Ryan Neff - Miss May I (07/05/2014)
Hey, Ryan. How are you?
Good. How's it going?
Yeah, I'm good. You're currently on tour in Japan with Crossfaith and Coldrain, how's that been going?
It's been good. We've been here for about a week and a half to two weeks, something like that. All shows have been sold out which is pretty cool for our first time here. It's a pretty extensive tour. It's been a pretty big party tour, lots of bar nights and meeting new friends.
Has it been tough opening for two Japanese bands in their home country?
I'll give it to them, they are very generous guys. The way the lineup worked on this tour was they are flip-flopping their headlining spot and putting us in the middle. So on any given day you could get Coldrain opening, Miss May I in the middle and then Crossfaith headlining or vice versa. It's been really cool and we're really thankful to them for this opportunity. We were supposed to come to Japan twice and both tours got cancelled. During one of them we flew from Ohio to Michigan and when we got there all the airports in the upper northeast from Wisconsin all the way to the east coast were frozen over so we missed the entire tour because all the flights got cancelled. We were supposed to be here with two tours experience but when we got here we weren't sure if we had any fans here at all. We were nervous about being sandwiched between the two headlining bands but the response has been much better than what we expected.
Speak of touring, Miss May I were last in Australia for Soundwave last year. What was that experience like?
That blew our minds a little bit (laughs). We were out of bed at nine or ten in the morning every day, lobby called at eleven and we were on stage at twelve or twelve thirty every day. We weren't very familiar with the other bands on our stage, they weren't the kind of bands that we'd toured with before or anything but we had gigantic crowds. We've had really good luck there. The only other time we've been to Australia is for the Parkway Drive tour [in 2011]. Even though we've only toured their twice it's definitely made Australia one of our favourite places to tour after two great tours.
Can we expect another Australian tour soon with the new album coming out?
Yeah, absolutely. Just like always, we've gotta work out how to fit it in to our crazy always-on-the-road schedule. As soon as we find the right time frame and the right bands to get there with we'll definitely be back.
I actually wanted to ask about your crazy schedule. Miss May I only formed eight years ago yet you're about to release your fourth album and are always on the road. How do you find time to yourself or do you prefer to always be busy with the band?
(laughs) I think we're this busy because of time. There's so many good bands, and as a fan of metal you don't have to stick to one band and stick with them to release a new record every four years like we used to have to. Kids want new content all the time and because of that you have to stay relevant and you have to stay out there. Unless you're the juggernaut band that's taking every other band out on your own headlining tour and you're the one drawing all the fans you've gotta keep staying on the roads and releasing records because you don't want people to forget about you. The pace has been pretty crazy for us. We had a pretty habit in our early days of neglecting outside countries. Like we might do five tours of America in one year and only hit outside markets one time, whereas our last two records we might play America once or twice a year and also try and play England and Europe and even Australia and even, like now, how we've hit Japan for the first time. We've played South East Asia and even China last year. The big thing for us is to try and make the band global right now. If we have to keep releasing material as frequently as we do then we want to make sure we can bring that material worldwide and play for all the people that are fans of the band.
Speaking of new material, your new song Echoes has some very emotional lyrics to it. What was that song written about?
The idea behind all the lyrics on this one [new album Rise of the Lion] was to try and make it a little more personal for the fans. What we did was we took a bunch of letters we received from fans that deal with things they're going through and how Miss May I songs have helped them get through stuff and we presented the band with a list of topics that we could help write songs about that would help fans. As we were writing each song we would try and pick a topic that would go with each song, so with Echoes, being a little bit of a slower more softer track, that one ended up being about the death of a best friend or loved one. Being a softer, sadder song that was the topic that fit that song the best.
What was the recording process like for the new album Rise of the Lion?
This one was different to the last one. When we did At Heart we really struggled when we got to the studio because we were on the road so much on the Monument album cycle that we didn't get the opportunity to write any songs. I remember we were on Warped tour 2011 and we were cramming in the back of the bus trying to get demos out so that we could get to the studio and be prepared and then when we got to the studio to record At Heart we really struggled. We only got three bangers on that album but we always want to try and get ten out of ten great tracks. That's why with Rise of the Lion, even with our hectic tour schedule we made sure we scheduled in two and a half weeks at a studio close to where we lived and we recorded the whole album live as a group. We basically had the whole record written before we got to the studio, vocals included. When we got to the studio to record with Terry [Date, producer] the songs were pretty much done and instead of having to write the songs there and take up time we were basically able to just edit little pieces of the songs to make each one better.
