Andy Williams - Every Time I Die (18/09/2013)
Returning to Australia for a headline tour this October, The 59th Sound chats with Andy Williams of Every Time I Die.
For the second time this year, Every Time I Die are visiting Australia. Has it been a busy year on the road for the band?
Yeah for the most part.
We’ve toured the states I think five times and then we did Australia, unless you’re a really big band you only do that (Australia) once a year maybe, but we’ve got a chance to go twice this year. We did Big Day Out and I’m glad to just get back and do a club tour.
Playing Big Day Out festival earlier this year was a decision that shocked a lot of diehard Every Time I Die fans, how was that festival experience?
It was cool. We don’t do festivals like that so that was the deal for us, we were like “oh my god we’re on tour with Red Hot Chilli Peppers” and we’ve never been on a normal festivals, usually if we’re on a festival there’s heaps of metal bands, and there just wasn’t you know, you’ve seen us before and we’re not that (Big Day Out) type of band, we’re a club band, you know what I mean?
I noticed the change in the size of the crowd at the shows, did you feel many of your fans missed out because of this decision?
Yeah. Absolutely, it was funny though because when we announced the tour we were getting our booking agent kept sending us ticket sales of the shows and the shows are selling insane, so yeah people were bummed we did what we did, like lets go on a tour, so people were mad at us.
But the band will be returning to Australia in October to do, lets say a real ‘Every Time I Die’ tour, which fans are estatic about, how’s the reaction been to the band directly?
It’s been insane, like I said kids were going crazy.
As you said it is unusual for band to tour Australia twice in one year and Every Time I Die have always had a great relationship with Australian audiences, is there a reason that stands out to you as to why the band relate to Australians so well?
I think it’s because of the real factor with the band, like I said before you’ve seen us before, we’ve hung out with you and we’re the type of band that goes literally from the stage right into the crowd and hang, we’ve always been that band that are like “sure, let’s go eat, let’s go do this” I think people realize that we’re like dudes that play music but we’re world travellers that enjoy peoples company if that makes sense and I think that translates to the crowd, they understand that later that night they’re going to have a drink with us and with Big Day Out you can’t find a person when there’s 70,000 people there, it’s not like “hey guys lets go to the bar and let’s all watch Mexican wrestling”.
As you mentioned Big Day Out is such a different festival for the band to play, did you take advantage of what the festival had on offer?
Yeah! I got to watch Gary Clarke Jnr every day, I watched Death Grips every day, I watched OFF! every day, Jeff The Brotherhood I really wanted to become friends with those guys, they really liked being by themselves so I was kinda scared to hang out with those guys, but I just watched them and that was it. Like I said we’re show goers, we just get to travel and play music so we appreciate music, so we get to go and watch bands.
Last year saw the band release ‘Ex-Lives’ a record I’m still blown away by that album, it took me by surprise by how strong the record is where a lot of bands from your era have really faded away from keeping that strength in their sound, how does the band maintain a heavy sound?
I don’t know, I think a lot of bands, when they get older I don’t know why this is, but a lot of our peers, taking Converge and Dillinger Escape Plan out of the equasion, all the other bands that we came up with are like “we’re old, we don’t like that type of music but we’re going to keep writing music” and they try all of these new things and it just fails miserably because people want to hear what they use to do.
It sucks to say that a band like Poison The Well, they went from writing metalcore to being a really good, almost heavy indie band, there wasn’t the same thing, they’re like opposites which is strange, I like their new record but if you’re a kid that’s at home you want to hear what you grew up on and it’s weird when bands start doing that and change, that’s kind of like instead of us going “we’re going to grow up and do this thing” we’re like “let’s get gnarlier, let’s push the envelope again and see what we can do on the next one” and I think that’s what it is. I think a lot of dudes loose the fire and that’s it, for us for some reason, all 5 of us are playing on 4 cylinders so it’s weird”.
Even watching Every Time I Die live, after so many years there is still such a high energy in the performance, how do you maintain that energy?
It’s getting harder. I’ll be 36 this year in December and every single time I jump or run on stage I know I’m going to feel it, it’s starting to get to the point where I’m like “damn, I should have started a band where I can just stand and play” but we’re definitely like “the show must go on” and the reason is, there’s 300 people in a crowd that paid fucking money to see us play and we’re going to make sure that every single dollar is worth it and I feel bad on days where my knees are hurting, my ankles are hurting and I’m like “shit I didn’t feel like I gave it my all” it really bums me out, backstage I’m like damn I hurt so bad, I can tell people in the crowd can tell I was hurting, it really upsets me so we just go, it’s one of those things for us you’ve gotta have two red bulls and fire it up, just get out there and run around like you’re 16.
