Four Year Strong Interview - July 18, 2009

Interview: Four Year Strong
Date: July 18th, 2009
Venue: The Reverb, Toronto, Ontario
Conducted by: Brandon Allin

Brandon Allin, pit reporter for The Daily Chorus, had an opportunity to chat with Boston quintet Four Year Strong before the Toronto stop of the Gig Life tour on July 18th, 2009. The band discussed their new 90s cover record Explains it All, their sudden success, and even joked about their favorite 90s memorabilia. For the full interview, please read on.

I'm sitting here with two of the guys from Boston's finest, Four Year Strong. How are you guys doing today?

AD: I'm doing good. We're happy to be in Toronto.

DO: Good. How are you?

I'm great. We're happy to have you here. For those who read this who may not be familiar with Four Year Strong, why don't you both introduce yourselves?

DO: I'm Dan (O'Connor), and I sing and play guitar.

AD: I'm Alan (Day), and I also sing and play guitar.

You guys have a new record coming out on in just a few days entitled Explains it All, which is comprised entirely of 90s cover songs. Where did the idea for that come from?

DO: Well, we've always been super stoked on songs from the 90s. Alan and I are always playing them, and we're always listening to them in the van and whatnot. But the first time I remember someone pitching the idea of doing a record like this, we were doing a Denny's thing on one of our last tours, and we had an acoustic guitar and we were just playing a ton of random 90s songs. We all thought to ourselves about doing it then, we know how much fun it would be, so it just sort of came together. The idea just got planted in our heads.

It seems like every time I see a post about this record, half of the response is kids boiling over with excitement, and the other half is what seems like endless complaints about not having any new material to listen to. Just to set the record straight, do you have a new record in the works?

DO: Absolutely. We're in the midst of working on a new record, which we're going to go and record when this tour wraps up, but it won't be out until the winter. This 90s cover record is just something we did to give kids more to listen to in between albums. We have tons of stuff written, and we did some demos before this tour.

AD: We're really stoked on what we have so far.

How did you go about selecting which songs would appear on Explains it All?

AD: That was tough. We had a list of literally hundreds of songs. There were actually some songs we didn't plan to do until we got into the studio, like "Fly," "Ironic," and the No Doubt cover. When we got in there, we just realized there were a handful of songs we could do in a really cool way, so we ran with them.

DO: There were a bunch of songs that we planned on doing when we entered the studio, but when we got in there, we knew it wouldn't work. For example, we were going to do Metallica's "King Nothing," but that didn't work out, and we also thought about covering Rage Against the Machine, but we realized we couldn't rap. [Laughs]

[Laughs] Which songs on the record would you say are your favorites?

DO: That's tough. My top three would probably be "Semi-Charmed Life," "Ironic," and "She's So High."

AD: I love "Roll to Me," that's always been one of my favorite songs. "So Much for the Afterglow" came out really cool," and I love "Ironic," as well.

You mentioned there were some songs you toyed around with that didn't make the cut. What were some of those?

DO: Well, the Rage Against the Machine and Metallica songs I mentioned were the two we took into the studio that were actually on the list, but neither of them worked out in the end. We just knew while we were working on them that it wasn't going to happen. But besides those, we had hundreds of songs we contemplated doing.

With the exception of the Reach the Sky cover, the track list is comprised of fairly recognizable songs. What fueled the decision to put "She Really Loved You" on there, amidst all the smash hits from the 90s?

DO: We know it's the one song kids might not know, but we talked about doing songs from the 90s that influenced us, and songs we grew up on. Reach the Sky being a local band, we saw them play countless times, and so we wanted to pay tribute to a band that inspired us.

AD: Exactly. We wanted to a handful of hits that everyone knew and loved, but there was also so much music from the 90s that we all listened to that we could cover, so we wanted to put at least one on there that influenced us from a whole other end of the spectrum. That's where "She Really Loved You" came into play.

