This is Michael Mullenix from Mishmashmagazine.com, very excited because tonight I am here with… Jeremy McKinnon from A Day To Remember!
MishMash: I’ve been watching this band for a while and have really been thoroughly impressed with what I’ve been hearing out of you guys. I realize that some of the people reading this might not be familiar with your music, so lets start at the basics: you are pop-punk/hardcore?
Jeremy McKinnon: Yeah
MM: How does going into song-writing or going into recording play out in this field?
JM: Well its something that always just came naturally, never something we had to force… well did sound forced at the beginning… but it wasn’t something we did on purpose. It was, more or less, we came from a town where a lot of hardcore bands were coming through and we liked pop punk as well. So when we came together and started writing music it was just a mixture of the two things that we wanted to play so it just came out naturally.
MM: Lets talk Homesick, the last album you put out. It seems that throughout your music there have been a lot of themes that have carried on, a lot of consistent tones, but it all comes together in this one. Care to tell us how Homesick was really written?
JM: We had been on tour for two and a half/three years on “For Those Who Have Heart,” and we wrote some of those songs right after our first album. Those songs were something we toured on for a long time. We pretty much toured for two years straight after we signed to Victory Records.
When it came to writing… I try to write about what’s going on with us in our lives on a day to day basis. Song to song, it’s just a different week of our lives. Naturally it was about going through stuff, being away from people you care about, and it all went from there.
MM: Some songs I wanna touch on, the first one being the first track of the record…
JM: Downfall of us All
MM: Right. In the chorus you say: “This town will be the downfall of us all,” are you specifically referring to Ocala in that one or…
JM: Well, yes and no. It’s about… not what we were expecting… kids that automatically write you off because you’re successful or people are into you. With every CD you put out, or at least that we put out, there are people who say you’re a sellout, even from the first record. The first record we put out, we’ve been called a sellout. It just something that’s happened with every album, and it’s a song to those people to say: “You don’t know what goes into stuff like this. This record meant a lot to us, it was really honest.” There’s a lot more to things than you see. It’s not like we didn’t want to be a successful band, and we’ve been trying to be since day one. There’s not any room for stuff like that.
MM: On a lighter note, someone has speculated that the song title “My Life For Hire” came from a line from Blizzard’s Starfcraft.
JM: Correct.
MM: Oh, serious
JM: Yes
::Sound of a High Five::
MM: There have been a number of different people appearing on the album, one of them here tonight, The Devil Wears Prada, you also have New Found Glory producing it and Killswitch Engage mixing it. At this point in your career is this showing the amount of support you get, not just from your fans, but your peers within the genre?
JM: We’ve had a lot of good responses from this record and I like to think it has something to do with the people we worked with. We’re definitely more proud of this than anything we have ever done, we owe a lot of that to everyone involved. We had a great team, there was a huge team of people working on this record. Chris Rubey worked with us on pre-production, so did Andrew Wade and Jaison Lancaster. Then Chad Gilbert produced it, Adam [Dutkiewicz] mixed it, we had a great team on the record, it’s just a no-brainer. We’re pretty decent at writing songs; we’ve just been really fortunate that awesome people like that are willing to work with us.
MM: Last album-related question I’m going to ask you about is the last track… Who is that girl and where did you find her?
JM: Her name is Sierra [Kusterbeck], she’s from a band called VersaEmerge, and they’re from South Florida/West Palm Beach. We met them through people we’ve worked with through our entire career, just being friends with people. And they had gone through some member changes and she had joined the band and they just revamped their sound. When I wrote this song and I knew I needed a girl on it, it was just a no-brainer. They’re friends of ours, and they’re an up and coming band, would really help them out and she has a cool voice.
MM: So now we are here at the Music Box with the Devil Wears Prada, Sky Eats Airplane and Emarosa. Where is this show in relation to the lifespan of the tour and how’s this dynamic been working so far?
JM: Well, we got like a week and a half left or something like that, so this is coming to the end now. Pretty much every day has been sold out but two actually, so the tour has been going over really well. This is the first time we’ve played in the US in half a year since we’ve put out the album and we’re writing so it’s been awesome to get such a good response on the new stuff.
MM: So you’ve gone to Europe
JM: MmmHmm
MM: And Australia?
JM: MmmHmm
MM: Wow, I guess the timing for Homesick was really suiting. Not gonna ask about Europe, because everyone has their Europe stories, but Australia, 20 hours on a plane, what was the reaction to the up and coming hardcore scene over there.
JM: The flight wasn’t so bad, rather smooth as far as flights go. We were actually on a time schedule where we went to sleep and there were only a few hours left, so it was cool. The tour… We couldn’t have gone over there in a better way because we went over there with Parkway Drive and they are like the biggest band in the country in that style of music. The first night was at a 9000 capacity outdoor arena and there were at least 7000 that were coming so it was absolutely insane. Bands in this kind of music do not draw like that in America, so this was the absolute best way we could have come across in this country. We were really fortunate to be on the tour in the first place and we definitely held our own, it was awesome. It went over really well, and we’re going to be going back in December.
MM: Damn. Well, just a few months out of the box with Homesick and I’m looking around your tour bus and you already have a makeshift studio here…
JM: Yeah
MM: You’re already recording the preliminary stuff for the next one?
JM: Yeah, well, I like to write, I write non-stop. I like to work out ideas whenever I can and it’s cool now that we have all this shit for when we are writing on the road. We have everything we need to do it, so why not keep doing it constantly and be ready for the next record instead of waiting forever. We just write whenever we feel like it and that can lead to really productive stuff, really cool stuff we write together. It’s cool to have the stuff, and we do, so we use it.