Where did the name Rise of the Lion come from?
It's paying homage to the fan base that we've amassed the last few years. It was just an American only fan base but it's opened our eyes when we've started touring around the world to all the fans of the band. Just like with the song topics that relates back to the fans we also wanted a title that's also paying homage to the fans. Rise of the Lion I guess relates to the fans taking us up more and more with each album and giving us an opportunity to do bigger and better stuff.
The album actually gets released in Australia before anywhere else in the world. Who's decision was that?
I dunno (laughs). That's one of the facts that we don't know why that is. Fans are asking us here in America “this isn't fair, this isn't fair” but we don't know why that is. It happens you know (laughs). All you guys enjoy, you'll have it a few days early.
Do you get nervous before releasing a new album?
Oh yeah. I think we might be the worst band about being nervous. We're pretty much nervous about everything at all times and I think that's because we enjoy what we do so much that we just don't want anything bad to happen. We wanna keep doing this as long as we can because we really love what we're doing. We're not nervous about things going badly we're just ready to get it out there. We're really excited, we've been done with it since Thanksgivings and we just hope that everybody loves it as much as we do.
Going away from the album now. What bands inspired you to want to play in a metal band?
My metal band story is actually pretty funny. I just wanted to play in a band, I didn't care what kind. I listened to stuff like Nirvana, Tool and Queens of The Stone Age at high school and I got pretty good at bass playing at home by myself. I got into my first band through my high school girlfriend's best friend because my high school girlfriend's best friend boyfriend was in a metal band (laughs). He told me it was a metalcore band and I was like “what the hell is that?” (laughs) so I had to educate myself with what metalcore was. I got CD's from All That Remains, Darkest Hour, As I Lay Dying and on and on and on and from there, once I'd decided that I really enjoyed that sort of music I just kept touring locally. The way that Miss May I happened was the other four guys were already kicking ass in our area [Troy, Ohio] even though they were pretty much little kids, like I was nineteen at the time and they would have been fifteen or sixteen. I think B.J. [Stead, guitars] might have been the oldest at the time at a whopping seventeen (laughs) and they were better than my band and everybody in my band was in their twenties. I made a conscious decision to start begging for a spot in the band and it ended up working out and I hopped into a band full of little kids, even though they were only a few years younger than me, and on and on we went.
Did you ever expect that eight years later you guys would still be going strong?
No every time we do something new it blows my mind. It's unbelievable all the stuff we do. The area that we're from is such a tiny area and it's so cool to be doing all the stuff that we're doing. It's now we're just starting to see it, like we've been touring for a really long time and things are really starting to take off for us worldwide. When we go home and talk to our friends and they're all getting married and having kids and buying houses, doing the normal “American dream” type thing and we're out there, playing gigs around the world for thousands of kids every night. We're away from home for nine months of the year and we're getting older and older our fan base is not getting any smaller. It's pretty crazy.
What one thing that Miss May I have done would you say you are most proud of?
This record is gonna be the thing for us. We always wanted to write a record where we could choose any of the ten songs off it to put in a set list and it'd make the fans excited and we don't feel like we'd done that on the older records yet. It's ten awesome songs that we worked really hard on. It's completely different to what we've done and by far the most raw record we've made and definitely pays homage to all the metal lords that we worship (laughs).
That's great to hear. We'll make this the last question – what would you say is the best and worst thing about being in Miss May I?
The best thing is definitely, especially realising it on this tour, is we do a fan meet every single night. We hang out at the venue after every show and it's incredible to meet fans every day and finding out what inspires them and how much they love the band. The worst thing is just getting your ass kicked on the road. Being gone all the time and dealing with jet lag and putting your body through all this stuff. Like last night I jumped off a PA stack and messed my back up so now I'm walking like an old man. But that's just part of the game.
Thanks very much for your time today. Good luck with the rest of the Japanese tour and the album and we hope to see you in Australia soon.
