Indie singer Dia gets Petty, focuses on group’s music

By John Benson

As one-half of indie-pop group Meg & Dia, which is part of the Warped Tour’s Wednesday show at the Post-Gazette Pavilion and July 9 date at the Time Warner Cable Amphitheater at Tower City, singer Dia Frampton said there’s a skeleton in her closet that’s she no longer trying to hide. This is despite the fact the skeleton in question – Tom Petty – is decidedly the antithesis of Warped Tour cool.

“He’s pretty much my favorite artist in the entire world,” said Frampton (no relation to classic rocker Peter Frampton), calling from Los Angeles. “I was telling my band that when I’m not recording or touring, I’m just going to go join a Tom Petty cover band on a cruise ship and hang out. It’s kind of funny, as I’m growing older I’m starting to like all of the music that I pretended to like when I was a kid to be cool. Like Tom Petty, my dad was big into him, and I was just like, ‘Oh cool, Dad, that’s awesome. What are you going to put on next, The Eagles? I want to listen to some like punk band.’

“And finally now that I’m 21, I’ve started to really listen to the stuff my dad listened to all of the time. I’ve picked up The Eagles, Boston, The Beach Boys. When I was like 16 or 17 there would be kids who buy Bob Marley T-shirts at Hot Topic and don’t really know about him at all. That’s totally me. But now if I ever get a tattoo, it would be Tom Petty.”

Oddly enough, Mr. Petty was actually the source of if not tension then a disagreement within Meg & Dia, which features Frampton’s sister Meg on guitar.

“We were recently talking about cover songs and I said we should cover ‘American Girl’ by Tom Petty,” Frampton said. “The band was like, ‘All the kids won’t know it or appreciate it,’ which kind of made me sad. I’m just like, ‘We should play it because we want to play it.’

“I never want to go with the crowd too much, to cater to them to that extent. So I’m hoping for future tours, we’ll be able to tour with people who draw an older crowd that is more our age. I think we’ve hopefully opened the door to do different festivals like Coachella or Bonnaroo. We’d be really excited to do something like that in the future.”

With a pop-punk aesthetic that early on featured hints of emo guitars, the rock act recently released its polished third studio effort “Here, Here and Here.” Frampton believes there’s a direct correlation between the band’s more mature sound and the fact the group members have become more comfortable working in the recording studio.

The results are the spooky, drum loop-fueled “Inside Your Head” and the string section-enhanced title track. At the very least, the material is not your quintessential Warped Tour-sounding songs.

“Yeah, I feel the same way,” Frampton said. “It’s probably just in general. I never know how we’re going to go over with the Warped Tour crowd. We’ve always kind of stood out, and we usually play just before or after a really hard-core band. So it’s kind of an interesting switch. But it’s a big tour, and it gives everybody different kinds of music they can check out.”

So even though this is Meg & Dia’s third appearance on the Warped Tour, is she worried “Here, Here and Here” material will fall on deaf ears?

“It is a concern but at the same time, it’s kind of exciting,” Frampton said. “I hope whoever comes out will take the time to see us, walk around and there are so many different bands you can see. So hopefully the people who check us out will appreciate us and if they don’t, then they’ll go check out something else. Hopefully we’ll gain some fans and just look on the positive side of everything, I guess.”