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Earlier this summer, Organised-Sound.com caught up with Four Year Strong; fresh off Give It A Name and in the process of embarking on Give It A Name... Introduces, they were in high spirits. Having foolishly given them a huge bag of candy before the interview began, we found ourselves enjoying less of an interview and more of a children's party as Four Year Strong became four years old!

Still, between pranking their tourmates with Flying Saucers and sampling some great British confectionery, we found the time to grill them about Give It A Name, joining the Decaydance family and, well, candy!

OS: So, I understand that this has been your first time touring the UK. How have you been finding it? Is it your first time here full stop?
All: Yeah, yeah.

Dan [O'Connor - Guitar, Vocals]: We've never even been out of the States before, so yeah, uhh, it's pretty sick. All the kids have been awesome.

Alan [Day - Guitar, Vocals]: These are sherbet-filled wafers...

Dan: Ooh! No way.

Alan: Dude, I love these!

Dan: I think I like these too!

[They eat the Flying Saucers]

Alan: This is the most insane thing I've ever eaten in my life.

Dan: I liked it, I just wasn't ready for it.

Joe [Weiss - Bass]: Don't worry, we've got plenty more.

Alan: Ooh, we have Party Rings!

Dan: Um, but yeah it's like the first time we've been here and uh, it's been awesome, like, all the kids have been great, like all the shows have been sold out which is sick and like, the kids have been, you know, way better than we ever imagined. When we're playing live, the kids are like, going off and really going for it.

OS: So, what's the main difference between a UK and a US audience?

Alan: The accents! [Laughs] And no one fights here.

OS: Really!?
Dan: We haven't had any fights at these shows, which is like... when we're in the States, it's like every day, if not like every other day.

Joe: And it's like uh, getting a new beginning which is really really nice. It's like, fresh every day. We've been touring the States for like, a pretty long time now, and it's like coming over and having just a brand new start is just pretty awesome and having kids be as awesome as they have and that stuff. Everyone's been really welcoming to us.

OS: You've been touring pretty continuously for a long time now, what's good about that but also what's bad about it?

Dan: What's good about it is that pretty often you can really actually see the crowds of like, our fans are really getting bigger when you come back to a place. The bad things are like, you miss out on a lot of things at home, relationships with your family, your friends, your girlfriend and stuff...

Joe: Everyone is still going on with their day-to-day life and we're gone for months at a time. People can't always stop what they're doing to wait for you. So that sucks.

OS: When you go back to the same places again to do you start to recognise fans?

Dan: There's definitely times when like, we'll recognise people and like there's a lot of kids we talk to all the time, I mean sometimes you can't recognise everybody because you meet tonnes of new people every day, but when you go back there and you see the same kids over and over again you really start to remember.

Joe: That's the other difference about coming over here, this is the first time for us so we're getting to meet a lot of people for the first time and we've met a lot of really cool people that I'm sure we'll end up getting to chill with next time we come round in November.

OS: Are you looking forward to the tour in November? It's gonna be a bit bigger than this one.

Joe: I can't wait for that.

Dan: Yeah, It's gonna be a lot of fun.

OS: Do you find over here you get more people hanging around the back door after shows, or is that the same everywhere?

Alan: [worriedly] Are the shrimp ones supposed to be shrimp flavoured?

OS: [Laughs] ...No.

Alan: I think it's Watermelon... Because I got kind of freaked out.

Dan: I did too, for about for about a split second. You know what these taste like? You know when you go to church - [to Joe] well, you don't - and you have like the body...?

Alan:[to Dan] Oh, you can have those because you love gummies!

Joe: Oh yeah, and M&Ms!

OS: We didn't know you liked them so much, we'll bring you more next time!

Dan: Ah, the sherbet! That sherbet gets me every time... Um, but yeah, I'm super excited for that tour, it's gonna be fucking sick.

Joe: Yeah, It's pretty similar with kids hanging out after the show and stuff, but because it's our first time over here, it seems like people are really excited, just because we're from a totally different side of the ocean but we've been a band for a long time, so we get people coming up to us and telling us they've been listening to us for three years but they haven't been able to see us because this is the first time. So hopefully now we'll be able to come over more often.

