To put it simply, we do a lot of work with The Wonder Years here at PropertyOfZack because they are just a pleasure to deal with on top of the fact that we heavily believe and support their music. I had the chance to sit down with Soupy just a few days ago to discuss the band’s new record in extreme detail, touring, and two more possible releases in 2011, as well as a bunch of other great things. The band’s new record and Hopeless debut will be as great as the expectations that many people are holding for it are hoping for. Read up and enjoy, it’s one of the best we’ve done!

The band is currently on a short eastern run with your good friends in Man Overboard and Handguns. How did the first two shows go?
The first two shows were sellouts, which is unbelievable. Let me rephrase that, that sounds conceded. The first two shows were out of control because they were sold out. Tonight is sold out as well, which is like, I don’t know. We think about where this band has been and I just never imagined us selling out any show, much less a couple in a row at legitimate venues. The Philly show was my dream show. That’s the venue that when I was a kid going to shows in Philly I had the dream of playing there someday, much less headline, much less sellout. That was out of control for me. R5 Productions runs the Church and it’s what keeps the DIY scene in Philly alive. If you want to book a show in Philly at that level and you don’t want it to be Clear Channel, the only thing you can go through is R5 and they’ve been keeping Philly alive for ten or fifteen years now. Last night a ton of our friends came out; Josh from Four Year was there. The rest of the guys were in the studio. Their whole crew that we spent a lot of time out on tour with was there too. It was good to see everybody.
 
What’s the set like?
We’ve been playing thirteen songs. It is mostly a mixture of Upsides and Won’t Be Pathetic Forever, but we do do one song off of the old one. It’s cool. We wanted to get a chance to get in some of the Won’t Be Pathetic Forever songs we don’t normally get to play. Sooner than later we’ll have a new record and we’ll have to start phasing out some of the older material because realistically in a half hour set you can only play the two newest releases.
 
Not too long before this tour The Wonder Years headed overseas on the Kerrang! Tour with Good Charlotte and Four Year Strong. How was that tour?
It was crazy. It was otherworldly for us.
POZ: You grew up listening…
Soupy: Yeah, but not just that. We’re a band that played basements. We were that band that played your VFW hall in the suburbs. These were 3,000 capacity sold out shows. To get on stage to a sea of people is intimidating and new for us, but I thought we did a great job with it. Kerrang! Magazine were awesome the whole time. They sent reporters on the tour and both the reporters spent the whole tour in our dressing room and they hung out with us all night. We shared a bus with Four Year and they’d come on the bus and play card games with us. Four Year are always amazing to tour with. Framing Hanley are super nice guys. The thing about Good Charlotte is that they’re not just a big band, they’re legitimately famous people. They’re in tabloids. They’re married to famous people. Joel, the first night, came into our dressing room and was talking to me and shows me videos of his kids and pictures of his wife and he’s like, “Yeah, this is my wife” and I’m like, “Kid, I know who your wife is; you’re famous. I can read about you in Us Weekly.” They were really down to earth. The whole tour was awesome. We did some headline shows, which were awesome. Banquet Records helped us out a lot.
 
Switching to the record: The band, and you personally, have come a long since The Upsides. Can you go into detail about the writing process of this record?
I think there was more attention paid attention to this than on The Upsides. Upsides didn’t become a concept until the record was done. Then all of a sudden we looked at the songs and went, “Oh wow, this really has a driving force behind it.” We didn’t name the record until it was a finished record. That was the only time we had ever done that. Won’t Be Pathetic Forever was named ahead of time. This release, I knew what I wanted the name of it to be last May before we had written a single note. I went into it really intently. When we wrote the lyrics, I spent a lot of time making sure that everything’s inner connected. Upsides has the theme where there’s a lyric that repeats, but there are concepts and scenes and people that come back. Not just form other songs on this record, but from other songs on Upsides. Phrases weave their way in and out of the record. I had a big piece of cardboard inside my room and I taped on all the lyrics as I had them; some were titles, some were full lyric sets. Then I would add to them in different color pens for the different themes so I could follow the themes weaving in and out and see it based on the colors.
POZ: Was that a stressful process at all?
Soupy: No, it actually relieved a lot of anxiety for me. I’m the kind of guy that likes things to be in spreadsheets and I like to be able to see everything. That relieves a lot of my neuroticism. It was good for me to be able to see the record. It was in front of my bed, so I could wake up every day and look at it and go, “Okay, this is where I am and this is what I can add to it.” It made everything a lot less stressful.
 
