Silversun Pickups Aren't Intimidated by Large-Venue Tour With Muse

When Los Angeles' Silversun Pickups open for British juggernaut Muse on a two-month North American spring tour, they'll be performing at venues with "center," "garden" and "arena" in the title. This may seem daunting for a band that emerged from the close-knit Silver Lake scene a few years ago, but drummer Christopher Guanlao tells Spinner he and the band aren't phased.

"The bottom line is we want to play to as many people as we can play to," he says. "It doesn't matter if it's 100 people or 50,000. We want to do the best we possibly can and take the band as far as we could. If we can take it further, why not?"

The Pickups are no strangers to playing fests like Lollapalooza, but these upcoming shows will be some of the largest of their career. Guanlao explains the band enjoys being able to alternate from opening for Muse to headlining their own smaller shows, but if the opportunity arose for them to headline their own stadium shows, they wouldn't turn them down.

Not only do the Pickups have a high-profile tour on the horizon, but they've been credited for invigorating the L.A. music scene, something that flatters Guanlao. "Being from L.A., it's very close to my heart," he says. "It's very endearing. I'm not gonna say we singlehandedly revived rock music in L.A -- it was here before and that's how we started -- but it's really cool that people equate us with some sort of revitalization of the L.A. music scene."

All four members grew up near the area of Silver Lake and taught themselves how to play music. "We were all in other bands and we all belonged to groups of people," he says. "We were all friends first then bandmates second. We'd always just go to each other's shows and support each other. If a band broke up another band would emerge with other members of group."

Despite the band's recent Grammy nomination and loss, friends back home still treat the group the same way before their rise in popularity. "It's nice to go back home and mellow out," Guanlao says. "It's not like people are stopping us left and right for pictures or anything." The Pickups plan to tour the rest of the year, but since they're not the type of band that can write songs on the road, it might be a while before they head back into the studio.

"Everything has been one crazy ride," Guanlao gushes. "None of us expected this. We were just happy to get signed and put out a record. I genuinely like the music we play. I don't get too sick of it. It definitely helps if the audience we're playing to is really into it. If they want to hear 'Lazy Eye,' we're not that kind of band yet where we're not going to play our hit song."