OS: It'd be nice to have you over here more often.

Joe: Oh yeah, definitely, we can't wait. The November one, really though, we're looking forward to so much. It's gonna be amazing I think. I've been waiting to tour with New Found Glory since I was a little kid.

Dan: All our working out's going to shit, Joe. We've been working out on this tour, stay toned.

Alan: Taking like baby steps forward and giant steps back.

OS: I'm sorry. The angel cake's good, though.

All: So good, yes.

Dan: These gummies are amazing.

At this point, the conversation diverts while a string of unwitting tourmates are encouraged to eat Flying Saucers for the band's amusement - Dan begins to make sculptures with the gummy bears, which he shares gleefully with Alan, and a lot of indecipherable rustling makes it onto the tape. We attempt to get the things back on track with:

OS: Who would you say your influences on the newest album are?
Dan: A lot of different ones, yeah. The songs on the new albums were written over a long period of times, so we went through a lot of stages of liking bands. There are all the main ones like Saves The Day, New Found Glory, stuff like that. There's a lot of weird crazy ones.

Joe: It's like a mix of hardcore bands and pop bands. We all grew up listening to a lot of hardcore and a lot of pop, so it's a mix of right down the centre is kind of like what we're trying to do. We play everything we listen to and try to blend it.

Alan: Works quite well.

OS: You can definitely hear a mix, there's been a lot of that said. How was Give It A Name? How was playing that? Because that was massive.

Dan: That was sick.

Alan: Yeah, that was sick.
Joe: It was definitely weird that it wasn't this leading up to Give It A Name, first of all because it’s called 'Give It A Name Introduces...', but we've already been introduced at Give It A Name. But whatever. No, I don't know. Our first time ever playing the UK was at an arena, and it was just an insane way to start the whole thing off.

Alan: It was awesome, there were tonnes of kids there singing along. It was very surprising.

OS: I wasn't there, but the people I know that went said you got a really good reception.

Joe: We just had no idea what to expect at all. It just started everything off really well, and everyone was in a really really good mood at how well it turned out, so it took a lot of stress off for the rest of the tour.

OS: You seem to get a really good response all round, I actually haven't heard anything bad about you anywhere, at all. I've never seen that happen before!
Joe: The internet is designed for talking shit on, people! So we're amazed, we've gotten pretty lucky with that.

Dan: It was definitely really cool to be able to start out the whole thing like that, with tonnes of kids singing along. It was cool because going to a new country, you don't really know what to expect, playing a big show like that and having a bunch of kids singing along, it was like 'Oh, this is gonna be pretty cool!', you know what I mean?

OS: Who have you found the best band to hang out with on the tour?
Joe: Probably... I'll speak for myself. I like The Color Fred guys, they're amazing, all of them are. Mayday Parade is really cool, we knew them coming into this, but we only met the Fred dudes about one time before this, and we're gonna be on all of Warped Tour with them as well, so we've made some new friends going into that. They have really similar personalities to us so it worked out really well and we easily get along.

OS: The 'Give It A Name Introduces...' tour basically launched Paramore in the UK. Are you hoping that you're going to explode in the same way? Because they're pretty massive now.
All: That'd be cool! That would be cool.

Dan: I hope! That would be sweet!

Joe: At the same time, I'd like to do kind of what we've done in the United States. We definitely did not come out of nowhere, we've been playing together for a really long time. We worked our way out and didn't just start off on a bigger level. We did tours of the full US back in the day, and every time around people knew us more and more. I'd like to do that over here and build up from scratch because we can build a real fan base, kids that are going to be loyal to you and not be like they just heard you, that's awesome, and then they'll forget about you six months later.

Dan: That's why we're really excited we get to come back really soon.

Joe: We're hoping a tour like that will be a good tour for us, just because I think they probably have a pretty similar fan base.