Awesome. Thank you very much, man. Cheers.
Matt Barton
Good. How's it going?
Yeah, I'm good. You're currently on tour in Japan with Crossfaith and Coldrain, how's that been going?
It's been good. We've been here for about a week and a half to two weeks, something like that. All shows have been sold out which is pretty cool for our first time here. It's a pretty extensive tour. It's been a pretty big party tour, lots of bar nights and meeting new friends.
Has it been tough opening for two Japanese bands in their home country?
I'll give it to them, they are very generous guys. The way the lineup worked on this tour was they are flip-flopping their headlining spot and putting us in the middle. So on any given day you could get Coldrain opening, Miss May I in the middle and then Crossfaith headlining or vice versa. It's been really cool and we're really thankful to them for this opportunity. We were supposed to come to Japan twice and both tours got cancelled. During one of them we flew from Ohio to Michigan and when we got there all the airports in the upper northeast from Wisconsin all the way to the east coast were frozen over so we missed the entire tour because all the flights got cancelled. We were supposed to be here with two tours experience but when we got here we weren't sure if we had any fans here at all. We were nervous about being sandwiched between the two headlining bands but the response has been much better than what we expected.
Speak of touring, Miss May I were last in Australia for Soundwave last year. What was that experience like?
That blew our minds a little bit (laughs). We were out of bed at nine or ten in the morning every day, lobby called at eleven and we were on stage at twelve or twelve thirty every day. We weren't very familiar with the other bands on our stage, they weren't the kind of bands that we'd toured with before or anything but we had gigantic crowds. We've had really good luck there. The only other time we've been to Australia is for the Parkway Drive tour [in 2011]. Even though we've only toured their twice it's definitely made Australia one of our favourite places to tour after two great tours.
Can we expect another Australian tour soon with the new album coming out?
Yeah, absolutely. Just like always, we've gotta work out how to fit it in to our crazy always-on-the-road schedule. As soon as we find the right time frame and the right bands to get there with we'll definitely be back.
I actually wanted to ask about your crazy schedule. Miss May I only formed eight years ago yet you're about to release your fourth album and are always on the road. How do you find time to yourself or do you prefer to always be busy with the band?
(laughs) I think we're this busy because of time. There's so many good bands, and as a fan of metal you don't have to stick to one band and stick with them to release a new record every four years like we used to have to. Kids want new content all the time and because of that you have to stay relevant and you have to stay out there. Unless you're the juggernaut band that's taking every other band out on your own headlining tour and you're the one drawing all the fans you've gotta keep staying on the roads and releasing records because you don't want people to forget about you. The pace has been pretty crazy for us. We had a pretty habit in our early days of neglecting outside countries. Like we might do five tours of America in one year and only hit outside markets one time, whereas our last two records we might play America once or twice a year and also try and play England and Europe and even Australia and even, like now, how we've hit Japan for the first time. We've played South East Asia and even China last year. The big thing for us is to try and make the band global right now. If we have to keep releasing material as frequently as we do then we want to make sure we can bring that material worldwide and play for all the people that are fans of the band.
Speaking of new material, your new song Echoes has some very emotional lyrics to it. What was that song written about?
The idea behind all the lyrics on this one [new album Rise of the Lion] was to try and make it a little more personal for the fans. What we did was we took a bunch of letters we received from fans that deal with things they're going through and how Miss May I songs have helped them get through stuff and we presented the band with a list of topics that we could help write songs about that would help fans. As we were writing each song we would try and pick a topic that would go with each song, so with Echoes, being a little bit of a slower more softer track, that one ended up being about the death of a best friend or loved one. Being a softer, sadder song that was the topic that fit that song the best.
What was the recording process like for the new album Rise of the Lion?
This one was different to the last one. When we did At Heart we really struggled when we got to the studio because we were on the road so much on the Monument album cycle that we didn't get the opportunity to write any songs. I remember we were on Warped tour 2011 and we were cramming in the back of the bus trying to get demos out so that we could get to the studio and be prepared and then when we got to the studio to record At Heart we really struggled. We only got three bangers on that album but we always want to try and get ten out of ten great tracks. That's why with Rise of the Lion, even with our hectic tour schedule we made sure we scheduled in two and a half weeks at a studio close to where we lived and we recorded the whole album live as a group. We basically had the whole record written before we got to the studio, vocals included. When we got to the studio to record with Terry [Date, producer] the songs were pretty much done and instead of having to write the songs there and take up time we were basically able to just edit little pieces of the songs to make each one better.
