Interview
Interview
Stage Times: State Champs
From conquering main stages to playing cocktail hour at a fan’s wedding, Derek DiScanio walks us through his most memorable onstage moments
Since starting out in the bedrooms and basements of Albany, New York almost 15 years ago, State Champs have asserted themselves as leaders of a brand-new generation of pop-punk.
Key players in the genre’s 2010s resurgence, over the course of their career the quintet have accomplished more than most bands could ever dream. From sharing stages with their heroes to collaborating with the likes of blink-182’s Mark Hoppus and All Time Low’s Alex Gaskarth, they’ve become the torchbearers of their scene’s future, keeping one foot firmly planted in nostalgia whilst the other strides towards evolution.
Enduring their fair share of ups and downs in their quest for longevity, State Champs’ self-titled fifth album came at a pivotal time before Christmas. With the band all finding themselves at differing stages in their journeys – with marriage, kids and geographical relocations all impacting the group’s dynamic – it served as testament to finding strength in unity.
“We shied away from the self-titled thing for so long. Most bands end up doing it around their third or fourth album, but we made it to our fifth,” frontman Derek DiScanio nods.
“We’ve been all over this industry throughout the past 15 years. We’ve had ups, we’ve had downs, we’ve broken down, and we’ve almost broken up multiple times. We’ve always been able to put the pieces back together and find our brotherhood again though.”
The album’s artwork depicts a trophy that’s been ripped up and pieced back together, and the band’s latest effort is a reminder of the spirit of resilience and camaraderie that has long defined State Champs. Championing the genre over the last decade, setting stages across the world alight with their incendiary energy, it’s not only a celebration of all that they’ve achieved – but of all that’s still left to conquer.
“This is our fifth album, we’re in the fifteenth year of our career, and we’re now seeing our biggest streaming numbers and ticket sales happening,” DiScanio smiles.
“A big part of State Champs is that we always have goals, and we’re always adding to our bucket list. There are a lot of big venues that we’ve yet to play, there are festivals that we want to headline, and there are countries and whole continents that we’ve yet to visit. There are always things to accomplish, so there’s always more to add to the list.”
Celebrating their self-titled release with some of their biggest UK shows to date, State Champs will be adding a few more ticks to that list when they make their return to this side of the Atlantic in February. With a chance to reflect on a decade and a half of triumphs, tribulations, and tales of overcoming, we sat down with DiScanio to discuss some of the band’s most memorable live moments to date.
The gig that made you want to play music
The one that comes to mind is the 2005 Warped Tour, which was the first Warped Tour I ever went to. I was 12 years old, my mom had to bring me, and I got to bring one friend. My mom set up a lawn chair and a cooler in a spot at the back of the main stage crowd and said, ‘I’ll be here all day, just check in with me every hour’. My friend and I ran around and had an absolute field day. We saw The Starting Line, Fall Out Boy, Senses Fail, Thrice, Motion City Soundtrack, Hawthorne Heights, Funeral For A Friend, Avenged Sevenfold, My Chemical Romance, The Offspring… I could go on and on. It was the best line-up of Warped Tour ever to exist, and I’ll stand by that opinion even now. I remember being there and thinking, ‘I want to do this… I want to be on this tour’. Sure enough, nine years later, State Champs ended up playing their first Warped Tour on the Kevin Says Stage. We went on to headline in 2016, and we also headlined the very last year in 2018. Thank you, Warped Tour.
The first
The first State Champs show was opening for a band called A Loss For Words, from Boston. We had named our band the night before the show because we had a couple of songs, but we didn’t have a name. Of course, we were playing a show and needed one, so that’s why we’re stuck with State Champs. We opened for A Loss For Words in a venue called Bogies, a shitty underground punk club in Albany, New York. Nowadays, Matty [Arsenault, A Loss For Words vocalist] is one of my best friends. He’s my older brother, and we’ve toured with that band in almost every continent now. We owe a lot to Matty and the rest of the band for being our big brothers in the scene and raising us the right way.