Is there any City & Colour-esque retirement plans up your sleeve?
Dallas (Green- City & Colour) is an idiot. Here’s the thing, when I know that my friends play acoustic it blows my mind because I bought my first acoustic guitar 3 years ago, at the ages of 33. I bought an acoustic guitar, I have always wanted to make really loud noises and like Dallas is the smartest dude on the planet because he was like “you know what, I’m going to learn this and play an acoustic guitar” now he can just dress like a farmer, get on stage, play to a bunch of people, make girls cry and make pretty music, me, I’m broken, I can never dress like a farmer and I write music that people want to bleed to, what a horrible choice.
There has been some questionable wardrobe selections from you in the past Andy I’m sure you could pull of the farmer look, you’ve been snapped in your underwear and without your underwear many times.
I’ve had a million different looks, I’m the man of a thousand faces.
Is there any looks you’re looking back on now with regret?
We (Every Time I Die) have this ongoing chain message that all of the band have of embarrassing pictures of Rat Boy (ex-ETID Drummer) so today I was trying to find one and I found this old picture from when we were recording Gutter Phenomenon and I look older in that picture than what I do now, I don’t know what that fucking look was, there was all this hair and a moustache –it was, oh my god, it was great! But yeah there’s a couple looks that I should have just left that outfit at home, I can’t think of any off hand but I’ll see them and be like “what was I thinking?”, whatever it’s fun.
It’s a good legacy to leave, a good way to embarrass the future grandchildren.
Exactly. At some point in time some kids going to go “hey wait this is your Dad right?”
They’re not going to have any friends with this mess.
Well I already told myself that I’m going to name my kid Lightning Bolt so he’s not going to have any friends anyways. Lightning Bolt Williams.
On the American tour there’s been talk of a very impressive encore.
Oh the ‘Hot Damn’ set! It’s really weird because we change our set every single day, so it’s different every day, so some days we would start with Hot Damn and end with a couple of bangers at the end and then there are days where we would do a full set and then come back out and do an encore of just Hot Damn in it’s entirety, I don’t know if we’re going to do it in Australia, we haven’t really talked about what we’re going to do in Australia yet. Right now we’re sitting on 65 songs or something that we can throw in a set.
It’s a hard decision to be made but I know a lot of your Australian fans have been excited on the idea of the ‘Hot Damn’ set, that album is one you will never be able to forget, reflecting back to when you released that album, did you know then you’d be playing that album from start to finish ten years later?
Absolutely not. That record was the weirdest record because we were supposed to go on tour with that band ‘Most Precious Blood’ and Ferret (records) called us and were like “hey, check it out, we booked you guys time to record in that time”- it was literally a month later, we had one song written for it, that was it and then we had one month to write the entire record and then record it for two weeks. It’s like “hey we need a record now”- Jordan was in school, Keith was in school so it would be like Jordan would be at school all day and we would get out and be like “what have you got”; “ahh I’ve got this” and we’d start playing and then when we were recording it, I was like “there is no way people are going to like this record, there is no way” and then people ended up liking it a lot.
More than a lot. Looking back at that spontaneous and rushed process have you attempted to replicate that process with other records?
I kinda felt that way with ‘Ex-Lives’. When we were doing Ex-Lives I was like “man this feels great, this already feels awesome” and hopefully year later people look back at it and say “oh that record’s great” but yeah it was.
A lot of people like ‘Big Dirty’ and when we were writing it I could tell we just needed to get a record out, which sounds horrible. I love that record though so I dunno.
Well Andy I have to wrap it up and I’m lost for words as now there’s so much more I want to know about that record, but bringing it back to the coming tour will we hear many track from ‘Ex-Lives’ or have they slipped from the set list?
Yeah you will hear a lot. There’s going to be a ton off that record live for sure, off the top of my head you’re going to hear at least seven of them, we’re probably going to play 22 songs.
Great, we will hold you to that, I’ll be counting it was great to talk to you again Andy, see you soon.
For sure, I can’t wait to hang when we get over there.
Cassie Walker
FRIDAY 18 OCTOBER
BRISBANE, THE HI-FI – 18+ www.thehifi.com.au
SATURDAY 19 OCTOBER
SYDNEY, MANNING BAR – 18+ www.oztix.com.au
SUNDAY 20 OCTOBER
MELBOURNE, CORNER HOTEL – 18+ www.cornerhotel.com
TUESDAY 22 OCTOBER
ADELAIDE, FOWLERS – Licensed All Ages www.oztix.com.au / www.moshtix.com.au
THURSDAY 24 OCTOBER
PERTH, AMPLIFIER – 18+ www.oztix.com.au
For the second time this year, Every Time I Die are visiting Australia. Has it been a busy year on the road for the band?
