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Interview with
JONATHAN VIGIL
from
THE GHOST INSIDE

(10th April 2024)

Interview with Audrey Songvilay

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Photo – Markus Hauschild

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Congratulations on your upcoming release of your new album, Searching for Solace. Could you please tell us about the inspiration behind the album and what listeners can expect from it?
Searching for Solace is about navigating through the maze of the mind. There’s so many times where you take dead ends, you take U -turns, there’s rights, there’s ups and there’s downs and any path is not a linear one. There’s so many variables and so many things that go on in getting to one place. This was the first time during the whole COVID lockdowns where I was having some struggles with my mental health and really understanding where I was and what I was doing. It was really difficult. Searching for Solace is just about everything that involves you getting to one place to another. You have to realise that it’s not about the destination. It’s about the journey and it’s about getting there. That’s what you need to find comfort in and not just the end goal. This record is where the listener feels the yin and yang, the back and forth, the push and the pull the whole time. We have songs like ‘Wash It Away’ which is a more poppy melodic singing song. Then we have a song like ‘Split’ or ‘Wrath’ or ‘Death Grip’ which is the exact opposite. It’s real heavy. It’s like a tug of war the whole way through, but it’s all about getting there and not the actual end part itself.

Your lead single, ‘Wash It Away’ has really resonated with fans. One of them has said that it’s made them have a more positive outlook on life. So what was the concept behind the song and how does that tie into the song’s message and the message that you just spoke about?
‘Wash It Away’ is a big one because I think everybody can relate to something like this. It’s about being on a path in life, whether it’s a career path or a schooling path or a relationship path or whatever. You put in all this time and this work and you traverse the landscape to get to a certain point. You might hit a crossroads and you think to yourself, am I doing this because I want to do it or because I’ve just invested all this time?
‘Wash It Away’ is about not being afraid to do just chalk up lost time and just raise everything and start over from scratch. I think a lot of times you don’t find out that you are on a wrong path in life until it’s too late. There’s a million things that could happen to take you off the course. The song is about not being afraid to just pick back up and just start fresh with something.

What aspects of this journey has influenced the evolution of your music and since your formation in 2004 until now?
Growing as people. We are not the same teenagers when the band started to now. We’re in our late thirties, early forties, we’re older men now. We’ve seen so much and we’ve done so much. We’ve been very fortunate to be able to tour the world and meet people of every culture and every single country and every place we go to and just absorb things and learn and grow. I think that has been very important for us is to always keep what we do.
It’s very positive and very uplifting because it’s very important to us to have that ethos and that message of really helping people when they struggle in life. And we’ve always been that kind of band to have that. We’re very fortunate to be in that position and take it as far as it can go. We’ve been very fortunate to be able to go everywhere in the world that we’ve ever wanted to. So just getting back down to Australia on this next tour we’re doing with Parkway Drive is going to be incredible. It’s collectively our favourite place to go to as far as tourists and as far as playing shows in a band. Australia was one of the first places that ever cared about our band, ever listened, sang along to our music and really got what we were doing. So to be able to go back there so many years later is really important to us and to have people care as much as they do.

Do you have a favourite State in Australia?
I want to say New South Wales because I think I’ve spent the most time in Sydney and we’ve been to Australia a bunch of times. So obviously I’ve done all the tourist stuff, seen the Opera House, done all that kind of stuff. I like Queensland. I love it up there. I have kind of a weird relationship with Brisbane. Brisbane’s always been incredible. There’s a song on the record called ‘Cityscapes’ and it’s about Brisbane. It’s about the day that I found out that my father had passed away. It was day one of a tour we did with The Amity Affliction. I remember looking out the city skyline in Brisbane and just in tears and I didn’t know what to do. I was so heartbroken and felt so alone and vulnerable in Brisbane. I think every time I’ve gone to Brisbane since my dad’s past, I always get reminded of that.

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Could you share more experience or moments that inspired tracks on the album?
This record is a little different for us because this is the first time where we’ve went into a record and a writing process with no hold barred. We had no reservations. We just went for it and that was our first record back after the accident. Searching for Solace was the first time we were able to take a step forward and not have to think about what we were doing or who we were writing for, or what we were trying to do. We just were like, we need to go into this and write the best songs possible because we remember not that long ago when we almost didn’t get a chance to come back to this and we weren’t sure this was going to be a thing again. So if we didn’t give it a hundred percent, then it would be a waste and we would sell ourselves short.