I'm just throwing this out there, but I think you folks could have done spectacular renditions of "Inside Out" by Eve 6, and "Everything You Want" by Vertical Horizon.

DO: Believe it or not, we thought about doing both of those. Vertical Horizon are actually from the Worcester area, which is where we're from.

AD: Trust me, we thought about doing every song you could possibly imagine. The list of songs we had made up was insane. We went through it and messed around with all of them. But who knows, maybe we'll do a part two? Probably not, but maybe. [Laughs]

DO: We could call it Explained it All. [Laughs]

[Laughs] I noticed you're giving away 90s-inspired ball-chain necklaces with the pre-orders for this record.

AD: We wanted them to be the really big, tight, choker type ones, but they couldn't fit the little pendants on them.

[Laughs] With that in mind, what are some other things that take you back to the glory days?

DO: Ecto coolers and pogs.

AD: Chain wallets and Skip-It.

DO: Skip-It was more from the 80s.

AD: Was it?

DO: That was another thing. Kids would send us pictures of all kinds of stuff that was definitely from the 80s, like troll dolls and Nintendo and stuff.

AD: Yeah, but a lot of those things were 90s for us I guess, considering we were barely alive in the 80s.

[Laughs] This is all coming off the strength of your sophomore effort, Rise or Die Trying, which more or less exploded onto the scene almost two years ago. Looking back, was that kind of success and recognition something you expected, or did it come as more of a surprise?

DO: Even when the record was finished, and it was just about to come out, we were still hustling CDs every day after shows asking kids if they wanted a copy, and most of them said no. When we did the record, we had signed to I Surrender because we just wanted to be a real band and tour and make music. We had no idea it was going to amount to anything, except for maybe us playing more shows.

AD: We've already been a band for almost nine years now, so when Rise or Die Trying came out, we had already been a band for what felt like forever. We had been touring for years already, so when we put out the album, we didn't expect anything significant to happen, but it went way better than we ever could have imagined.

Earlier this year, you inked a deal with Pete Wentz's imprint label, Decaydence Records. How did that happen?

DO: Just to clear something up, we're still with I Surrender Records as well, we're just a part of both labels now. The reason we signed with I Surrender to begin with was because we were working with Rob (Hitt), who used to play in Midtown, who is just a hardworking dude whose band started out as kids the same way we did. He worked for everything he got, and Pete is the exact same way. He was just a normal kid who started a band, his band got big, built a crazy following, and accomplished all this crazy fucking shit. He does the things he does because he loves them, so the way we saw it is we'd rather have someone who loves our band working for us than some random dude sitting behind a desk.

Did you have a handful of labels trying to scoop you up after the success of Rise or Die Trying?

AD: No, not really. It's all been very low-key.

DO: There wasn't that much interest. We were on I Surrender, and Pete suggested doing something with both labels, so we did.

When your next full-length sees the light of day, what sort of sound can fans expect? Is there anything new you're looking try that you wish you could have done with the first record?

AD: Well, we just want to make sure we mature our sound. We don't want to take any crazy risks or anything. We're not going to release a dance pop record that leaves kids wondering what the fuck just happened, or anything like that.

DO: The new record will still be very much Four Year Strong. We're not going to completely change our sound. You're going to hear what you expect to hear, but it's also going to be different. We're not trying to write Rise or Die Trying part two, we're just trying to write the next chapter for our band.

That's all I've got for you guys today. Is there anything you'd like to add before we go our separate ways?

DO: Come to the shows.

AD: Buy Explains it All when it comes out. Don't download it. [Laughs]

Thanks for your time. Best of luck on the rest of the tour.

DO: No problem. Thanks a lot.

AD: Thank you.

Four Year Strong's new album, Explains it All, is now available in stores via I Surrender Records.

For more information on Four Year Strong, please visit MYSPACE.COM/FOURYEARSTRONG, or follow the band on Twitter at TWITTER.COM/FYS. The Daily Chorus would like to send our gratification to Mara Frankel and Josh Lovell for their hard work in coordinating this interview.