Yeah for the most part.
We’ve toured the states I think five times and then we did Australia, unless you’re a really big band you only do that (Australia) once a year maybe, but we’ve got a chance to go twice this year. We did Big Day Out and I’m glad to just get back and do a club tour.
Playing Big Day Out festival earlier this year was a decision that shocked a lot of diehard Every Time I Die fans, how was that festival experience?
It was cool. We don’t do festivals like that so that was the deal for us, we were like “oh my god we’re on tour with Red Hot Chilli Peppers” and we’ve never been on a normal festivals, usually if we’re on a festival there’s heaps of metal bands, and there just wasn’t you know, you’ve seen us before and we’re not that (Big Day Out) type of band, we’re a club band, you know what I mean?
I noticed the change in the size of the crowd at the shows, did you feel many of your fans missed out because of this decision?
Yeah. Absolutely, it was funny though because when we announced the tour we were getting our booking agent kept sending us ticket sales of the shows and the shows are selling insane, so yeah people were bummed we did what we did, like lets go on a tour, so people were mad at us.
But the band will be returning to Australia in October to do, lets say a real ‘Every Time I Die’ tour, which fans are estatic about, how’s the reaction been to the band directly?
It’s been insane, like I said kids were going crazy.
As you said it is unusual for band to tour Australia twice in one year and Every Time I Die have always had a great relationship with Australian audiences, is there a reason that stands out to you as to why the band relate to Australians so well?
I think it’s because of the real factor with the band, like I said before you’ve seen us before, we’ve hung out with you and we’re the type of band that goes literally from the stage right into the crowd and hang, we’ve always been that band that are like “sure, let’s go eat, let’s go do this” I think people realize that we’re like dudes that play music but we’re world travellers that enjoy peoples company if that makes sense and I think that translates to the crowd, they understand that later that night they’re going to have a drink with us and with Big Day Out you can’t find a person when there’s 70,000 people there, it’s not like “hey guys lets go to the bar and let’s all watch Mexican wrestling”.
As you mentioned Big Day Out is such a different festival for the band to play, did you take advantage of what the festival had on offer?
Yeah! I got to watch Gary Clarke Jnr every day, I watched Death Grips every day, I watched OFF! every day, Jeff The Brotherhood I really wanted to become friends with those guys, they really liked being by themselves so I was kinda scared to hang out with those guys, but I just watched them and that was it. Like I said we’re show goers, we just get to travel and play music so we appreciate music, so we get to go and watch bands.
Last year saw the band release ‘Ex-Lives’ a record I’m still blown away by that album, it took me by surprise by how strong the record is where a lot of bands from your era have really faded away from keeping that strength in their sound, how does the band maintain a heavy sound?
I don’t know, I think a lot of bands, when they get older I don’t know why this is, but a lot of our peers, taking Converge and Dillinger Escape Plan out of the equasion, all the other bands that we came up with are like “we’re old, we don’t like that type of music but we’re going to keep writing music” and they try all of these new things and it just fails miserably because people want to hear what they use to do.
It sucks to say that a band like Poison The Well, they went from writing metalcore to being a really good, almost heavy indie band, there wasn’t the same thing, they’re like opposites which is strange, I like their new record but if you’re a kid that’s at home you want to hear what you grew up on and it’s weird when bands start doing that and change, that’s kind of like instead of us going “we’re going to grow up and do this thing” we’re like “let’s get gnarlier, let’s push the envelope again and see what we can do on the next one” and I think that’s what it is. I think a lot of dudes loose the fire and that’s it, for us for some reason, all 5 of us are playing on 4 cylinders so it’s weird”.
Even watching Every Time I Die live, after so many years there is still such a high energy in the performance, how do you maintain that energy?
It’s getting harder. I’ll be 36 this year in December and every single time I jump or run on stage I know I’m going to feel it, it’s starting to get to the point where I’m like “damn, I should have started a band where I can just stand and play” but we’re definitely like “the show must go on” and the reason is, there’s 300 people in a crowd that paid fucking money to see us play and we’re going to make sure that every single dollar is worth it and I feel bad on days where my knees are hurting, my ankles are hurting and I’m like “shit I didn’t feel like I gave it my all” it really bums me out, backstage I’m like damn I hurt so bad, I can tell people in the crowd can tell I was hurting, it really upsets me so we just go, it’s one of those things for us you’ve gotta have two red bulls and fire it up, just get out there and run around like you’re 16.