You have shows coming up in September. What can new fans expect? And for the fans that you have now, why do you think they resonate so much with your music?
We really made it a point to be a band that can be hopeful. We are aware that time can and life can get difficult at times. That’s why we have the lines like “life swinging hard, but I’m swinging harder.” We have those big, full moments when we wrote them. We were all very sincere about what we were doing, but we didn’t really have the kind of hardships and the setbacks that we’ve had until our accident, and us getting back to music again was really important for us to prove to ourselves and prove to everybody that it’s real and it’s not just a saying or just something that we’re doing to try to benefit off of. Our fans can come to our shows and really expect to see our band again in a whole new light, because we’ve really done so much work to work on our live sound. The new fans are going to really appreciate just the sincerity on stage and they’re really going to connect with what we’re doing.

If you could perform with any music artist alive or dead, who would you choose and why?
Wow, that’s a gnarly question. I think I’m going to have to say something crazy that wouldn’t make sense for a band like us, but it would have to be like the Beatles. The reason I say that is because my dad is the one who got me into music and he was a gigantic Beatles fan. We were always listening to the Beatles when I was young and he was always filling our house with songs.

Do you have a favourite Beatles song?
Hey Jude. And that’s a Paul McCartney song. So, yeah, I guess it would be Paul McCartney.

What piece of advice would you give to an artist starting out?
Be genuine. Just be yourself and do what you can do and elevate it and not try to mimic anybody because I think that’s a big problem with people as they hear they have a favourite band or they have a favourite artist or they have a favourite singer, they have a favourite songwriter and they do what they can to emulate that. Most of the time it comes across as disingenuous and it’s not something that people can relate to or they can feel. Why would I go for this knockoff version of the artists that I care about? So it’s important to be yourself, to believe in what you’re doing, to be proud of what you’re doing. If you believe in yourself and you believe in what you’re doing, people will follow and people will come along.

What is the craziest thing you’ve ever done?
I went skydiving one time for my 18th birthday. Me and my buddy, we drove to Las Vegas and we went skydiving and it was crazy and it was spontaneous and there was just no plan.

What is one topic you can talk about for hours?
Wow. I hate to say this, but probably video games. I’ve been a big video gamer my entire life. I grew up playing Nintendo and then Super Nintendo was my console of choice. I follow a ton of like tech blog.

What is the thing you like most about yourself?
I’m able to make things in stride. There’s been times in life where I’ve gotten a lot of really tough news but I’ve never let it really defeat me. I’ve never let it like slow me down or crush me. Like I’ve always done what I can to just stay as like baseline as possible.

There’s just some rapid answer-questions I’d love to get to know about you.
Favourite:
Album: NOFX, Punk In Drublic.
Artist: Chino Moreno.
Movie: 10 Things I Hate About You.
Place to visit: Tokyo.
Venue to play:? Chain Reaction in Anaheim, California.
Food: Nando’s.
Tattoos: I don’t like any of my tattoos. I have tattoos that I like and think are cool, but if I had the option, I would just not have tattoos at all.

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Destroy All Lines Presents

PARKWAY DRIVE
20 YEAR ANNIVERSARY TOUR

WITH SPECIAL GUEST

I PREVAIL (USA)
THE GHOST INSIDE (USA) + VOID OF VISION

TOUR DATES:

Friday 20 September – Brisbane Entertainment Centre, Brisbane
Saturday 21 September – Qudos Bank Arena, Sydney
Sunday 22 September – John Cain Arena, Melbourne
Friday 27 September – AEC Arena, Adelaide
Sunday 29 September – HBF Stadium, Perth

Early bird pre-sale tickets on sale: Tuesday 26 March @ 9am local time

To Gain Early Ticket Access Register HERE

General tickets on sale: Thursday 28 March @ 9am local time

Tickets from destroyalllines.com

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Pre-Order Searching For Solace
Pre-Save Searching For Solace

SEARCHING FOR SOLACE
Tracklisting

Going Under
Death Grip
Light Years
Secret
Split
Wash It Away
Cityscapes
Earn It
Wrath
Reckoning
Breathless

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Follow THE GHOST INSIDE
Website – Instagram – Facebook – Twitter

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Press Release 28th March 2024 (below) HERE

THE GHOST INSIDE
question their sanity
in crushing new single
‘Split’

New Album
SEARCHING FOR SOLACE
Out April 19 Via Epitaph Records

Touring Australia this September
Supporting PARKWAY DRIVE

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AMNPLIFY – DB