Last year this band put out one of the most overlooked and underrated albums with their effort called This Year Brought Out The Worst In Me. Not only was that record the best titled album you'd find all year, but it was also among the best albums to be released in 2012. I convinced Ryan Davis to take a few minutes from writing their follow up to last year's record and answer some questions for me about their plans for 2013.
| You guys come from a town called Gary, Indiana. What's Gary like? Ryan: It’s a little run down but we have a baseball team and stadium so that’s cool. It’s a part of Northwest Indiana and about half an hour from Chicago so there is always something to do. I like staying in Gary more than heading out to the city though. Last year you guys released an album, This Year Brought Out The Worst In Me. How did you come up with the title for that? Ryan: It was a song title at first for the song This Summer Brought Out The Worst In Me (which we changed to This Summer…) and we were trying to come up with a title that would generalize the whole album and This Year Brought Out The Worst In Me seemed to fit pretty well. Mario and I both consider This Year Brought Out The Worst In Me one of the most underrated and overlooked records of 2012, on the whole how has that record been received by fans? Ryan: Well first off, thank you. Our fans have received it very well. I think it’s an album that if people gave it a chance as a whole that they’d be able to relate. We’ve had a lot of people mention that our lyrics hit home but we aren’t lyrical geniuses and are pretty straight forward and honest. In early January you put out a CD composed of b-sides and acoustic renditions. That record was called Playing The Guitar Drunk Until Your Fingers Begin To Bleed A Bit, can you tell me more about that album? Ryan: That album was something that started as a small project for fun and then turned into an actual release. When Seth Henderson from ABG Studios got on board to do the album we just had fun with it. We added a lot of harmonica, banjo, and organ and it was a step outside of the box and the normal for us. We all love The Revival Tour gang, Lucero, and stuff in that kind of genre and we wanted to do something in that sense. It’s a one off album, the next one is a banger. I understand you worked with Capeside Records (The Better Fight, Act As One) how was it working with them? Ryan: It’s been fun. D Jay does his best to help all of his bands out. I’m hoping that soon people will start to notice Capeside. Will you continue working with them in the future? Ryan: We will always support Capeside. With the new album we are recording I don’t know who will be releasing it yet. Whatever happens though I know all of us would do anything to help D Jay and everyone else at Capeside. From my understanding you guys are working on a new album, do you have any time table for the release yet? Ryan: We plan on releasing it in January of 2014 but it really depends on how and who we release it with. The latest it will be released is January 2014 though. We will have the album finished in March 2013 and from there we are gonna tour and promote our old albums and try and get more people excited about this new release. I noticed you started a Kickstarter (here) account to help fund the new record, has that approach been effective so far? Ryan: Yeah, any time we need help our fans are doing what they can. That’s a great feeling knowing people are behind you. Thanks to everyone who has ever bought a shirt or CD. This band wouldn’t exist if our fans didn’t care. Do you have any tour plans for this Spring/early-Summer? Ryan: We plan on touring May 16th to June 4th June 14th to July 2nd and we are working on setting up tours for August, September, and October. Where do you plan on going? Do you have a tentative schedule for that tour yet? Ryan: We are still wrapping up loose ends for our May and June tour but in May we are doing an East Coast tour and June will be a midwest/south-central tour. We are gonna announce who we are touring with and dates in March. Before I let you go, in your opinion, which bands should we keep our eyes open for in 2013? Ryan: There’s a lot! Our buddies in Red Light Compliance and Trash The Dress are getting busy. Real Friends are about to explode big time, I think. Other than that, Don’t Wait Up and Rust Belt Lights are both recording and planning on touring. So that’s 5 new bands you need to go pay attention too! Interview by Anthony Allegra   |