The smallest
I want to say it was in Nashville, Tennessee around 2011. We played a venue called Exit/In, which is a very iconic old school Nashville rock venue. We were so excited to play there, and we were on tour supporting Cartel. We ended up playing to each other’s bands, the members’ girlfriends, and one person that paid for a ticket. It’s still the only show where we’ve only sold one merch item, and it was to the one person that bought the one ticket. I think the issue was with the routing of the dates we were playing. Cartel and State Champs were heading out to meet New Found Glory for the Stick And Stones anniversary tour, so we just played a couple of shows on our way out. They were booked last minute, so nobody even knew about them, and that’s why it flopped. That’s one that we always talk about, no offense to Cartel whatsoever.
The biggest
The biggest crowd that we’ve ever played to was when we played the main stage at Reading & Leeds Festival. It was in 2016, and we were the first band on the main stage. I remember sound checking around half an hour before the gates opened, and there was no one in the field. I was looking out for miles, and all I could see was grass. I was thinking to myself, ‘God, it’s so early… This is going to be terrible’. I truly thought no one was going to come and see us play, but about five minutes before our set started, I saw the avalanche. There was this mad dash of bodies darting towards the barricade of the main stage, and thousands of people started rushing at us. I thought they were going to ambush the stage and knock it all over! They were so excited for the show and to rock out all day. Fall Out Boy and Biffy Clyro co-headlined that night, and we had a blast. I remember seeing The 1975 on the second stage too. We met a lot of new friends, and it was a milestone event for State Champs.
As a musician, do you enjoy the challenge of playing to those huge crowds?
It gets a little mesmerising when you look out and you can’t see how far back it goes. You can’t look all the way left or all the way right, and it almost makes you forget your own music at times. I take a lot of pride in those big moments though, especially when a majority of the crowd doesn’t know who we are. We have to win them over, and I judge how well we’ve accomplished that by the crowd interaction. By the end of our set, it’s been a good show if I can see the energy shift within the crowd. If I have them all in the palm of my hand, I can make them all put their hands up in unison and go side to side, or I can make them all jump and shake the earth at the same time. That’s when I know that we’ve got them, and I live for that moment.
The weirdest
Recently, we played a wedding for the first time. We usually say no to those type of things, but we became good buddies with someone who is one of our biggest fans. He lives in Connecticut, and all he wanted for his wedding was to see his favourite band play a cocktail hour in suits. It was a great wedding, it was beautiful, but we played before anybody was really drunk. We played to 100 people that didn’t know who we were, including old grandmas in wheelchairs covering their ears. Amongst them though was our good buddy, the groom, rocking out with his best friend to every single song. He had an incredible time, but I’m not sure about everybody else!
The worst
I don’t know what year it was, but it was the only year we ever played Pukkelpop Festival in Belgium. It’s a big festival in Europe, and we were very excited to do it. Rihanna was the headliner, so that was cool, but it’s the only time where everything has gone to total shit onstage. Nothing was working, nothing was coming through the PA, and we thought everything was fine. The crowd were waving their arms in disgust because they couldn’t hear a thing, and it might have been the only time I’ve ever walked offstage mid-set and said, ‘I’m not going back out there’. I was being a little diva about it because if I couldn’t even talk to the crowd and explain what was going on, what was the point? We learnt so much about ourselves, our communication skills, and our resilience from that, but at least we got to see Rihanna!
The best
It was probably our biggest headline show which we played to a packed-out London Roundhouse. It happened during a UK tour a few years back, and it was such a special night for us. It was a milestone achievement in an iconic venue that we had always wanted to play, and we had spent years climbing up the ranks. When we started coming over to the UK, we wanted to headline Camden’s Underworld. We did that, sold it out, so next we wanted to headline Kentish Town Forum. We did it, sold it out, and the Roundhouse was next. It’s exciting to see things getting bigger like that… Who knows what’s next for us?
State Champs start their UK tour on 18 February. Find tickets here

Photo by Miikka Skaffari/Getty Images