MM: I’m just blown away…this is the first time I’ve been sitting on guitar cables during an interview. Ok, last time you were playing in America was probably the Warped Tour?
JM: Actually New Found Glory, which was after Warped Tour
MM: The reason I wanted to bring that up is because you did Warped Tour last year and it comes to my attention that you are on the entire tour this year.
JM: Yes, we’re going to be playing the Hurley Stage, not the Hurley.com that’s what we played last year, no smart-punk last year, it was a part of it though, we are playing the actual Hurley Stage (writer’s note to Warped Tour: no, of course, this won’t cause confusion).
MM: Is that the one with the big tire stuff over it?
JM: Yeah, like the big black bubble, so yeah, we’re playing that stage.
MM: Ok, awesome. Well, we are on the way to Warped Tour and of course hopefully a few kids [reading] this will make it a point to come check you guys out. What’s the reaction you had last year and how has it steam-rolled its way up to this one?
JM: Well last year was nuts. We were really fortunate because last year we were actually playing in amphitheaters, they’d take this humongous thing that KISS plays on when they play that town and cut it in half and put Hurley on one side and Hurley.com on the other, it’s weird. The Hurley Stage, they have two, so they put them together, and since Warped Tour is so fucking hot almost all of [the crowd] were covered, so this would be the one place kids could go and it wouldn’t be nearly as hot and they can have fun, move around and not get exhausted. We were fortunate because we had a lot of hype last year on Warped Tour so we were already a band that people wanted to see, but it made it so much easier for people to chose to see us over other bands because it’s shaded, and you can sit down if you wanted to. We would play to no less than 5000 people a day, and we killed it. It just helped set us up for what is happening now.
MM: Well I got to see you guys last year, looking forward to your appearance on it this year, and if you get called back a third year, I owe you a Coke.
::Laughter::
MM: Well, now that we got the important stuff out of the way I need to ask you about being (A) a pop-punk band and (B) being a hardcore band from Florida. I grew up in Miami and curse the days the internet wasn’t everything it could be.
JM: Well there was a band called Seventh Star from our hometown, they’re on Facedown Records, they’re a Hardcore band. So we grew up going to their shows because they were the only band who really mattered and was actually doing stuff in our home town. So they’d come through on tour, or they would have their friend’s bands come in who they’d been on tour with, and they were all hardcore bands. It was just non-stop hardcore shows coming through town and we just grew up going to shows like that. And then we all liked Blink 182, New Found Glory, stuff like that, so just kinda happened.
MM: Ocala is closer to Orlando, Tampa, or Jacksonville?
JM: In the middle between Jacksonville and Orlando. Gainsville is like 30 minutes away from it.
MM: Damn you North Florida punks who actually got some decent music coming your way.
JM: Heh, yeah
MM: We had to wait for something cool like Ozzfest to roll into West Palm
every now and again.
JM: Well you had Glasseater, and we all love Glasseater.
MM: Yeah, Glasseater was cool. But the only band I can think of to come out of Miami in the past while is… well I guess this is salt on the wound, Black Tide, which would be the Kerrang Awards for you guys back in Europe, right?
JM: Right
MM: But it’s crazy to think of Florida as a place music does come from, not just a place people go to die. Also crazy to think of you guys getting Nostalgic for a place I was given a standing ovation and high five for leaving. Before I completely forget, Punk Goes Pop, how did you get involved in this? I have to know.
JM: They asked us because of the cover song “Since You’ve Been Gone” that we did, I assume that’s why they hit us up. So they asked us if we wanted to be a part of the new Punk Goes Pop, and to be honest with you being part of one of those compilations on Fearless was always a band goal that we always had. We grew up listening to all of those and thought it would be sick to be on one, so when they asked us of course we had to. Also it’s a cover song, so we are already pretty familiar in doing stuff like that. They send you a list of songs, like 60 or 70 of them that you can chose from, so we chose a couple that stuck out in our minds, and then go listen to them all on YouTube, and when we got to The Fray we said this is it. The song is just such a better song than anybody else’s, not because of us, because their song is so catchy. Take a song, any song off that record, and I will guarantee you there are more memorable parts on the Fray’s song than 90% of the songs on that record. It was a no-brainer. It was like, this is such a good song, we don’t even have to try to make this sound good, it already does. Just try to do our thing to it and make sure I’m on point, because he is a badass singer.
MM: As for memorable, my roommate’s ex-girlfriend had Singstar so that’s where I know that song. Kept thinking; “there has to be a Hardcore version in here somewhere” so I’m glad you were the guys to bring it out of it. If I may ask, not sure if Fearless wants you to divulge the rest of the list, what were the other possibilities you were throwing around?
JM: Bayside did Beautiful Girl, thinking about that. We listened to what Four Year Strong chose, The Love Song, Sarah Bareilles or something. I remember Neil was saying “that song is amazing” and then we put it on and I was like “fuck I wouldn’t even know where to begin.” Threw that one out. That was actually a really hard song and props to them for trying. I’m thinking… Apologize, Silverstein did that. But that was taken, we knew that was taken, and we might have done that one. But The Fray was amazing and I didn’t know they were on there until I was scrolling down the list.
MM: Well the fact that you listed three songs and they all made their way onto the album makes it sound like anything that was good or considerable was already on there.
JM: Well they all are amazing songs; those were just the ones that stood out obviously to everyone.
MM: Awesome, well that with that, I think this nicely wraps up this interview, thank you guys for taking the time to meet with us
JM: Yeah, thanks for having us
MM: And have fun on Warped Tour if I don’t see you there, but I probably will.
JM: Cool man
MM: This has been Michael Mullenix with MishMashMagazine.com
>> www.myspace.com/adaytoremember
Tags: a day to remember
Music
Film & TV
