Atreyu - Dan

Interview Date: October 26, 2006

Associated band: Atreyu


How has the reactions to the tour been in the 2 1/2 weeks it's been on the road?

DAN: It's been really good actually. We haven't headlined anything like this lately; it's always been festivals like Taste Of Chaos or Ozzfest for the past year and a half. To finally come back and do our own thing for a bit is awesome, especially to play a longer set and do things our way.

Do you plan on headlining more tours in the near future, or do you anticipate more of the festival-type schedule you mentioned?

DAN: We are actually going to start writing a new record when we are done with this tour. We just signed with a new label (Hollywood Records). The sooner we are done writing and putting out a new record, the sooner we are done with Victory Records and moved on to Hollywood Records.

Have you been writing for the new record while on tour, or is a process you mainly keep for when you're back from tour?

DAN: We write little riffs here or there while on the road, but for the most part, we wait until we get home so we can practice in the practice studio and put things together. As soon as we get done with all this, it'll be time for us to start writing and get it done.

What is your current reaction to what happened with Victory?

DAN: They did a lot of things that weren't very fair or not, I don't think, necessarily legal. Things just that aren't cool; record labels and bands working together is a business, and when you sign to a record label, it's like you are working together as a team to make each other both successful. If one side of the team is not pulling their share or screwing you over in any way, it totally throws things off. In that sense, I think it is to our benefit that we are going our separate ways, as have some other bands with them as well.

How significant of a change has Hollywood Records been for Atreyu compared to what you've had in the past?

DAN: The reason we were more excited about it than anything is the fact that they showed a lot of interest in us for a long time even before we were looking to get signed by them. When Victory signed us, they weren't really going to shows or anything. They just sent someone out for one show, said that it would do, and offered to sign us. With Hollywood, they have come out to our shows for the past year or more just checking us out and watching us grow as a band. They also don't have a lot of bands like us on their label. I feel like we are going to be more focused on, unlike a label like Warner which has My Chemical Romance, The Used, and Avenged Sevenfold. There are so many bands on that, so if we went to a label like that, we would just be mixed in with everyone else.

Does Hollywood have any influence towards the type of material you are writing? For example, have they noticed the success of your Bon Jovi cover and encouraged more of the sort?

DAN: They have been supportive and fine with what we do so far. All our success has been based on us writing our own music and doing our own thing. Hollywood has liked that a lot about us. I think that's another reason why we decided to work with them, and they decided to work with us. They are cool with the way we do things, and tell us they just want to work with us and help push us up to the next level.

Have any songs that you wrote way back lost the power to you but you play just because fans request the songs night after night?

DAN: Yeah, there are several ways to look like that. There's the one way where the songs don't really mean as much to you because you've just played them so many times. There are also songs that I like, but I don't like playing. For example, a song that we've probably overplayed a lot is Ain't Love Grand. We wrote that song so long ago, but people like to hear it a lot. It's not really a fun song to play. Another one is Her Portrait In Black. I love that song, but I really don't like playing it live. It's a bit boring for me. I like stuff a bit more riffy and more leads in it that keep me something to do.

Do you particularly take notice at the comments made by fans and haters alike online on large community-based pages or the band's Myspace?

DAN: I used to a lot. You used to just like, watch your career grow and watch things change with the amount of people that like your band and where you are going to go next. When we first started, that was pretty popular for kids to go online and say things, and for us to check it out and all that. The tough thing is that the internet is really easy for people to anonymously talk shit about your band. If you honestly read all the stuff that most of the kids say, it's like 15-year-old kids who don't know what the fuck they are talking about. It's like, what band have they been in that can have any say in anything? I think Michael Jackson said it best when he said that it's better for people to talk bad things about you than to never talk about you at all. At least people are talking.

How do you react to the fans who seem blatantly disrespectful when you don't play older songs in your set?

DAN: You brush it off. If you look at any band, every record they put out gained and lost fans. There's nothing you can do about that. Everyone's going to have that one record by a band that nothing else by the band can compare to that one record and you swear by it. It's like that a lot of there's something hard that you went through in your life that it helped you through, or it had a huge impact on you. Anything after that, nothing else really feels the same. We're going to still write our records and put out stuff that makes us happy. As long as there's more and more people that come back, we must be doing something right.

Do you feel like there is a particular album that you have been a part of with Atreyu that speaks out as more personal to you more than the others?

DAN: Not too much. I guess The Curse just because that was the record that really started getting us going as far as our success turning. It was more of a catalyst for us to get things going. We still have a long way to go, but you can feel that when the record came out, all these things were changing. It's an extremely cool feeling to have all those things changing.

Where do you see Atreyu in about a year or so?

DAN: Hopefully less than a year from now, we'll have a new record out that we will be supporting. Usually we get a little nervous right before we start writing, but once we get down to it, it comes out pretty quickly. We are a machine when it comes to touring so we get right back out there again. Hopefully, knock on wood, everything goes well, and we can take things to the next level.

With a lot of the non-festival tours you've done recently, you've been headlining or co-headlining each tour. If you were to be support for a band, what band would you wish to be the headliner?

DAN: As far as a band relevant to now, I think certain bands like AFI or My Chemical Romance would probably be the perfect size and type of band for us to support. That's what we'd have to shoot for. For someone who isn't around anymore, I would shoot for the original line-up of Van Halen, Queen, or something huge like that.

What led you to having the supporting bands to be on this tour?

DAN: We had a say in it to an extent. When you are booking a tour like this, you have to look for bands that fill certain slots well. If you have one band who sells like 500,000 records, you want the band below that to be a band that sold like 250,000-200,000 records. The band below that would be like 100,000 records, and below that would be 50,000. By looking at it like that, we looked at what bands would perfectly fit that kind of thing. Bands like From First To Last, Every Time I Die, and Chiodos are really good bands with a lot of good buzz about them. I think right now they all draw a lot of people, and all our names on paper looks really good.

You have played both Ozzfest and Warped Tour pretty much back and forth each summer. Which tour do you prefer?

DAN: Well, it's always been a different type of festival. The audiences are slowly coming together as the same type, but when we did them like a few years ago, it was a lot more diverse. Warped Tour has always been more of a punk or poppy vibe with a lot of young kids there. Ozzfest is like full out metal kids that come out for only Ozzfest every year. Kids get super nasty, run around with shirts off, get horrible sunburns, and drink a ton of beer and get wasted. The energy was a little more fun on Warped Tour when we did it in 2005, but Ozzfest is really cool as well.

Do you have any final words to the readers?

DAN: rn To anyone who has supported Atreyu, thank you very much. To anyone who has come out to our shows, bought our shirts and records, we need that to be here. Thank you for keeping us here.