|
Nothing left to lose or prove.
Four Year Strong have had an almost meteoric rise, going from strength to strength since my last interview with them - in no small part due to their tireless dedication to touring and their quirky musical style; punk-pop with melodic vocals and some rather inspired use of keyboards and synthesisers.
At the end of last year, before exams, dissertations and deadlines took over, I caught up with Dan O'Connor for a frenzied ten minutes before the band went on stage as the main support act for New Found Glory. After bribing Dan with sweets, we had a pleasant chat about what Four Year Strong had been doing since the last time I interviewed them, and what their plans for the future were.
OS: Last time I spoke to you, you were just about to head off to Japan. How was that?
Dan: It was awesome - Japan was just crazy. It's so weird going to a place that's a complete culture shock. It was completely different to anywhere we'd ever been and it was crazy because kids were just as crazy about singing along and stuff. It was really cool to go somewhere that different and still have kids know your band.
OS: And you also were very excited about going on tour with New Found Glory...
Dan: I've been a huge fan of New Found forever. When I was growing up, I was really into hardcore music from Boston, stuff like that, and New Found was one of the first punk-pop bands that I started to like. Nothing Gold Can Stay, that was the first CD from them, and it was awesome. My friend actually gave me a cassette tape with Nothing Gold Can Stay on one side and Saves The Day - Can't Slow Down on the other side, and that's what got me into pop-punk.
OS: So has this tour been as great as you thought it would be?
Dan: Yeah, this tour is awesome. The guys in New Found Glory are awesome. Especially this tour, because we're really good friends with the guys in Set Your Goals and in Crime In Stereo too, so it's just really fun. In most tours you have to take a week or two to get to know the bands, but at this point we're already all friends so it's cool.
OS: Do you think being here with [New Found Glory] has won you over any new fans?
Dan: I think so, well I hope so. I feel like we have a lot more fans than we did – these shows, kids have been going crazy and it's been insane. But I do feel like we're making new fans because I talk to a lot of kids who are like "we kind of heard of you before tonight" and they were really into the songs, all this kind of stuff. I'm really stoked on this tour, it just rules. It's a really good line-up, too. All the bands are really awesome so even when I’m not playing I'm always just watching.
OS: You did a headline show up in Leeds the other day, and you have another in Camden coming up next week, but are you planning on doing a proper headline tour in the UK anytime soon?
Dan: We want to really bad. We don't have any thing planned out yet but we've been talking to our manager, we really want to come back and do a whole headline tour – either bring a band we’re stoked on from over there or just tour with bands from over here. All Or Nothing is really good, and Me Vs Hero is on our manager as well, so we would love to do something like that. But yeah, we really want to headline over here. That would be awesome.
OS: How was the Leeds show?
Dan: It was sick. It was like my favourite show of the whole tour. Is that where you’re from? It was awesome. I'm really stoked for the Camden show, too. That show’s going to be nuts. I think it's only 40 tickets away from being sold out so I'm really excited.
OS: You've pretty much just come off Warped tour – did you enjoy it?
Dan: It was awesome. That’s actually where we made really really good friends with Set Your Goals, on Warped tour. It was really cool because we got to meet a lot of new bands and got to play to a lot of people. We definitely made a lot of new fans on Warped tour this summer too because we got to play to all the kids that had never heard of us before. And it was really fun because... I know like every band ever says this but it was just like summer camp because you’d get up really early in the morning and have some cereal with everybody and just hang out. We had scooters and we were scootering around!
OS: Did you take over the catering or something? I saw pictures of you.
Dan: Oh yeah, they had random kids who'd come in every day and serve the bands and one day we decided it'd be cool if we did it instead so we served everyone one time. It was fun.
OS: How has the UK changed since the last time you were here?
Dan: It's colder. Way colder. Other than that, the shows are way bigger. And last time I felt like we had more time to just walk round and see cool places, but on this tour my sleep schedule is just so fucked. I wake up every day at 3.30. I go to bed at 7am and wake up at 3.30 so I haven’t seen daylight literally in like a week. Every day I wake up and it's dark and I go to bed and it's dark. I feel like I'm living in Alaska.
OS: So you haven't seen any of the cities?
Dan: Not really, a lot of the cities we saw last time. I was walking today and saw some crazy castle thing over there but it was too dark to really go and check it out. But we have a day off in London before the Camden show this time, so we're going to just bum around and do touristy stuff. We have a driver so he can drive us around.
OS: Last time I spoke to you, you said you were going to be on tour for most of the year, and you also talked about learning to write on the road, so how's that been going?
Dan: It's been going good. It's still definitely really hard. We've actually taken a little bit of time off. After this tour we have a good chunk of time off – like a month and a half – so we're going to really buckle down. We have a lot of the record written but we're going to try and finish it up and finalise a lot of it, and then we’re going on tour again on February 13th to do Taste of Chaos in the States. After that we’re going to go into the studio in April to record the next record.
OS: So it's coming up pretty soon.
Dan: Yeah, it's definitely leading up. It's weird nowadays because I feel like last year, we were like "Oh cool we go on tour for a little while" and the year seems longer. Now it's like "I have this tour then this tour then this tour and then the year is over." It goes really fast.
OS: A lot of your song titles reference films or are lines from films. Would you say that popular culture particularly influences you whilst you're writing?
Dan: Not really. I guess with writing... most of the song titles are just lines from movies we say a lot. We're the kind of band that is just constantly quoting lines at one another. Heroes Get Remembered, Legends Never Die is from The Sandlot because we all just love that movie. With Catastrophe, we just threw the word from the chorus as the title. It just seems boring. It seems more fun – you put so much work into a song and then you just name it something boring? Why not give it a cool name? That's pretty much where we're at.
OS: What is your favourite Four Year Strong song?
Dan: My favourite song? It goes back and forth a lot. Right now, my favourite song to play is Maniac (R.O.D). That song’s really fun to play, I like that song. A lot of times, my favourite is Prepare To Be Digitally Manipulated. That one's always really fun to play because we always play it really early in the set. And Heroes Get Remembered, Legends Never Die is always a good one because kids always go crazy for it.
OS: And finally – as a kind of cop out - what’s the question you’d most like to be asked in an interview, and how would you answer it?
Dan: My favourite question I'd like to be asked is probably 'what is my favourite toy?" Because I love Legos. Our band is actually super stoked on Legos. Our keyboard player buys them all the time on tour. It's really fun.
OS: Do you buy like, the Harry Potter ones and the Star Wars ones and stuff?
Dan: Uh... He's really into the castle ones right now. I used to have a lot of the pirate ones and the under the water ones. Those ones were really cool with the little submarines and the sharks and shit. Sweet. Yeah, Legos!
Four Year Strong are about to embark on the Easkpak Antidote tour throughout the UK and Europe, along with Alexisonfire, Anti-Flag, and The Ghost of A Thousand. Their recently released cover album, Explains It All, is available now.
| 
