Excerpts from the Dan O'Connor (Four Year Strong) Interview

Dan is a super nice guy, and really fun to talk with. I would totally hang out with him anytime.
Read the full interview on DyingScene!
See the pictures here!

CV: Is it true that the bands put away a case of Drank a day on that tour?

DO: The tour, all together, loved Drank. I actually never drank the Drank because I was always kind of scared of it. I don’t drink caffeine, I don’t drink soda, I don’t drink energy drinks, I don’t drink any of that stuff. It kind of fell into this weird purgatory of things that I don’t have, so I just decided not to drink it just to be on the safe side.

CV: Did the purple can scare you?

DO: Just the fact that it’s an anti-energy drink, like I’d be drinking a can of downers. It was just kind of weird.

CV: Did you guys ever prank call the Trapped Under Ice hotline?

DO: Alan texted them to do something during our set, like “whole band jump off the stage” so they did that. It was pretty fun.

CV: What’s one thing you always bring on tour? Besides your instruments.

DO: One thing I could not survive on tour without is actually three things that I need equally, and they’re all Apple products – my iPhone, my iPod, and my computer. I need all three of those things to function on tour, especially my iPod because I need to listen to music at all times when I’m not playing music. And my iPhone because I just need to be connected, I love it. I’m one of those Apple-freak people, I love everything they do - I go on the blogs and the forums.

CV: Do you have an iPad?

DO: Not yet – not because I don’t support it, but because I think that if I buy it, they’re going to come out with a better one 6 months later, so I’m just waiting for them to come out with another one.

Another thing that I will never leave at home when I go on tour are my Bose Beats by Dre headphones. They are the best headphones I’ve ever used.

CV: Is it comfort or sound that makes them so great?

DO: It’s both! Listening to music is so much more fun through those headphones. They’re the best. Just get ‘em – everybody, get ‘em. They rule.

CV: This isn’t a plug for Bose, but they should be giving you free pairs for saying that.

DO: I would love that!

CV: Do you guys have any tour rituals or habits?

DO: As far as things that happen every tour, we can’t go on tour without something bad happening to our tires within the first 48 hours of our tour.

CV: I heard that you guys actually had some tire problems this morning, what was the deal?

DO: Yeah, the tire broke off of our trailer this morning – that happened to us on our last tour as well. Pretty much every time we leave for tour, within the first 48 hours we either get a flat tire or we’ll show up to load the trailer and it has two flat tires the morning of. And we’ve tried everything, we’ve replaced all of the tires the day before – everything. Something will always happen with the tires.

CV: So you guys always bring a spare or three.

DO: Yeah we keep like three spares ready.

CV: Are you guys going to have more ChatRoulette sessions coming up?

DO: Yeah, they’re always fun. We like to do those when we have a lot of people around, because it gets way more fun. We especially like to do it if we stay at a hotel with other bands on tour – we have them come into the room and we all just stay on there for hours and hours and hours. But yeah, if the mood strikes – we’re on there.

CV: Is it true that you guys are going to rock so hard that the tower in Pisa stands up straight?

DO: I would love to do that, go down in history.

CV: On the to-do list then.

CV: You guys are all inked up pretty heavily – how many tattoos or hours in the chair do you need to be in Four Year Strong?

DO: When Four Year Strong started, none of us had tattoos because we were all like 15, 16 years old. I don’t know how many I have – I’ve spent a lot of time getting tattooed, but we’re all gluttons for punishment I guess.

CV: Do you have any artists that you go back to for ink?

DO: There’s a couple of dudes in our hometown – Zane, who we’re really good friends with, and Joey Fischer, who does a lot of tattooing for us. I think either one or both of their links are up on our MySpace page. Check ‘em out.

CV: Is it true that you guys are called “Four Year Strong” because you guys only shave once every four years?

DO: No, it came from a Get Up Kids lyric.

CV: Alright, well I promised not to ask you where it came from so you don’t have to explain it cause I’d feel bad.

CV: The Worcester, MA, scene is pretty awesome. Bane and Bury Your Dead both came out of there, as did you guys. Who from that scene would you say influenced you the most?

DO: If it’s from Worcester, then I’d have to say Bane. We all went to a lot of Bane shows when we were younger. But there’s so much music that comes out of Massachusetts alone, it’s tough to pick one band. You’re influenced by the place – Massachusetts, Boston, Worcester, there are just so many awesome musicians there, so many awesome bands, so many awesome shows, the kids are great….everything is just awesome! It’s pretty hard not to be inspired to play music when you live in Massachusetts.

CV: How did you guys end up on Decaydance and I Surrender Records?

DO: We joined I Surrender right before Rise or Die Trying came out. We met Rob Hitt, who owns the label, because we played a show in New York and he came to see us. They had been, I guess, watching our band for a while, and they liked our show a lot. He wanted to see us play in our hometown, and we had a show there a few weeks later, so he drove down with a couple of other people, Gabby and Mara from I Surrender. They checked it out and were stoked on it, and made an offer – and we were stoked on them, so we took it.
It’s really awesome, the way that they run I Surrender and the way that everyone gives a shit about everything that goes on with that label, is awesome. Even now that we’re on Decaydance and Universal/Motown, we still work with everybody that we worked with at I Surrender. Mara still does our press stuff and Rob is our manager. We never had to leave anybody behind – when we went to Decaydance, we got to keep all our friends at I Surrender, and now all our friends at Decaydance get to work with our band too. Now we’re going to Universal and it’s the same thing – we’re just building our family, we don’t have to leave anybody behind. That’s really important to us, because we get really attached to the people who work for our band.