Can you talk about the influence that Allen Ginsberg’s “America” had on you?
Sure, I mentioned it in the interview with AltPress, and I’m not necessarily going to explain exactly how it connects. There’s a poem by Allen Ginsberg that is in correlation to this record I feel. It’s almost as if the record we wrote was written to be in dialogue with “America” by Allen Ginsberg. “America” is a poem from 1956 that Ginsberg wrote in Berkley. It’s one of the extra poem on the collection that “Howl” comes in. If you pick up “Howl,” it’s “Howl” plus “Sunflower Sutra,” “America,” “In The Back Of The Real,” and a couple other poems. They’re like the supplementary poems to “Howl” that finish the collection. I’ve read different critiques of it, but to me, “America” is a poem that represents Ginsberg’s relationship with America as his home. The poem, I feel, speaks to the dichotomy, not just where he says “this is good and this is bad,” but an internal dichotomy in which he’ll say like, “I see why this is stupid and yet I buy into it. I see what’s fucked up, but I admit to being a part of what’s fucked up.” It shows this love/hate relationship. There are certain lines in the poem that lead you to believe that while he is listing issues he has with the nation and with the nation as is home that there’s got to be some love for it because otherwise he would leave. He makes reference to Burroughs leaving the country and he could just as well leave the country, but does not. I think it’s an interesting poem and an interesting piece to correlate to the record. It’s not the only piece of media that correlates to the record, there are scenes from movies that have impacted me and there are lyrics and performances I’ve seen and they’re in our new release, but that is the heaviest one.
 
You guys recorded with Steve, whose record speaks for itself.
Steve certainly has a hell of a track record. No question about that.
POZ: How did that come about, and how was it?
Soupy: Well it came about via Jesse Cannon who manages Man Overboard and Transit and also produced Real Talk and Keep This To Yourself. He’s here tonight. Jesse is a good guy, you’ve done interviews with him before. Jesse’s a good guy, I love him. Jesse’s had a great year for bands and he’s aware of great connections that can be made. He heard our band, he liked it, he realized that Steve sound could capture what we do well. He hooked us up. Doing the record with Steve was a totally foreign experience. He did things differently than we had ever done things before. The order of operation, when we had to be at the studio, everything was different. For the better, I think. Everything was real, that’s the best way to put it. Everything was natural. He didn’t auto-tune the vocals, he didn’t sample replace the drums. If there is an effect on the guitars, it came in through a pedal. If there is an effect on my voice, it’s because I sang through a pedal or sang at an end of a hallway. If there’s reverb it’s because I’m at the end of a hallway not in a vocal booth. If there’s distortion it’s because I’m going through a fucking Boss distortion pedal. It’s all super natural sounding, which I think sounds phenomenal. When we recorded Upsides, we weren’t really a full time band. We were on tour and then in school. We were writing and then we were in school. We were recording and then we were in school. I went into the studio singing how I had always sung, but after Upsides we spent a full year and a half on tour and kind of learned how we played and sing. You naturally adapt to how you actually want to do it instead of how you thought you want to do it. So I think my voice just sounds more like how I sound now. It sounds the way I do when I talk.
 
How many tracks are on the record?
There are thirteen tracks on the record.

