Project Description

Interview with

RYAN PHILLIPS

from

STORY OF THE YEAR

Interviewer – Deyan Stevic

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Story Of The Year

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Known for their spectacular live shows and rapacious anthemic songs, STORY OF THE YEAR have emerged from their self-imposed hiatus and the bands devoted Australian fans couldn’t be happier!

It’s been 7 years since the last STORY OF THE YEAR record. They’re stepping out of the shadows with more passion and energy than any time in the last decade. They are re-vitalized and absolutely intent on delivering the best record of their lives. Alternative Press couldn’t agree more exclaiming ‘Wolves, is nothing but a complete success…this record sees STORY OF THE YEAR rising to the occasion and surmounting past challenges with determination and confidence.’

If you have seen a STORY OF THE YEAR live show before then expect more than you could imagine, and if you haven’t then it has to be seen to be believed.

Deyan Stevic from Amnplify caught up with Ryan Phillips for an update recently.

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Q: So it’s been 7 years since your last record, what inspired you emerge from your self-imposed hiatus?

A: I don’t know if there was any kind of inspiration behind it, it was more of a feeling. Ryan continued to write the whole time we were off and doing other things and being family men. To my understanding he just woke up one day and said “yeah, it’s time”. I mean we’d been sending some demos back and forth and then I think Dan put vocals onto one of his demos and just the timing and the way everything sounded together it just sounded like it was the right time to start writing a record.

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Q: Awesome, so you guys have plenty of Australian fans rejoicing over the new record. After 7 years, what’s it like coming back to work together to create another record?

A: It was awesome, it wasn’t like a thing where we had a hiatus and didn’t see each other and didn’t talk to each other. We all hung out, we’d see each other at the bar, we’d go to each other’s houses and hang out and stuff like that, so it wasn’t like “oh we haven’t seen each other in 7 years let’s make a record”. I mean we’re best friends, it’s hard not to be around each other and you know we had done some shows in between there and flew to different places and did some odd gigs and did some things like that but it wasn’t anything abnormal to get together it was super exciting to be creating new music and potentially putting out a record. It was really exciting more than anything, you know, the forward thinking in the songwriting between Dan and Ryan was amazing to me so it was exciting for me to be able to hear that and to start to gather ideas, you know, these were fantastic songs so that’s what I was excited about more than anything.

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Q: So you’ll be touring Australia in May which is massive news. What kind of show can fans expect for those who have never seen you live before?

A: Energy, good times, smiles. Where we’re at right now in our lives and careers, it’s all about having fun. We’re all getting a little older, we all have families. We’re not the Foo Fighters so we’re not making millions upon millions of dollars per year so anything we do has to be fun or there’s no point doing it anymore. We’re not 23 years old trying to grind it out and do all that stuff. We’re not single dudes just hanging out and playing music, it’s a job now. But at the same time we have to have a good time. We want the crowd to know that we’re there to play music for them and we’re stoked about it and you’ll see that. You’ll see that we’re laughing on stage, smiling, you know, a super high energy show like it’s always been. They’re just going to see 4 dudes having a fantastic time playing rad music that we’re super stoked on.

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Q: So as a band what are some of the most important things you’ve learnt between the 7 years of releasing music?

A: It goes back to just having that time off, I don’t want to say that any of us fell out of love for making music but it kind of reenergized it. When you go so hard for 7-8 years just touring, recording, touring, recording and barely ever being home and all that stuff there’s a point in time where you kind of get burnt out. You kind of feel like you need to step away for a second because you’ve been going so hard for so long that you can’t really step back and see the bigger picture and see where you’re at, whether it be you’re tired from being on the road or maybe you’re not super stoked on what you’re writing all the time. So what I learnt in that time off was that I missed playing shows a whole lot and I missed being around my friends all the time in a creative environment and that’s what I took away from it. I missed that, I missed the excitement of hearing new ideas coming together or a new finished record which we’re all f***ing totally in love with, that we just love this record, we’re so proud of it. I missed that aspect of it and I also missed playing shows, you know, being off for that long it’s kind of hard to come down to Australia or somewhere else other than playing our home town every now and then and maybe a couple of US dates that we get offers for randomly. But I miss travel, I miss playing for fans in other countries, it was a lot of missing things for me. So like, I just miss that aspect of a full time band, and we’re not technically a full time band still, we’re doing things in different ways, just sporadically doing things that make sense. But, I miss planning for things and looking forward to going to see you guys or going somewhere else or playing shows or promoting a new record and all that stuff. It was a lot of “oh I wish we were doing that right now but I understand why we had to take a step back”. Maybe I learnt to appreciate everything a little more, not that I appreciate it more I just appreciate it in a different way now.

