? I think I'm safe to assume that you guys must have taken a long time piecing everything together.

Travis: The album contains songs that vary from being written when we first started in December of 2002, to songs that were finished a month before we recorded the following October. To be honest, we were really learning as we went. There were constant changes to old songs along with creating new songs and getting rid of ones that we thought just didn't cut it anymore. Half of the writing process was for us to learn how to play together as a band. When we went in to record we talked about putting in some tracks to make the record flow together and actually spent some time talking about the track order just because we wanted it to sound almost like a book would read from a musical standpoint with a solid introduction that would flow throughout towards an expansive but satisfying conclusion.

UN: The album name comes from a line in the song A Three Second Excerpt. I was wondering why it was chosen for the album name? Did you guys think it just had a memorable ring to it? I think it works amazingly well as both a lyric as well as an album name.

Travis: One of the reasons I particularly like the name, "Handshakes, Hello and Goodbye", is that it could be taken a couple of different ways depending on how you wanted to look at it. In the song it refers to the fact that brief media spots many times serve as both our introduction and complete summary of cultures, individual peoples or even events that we are not otherwise familiar with. In the absence of personal contact we are left with this "Three Second Excerpt" to define a complicated subject. This ties in with Ernie's general call for awareness throughout the record and at the same time, at least in my mind, calls on us to make life more than just a series of greetings and departures, but rather to find genuine love in the face of a stranger you might otherwise ignore out of habit or fear. Also, some of the pessimists in the band thought that if for some reason we never made another album, it would be a great name for our only one...haha, well actually I just thought of that now...but it would be.

UN: For the life of me I can't figure out the artwork, care to elaborate on the meaning behind it? I was somewhat thinking it might be an anti-television theme, but that doesn't seem to fit the lyrical approach to the band at all.

Travis: First of all, we would like to say that Caleb Olsen of Bootcore Grafix did a great job on the layout. He came up with a couple of great looking layouts and I think we pestered him a little bit to get what we wanted to come across in it. Because we took the title of the album from the song "A Three Second Excerpt" we also went with a similar theme for the cover layout. It is not so much of an anti-television theme as it is a reminder of where the majority of us get our information. Ernie definitely has developed an aversion to the collection of major media channels and wanted to call attention to the fact that so much of our knowledge experience is based on what is given to us these same media channels. Whether they are fair or unfair in the portrayal of events, it is certain that they possess a tremendous amount of power.

UN: A few of the songs are re-recorded songs from the bands out of print demo. Are the songs reworked at all? I haven't had the chance to check out the demo, would you say there was a big progression between the demo and the debut?

Travis: Both "Revolver" and "For Safety Reasons" were recorded on the original demo with our former drummer Nick Canale who we cannot thank enough for being there to start this musical journey with. As far as song structure, we rehashed the last minute or so of "For Safety Reasons" while "Revolver" stayed fairly similar with only a few vocal changes and guitar nuances, but they sound very different because of the differing styles of the two drummers who recorded each time. While Nick was a great guy and a talented musician, his heart belonged to a style of music that didn't really work with what we were playing. He now plays with a band called Less Pacific that he fits very nicely with, but I think that the two songs came alive when Ronnie added his talent and creative input to them. I think we made a lot of progress from our demo to the album mainly because we recorded that demo only three months after we began playing together. We really didn't have a lot of experience and although we have some talented people in the band who have a knack for picking things up very quickly we simply needed more time to practice and let our ideas grow.

UN: Does it bother you that you'll probably get lumped into the overcrowded "screamo" genre? Of course you do use both clean vocals and screaming, but TPD is much more, I'm not sure if it's the right word, progressive. It would definitely be selling you guys short to lump you into that category.

Travis: It doesn't bother me too much that we will undoubtedly be classified as "screamo". I think most music fans really don't form an opinion about a band until they hear them and even though I think categories in music are becoming over-specialized, I don't think of "screamo" of being so far off when you break it down. I know that it's association with other bands that defines the genre rather than the original meaning of the word, but we definitely try and create music that stirs up emotion and there is no denying that it contains screaming. But yeah, I guess we would want someone to say that we create emotional music containing screaming rather than calling us another "screamo" band while rolling their eyes slightly to express their boredom. But I never pay to much attention to genre labels because I've had enough experience to know that you can find amazing music in any one, no matter what you might first think when you hear what it's being called.

