Interview
Interview
Stage Times: Four Year Strong
From a high school Halloween party to Boston’s Fenway Park, Four Year Strong’s Alan Day walks us through his most memorable onstage moments
Building up a reputation as one of the genre’s most relentlessly energetic exports, the last five years have brought a jarring change of pace for Massachusetts pop-punk kings Four Year Strong.
With the pandemic throwing a wrench into their plans for 2020 album Brain Pain, they were left grappling with unfinished business. Unable to properly bring the songs to life onstage, the four-piece found themselves in a strange creative zone. The pressure to keep writing only grew as the months passed and the industry fought to make up for lost time, and the band realised that they had to swiftly get the show back on the road.
“We had a date booked with Will Putney [producer] to go into his studio and record a new album. We had around a year to write beforehand, but we had nothing. About a week before the session, we had to call Will and say there was a change of plans,” vocalist/guitarist Alan Day recalls.
“We went there and locked ourselves in the studio to write, and the first week was like pulling teeth. Everything that came out sounded like garbage that had been played a thousand times before, but we kept listening to music and looking for inspiration. We remembered the things that we grew up listening to, things that inspired us.”
Retaining the quintessential Four Year Strong sound whilst stepping boldly outside of their signature pop-punk and metal blend, Analysis Paralysis keeps you guessing from the second you hit play. Introducing industrial elements and sequencers into their arsenal alongside monstrous riffs and colossal singalong choruses, it’s an album made with the spirit of the band’s live show firmly at its centre.
“When we were writing, we were constantly talking about what the crowd would be doing in each moment. Is it the singalong moment? The moshing moment? The jumping moment?” Day explains.
“Touring and playing live is what Four Year Strong has always been about. We started before it was easy to record your own demos and put stuff up on the internet, so we did it the old-fashioned way. We tried to be a really good live band, and that got us traction in the early stages of our career. Seeing our songs live caused a physical reaction for people, and on this record, we were picturing the live show at every turn.”
Ready to see those reactions firsthand as they bring Analysis Paralysis to the UK for some explosive shows this February, we sat down with Day to reflect on over two decades of chaotic onstage antics – from trying to win over a room filled with Ludacris fans to playing stadiums with their heroes.
The gig that made me want to play music
To be honest, I knew that this was what I wanted to do long before I ever went to a live show. There are videos of me as a little kid, around three years old, and I’m holding toy guitars and microphones, singing to the camera. It feels as though it’s been on my radar throughout my whole life, and oddly enough I didn’t actually see my first live show until I was a young teen. That was when I went and saw BB King with my father, and it was awesome. I was old enough at that point to recognise that it wasn’t my thing though, it was my dad’s thing. The first show I went and saw by myself with my friends was Saves The Day. It was in the same venue as the BB King show – the Palladium in Worcester, Massachusetts – and that’s now where we do our annual holiday show. That show was the one that made me go, ‘Yeah, this is the lane that I want to take’. I realised that for me it’s all about melodic punk music that has super high energy, and that show solidified what I thought I already wanted.
The first
The first gig Four Year Strong ever played was on an island. In the neighbourhood that I grew up in, there’s this thing called The Island Club. It’s a community clubhouse, and there’s a pond there. You have to take a little barge over to this small island, probably not even a quarter of the size of a football field. The island has a stone clubhouse on it, and my sister had a Halloween party there because my dad was a member of the club. It was 2001 and we had just started, so we basically just played a bunch of covers, but we had a couple of original songs. My other band at the time also played, so it was their last show, and Four Year Strong’s first.
The smallest
Our first show was pretty small, but we’ve played way smaller shows over the years. At least that one had all of our friends at it! Our first ever tour was with a Canadian band called The Fully Down who were on Fearless Records, and another band called Maida from Southern California. Half of the shows we showed up to, the venues didn’t even know that there was supposed to be a show. Other times, there were supposed to be local bands on the shows, and they had no idea. No one bought tickets, and there were multiple shows where the promoter would say, ‘Hey, do you want to just not play? You’re going to be playing for nobody, and you’re not making any money because we sold no tickets.’ We played anyway though, just for the opening bands. I found some old tapes from a camcorder that we brought on that tour, and a lot of it is just the other bands singing every song during our set. At least everyone had a good time!
