Hawthorne Heights once again highlights Vans Warped Tour and the Ohio-based group performed at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, N.J. on Sunday.
Bassist Matt Ridenour and guitarist Mark McMillon took the time to talk to Mstars before the band's set to discuss their successes, returning to Warped Tour and much more.
MStars: You're one of the more veteran bands here at Warped Tour...
Ridenour: You can say old.
McMillon: You can say we're old.
Ridenour: "More veteran." We know what that means. [Laughs]
MStars: [Laughs] So what's it like for you to come back and do this tour that you've done so many times before?
Ridenour: It's super cool. We've always loved doing it. It's a new experience every day but the same experience every day. It's like a tour where it's the same but the set changes and everything. You get a lot of people that come to see their favorite bands and when you get that many people with their favorite bands here, somebody knew is going to find out about you, which is awesome. And at this point, we still get new fans. So considering we've been around a long...since we're "more veteran," to get new fans at this point is pretty awesome still.
McMillon: And being older, we know a lot of people that are on the tour.
Ridenour: More veteran. [Laughs]
McMillon: More veteran. Being more veteran, we know more people. So it's just fun. Club tour, we have a few friends here and there out with us. But this is like friends from all over and it's great.
Do you get any interaction with the bands on their first Warped Tour, the ones that are new to this experience?
Ridenour: Have we met anybody that this was their first Warped? Well, Forever Came Calling, it's technically their first Warped Tour. We're friends of them. They did it last year but they weren't on the tour. They just showed up and tried to sell CDs every day. So they did all the bad part and not any of the good part, so they probably have it worse than anybody. But it's technically their first Warped Tour.
You just put out Zero. What can you tell us about the response you've gotten to that so far?
Ridenour: Really good.
McMillon: Great.
Ridenour: People seem to love it. It's probably the most ambitious thing we've ever done, so we're really happy with the reception.
The band had a gap between records in 2010 and 2013. Why was that?
Ridenour: We did two EPs and then we self-released just to keep stuff coming out. Our old label they had some weird, something happened and who knows. So we just said, "Alright, you cool? Okay, we're cool." And then we peaced out and then released two things on our own and figured it out. Somebody wanted to release a full-length and we said okay.
Have you noticed any change in Warped Tour? Has it changed at all from year to year?
Ridenour: It's the same. [Laughs] We were talking about it earlier. If you have to be somewhere at 3:52, that thing will happen at 3:52, which is just not like any other tour.
McMillon: So rare on a rock tour.
Ridenour: Like lunch starts at noon, ends at two, done.
McMillon: Normally it's like hurry up and wait all day.
Ridenour: If you have a signing at 2:30, it will happen at 2:30 and it will be done when it's done. Awesome. A regular tour, you could have one band go over five minutes and ruin the whole rest of the day. Like you have to cut your last song because they have a noise curtain.
McMillon: Warped Tour, everyone's ego's in check. Everyone's the same. Nobody goes over and if you do, you're gonna hear about it no matter how big your band is. Everything runs like clockwork. It's awesome.
You had a lot of success very quickly. Was that jarring for you to have to get used to that right out of the gate like that?
Ridenour: It seemed surreal but I don't think it was jarring because we didn't really know that's now what happened to every band. [Laughs] Because we just had our little stupid band that we played in our guitar player's mom's basement and then it got somewhere. So we really didn't know any different so to us it probably just seemed normal.
I mean, we never took it for granted, but the escalation, even though it was really fast to everybody else, we got to watch it kind of happen from the inside. So it didn't seem as fast to us.
So who knows? In my next band, I could really answer that. [Laughs]
© 2024 MstarsNews.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission
