Tag: "Taking Back Sunday"

Chicago’s Riot Fest has become one of the must-attend alternative music festivals of the year. 2013 will be no different, and dare I say it may even be the best year yet.

Breaking around 11pm (EST) last night, May 15, Riot Fest’s initial lineup announcement includes headline performances by Blink-182 and Fall Out Boy. An additional headliner will be revealed in the weeks ahead, but as far as additional confirmed acts go, you can count on seeing The Violent Femmes, Motorhead, Sublime With Rome, Rancid, AFI, Blondie, Public Enemy, Brand New, Flag, Taking Back Sunday, Rocket From The Crypt, Bad Religion, Atmosphere, The Dismemberment Plan, Dinosaur Jr, X, Devotchka, Yellowcard, Screeching Weasel, Pennywise, The Broadways, Against Me!, Bob Mould, Gwar, The Lillingtons, Best Coast, The Lawrence Arms, Say Anything, Bad Brains, Quicksand, The Selecter, Bad Books, Mission Of Burma, The Devil Wears Prada, Saves The Day, Glassjaw, Bayside, Stars, Toots and the Maytals, Peter Hook (performing a Joy Division set!), Smoking Popes, Reggie and the Full Effect, Attack Attack!, The Dear Hunter, Maps and Atlases, Surfer Blood, Chuck Ragan, Dessa, Saul Williams, Empires, Memphiskapheles, Kitten, Peelander-Z, Touche Amore, Masked Intruder, Deal’s Gone Bad, Twin Peaks, Flatfoot 56, and White Mystery.

Pretty awesome, right? Tickets start at $23 a day; the festival is being held September 13 through 15 in Chicago. Buy tickets or see the official website here. Continue reading ‘Riot Fest Lineup Announced’

It’s hard to believe that Taking Back Sunday has been around for 10 years already, and it’s even harder to believe that guitarist and backup vocalist John Nolan wasn’t even in the band for about eight of those years. Recently, he and frontman Adam Lazzara performed some acoustic renditions of TBS songs for Baeble Music. In the video for these Baeble Sessions, they also talk about their falling out, what the past decade has been like, and what they have in store.

This is a nice precursor to their upcoming live double album release, which includes both a full acoustic version and a full band version of their breakthrough debut album Tell All Your Friends. Click here to check out the Baeble Sessions video of Lazzara and Nolan performing “Sad Savior,” “Your Own Disaster,” and “Best Places To Be A Mom.”

If you like Taking Back Sunday, then you might also like OurStage’s own Seventh Inning Stretch.

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Ten years ago, emo rock band Taking Back Sunday burst onto the scene with their breakthrough debut album Tell All Your Friends. Clearly, listeners took those words to heart because before long everyone was telling their friends about this soon-to-be-legendary record. Now, after touring around the U.S. performing the record front to back to celebrate its 10 year anniversary, the band has decided to release 2 live recorded versions of the album from this tour, one acoustic and one full band.

The exact date has yet to be announced, but these albums will be released some time next year through Taking Back Sunday’s own label. Since the band’s contract with Warner Bros. has ended, “releasing the albums themselves is the band’s way of seeing whether they want to sign with another label,” according to vocalist Adam Lazzara in a recent newspaper article. Needless to say, long-term fans of the band will be chomping at the bit to get their hands on these live albums.

If you like Taking Back Sunday, you might also like OurStage’s own All About A Bubble.

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Exclusive Q and A: Taking Back Sunday Talk Warped Tour Ten Years After ‘Tell All Your Friends’
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Releasing three albums in just 18 months sounds like an exhausting endeavor, but you wouldn’t know it from the looks of Yellowcard at their recent Vans Warped Tour dates. The band is as full of energy as they were back during the early 2000s, and are gearing up for the release of their newest studio album Southern Air. We sat down with guitarist Ryan Mendez at their Mansfield, Mass. Warped Tour stop to talk about his early days on the tour, the writing process for the new record, and the album’s one big guest appearance that didn’t make the final cut.

OS: It’s the band’s 5th time on Warped Tour.  What’s different this time around?

RM: Well, I did the tour in ’02 and ’04 with my old band when we were traveling in a van, and it was just the most bottom-of-the-barrel experience of paying your dues on Warped Tour. Now, with us being at the level that we’re at, and me being a part of Yellowcard, it couldn’t be any more different for me. We did about half of the tour in ’07, and that was awesome too, but we were in kind of a tough time as a band then, and we were having issues with our bass player, who ended up leaving the band later in the year. It was just not the right mental page for us to be on, but now everybody’s doing great, we’ve got a new record coming out, and the tour has been awesome. Warped just treats us so well, and we’ve been having a great time.

OS: Yeah, the reception at your show today was awesome

RM: I think it was probably the best show of the tour for us. Before that, I think Chicago was the best show, but this might have taken it’s place!

Continue reading ‘Exclusive Q and A: Yellowcard Open Up About ‘Southern Air’ And Being Warped Tour Veterans’

It wouldn’t be hyperbolic to call New Jersey pop punk act Man Overboard a touring machine. Their schedule for 2012 has so far included dates in the United Kingdom, United States, continental Europe, Russia, and Ukraine. As if that weren’t enough, this summer they played every single date on notoriously brutal The Vans Warped Tour. We caught up with guitarist Justin Collier at their Mansfield, MA Warped Tour stop to talk stage dives, Russian punk shows, and why little girls love New Found Glory.

OS: You guys played a killer set earlier today, even though you had a pretty early time slot.

JC: I think that a lot of bands get really bummed out when they first come on the tour and find out they have to play either really early or really late. They think that if they play first, then nobody’s going to be there, and if they play last, then everybody’s going to be gone already. Even though some kids at our signing today told us that they missed our set because they didn’t get there until 1 p.m, I think a lot of kids do get there early.  Some of the people who arrive early and don’t have anyone to watch will think, “Oh yeah, I’ve heard of that band.  I’ll check them out.” And that’s half the battle of Warped Tour.  That’s what you’re here for—to get new fans.

OS: But by now, you guys have become a fairly established act on the tour, and it doesn’t seem like you need to try incredibly hard to get a lot of people out to see you.  There were a certainly a lot of people out there this morning.

JC: It’s different in different places, you know? When you play somewhere like Boston and there are 20,000 people out there, it’s a little easier than when you play Kansas and there are only 5,000 people for all of the bands on the tour. Being from a city like Boston or Philly, where I’m from, there are always good shows. There would be bands that I’d see in Philly and I’d think, “Wow, they’re huge,” but I’d see them somewhere else and realize that they weren’t as big as they seemed.

OS: Being from a place with very intense scene loyalty, like the Philly or Jersey area, how do you feel when you tour abroad? You guys have toured in some very distant places recently, like Russia and Ukraine. What effect do those experiences have on the feeling of musical place you get from your hometowns?

JC: It makes me really appreciate being from the city of Philadelphia. I think that I didn’t before, but now I do, because there are things like R5 Productions and other really great companies, people, and collectives that do shows and events and all kinds of cool stuff. I have a very high standard of how punk shows should be run, but then we would go somewhere like Russia and, not to their discredit, they just haven’t been bred the same way that Phildelphians and Bostonians have been bred to run punk shows. I’m used to some pretty cool shit, but other places are just different and you have to get used to it. It’s always an adventure going somewhere else anyway.

Continue reading ‘Exclusive Q and A: Man Overboard Talk Philly Pride and Punk Longevity’

Any fan of early 2000′s pop punk knows that Taking Back Sunday‘s Tell All Your Friends is the go-to warm weather record. Ten years after the album’s release, TBS is still one of the biggest bands in the modern rock scene, so it’s no surprise that they’ve been drawing the biggest crowds at Warped Tour all summer. We met up with drummer Mark O’Connell and guitarist John Nolan at the Mansfield date to chat about having icon status on Warped, writing new material and the rumored 10th anniversary tour for their classic debut record.

OS: You haven’t been on the Warped Tour for many, many years. What’s it like to be headlining the whole thing this year?

JN: I think the weirdest thing is that this band has a status, I think, at this point, amongst the other bands. The younger bands kind of look at us like something. You know, like we’re these elder statesmen or something like that, which was not the case, obviously, in 2004. But yeah, it’s definitely interesting to be on this tour and to be in this kind of position like that, where bands look at you a certain way, and even the audience, too. But it definitely feels like we’re reintroducing ourselves to a lot of people at the same time, which is cool. I mean it’s been a good thing all around, I think.

OS: You’ve never done Warped Tour with the lineup you have now. What’s it like to have two new people out this time?

MO: Well he is one of the new people. [points at Nolan]

JN: He gets to talk shit about one of the new guys [laughs].

MO: And he’s a new-old guy, the old-new…whatever. But, I can say that it’s definitely more fun with John and Shaun [Cooper]. The original lineup.

JN: I personally think the band is much better with Shaun Cooper and John Nolan in it. I mean just, a completely unbiased position, I mean, it’s just better. Just better. [laughs] Everything is better.

OS: There are a lot of veterans out with you guys this year, like New Found Glory, Bayside, and Senses Fail. Is it nice to have bands that broke out around the same time you did on Warped Tour?

MO: Yeah. You know, we’re always right next to Bayside and New Found Glory, so they’re good dudes, we’ve known them for a long time, so it makes it nice to, you know, be able to wake up and see people that you know. Friendly faces, smiles, good friends. Good times.

Continue reading ‘Exclusive Q and A: Taking Back Sunday Talk Warped Tour Ten Years After ‘Tell All Your Friends’’

It’s officially summer, and Warped Tour has begun! In case you haven’t heard, we’re sponsoring our own stage for twenty-two dates and bringing over twenty-three artists out to perform on it. We decided to catch up with these artists to get the scoop on their summer plans.

Over the past few years, Phone Calls from Home have become a pop rock staple in their local scene. These boys will be bringing their exciting live show to Warped Tour all month long, with hopes of bringing feel-good vibes to fans new and old. Read on to find out how the band met, what they’ve been doing this year, and what they hope to accomplish on Warped Tour.

OS: How did you guys all meet and start the band?

PCFH: Dave, Zack, and Jason met in high school and they met Danny when they were on tour and played a show in Alabama.

OS: Like OurStage, Phone Calls From Home is a Boston-bred operation.  What’s your favorite local venue to play?

PCFH: We played at the Brighton Music Hall recently with Paradise Fears and it was great! Definitely a new favorite for us.

Continue reading ‘OS @ Warped Series: Phone Calls From Home’

All About A Bubble

There’s a pantheon of music constructed of staccato guitars, thrashing drums, and searching, volatile vocals. Some call it emo, some call it pop-punk, some call it alternative. The name itself isn’t important. What matters is the legion of fans who flock to festivals like Warped Tour, snatch up records put out by Fueled By Ramen, and pour their love into every note, every word uttered. Band like At The Drive In, Taking Back Sunday, Motion City Soundtrack and countless others have supplied this demand over the course of two decades. You can add the name All About A Bubble to the list. The Tulsa, Okla. group delivers frenetic, precise rockers like “West Coast,” with its chugging guitars and monster melody. “Impossible to Fade” begins with singer Dustin Storm’s innervated croon before kicking into a coursing power ballad. The calm after the storm comes from “Paper Planes,” a mostly acoustic heartbreaker moved along by—you guessed it—big guitars and drums. Welcome to the pantheon, guys.

D.V.N.O.

Like the French duo Justice, whose single “DVNO” seems to serve as the inspiration for their name, D.V.N.O. want you to dance. But unlike Justice, the Floridian band isn’t going to lure you to the floor with big disco-electro beats. They do it the old fashioned way, with guitars, drums, and energy that’s off the Richter. “You & I Together” is a manic jitterbug of gritty guitars, rock steady drums, and adenoidal vocals (think Steve Bays from Hot Hot Heat). Stylistically, D.V.N.O. walks the line between gutsy dance rock and emotionally charged pop-punk, a combination of Taking Back Sunday, The Strokes, and The Black Kids. On the emo end of the scale you have tracks like the turbulent “One Last Time.” But with “Dance With Me” it’s back to what the band does best: frantic, percussive rock with a lot of heart. Lovelorn spazzes, manic dreamers—this one’s for you.