That’s dedication, for sure…
I was probably 17 or 18 when that was happening, and at that point it was all I’d ever wanted. The fact that I was even travelling the country in a van with a bunch of my friends, playing music every night… I don’t remember it being that discouraging when people weren’t at the shows. In my mind, why would there be anyone there? The reason we were there was to make fans, because we knew that we didn’t have any. Getting even one new fan would make it worth it. Even if it was the bartender.
The biggest
I think it would be at Fenway Park in Boston. We opened up for Fall Out Boy and Bring Me The Horizon, and it was our first and only stadium show. We’ve played some really large arena shows too though. The second biggest would be the The O2 Arena, which we played with blink-182 in 2012.
Do you enjoy the challenge of winning over those bigger crowds?
Obviously, I love the crazy intimate shows, but I love large shows too. You do have to win people over, and that’s so fun. We did a European arena tour with The Offspring a couple of years ago, and the whole tour was entirely sold out before any support acts were announced. Every person in there was an Offspring fan, and that was that. We were direct support, and no one knew who we were. We sold maybe a couple of t-shirts a night with 10,000 people in the room. It was an incredibly rewarding tour though, because when we started playing the room would be dead. It was full, but people were just staring at us. We had to work the room, and by the end of it people were jumping, cheering, and having a good time. It felt as though by the time we stepped offstage, the crowd got what we were going for. I love having the opportunity to connect with as many people as possible.
The weirdest
We played a college show in Connecticut once, and the only two artists on the show were Four Year Strong and Ludacris. We were on first, then him, and it was hilarious because the audience was an entirely Ludacris fanbase. We were literally getting booed at, but it was so ridiculous that we weren’t even bummed about it. We thought the whole thing was so funny, and we just powered through. The crowd absolutely did not get it, but it was very funny. The promoters who put on the show made theses Ludacris x Four Year Strong shirts, and I still have mine somewhere.
How did that show even get booked?
So, the real answer to that question is that I have no idea. However, I have a theory. A lot of colleges and universities in the States have extracurricular clubs, and sometimes clubs put on these spring concerts. I assume that in this particular club, someone asked the question of who should open this show, and some random kid who liked our band said, “Four Year Strong should do it!” It must have been someone who loved the band, that didn’t care if it was a good fit or not. I’m sure they must have done the leg work.
The worst
There are two answers to this, and the first one is one that we always talk about as a low point for the band. We were playing a venue in New Jersey called Dingbatz as part of a tour, and it’s this tiny club that holds around 200 people. It was such a low point for us, and we felt like it was all over and no one cared anymore. We felt like old news, and everything about the show sucked. The sound sucked, and we were playing old songs that we weren’t connecting with anymore. We hadn’t put out any new music in a while because we were afraid that no one would care, and the whole thing was a pretty big bummer. The second one actually goes back to our annual hometown show that we do around the holidays. There was one year where the band had basically broken up because we all hated each other. We hadn’t spoken to each other in ages, but we had booked the show already. We showed up, didn’t speak to each other, played the show, then all went home. It was pretty painful, and the show was probably fine, but everyone’s morale was rock bottom. That’s the depressing side of Four Year Strong. We’ve been around a while and had our fair share of ups and downs, but I guess that’s life.
The best
Two years ago, we did our first headlining tour in a long time. It was the anniversary of our album Enemy Of The World, and it was easily the best headlining tour we have ever done. Honestly, I can’t explain how exciting it is to be around for this long and all of a sudden have your most successful tour. The Boston show on that tour was the biggest headline show we’ve ever played, and when you’ve been doing it for so long… That’s special. It was the best it’s ever been, even though we’ve been doing it for 20 years. We had Knuckle Puck, Microwave and Youth Fountain with us, and the whole tour was amazing. Of course, Fenway Park was pretty mind-blowing too though.
Photo by Daniel Boczarski/Getty Images
