As the Plain White T’s learned over the last two years, there’s something unreal about success. One minute you’re sweating your ass off on stage in some dive. The next, your song is 1 and your CD has sold more than a million albums worldwide. One minute you’re listening to “Rubber Soul” on your iPod; the next you’re a Song of the Year nominee at the Grammys and Ringo Starr is saying hi to you. Unreal. Yet staying real is precisely what the Plain White T’s are all about. So on their new Hollywood/Fearless CD, Big Bad World, they passed on the digital bells or whistles. Instead, producer Johnny K pressed the ‘record’ button and the band simply played its heart out.“Our songs in the past had a ‘50’s and ‘60’s influence with classic songwriting structures and harmonies,” says Tom. “This time we decided, rather than punk that out and make it sound modern, we would record as though it could have been done by the Beatles or early Tom Petty. We got to a place where we sounded good live 300 nights a year, so we wanted to capture that.” The Chicago based band, together for a decade, is still on a road of self-discovery. Formed during Tom’s teen years when he saw his life laid out before him at Chicago’s famed Metro club, the band built a steady following over the years and miles. They were invited to the Warped Tour (three times), opened for bands like Jimmy Eat World, and released two indie CDs their 2002 debut, Stop and 2005’s All That We Needed. The band signed with Hollywood Records, releasing Every Second Counts in 2006 and putting “Hey There Delilah” out as a single. The track hit 1 on Billboard and iTunes (becoming one of very few songs ever to log more than 3 million downloads), propelled the CD into a worldwide hit, and earned the band two Grammy nods, Song of the Year and Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals.

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