PropertyOfZack was lucky enough to sit down with Josh Franceschi of You Me At Six when the Warped Tour came into town. Definitely check out the interview to read up on how the band deals with touring, their top 5 spot on the UK charts, and what they’ll be doing next summer! 

For the record, could you state your name and role in You Me At Six?
I’m Josh. I sing in You Me At Six and that was the answer to your question.

Warped Tour is more than halfway over. Could you tell us a little about your experiences of the festival both on and off the stage?
Warped Tour has been amazing for us. We’ve made a lot of new fans and became friends with a lot of bands we thought we’d never been friends with. So that’s been really cool. We’ve played some great shows. We’ve played some not so great shows. I really, really prefer the east coast if I’m on it. The west coast is nice with the weather, but I think there’s something about this weather that make the kids go apeshit for music. They’re very, very keen on making the most of their day. In Houston we played first on a stage where there was such a bad thunderstorm throughout the whole day and we were watching a tornado behind it and we had to like hold stuff down. We ended up playing for like 1,000 kids who were all…we were all wet and they had a great time. Everybody was sliding on their bellies in the mud and stuff.

What’s it like being an international band and having a great reception at Warped, being the festival that it is.
We did Warped Tour last year as well, half of it, and we did the AP festival in the fall, but I’ve been surprised with the response we’ve had of lately. I kind of feel that we have an edge on some of the US bands in the sense that kids may say, “The Cab are here all the time, so I can see them in a few months, but You Me At Six may not be back for another five or six months.” It’s been really good.

What would you say is the biggest difference between your fans here and your fans back home?
I think US people don’t jump straight onboard when it comes to a new band. In the UK you can get a strong following as long as you’re present, as long as you’re there the whole time, which we have been. So I don’t know. It’s hard. In London we play for like 5,000 people a night. It’s much different coming here and playing for less people.  

 
Hold Me Down was released back in March in Europe but wasn’t released here until June, right before Warped. How has the reception been in your mind?
I think it’s difficult. It happens with every single band. All Time Low released their album in the states in July and it didn’t come out in the UK until September/October time and I think every band has that problem. Not many bands get their stuff out on the same day around the whole. So a lot of people can download it if they want to download it. It’s good for here because when we got here people were actually listening to it. I think the reception has been good. I’m happy with it. The main thing is though that we haven’t started our cycle here. We’re gonna be touring here a lot more in the next year or so.

Hold Me Down hit the top 5 on the album charts in the UK. How shocked were you guys to see yourself that high up?
I think everybody else around us, our label, our management, thought the record would go top 10 or top 20. We were the ones who were skeptical about it. We were placing bets that we wouldn’t. We were number 4 at a point above Lady Gaga. We couldn’t even believe it. Obviously it went very great for us.

Will we be seeing another single announced soon to come out for all your Australian and European touring?
We just shot a video for “Stay With Me”. The UK is ahead in terms of scheduling of when it hits TV and stuff. But in the next month or so we’ll see. Hopefully eventually our stuff will get over here. But I don’t know. They’ll be delayed releases.

What would you say was the biggest difference in the writing and recording processes of Take Off Your Colours and Hold Me Down?
I think any band that has had members who haven’t been in other bands before…you don’t really know what you’re doing. We didn’t really no what we were doing for Take Off Your Colours. We recorded both CDs at the same studio. To me, you can tell the difference in sound sonically. Almost like one was recorded in a shed and the other was recorded in a master studio. It was the same studio, but we knew what we were doing. We were much more hands on and we got more involved. We had longer time. Take Off Your Colours was recorded in two and a half weeks and Hold Me Down was recorded in nine weeks. The process was different slightly in the sense that we had lots of old songs for Take Off Your Colours, but Hold Me Down was a new ballgame. We also wrote a lot of songs on the road. “Underdog” was one of my favorite songs on the record and that was written in a dressing room in Germany. It’s weird how that kind of stuff happens. That’s how some of the best songs are written.

You guys will be playing Reading and Leeds in late August. How stoked are you to be able to play that festival on the main stage?
Last time we played the NME stage and we didn’t know who was going to show up and how it was going to go, but people couldn’t get in the tent it was so busy. So to play the main stage…it’s everyone. Everyone has to be in that area throughout the day whether they like it or not. We will be playing to like 50,000 people a day, so I’m definitely nervous because we’re playing after some great bands like Thrice and Motion City Soundtrack and we play directly before the Bizkit. So when we come off Limp Bizkit comes on. It’s kind of insane that that’s going to happen.

You guys are kind of famous for always being on the road, but even I have been surprised by how much you have booked. You’ll be heading to Australia with The Audition in late September. How are your fans down there?
Australia is amazing for us. We did Soundwave and it was the first time we went there and we were playing for like 2,000 people a day and everybody knew our stuff. We got quite a good thing going on there. When we go back in September we’re doing a headline tour, so I’m very, very excited about.

After Australia you have like a week off before your European tour in October and then you’re going to be in the UK in December. What kind toll does it take on the band to be on the road so frequently?
Yeah, last year we went from Warped Tour from July and toured pretty much through December. We got back, we did Reading and Leeds in August and we literally a week later came back to America for the fall tour that we did. It definitely showed. We were on the Paramore tour in Europe and when we got off that we were all fucking happy to be away from each other. But at the same time, you build a bond as well. It takes a toll but it’s made us an even tighter band. We’ve learned a lot from different bands. But if you’re gonna be in a band and you’re gonna do it, you should just do it properly. There’s no point in releasing a record and not touring.

Is it definitely a nice thing to be able to hit the same places over in a year though?
Yeah definitely, of course it is. We’re very, very happy to be able to do that. The thing is that we’ve been very smart with our money and our finances. We know that we make money in the UK, so we use that money and money from our label to fund these tours. So essentially we’re making an investment on our band and hopefully our career. The Australian tour is out of our pockets; it’s a lot of money to do it. We’re going to New Zealand as well. Since we’re doing that it’s added on like an extra eight grand. It’s a lot of money. It’s worth it though.

You play your last scheduled show on December 19^th. After that will You Me At Six be taking some much deserved off time for the holiday season?
We’re having Christmas off hopefully. But we’re gonna pop back here in the spring time and we’re also planning on doing some writing and pre-production and we’re going to record our next record next summer. Our schedule on Myspace is pretty much what we have booked right now.

What’s the best part about having such a strong fan base in two continents?
The best thing about being in a band is that we get to go to places like New Zealand and we get to play Warped Tour. A festival that I was aware of when I was 14 watching DVDs of it. For me, to be a part of this…there’s very little for a band to complain about. People in bands have the best job in the world and that’s all.

Thanks so much for your time, is there anything else you’d like to add?
No, just our new record is out now in the states, Hold Me Down. See you in the spring.