When might we be hearing the first single?
I don’t know. We’re supposed to find that out today. It’s supposed to be announced to me today. We’re really super heavily involved with how the record is going to be promoted, the way we’re going to do things, how we’re going to roll them out. You should see the file I sent Hopeless, they must have wanted to kill themselves. I sent them a file of all the ideas I have and how I want it to be done. I set it up like lesson plans like if I was teaching with goals and procedures. I sent them this huge file of like fifty different word documents for things I want to do. Some of them are real little and some of them are huge and expansive procedures. They are digesting all of that and getting back to me right now.
 
I assume that the record will be out before Warped?
The record will be out in June. I think I know the date, but I don’t want to jinx it yet so I don’t want to tell you.
 
This is of course the band’s true debut on Hopeless Records since off of No Sleep. How excited are you to take it to the next level with The Wonder Years in terms of the reach you’ll be able to have now with this release?
No Sleep’s coming up hard. This is going to be a huge year for No Sleep.
POZ: Should be great for Balance & Composure.
Soupy: That record sounds unbelievable. It’s so fucking good. The Stay Ahead Of The Weather stuff, the Into It. Over It. stuff is going to be crazy. The Now, Now stuff, the No Trigger stuff. But yeah, I am excited because Hopeless does have a direct line with a bunch of things. They can just call Alternative Press and be like, “Hey, here’s what we’re doing” and be like, “Are you interested?” It doesn’t have to be like a convoluted series of emails with fingers crossed. It’s a lot easier to lockdown exclusives and lockdown stories and where we want to put things. That’s going to be really helpful. I think Hopeless has a far-reaching network of social media. There are people that love Hopeless bands, not necessarily our band, but bands that are involved in the label. Hopeless has a network to reach all of those kids. They may not like us, but they can all have the opportunity to hear us.
POZ: And they have their international labels.
Soupy: Yeah. I love the international staff in England and Australia. Everybody does a great job.
           
I spoke with Louis not too long ago and he actually mentioned that there were talks with No Sleep to originally put out The Upsides on Hopeless, but it all came down to timing. How long were talks with Hopeless actually running for?
Yeah, they heard the first couple of songs on Upsides and said, “Call me, you guys have got to come in here so we can see you live. We’ve got to see what we can do.” At that point the ball had been rolling; it was a couple of weeks before the release. It was released and then we signed to Hopeless officially a couple of weeks after Upsides came out.
 
Following this tour, the band will be heading out with Fireworks, Such Gold, Make Do And Men, and Living With Lions on one hell of a tour throughout the south and west. How stoked are you for that tour?
It’s going to be fun. It’s all B markets, so it’s going to be weird to play little hole-in-the-wall venues. It’s going to be cool.
 
Will we be seeing any dates between then and Warped?
We’re going to Australia in between. We’re over there with Parkway Drive and You Me At Six.
POZ: How excited are you guys to get back over there?
Soupy: I love Australia. Our friend Ben, who brought us there last time, is going to tour manage us and drive. I miss his face and his fucking rat tattoos. It’s going to be fun. The first show is 8,000 people. I’m probably going to shit my pants walking on the stage.
 
Warped Tour is obviously everyone’s dream, especially for pop-punk bands, but is it still everything you hoped it to be heading into it?
We’re ready to work harder than we’ve ever worked. We have plans for Warped Tour. Things that we want to do that no one else has ever done. We’ll see you there.
 
I assume we can expect constant touring nationally and internationally after Warped as well?
Constant touring. We’re hoping to get out maybe two more releases this year.
POZ: Can we talk about that?
Soupy: We can say that I hope to get two more releases out this year, and they’re going to be interesting things; things you’ve never seen. Things you have either rarely seen been done or things that you’ve never seen done. My hope is that we’ll be able to do them and they’ll go off without a hitch and everyone will be really psyched on them because I think they’re going to be cool and rare and collectible and fun and new.
POZ: Hopeless releases?
Soupy: I don’t think either of them will be on Hopeless. I’m hoping one will be on Sub City, which is Hopeless’s charity label. We would like to do more charity work. We’re hoping that that comes out there.