Interview with Alan Day: Four Year Strong

© Laura Callan – Four Year Strong’s Alan Day, Live

 

Four Year Strong are an exciting new band from Massachusettes, and we were lucky enough to catch up with Alan Day ahead of their electricifying support performance for New Found Glory in Southamp­ton Guildhall. We were so impressed by them we made sure to catch them at their headline London show in December, see myspace.com/thelivehour for more photos.

 

Q: How is it touring with New Found Glory?

A: It’s been awesome, the whole thing. Right before this we did the whole US version of this tour with Set Your Goals as well, and the whole tour was awesome. Most of the shows were sold out, the kids were loving it and its almost even better here, all the shows have been sold out and all the kids have been going crazy for these shows, it’s been a lot of fun.

 

Q: It’s a great line-up, [Crime In Stereo, Four Year Strong, Set Your Goals, New Found Glory] how did it come about?

A: I knew the line-up a little while before the tour started because New Found Glory were putting a tour together where they wanted similar bands that were doing the same kinds of things, because it’s called the “Easycore Tour” they just wanted it to fit, you know.

 

Q: There are four bands tonight, three support bands who only get around 20-10 minutes each, do you find that that’s enough time to connect with the audience?

A: I feel like that’s definitely the right time for us to do that. As long as our band has been together we’ve always played really short sets. I know like a while ago before things were going so well, we always thought that playing a shorter set was better, because if you put all your energy and put everything right in front of everyone right from the start, if you play a shorter set you can keep people wanting more.

You know, rather than playing for a long time and it’s like “Is this band still playing? When is the band I wanna see coming on?” So if you play a really energetic show, kids go “What the hell was that? I wanna hear more” and maybe they go buy a t-shirt or CD.

Since we’ve always done that I think now we’re used to playing short sets, now when we have to play longer that a half hour we freak out! [laughs]

 

Q: Are you looking forward to your headline London show?

A: Yeah, we played a headline show the first day we were here in Stoke, that was really cool, we played a little bit longer set, we played a couple of covers of older songs and we’ll probably do the same thing in London. But its nice to play headline shows over here because we’re playing second on this bill [New Found Glory show] and it’s still awesome because kids are coming to see us, but it’s totally different when you’re headlining, you know that if everyone there is still there by the end of the show, then they’re there to see you. So it’s a completely different vibe and it’s really cool to be able to do that.

 

Q: Did you want to do your own mini tour while you were out here?

A: Well we didn’t really have the budget to do more but eventually we will definitely be coming out here to do more, definitely.

 

© Laura Callan – Four Year Strong – Live at London’s Camden Underworld

 

Q: You played Give It A Name, and the Give It A Name Presents… Tour in 2008, how was that?

A: The shows were amazing, it was our first time out here and we were playing this huge festival so that was really cool. I think that really helped to get the word our for the tour because we got to say onstage in front of so many people “Hey we’re gonna be doing this tour, come check out these shows” and every single one of the shows was sold out so that was really really cool! It was also really good because the four bands on the tour had never been here before, so I think that made the kids really excited to see the show because no-one had been before and it was a rotating line-up so one day we’d be headlining, one day we’d open, and so on so I think that was really fair considering none of us had been over here before. All the shows were awesome.

 

Q: What are you influences and how exactly would you describe your own sound?

A: As a band we all have different influences, we all grew up listening to hardcore and like bands from Boston and the North East area but we started getting into popular stuff, listening to New Found Glory and Saves The Day and bands like that, and we were intrigued, they were bands playing such pop-punk music that was obviously influenced by hardcore and also we grew up in the hardcore scene, we were kind of the same thing and we wanted to show our roots in hardcore and stuff like that.

 

Q: There are five of you in the band, how do you all manage to get your own influence into the music?

A: Well most of the writing is done by me and Dan, the other singer, and we pretty much have the same idea for what we want to do, it’s not necessarily like different songs have different influences of stuff like that, but we both have a wide range of music that we listen to that we definitely take bits and piece of everything and kinda throw it all in there.

 

Q: Our show, The Live Hour, is all about live music, what do you think is good about seeing bands live?

A: I think live music is extremely important because, you know, people who are so into music, like listening to music all the time know it’s so important to se and experience what they are listening to, it’s totally different sitting at your home listening to your iPod while your washing the dishes, doing whatever, than actually going to see that band your listening to, see who they are and what they really do. It’s hard to explain in words I guess, it’s just a totally different experience, I feel like if kids didn’t have live shoes and didn’t get to see the band that they like live then music wouldn’t be like it is, people wouldn’t be as interested in music as they are, because when you go to a show you feel like you’re a part of it rather than being an outsider listening to it, so I think it’s all really important.

 

Q: What would you say are some of the best bands you’ve seen live?

A: That’s a tough one, I have to say that New Found Glory are probably one of the best, Set Your Goals are also awesome live too. There’s millions, Every Time I Die are also one of my favourites, we were with them at the warped tour all summer, they’re amazing live. I could probably go on all day!

 

Q: So what should we expect from Four Year Strong in 2009?

A: I’m sure we’re gonna come back to the UK, it’s our plan right now! We have some time off right now, we’re gonna write a new record, we already have some stuff written and were working on new stuff, but we would like to release a new record next year [2009] so we’re definitely gone be trying to do that, that’s priority. We have some tours lined up already and we’re looking at some other tours, and we’re definitely, definitely looking into coming back here, yeah!

 

 Listen to The Live Hour on Pure FM Sundays 6-7pm.

Four Year Strong’s debut album Rise Or Die Trying is out now, visit www.fouryearstrong.com for more info.