Bring on the Jonas Brothers

They’ve got hit records. They’ve starred in movies and on TV. And they’ve got perfect hair.

Ah, life is good for the Jonas Brothers. And on Sunday, the Pied Pipers of squealing ’tweener girls will be back in Tacoma, headlining the Tacoma Dome with cuts from their brand, spankin’ new album, “Lines, Vines and Trying Times.” Kevin, Joe and Nick Jonas held a conference call shortly after the tour was announced. And, from the transcript, here’s some of what they had to say about their new sound, having fans in the White House and getting ‘dissed on “South Park”:

Nick on musical influences: Some of our biggest influences in the writing process are people like Elvis Costello, Prince and Johnny Cash, and Neil Diamond is a new one. Also, the Zutons out of the UK and Kings of Leon.

We’ve been working on trying to use metaphors, in a way, to kind of mask a literal thing that happened to us. I think that, personally, Elvis Costello is excellent at doing that. And (we’re) listening to his music and trying to, you know, do our best to imitate that gift that he has of being able to tell a story with using metaphors.

Joe on the new album’s sound: It feels like just a good growth in our music, and it has a lot of more kinds of horns in the record and a lot more strings. Also, there’s more to the music rather than just a typical kind of relationship song.

We had the opportunity to write the songs for our new television show and that kind of helped us as writers kind of think out of the box. And so with our new record we kind of wanted to do the same, and that’s exactly what we are doing.

Nick on “Poison Ivy”: “Poison Ivy” is a song that we wrote with our bass player, Greg Barbowsky, who we wrote the song ‘Tonight’ with on our last album. And ‘Poison Ivy’ is really cool. It’s a metaphor for various things that have happened to us about maybe a relationship you can’t get out of or something that you’ve gone back to, even though it might not be the best thing in the world for you.

Joe on having Sasha and Malia Obama as fans: You know I’m sure if they would like to come we would be fine with them having tickets, for sure. And I’m sure they could probably get their own tickets without even – just magically. By July 13, actually, we’re going to be in Washington, D.C., doing a concert, so hopefully the family will come out to watch the show. I mean, they’re always invited and we’re very excited for the summer tour to make its way over there.

Nick on jamming with Stevie Wonder at the Grammys: Performing with Stevie Wonder was an experience that we’ll never forget and we’re very thankful. We know that we’re young guys and that that was really, truly an honor and we’re so thankful to him and his team for making it happen.

Kevin on secondary ticket brokers: We sell directly to our fans. You know, we have an initial presale straight to our fans to our fan club, and that comes straight, you know, to our fans. We want to do everything possible (to ensure) these tickets go directly to the people that want to see the show, no people that are just trying to profit from reselling a ticket.

Nick on being lampooned on an episode of “South Park”: I think we always like to, you know, be open to make fun of ourselves, you know, we’ll be the first to. We did it on “SNL” and it was kind of fun. But I think for us we’re so focused on what we’re doing with this tour and our album and everything that we didn’t have too much time to see it.