CV: That’s awesome. So the new album, Enemy Of The World, came out in March and debuted at #40 on the Billboard charts – was that a surprise?

DO: It was, we never expected to get anywhere close to even the top 100. I think Explains It All hit #147, and so we were expecting to a little bit better or the same. But we were going to be happy with whatever we got, when we got that we were all pretty floored – we were all pretty stoked on it.

CV: Sweet. Did anybody buy the platinum pre-orders?

DO: No, those were kind of a joke, but nobody bought them. We got a lot of emails asking about them; like, “Oh, can I buy this one if I do it like this?” or “Can I buy this one for cheaper?” and we were like “Nope. Gotta be exactly as advertised.” But those were funny. The kids got a kick out of those.

CV: Did you guys make them up on your own?

DO: Yeah, everybody just wrote down random shit and sent it in.

CV: Did you guys have any input on Ken Kelley’s cover art for Enemy Of The World?

DO: We came up with the idea while we were recording Rise Or Die Trying, we’ve been talking about doing it for a long time. When it came time to do this record, we were like “Do we still want to do this? Yeah, that would be hilarious!” We started looking for artists, we found a couple of people who did movie posters who were retired. Our friend Tom, who sings for The Ghost Of A Thousand from the UK, who we were on tour with, with Alexisonfire and Anti-Flag, he was like “Have you ever checked out Ken Kelley?” And I was like “No!” – so I checked out his website, and he was awesome, and we hit him up, and he was really stoked to do stuff for the band, and he just really nailed it.

CV: Yeah, he did!
CV: You guys used the synth a little less prominently on Enemy Of The World than on Rise Or Die Trying – was that intentional, or a product of working with Machine, or just a natural evolution of the sound?

DO: There’s a lot of synth stuff there. Josh wrote all of his parts himself, he and Machine worked out a lot of parts. I think he wanted to do more padding, and adding textures to the songs, which I think he did. There’s a lot of parts in the record where it’s not really a prominent thing, there’s keyboards there. And if the keyboards weren’t there, it would be a much thinner record – he did a really good job with stuff. There’s not as many twinkly leads and stuff, but the band’s maturing and Josh is maturing with the way he writes too.

CV: Did you guys change up your hardware, or your writing, or your mixing? This record has more of an abrasive sound – on Rise Or Die Trying, things go from poppier parts to hardcore parts. On Enemy Of The World you guys really hit a consistent easycore sound.

DO: Anytime we’re writing, we’re thinking about how we want it to sound live and the way we want to come across at shows. We really concentrated on writing cohesive songs. On Rise Or Die Trying, I guess our problem, in retrospect, was that it was more a cool part that we liked, into other cool parts. When we went in to do Enemy Of The World, we really concentrated on getting the songs to sound whole, so when you’re at the end of the song, you recognize it from the beginning of the song. We didn’t want it to be as cut and dry, with a poppy part and a hard part, we wanted to keep a consistency. We wanted the parts where we’re singing poppy to be hard, and the parts that are harder to have poppier parts in them. We wanted to take everything to basically the next level and blend it together and hone in on our own kind of sound.

CV: Who did the gang choruses? I heard it was some Worcester hardcore bands.

DO: It’s literally just me, Alan, and Machine – that’s it. The reason we did that is because every time we have a bunch of people come in, it ends up being washy. We wanted it to be really harsh, so we kept it with less people, more times.

CV: How would you say your musical influences changed between Rise Or Die Trying and Enemy Of The World?

DO: They definitely changed. On Rise Or Die Trying, we were influenced by a lot of bands that we would be categorized with, pop-punk and hardcore bands. With Enemy Of The World, we started to really look up to good song-writers. There’s a lot of really weird influences on our record, like Bon Iver, who’s a singer-songwriter and Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. Just people who know how to write a good song, and that’s what we concentrated on for this record, so when we were in there we were listening to bands and groups that really just nail songwriting, people that we’ve always looked up to.

CV: Would you say your non-musical influences changed at all?

DO: Not really, we’re all big movie guys – we’re all into anything new, and always checking out old stuff. None of us have a set “thing” that we stick to, we all like to branch out and experience different things. We always watch any movies or read any books that are recommended to us. That’s kind of the way it’s always been.

CV: What albums are you listening to right now?

DO: Right now, a lot of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. Actually, really into Taylor Swift’s record right now. Especially with the Beats headphones, I just love listening to music. I’ve been really into Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix.

CV: What’s your favorite album of 2010 so far? Not Enemy Of The World, that’s too easy.

DO: I don’t know, that’s a tough question. There’s records, but I’m not sure when they came out. I’m always scared when I pick my favorites of things because as soon as I say it’s my favorite, I’ll think of something else – so, all music that’s come out in 2010 is my favorite.

