American Authors Say Their Name Is All About Telling Stories.

American Authors are still riding the success of their platinum single "Best Day of My Life" and are gearing up for a European tour that starts next month, followed by a summer tour with OneRepublic.  Now, you may have wondered why a band that creates music, not books, would name themselves American Authors.  According to lead singer Zac Barnett, it's all about telling stories.

"An author doesn't necessarily need to be someone who writes a book or a novel but someone who tells a story through written words," Zack said "We like to consider ourselves authors because we tell our stories through lyrics and through our music."

Okay, that explains the "authors" part of the name. But why "American?"  Zac says it's because the group is like a microcosm of the United States, because the members come from so many different states.

"Before we all met at college in Boston, we came from all over the place," Zac explains. "So, growing up, I split my time between Minnesota and California, our guitar/banjo player James grew up in northern Florida, Matt, our drummer's from Texas and Dave, our bass player, is from New Jersey.  So we just kinda come from all over the country."

"We all had different upbringings, different backgrounds, growing up," he adds. "And the stories that we tell are very heavily influenced by where we all come from."  You can hear those stories on the band's debut album, Oh, What a Life, which is in stores now.

Of course, with a name like American Authors, the band is constantly being asked who their favorite American authors actually are, and Zac says he has a few go-to favorites to answer that question.

"I have a few different ones Jack Kerouac is good," he says, referring to the man who wrote the 1950s classic On the Road.  "There are a couple new ones that I like: Chuck Palahniuk and Chuck Klosterman.  There's a bunch of different people."  

Chuck Palahniuk wrote the novel that became the movie Fight Club.  Klosterman's famous for his collections of comic essays on pop culture topics, including one called Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs.