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06-11-2008 10:47
Story Of The Year @ Manchester Academy
Story Of The Year have been trekking around the UK causing Chaos on the aptly named Taste Of Chaos tour over the past few weeks to promote their sexy new album The Black Swan as well as hand out with their mates in Atreyu and As I Lay Dying.
I caught up with bassist Adam Russell to find out about life on the road, being inspired by The Beatles and his dreams of space exploration.
We love it. I’d just really appreciate it if the rain would stop. It’s cold too!
Our manager co-owns the tour so it’s pretty easy for us! We’ve toured with most of these bands before so it’s a good fit. We share some fans too so it feel pretty good to be here.
Yes because they were a band before I joined and I was a huge fan. Joining the band was an amazing opportunity because I knew that Ryan and Dan would do something awesome so I figured it would take off.
When I first started playing music when I was 14 years old, I didn’t even care, I just wanted to play the songs that I liked. I just played loads of covers that I loved.
Probably Alive by Pearl Jam but when I first started playing it was Metallic songs all the way!
When I was really little I wanted to be a palaeontologist and mess around with dinosaurs. But then my real ‘career’ dream was something which involved the space programme.
Really, that’s awesome! I went to space camp for two years in a row when I was 10 and 11 so I was really into science as a kid. Then once I discovered music it put all that back but now the music is a constant I’m rediscovering science by doing a lot of reading.
The music is just a collection of writing over a long period of time starting mostly with Ryan with his guitar - the dude never stops writing ever! He builds up a huge collection of song ideas and then we all sit and work on them and they’re changed up and become ‘real songs.’
Lyrically Dan and I are the primary writers and I think that being a little bit older and having more time off to discover life as a person rather than how we are on the road gave us time to explore more topics such as relationships between friends and stuff like that.
The Black Swan theme came almost at the end of recording from a book that Ryan saw in a bookstore by the same title which is about this theory about events in history and how the most important events are the most unpredictable and that really seemed to tie in with the lyrics that had been written about worldly issues.
It seemed to be an all-encompassing vibe and so then we wrote the title track after we had named the record!
Yeah; I think it’s different but it’s also a combination of our first two records which were both very different. I think this album pulls the best from both records and takes them a step forward.
My top four bands (I can’t pick a fifth for some reason!) are Pantera, Metallica, No Doubt and Outkast which is a bizarre combination. I’ve also always been a huge fan of The Beatles; Paul McCartney and Eric Clapton are awesome.
I bought the new Nelly record because he’s from St Louis so we’re big Nelly Supporters. I also bought the new H2O record a while ago they’re a New York hardcore band.
Becoming a touring musician. Apart from making a living and being able to buy a house and all the things that come with any career; just being able to tour and to play music to make a living and not having to worry about getting another job.
Being away from my family.
The other day in Liverpool. We went to the Beatles museum and it brought me back to when I was a kid first discovering music from my mum who was a huge Beatles fan. It seemed like an entire story of a bands career in a hour long tour made me put our career in a mental movie for a second and think ‘we’re here and the Beatles were a band for eight years’ I thought about what we’ve been and what we’ll be when we’re done. It was really inspiring.
We’re pretty much off until January after this. We talked about doing some different international stuff but I think it’s all going to be pushed back until after the New Year. We might do a tour of the States and then that will probably be it until we start writing again.
I want to tour every single country that bands can tour. Seeing places is one of the biggest perks of being in a band.
Zurich, Switzerland has been my favourite. I was only there for a day but it was the most beautiful place I’ve seen. I was sat in Starbucks and there was a river running through downtown and dudes were fishing in the river. It was a cleaner, nicer, more spread out version of Southern California.
It would have to have been the show we played three days ago because we have this game we play where you make glasses with your fingers and if you make eye contact with someone when they’re doing it you have to stop and lie down no matter what you’re doing.
So I was on stage and Atreyu had come down to the front and I looked up and they were doing that so I had to lay down on the stage and play my bass. That was pretty cool and I think that was a good show for them as well.
FemaleFirst - Ruth Harrison
Photography - Claire Parkinson
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