Where did the name Rise of the Lion come from?
It's paying homage to the fan base that we've amassed the last few years. It was just an American only fan base but it's opened our eyes when we've started touring around the world to all the fans of the band. Just like with the song topics that relates back to the fans we also wanted a title that's also paying homage to the fans. Rise of the Lion I guess relates to the fans taking us up more and more with each album and giving us an opportunity to do bigger and better stuff.
The album actually gets released in Australia before anywhere else in the world. Who's decision was that?
I dunno (laughs). That's one of the facts that we don't know why that is. Fans are asking us here in America “this isn't fair, this isn't fair” but we don't know why that is. It happens you know (laughs). All you guys enjoy, you'll have it a few days early.
Do you get nervous before releasing a new album?
Oh yeah. I think we might be the worst band about being nervous. We're pretty much nervous about everything at all times and I think that's because we enjoy what we do so much that we just don't want anything bad to happen. We wanna keep doing this as long as we can because we really love what we're doing. We're not nervous about things going badly we're just ready to get it out there. We're really excited, we've been done with it since Thanksgivings and we just hope that everybody loves it as much as we do.
Going away from the album now. What bands inspired you to want to play in a metal band?
My metal band story is actually pretty funny. I just wanted to play in a band, I didn't care what kind. I listened to stuff like Nirvana, Tool and Queens of The Stone Age at high school and I got pretty good at bass playing at home by myself. I got into my first band through my high school girlfriend's best friend because my high school girlfriend's best friend boyfriend was in a metal band (laughs). He told me it was a metalcore band and I was like “what the hell is that?” (laughs) so I had to educate myself with what metalcore was. I got CD's from All That Remains, Darkest Hour, As I Lay Dying and on and on and on and from there, once I'd decided that I really enjoyed that sort of music I just kept touring locally. The way that Miss May I happened was the other four guys were already kicking ass in our area [Troy, Ohio] even though they were pretty much little kids, like I was nineteen at the time and they would have been fifteen or sixteen. I think B.J. [Stead, guitars] might have been the oldest at the time at a whopping seventeen (laughs) and they were better than my band and everybody in my band was in their twenties. I made a conscious decision to start begging for a spot in the band and it ended up working out and I hopped into a band full of little kids, even though they were only a few years younger than me, and on and on we went.
Did you ever expect that eight years later you guys would still be going strong?
No every time we do something new it blows my mind. It's unbelievable all the stuff we do. The area that we're from is such a tiny area and it's so cool to be doing all the stuff that we're doing. It's now we're just starting to see it, like we've been touring for a really long time and things are really starting to take off for us worldwide. When we go home and talk to our friends and they're all getting married and having kids and buying houses, doing the normal “American dream” type thing and we're out there, playing gigs around the world for thousands of kids every night. We're away from home for nine months of the year and we're getting older and older our fan base is not getting any smaller. It's pretty crazy.
What one thing that Miss May I have done would you say you are most proud of?
This record is gonna be the thing for us. We always wanted to write a record where we could choose any of the ten songs off it to put in a set list and it'd make the fans excited and we don't feel like we'd done that on the older records yet. It's ten awesome songs that we worked really hard on. It's completely different to what we've done and by far the most raw record we've made and definitely pays homage to all the metal lords that we worship (laughs).
That's great to hear. We'll make this the last question – what would you say is the best and worst thing about being in Miss May I?
The best thing is definitely, especially realising it on this tour, is we do a fan meet every single night. We hang out at the venue after every show and it's incredible to meet fans every day and finding out what inspires them and how much they love the band. The worst thing is just getting your ass kicked on the road. Being gone all the time and dealing with jet lag and putting your body through all this stuff. Like last night I jumped off a PA stack and messed my back up so now I'm walking like an old man. But that's just part of the game.
Thanks very much for your time today. Good luck with the rest of the Japanese tour and the album and we hope to see you in Australia soon.
Awesome. Thank you very much, man. Cheers.
Matt Barton