Is there any City & Colour-esque retirement plans up your sleeve?
Dallas (Green- City & Colour) is an idiot. Here’s the thing, when I know that my friends play acoustic it blows my mind because I bought my first acoustic guitar 3 years ago, at the ages of 33. I bought an acoustic guitar, I have always wanted to make really loud noises and like Dallas is the smartest dude on the planet because he was like “you know what, I’m going to learn this and play an acoustic guitar” now he can just dress like a farmer, get on stage, play to a bunch of people, make girls cry and make pretty music, me, I’m broken, I can never dress like a farmer and I write music that people want to bleed to, what a horrible choice.
There has been some questionable wardrobe selections from you in the past Andy I’m sure you could pull of the farmer look, you’ve been snapped in your underwear and without your underwear many times.
I’ve had a million different looks, I’m the man of a thousand faces.
Is there any looks you’re looking back on now with regret?
We (Every Time I Die) have this ongoing chain message that all of the band have of embarrassing pictures of Rat Boy (ex-ETID Drummer) so today I was trying to find one and I found this old picture from when we were recording Gutter Phenomenon and I look older in that picture than what I do now, I don’t know what that fucking look was, there was all this hair and a moustache –it was, oh my god, it was great! But yeah there’s a couple looks that I should have just left that outfit at home, I can’t think of any off hand but I’ll see them and be like “what was I thinking?”, whatever it’s fun.
It’s a good legacy to leave, a good way to embarrass the future grandchildren.
Exactly. At some point in time some kids going to go “hey wait this is your Dad right?”
They’re not going to have any friends with this mess.
Well I already told myself that I’m going to name my kid Lightning Bolt so he’s not going to have any friends anyways. Lightning Bolt Williams.
On the American tour there’s been talk of a very impressive encore.
Oh the ‘Hot Damn’ set! It’s really weird because we change our set every single day, so it’s different every day, so some days we would start with Hot Damn and end with a couple of bangers at the end and then there are days where we would do a full set and then come back out and do an encore of just Hot Damn in it’s entirety, I don’t know if we’re going to do it in Australia, we haven’t really talked about what we’re going to do in Australia yet. Right now we’re sitting on 65 songs or something that we can throw in a set.
It’s a hard decision to be made but I know a lot of your Australian fans have been excited on the idea of the ‘Hot Damn’ set, that album is one you will never be able to forget, reflecting back to when you released that album, did you know then you’d be playing that album from start to finish ten years later?
Absolutely not. That record was the weirdest record because we were supposed to go on tour with that band ‘Most Precious Blood’ and Ferret (records) called us and were like “hey, check it out, we booked you guys time to record in that time”- it was literally a month later, we had one song written for it, that was it and then we had one month to write the entire record and then record it for two weeks. It’s like “hey we need a record now”- Jordan was in school, Keith was in school so it would be like Jordan would be at school all day and we would get out and be like “what have you got”; “ahh I’ve got this” and we’d start playing and then when we were recording it, I was like “there is no way people are going to like this record, there is no way” and then people ended up liking it a lot.
More than a lot. Looking back at that spontaneous and rushed process have you attempted to replicate that process with other records?
I kinda felt that way with ‘Ex-Lives’. When we were doing Ex-Lives I was like “man this feels great, this already feels awesome” and hopefully year later people look back at it and say “oh that record’s great” but yeah it was.
A lot of people like ‘Big Dirty’ and when we were writing it I could tell we just needed to get a record out, which sounds horrible. I love that record though so I dunno.
Well Andy I have to wrap it up and I’m lost for words as now there’s so much more I want to know about that record, but bringing it back to the coming tour will we hear many track from ‘Ex-Lives’ or have they slipped from the set list?
Yeah you will hear a lot. There’s going to be a ton off that record live for sure, off the top of my head you’re going to hear at least seven of them, we’re probably going to play 22 songs.
Great, we will hold you to that, I’ll be counting it was great to talk to you again Andy, see you soon.
For sure, I can’t wait to hang when we get over there.
Cassie Walker
FRIDAY 18 OCTOBER
BRISBANE, THE HI-FI – 18+ www.thehifi.com.au
SATURDAY 19 OCTOBER
SYDNEY, MANNING BAR – 18+ www.oztix.com.au
SUNDAY 20 OCTOBER
MELBOURNE, CORNER HOTEL – 18+ www.cornerhotel.com
TUESDAY 22 OCTOBER
ADELAIDE, FOWLERS – Licensed All Ages www.oztix.com.au / www.moshtix.com.au
THURSDAY 24 OCTOBER
PERTH, AMPLIFIER – 18+ www.oztix.com.au