Signing with RCA Records

By 2002, Nathan and Caleb had received interest from a number of music labels and eventually signed with RCA Records , which initially insisted on putting a band together for the two of them. In an interview with Billboard , however, Nathan outlined how they told RCA, “We don’t want to be Evan and Jaron . We’re going to buy our little brother a bass, he’s a freshman in high school. Caleb will teach himself the guitar, Matthew played guitar when he was 10 and I’ll play the drums. They said, ‘All right, we’ll come down in one month and see you guys. ‘ ” Later in the interview Caleb admitted to the brothers “kidnapping” their cousin Matthew from his hometown in Mississippi for him to join the band. They told his mother that he was only going to be staying for a week but never allowed him to return home. “We locked ourselves in the basement with an ounce of marijuana and literally spent a month down there. My mom would bring us food down”, added Nathan. “And at the end of that month the label people came and we had ‘Molly’s Chambers’, ‘California Waiting’, ‘Wicker Chair’, and ‘Holy Roller Novocaine’.”