UN: This one is a pretty straight forward question. When I first read the name I was thinking to myself that's an interesting name. Usually if you put some thought into it you can come up with some sort of idea as to what it means, but I'm totally stumped by The Prisoners Dilemma. How did the name come about?

Travis: The name actually comes from a topic in mathematics called Game Theory. The Prisoner's Dilemma is a specific situation in which two prisoners are accused of a crime and have the option of turning on the other one for a less severe sentence. There is a semi-specific reward/consequence matrix in which if a prisoner turns on the other he gets off free while the other one gets 20 years in jail, if neither turns on the other they each receive five years and if both turn on each other they each receive 15 years in jail. This is just a theoretical situation and the significance has nothing to do with any prisoners in any jail, but more to do with the idea of competition in a free-market system. It was Adam Smith's idea that competition would engender the best possible outcome, that it would serve as an invisible hand to aid us in progress, but one look at the consequence/reward matrix of the prisoner's dilemma and you begin to see a flaw in that. It is always in the best interest of both prisoners to turn on the other, regardless of what the other does. When prisoner A turns on his partner he gets no years in prison if prisoner B does not crack and 15 years in prison if he does, while if the prisoner way went the other route and decided not to turn on his partner he would get five years in jail if prisoner B did not turn on him and 20 years in jail if he did. The same is true vice versa. So turning on your partner equates to either 0 or 15 years while not turning yields 5 or 20. In all cases turning is the optimum choice for each prisoner, but it is a different story at the net yield of both prisoners jail time. If they choose rationally, in their individual best interest, they will both turn on each other and yield 30 years of combined jail time, while if they would have stuck together and collectively bargained as a rational group rather than two individuals they would only be in jail for a combined 10 years. In an efficient society behavior should be driven by its effect on the group rather than the individual, but in our society the opposite is true. A society that favors group decision-making is hard to make work on a practical level, but should be aspired to.

UN: What would you say brings out the more experimental side of the band? I don't want to go out on a limb, but it almost reminds me of albums from the 70's. There was always a constant thread throughout the entire album, but each song introduced something new and the songs were lengthier and more intricate.

Travis: Some of the sounds we come up with are a result of us each bringing different musical ideas to the band. Robert and I used to come up with music using synthesizers and MIDI programs just for fun and we decided to bring just a little bit of that with us for the album. We definitely tried to give the album a flow to it; in the past there have been albums that I've really admired for there ability to play through seamlessly like the natural flow of thought and we definitely tried to emulate that.

UN: Are dynamics something you guys discuss when putting together the songs? The transition between the clean and dirty guitars as well as the singing creates quite a contrast. You guys also have a lot of almost atmospheric sections as well. Would you say that contrast is a big part of the Prisoners Dilemma sound?

Travis: Definitely. Dynamics are a big issue with all of us. Any time we start to write a song, the most discussed topic is how the song should flow, where it should build, what should come out of it, how the lyrics affect the intensity of the parts. We want to create songs that are as diverse as our musical personalities and we feel there is no reason why it shouldn't be that way. Some of us love writing these big, spacey, somber sounding parts and others have a hankering for spastic fits of intense sincerity and I think it is the contrast that makes each part effective.

UN: With the debut out will the band be touring more then you have in the past? I believe I read that you guys just went out on a two month tour, but seem to have only a few shows listed on your website for the next month. Can we expect the band to be on tour for most of the summer?

Travis: Yes, we would like to be touring at least half, but hopefully two-thirds of the summer. We completed a two-month U.S. tour in support of the release of the album in early spring and late winter, but we know we need to be touring as much as we can to get our music out there. We have a few things in the works that should be coming up soon, and if all goes well we will be touring for the majority of the summer.

UN: Ideally, what would you want someone to get out of the debut album? Do you want it to affect people the same way albums affected you guys when you were first hearing new bands? It's a memorable thing the first time a new sound rushes your ears. I don't think anything in the world compares to finding a band that moves you.

Travis: Art is a wonderful thing. It has the power to create worlds that take you in and make you think about topics that stretch beyond the everyday humdrum, and sometimes turn the everyday into the sublime, intricate acts that define our existence. We want the listener to come away like someone who has just finished a great novel, feeling like they are seeing the world for the first time, like they have just received some kind of timeless knowledge and are ready to set foot in a brand new existence. We've all had that happen with albums before, when you first hear that one that changes your idea of what music can be, or even when you hear it again for the first time in a while. We would be honored if anyone comes away from our album with that kind of inspiration and joy.