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Q: I read that “Wolves” was a project that was crowd funded by fans and released on Pledge Music. Can you explain the story behind how this came about?

A: Well, we didn’t have a label anymore, we were let go by Epitaph Records at some point in time. Between taking a hiatus and whatever we did they were just kind of like “ok well…” whatever, however it happens in the record business. So when we decided to think about doing a new record where thinking should we crowd fund it, I mean we tried to go the label route, made demos and all that stuff then thought “could we do this on our own?” I think once we really started looking at it, in this day and age with the internet and social media and how things are done, it’s a different game than when we first started when you had to have a record label to push all that stuff and pay for press everywhere and do all these things. You don’t really have to do that anymore to be a band really. I mean we were kind of skeptical of the crowdfunding thing, we were away for a long time and we were thinking would our fans want to give us money to make a new record. When we did it though they came out in full force, we reached our goal in a few days it was amazing. Doing that made us realize people wanted new Story of the Year and we weren’t forgotten and I think maybe it pushed us a bit further than we had in our mind of we’ve got to make a rad record. We already knew that our songs were the best songs we had written in our opinion but I think for me I thought these people paid to fund this record for us so we had to make the content awesome, we had to make the visual stuff and videos and all that stuff top notch for these people that gave their hard earned money for us to make a record. It was a crazy experience, it was hard, things took longer than we thought because we were new to it so we had to navigate and figure out some things along the way that we weren’t totally sure of. I know some people got frustrated with the length of time some things took but we were frustrated to because we were running into all these different obstacles that we had to overcome. But I think in the end, the length of time it took to do certain things was necessary for us to give people a product that we didn’t do half-assed. Because people paid for it we wanted it to be right before anyone got anything.

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Q: So how does the process change when you’re independently releasing and having complete control without a label constantly overseeing things?

A: Things take longer just because one, we’re unsure of things and two, just us as a band is how we’ve always operated unless someone says “you need to get it done on this date” we’re kind of just like “oh we’ll get it done whatever”. Especially now because it not being each of our only things that we do, it had to be done a different way so it just took longer. That was a bit thing that without a label you’re not given an advance so you can live off it and make a record and not have to worry about your bills. Every single penny that we got that people crowd funded was used to pay for the album’s production so we had to do things differently so it took a little longer but it did give us the freedom to do what we wanted to do. We didn’t have turn our record in to a label and hope that they thought it was good enough to do something with, it was just “we’ve got a record and we’re going to put it out guys”. It was cool, it was different but at the same time it had been so long from when we’d released the last record through a record label that it was weird but it wasn’t at the same time because it wasn’t like “yeah we put out a record two years ago and we had this machine behind it but now we’re going to put one our today, or this year.” So there was a disconnect in my opinion, it wasn’t that weird. It was harder but it was worth it because it gave us that control over everything.

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Story Of The Year

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Q: Personally, what are some of your favourite songs off the album?

A: “Praying for Rain” is probably my favourite song on the record, it’s an amalgamation of a lot of Story of the Year stuff but it’s also a massive step forward for us just having a 7-minute song that takes you on a journey. With all the different sections of the song nothing repeats really, I don’t know I just really love that song a lot. Other than that “I Swear I’m Ok” is another big one for me, I think lyrically and melodically it’s amazing. Dan did such a fantastic job with that song that I love it. I love the whole record but the standouts would be Praying for Rain, I Swear I’m Ok, Miracle and Like Ghosts I think are big ones for me.

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Q: Cool, so when writing up set lists, especially when touring a new album is it hard to find a mix between old and new songs? I mean, there’ll always be the old fan favourites but I’m sure you guys are itching to play as many new songs as you can just to show your evolution. So is it hard finding that mix?