CV: Have you heard the new Circa Survive?

DO: I haven’t heard it yet; is it good?

CV: Yeah.

DO: That’s awesome.

CV: What influence, musical or not, do you think your fans would be surprised to hear plays a role in your music? Anything crazier than Taylor Swift?

DO: I’m really into pop music, and I’m getting more into pop or dance music, mostly because I like hearing all of the little nuances. When I used to listen to pop or dance music, it would just be like “Oh, there’s a kick drum and whatever” but my new favorite thing to do is to listen to records like that, heavily-produced records, and hear all of the little things that people put in there and just separate it in my brain. Justin Timberlake, electronic stuff – if you looked at my iPod, it would make you stoked or it would make you sick. It’s pretty all over the place. I can’t listen to my iPod on shuffle, because you’ll hear a song and you’ll get in a mood from that song, and then the next song will completely be the opposite. It’ll go from, all the sudden, Hope Conspiracy will come on, and then Rascal Flatts will come on. It’ll go all over the place.

CV: Sounds like you’re pretty eclectic.

DO: Yes, I try to be.

CV: Is it true that the guitar riff in Bada Bing! Wit a Pipe is the same as the one in Audio Karate’s Nintendo 89?

DO: I don’t know, I’ve never heard that before.

CV: I’ll send you an MP3. Better place to catch a show: Worcester or Boston?

DO: That’s tough. Depends on the show.

CV: Let’s say Bane.

DO: Bane? Probably Boston, because in Worcester, the Palladium would be good - but seeing them at ICC Church would be a lot more of a fun show, only because it’s more of a no-holds-barred type place. Palladium’s awesome, but it’s a little to venue-y for a hardcore show.

CV: That’s funny, because the New England Hardcore and Metal Festival is going on there right now.

DO: Yeah, they have it there every year. We had Bane on our holiday show this year at downstairs Palladium. That was fun, too, but if I had to pick a place to go to the show and enjoy myself, I’d probably pick ICC Church in Boston.

CV: Scott Heisel of Alternative Press took a shot at you guys in his review of Set Your Goals’ This Will Be the Death Of Us - did you guys ever have a problem with him?

DO: We were kind annoyed by it at first – not really mad at him, just mad that it happened. But I think Set Your Goals was actually more mad than we were. We kind of just thought it was funny. I don’t know for sure, but I think I remember one of them saying that they called him to be like “Why did you have to …?!” If that was me, I’d be annoyed too. You’re getting your record reviewed, and you put all this work into it – the last thing you want is another band’s name to show up in your review. Especially if it’s like the last line.

CV: I read it as him saying “Bottom line: this album will be compared to Four Year Strong’s next album”

DO: Yeah, and being compared to that band is awesome, because they’re a great band.

CV: For sure, and I love that record.

DO: It’s a great record, but it’s just kind of frustrating to have somebody try to start drama. We’re huge fans, best friends with that band. The press has always tried to start beef between us, trying to make kids think that they need to choose between the bands. That’s why we did the Set Your Record Straight Tour, it was the first tour that we did together, just showing that we’re friends. We’re not enemies, we’re not fighting for pop-punk cred. We just both love playing music, and we play different music but we just fall into a similar category.
They’re definitely more West Coast than we are – that’s one thing I think you can pick out between us and Set Your Goals, you can hear that we’re an East Coast band and you can hear that they’re a West Coast band. You can definitely hear that they grew up listening to bands like The Descendants, where we more grew up listening to bands like Blood For Blood or Hatebreed.

CV: I’m not trying to start any drama, but I’d say you guys have more of that metal edge.

DO: We definitely have more of a metal-y sound and they’re a lot more punk than we are. They’re fuckin awesome at it, I wouldn’t even try to touch it.

CV: Is it true that Joe and Alan are Bronx Mowgli Wentz’ godparents.

DO: No, they’re not – I actually don’t know who the godparents are. I’ve never met Bronx, but I’m sure we will. We’re never in LA when Pete’s in LA.

CV: If you weren’t in a band, what would you be doing these days?

DO: I’d probably be dead.

CV: Sweet. Do you have any questions for me?

DO: Do you go to school here?

CV: No, I don’t go to school at all. I’m a patent examiner for the federal government.

DO: Patent examiner? So, somebody sends in something they want to patent, and you look at it, and you give the okay?

CV: Yes.

DO: That’s awesome. Do you ever get any really cool stuff? Anything that I would know?

CV: Probably not, I work in chemical sterilization.

DO: Chemical sterilization? Well, my sisters would know – they work in biochemistry.

CV: That’s pretty cool. Mass has a huge biochem industry.

DO: Yeah, that’s what they do. They work on medical shit. I don’t really know what they do, they talk about burners or cooking something – they have these big things they have to stir – I don’t get it.

Ok thanks again to Dan, Mara from I Surrender, Kelly from QWRI, Josh Lovell, Dave from DyingScene, everyone who helped with the show, and last but not least to my lovely and wonderful girlfriend Ania, without whom I never would have visited Rhode Island to see this show and have the interview.