OS: Joining Decaydance... I know this is a question you probably get asked a lot, but how did that come about? You're really quite different to the bands on that label.
Dan: The way it came about is, the guy that owns the label we're on in the US, I Surrender, Rob [Hitt, ex-Midtown], he's really good friends with Pete [Wentz, Fall Out Boy], we played a show with Fall Out Boy, and Pete had heard a lot of the record and talked to Rob, and basically I Surrender and Decaydance decided it'd be a cool idea to do a co-op thing, asked us if we'd be down, we were like 'yeah totally', and like the thing that's cool about Decaydance is that a lot of the bands on there sound different from each other, and that's good - I think that's why they wanted us, because we don't sound like other bands on the label. It's just really cool because instead of having to deal with some random dude in a suit sitting behind a desk making calls for our bands and we don't really know that dude, we get to work with people we know, people that we trust, people who have worked hard to get where they are helping us and making calls for the band, it's a little more reassuring than having some no-name dude that you don't know who the fuck he is.

OS: I don't know about the US, but over here, Decaydance's promotion method seems to be to have a band tour with the same album, sometimes for a couple years... is that what you're going to do?
Dan: No, we're planning on going back into the studio and trying to record a new record, we're starting now and we're going slow because we're still learning to write on the road, we're still kind of getting used to it, but we're going on Warped Tour so we have all summer, we've got a lot of random breaks coming up before that so we hope to get a lot of writing done in that time.

OS: You're going to Japan soon, are you excited about that?
Joe: Tomorrow morning.

OS: Really?
Dan: Tomorrow morning we go to Japan and we go for a week, and then we go to Australia. It's pretty crazy.

Joe: Especially for people who've never been out of the States before, to go straight to the UK and then Japan and Australia.

Alan: There's two other guys in the band who aren't in here now, and they've never even been on a plane before.

Joe: It's a big step for us.

OS: What do you do to make audiences remember you? There are four bands on tonight, so how are you going to make yourselves stand out?
Dan: We try and make our live show as wild and entertaining as possible.

Joe: Normally, I would love it when there's no barrier because a lot of times, kids can get up on the stage and all that shit. It makes for a much better experience for us and them, if you just wanted to listen to the music you could put the CD on in your car, but this way at least people can be a part of it, and hopefully be interested and want to check us out and come back again... I don't know.

Dan: We put a lot of emphasis on our live show to make sure that we're playing to the peak of our ability and give them a show as well as playing music, we want to make sure we're giving them their money's worth.

OS: Just as an aside, we've noticed the crosses on your hands, and we've heard some of you are straight-edge, is that a message you're promoting? We've seen a downturn in that recently.
Dan: Well, just myself and Alan.

Joe: It's more like a mutual respect thing between us, I'm not straight edge, but I respect it, like if I was drinking I wouldn't be like 'oh fucking hell, have a beer, bro.'

Dan: And the same for us, too.

Joe: It's just like a respect issue.

Dan: We don't push it on people, but it's just a thing me and Alan have done. I'm not a preachy person, it's just my own thing.

OS: Last question: Who's your favourite UK band?

Joe: You know who we just met that I love? You Me At Six. Max, that kid is fucking hilarious.

Alan: We heard them for the first time at the Give It A Name, and they were really really really good, really really awesome dudes.

Dan: They came up last night, actually, I think they're coming tonight, too.

Joe: Yeah, we were chilling last night, but those guys made us feel very welcome here and chilled with us for the whole Give It A Name thing and right away were just super easy to get along with and talk to.

OS: They were on this tour last year and obviously they've done really well off the back of it, they've been touring all year.
Joe: their reaction at Give It A Name was insane.

Dan: It was ridiculous.

Joe: They had the best reaction of the day, it was insane. It nice because they were willing to make some new friends. Hopefully at some point we can bring them up our way and return the favour.

Four Year Strong's second full-length album 'Rise Or Die Trying' is on sale now. They will be supporting New Found Glory and playing selected UK headlining dates in November and December - we'll be catching up with them again on November 26th for more talk about candy!