A: In the past it has been because normally half the time when one of our new records would come out we would be either getting ready to start a tour or be in the middle of a tour so it’s hard to throw a bunch of new songs into a live set when nobody’s heard anything. So it’s like, maybe you’d want to put in the one song everybody has heard already, the “single” that’s been out for a month or two before the album comes out and you want to put some sweet badass live songs from the new album on the set. I feel like in the past we’ve been limited to putting 2 or 3 new songs it the set right after the album’s come out but with this one it’s been out since December of last year. So people have heard it, it’s been out for a long time and leading into it we released tracks if you pledged for the record so people have heard it for longer than what we’re normally used to so for us it was like “I think we should play this many songs from the new record and this many songs from the old records and this is what we’re going to do”. It was pretty easy this time. I think we’re playing probably 7 new songs and it’s going to be a reasonably long set for us. But yeah, it was pretty easy for us this time just because we’re so stoked on the record that we want to play everything and we were like “ok well we can play these ones and we’ll be good, and there’s still a mix with the old stuff too”.

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Q: Yeah I’m sure your fans down here would love to hear heaps of the stuff from the new album. So you’ve got Melbourne’s “Void of Vision” supporting you on your Australian tour, do you listen to any Australian bands?

A: I’ll be honest with you; I don’t listen to a lot of music nowadays. As I’m getting older and I hate saying this because I’m in a band and I want people to listen to us and all that stuff but it’s hard for me to find time to really find new bands and listen to new music. I hate saying that and I know it sounds so douchey, I feel like I should know more about current music but between having another job when I’m home and having 2 kids and my family and doing band things, I find myself just listening to stuff I grew up listening to. I don’t really listen to much new stuff and I hate saying that, but I’m just being honest. I just end up listening to hip-hop I grew up listening to or Pearl Jam or Rage Against the Machine and stuff like that. It’s really hard for me to find time and listen to new music and get into it but I love watching new bands I haven’t seen before live and that’s a big thing for me. I tend to like seeing a band live first before I hear the record anyway because if I hear the record first I’ll expect the same thing live and if it’s not exactly the same as on the record that can be disappointing. For me at least it’s a different vibe seeing a band live and it gets you more into the music. So I’m excited to see the dudes play for sure.

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Q: Honestly, that’s fair enough. There’s a lot of new music coming out these days it’s hard to keep track.

A: There’s so, so much music. Even bands I like have put out new music and I haven’t heard it yet it’s like “ah, I don’t have time!”

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Q: How would you say gigs in Australia and our fans compare to the rest of the world?

A: They are some of my favourite shows we’ve ever, ever played. Here’s what I think but I don’t live there so I don’t know. I think everyone in Australia is super happy and stoked on a daily basis so when they come to the show they already have that energy and that makes it rad. But I think on top of that, not living in the US where I think the majority of bands are these days, you don’t see a band you like 3 times a year. You see them once every 1 or 2 years. So when a band comes through, the energy level is that much more up there. So I liken that to Australia, or Japan where they’re such big fans of music and they’re not jaded or burnt out on bands and music that they just love every minute of it and I feel like that’s how Australians are too. One of my favourite shows we’ve ever played, might have been in 2006, we headlined in Sydney and to our current date, the biggest headline show we’ve ever played. It was like 6,000 people, I don’t remember the name of the place, it was huge. I walked in for sound check and I was like “we’re not going to fill this place; this place is way too big” and then we walked out on stage to play and it was fully packed and it was amazing. It was so amazing. I love coming to Australia, I love playing there. All the fans are rad, we’ve always had a great time there and I’m super stoked to come back.

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Q: That’s awesome, any last messages for your Australian fans before you come?

A: We love you guys, we’re super stoked! Come see the shows. Buy the record, stream the record, steal the record, whatever people do nowadays I have no idea. Just come out, hang out, have some f***ing beer, we’ll have a great time. We’re just so excited to come down there!

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Q: Sweet, thanks so much for the time.

A: Oh, not a problem. Thank you, see you soon.

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Story Of The Year

 

TOUR DATES:

Tuesday 1 May – Capitol, Perth – 18+

Thursday 3 May – The Triffid, Brisbane – 18+

Saturday 5 May – Metro Theatre, Sydney – 18+

Sunday 6 May – 170 Russell, Melbourne – 18+

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Tickets on sale NOW

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AMNPLIFY – DB