Tampa Calling

For years, the annual Warped Tour has been more or less a knucklehead boys club on wheels — with music in between — but in recent years more female-dominated bands have been cracking the lineup. Count among them Meg & Dia, the two easy-on-the-eyes, Utah-bred sisters Frampton (no relation to Peter) — Meg, 23, and Dia, 21 — and their three male bandmates.

The group has been on three Warped jaunts, including this year’s.

Meg & Dia is supporting its first major label release, Here, Here and Here (released April 21 on Sire), an accomplished collection of confessional and sometimes confrontational (and irrepressibly catchy) modern rock that takes more stylistic liberties than most bands in the pop-punk/emo realm.

Dia (foreground in photo), who sings lead and splits songwriting duties with Meg and the other band members, called from the tour bus and proved to be a lively, open interviewee. Here’s an edited version of our conversation.

What are the good parts and the bad parts about Warped?

(Coughs) Well one of the bad parts is getting sick and not being able to get better. We don’t have a hotel, a place to take a hot bath. I’ve been cleaning out my nose with a netti pot. I’d give anything for a hotel right now, a quiet room. Yesterday I had a crazy fever.

Video after the jump.

Meg & Dia play the Warped Tour on Sun. July 26 at Vinoy Park, St. Petersburg.

You’re at least in a tour bus, right?

We have a bus, thank goodness. I can’t see how people do it in vans.

So the good stuff about Warped …

We get to see a lot of good bands. We were on the tour in ’06 and ’07, and it’s like a family reunion. The crew, the stagehands, everyone is really nice here. We’re hanging out with them more than anyone. Warped is real earth-friendly, too. Kids are easily influenced, so they can walk by charities and maybe stop in.

But I see 12-year-olds on their way to the Trojan condom tent. I mean, it’s good to be safe, but when you’re 11? “But it’s safe.” I wanna say, “No it’s not!” I guess I’m somewhat conservative, but that’s too young. There’ll be a punk rock band telling the crowd to put their middle finger in the air, and I’m like, “Cool — punk rock.” And then I look around and there’s little kids watching. It’s like, “Oh no.”

I always think of Warped as a boys club. How are you relating to all the guys?

Well, I met this guy in a band the other day, and he was like, “You should come by; I make these awesome whiskey and ginger ale drinks. So I was like, “Sounds good.” And then he looks at me real serious and says, “I have a girlfriend. I just wanna be friends. Just so you know that.”

That’s a strange kind of role reversal. You tend to think of the guys as predators. Here’s a guy who wants to make sure you’re not a predator.

There are all these guys bro’in’ down, gambling, smoking. When I sit down I feel weird. It’s a little hard for me to make friends in that scene when if I talk to anybody they think I’m hitting on them. I have made some cool friends, though. This one guy and I started exchanging books. I gave him a Buddhist book — I’m not a Buddhist, but I’m interested — and he gave me a Kurt Vonnegut book. We’ve started a little book club. We’re the nerds on the tour.

You’re singing on Here, Here and Here has a real edge. There’s an element of confrontation and anger there. Where does that come from?

I think the spirit of my vocals comes out most heavily because I wrote a lot of the lyrics on the record. And the lyrics really meant something to me. On the previous albums, the lyrics came from a lot of literature and books. This one was more about my personal life, and what I was going through at the time. I was still really bitter, and you can hear that some times [in the singing]. I didn’t feel I had to make the vocals nice, like pretty girls have to sound pretty.

What were you bitter about?

I was going through a very bad breakup. It was the first time I’d been alone since I was 15. Ever since I was 15, I always had a boyfriend. I’d break up with a boyfriend and find another one instantly, just because I would go hunting for it. Sometimes I wouldn’t even like them very much. But we could at least lean on each other.

It was the first time I had been alone for a long time — not having anyone to call, eating by yourself, people staring at you. Before, the band would say, “Why don’t you just be single for a while, relax.” In just about the last month, I’m become happy being alone.

You know what’s going to happen, right? You’ll find a new boyfriend, probably tonight.

Thanks for the jinx.

How does the creative dynamic work with Meg? She is, after all, the older sister.

I think whatever animosity there was has been ridden out. She’s been real supportive. She plays guitar and piano. She’ll add stuff to my songs to bring them to life. She’s real positive, but also critical. “What if you tried this?” Or sometimes, “You should really just get rid of that.”

Has being professional partners affected the sister bond.

We’re still very close.

So it sounds like your parents don’t have to worry themselves to death with their daughters out on the road. You seem like a level-headed pair.

They’ve always been real supportive. Meg and I are just really big nerds. It’s kind of ridiculous when people come and talk to us. We talk about books or some nerdy movie.

Have you come under pressure from the marketing people to use your sex appeal in a way that might make you uncomfortable?

We don’t wanna be like Britney Spears. We’re interested in being more — I don’t wanna say classy, because I don’t think showing skin is always a bad thing. But we’re just nerdy and kind of keep to ourselves.

Meg & Dia, “Monster”

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