Joe's Big Toe

There’s some­thing about hav­ing a band like Reel Big Fish in Birm­ing­ham that always causes a stir. Out­side, people are already start­ing to mill around, and as I walk towards the doors, a man who may as well have the word “tout” prin­ted on his bomber jacket almost asks me if I have a ticket to sell, before he real­ises its only 4pm and changes his mind. The tour man­ager, Tom, smiles broadly as we make our way through the build­ing. “Cold out there huh?” “I know mate” I smile back, “and I have to live here”. Shit, I’ve barely opened my mouth and I’ve already said “mate”.
Walk­ing through the newly-decorated cor­ridors of the Birm­ing­ham O2 academy there is an odd sense of calm, but it isn’t until I see the stage that I feel the anti­cip­a­tion in the room; this is the ebb before the tidal wave hits. In a couple of hours, some­thing huge is going to be unleashed here.
Back­stage, the band are relax­ing and mak­ing a few pre­par­a­tions. We find Ryland in the hall­way, warm­ing up on a small prac­tice kit. Derek flicks cas­u­ally through his laptop and Scott reclines on the sofa. Every inch the seasoned tour­ing band, they don’t seem tired or stressed, they just seem focused, and judging by pre­vi­ous Reel Big Fish shows I’ve seen, I don’t blame them for pre­serving their energy — they’re going to need it.

How’s the tour going so far?
Ryland: I think it’s going tre­mend­ously, we love com­ing to the UK. We love people who come to the shows, they’re a crazy bunch of kids and it allows us to put on a really high-energy show. It’s like, we throw our energy out at the audi­ence and they push it back, which makes for a very fun experience.

What’s the tour­ing situ­ation like with the band; is it dif­fi­cult liv­ing in each other’s pock­ets?
Ryland: I think at this point we’re just used to being with each other all the time, I’ve been with the band for five years now. I guess you just get used to pretty much liv­ing with someone six or seven months out of the year. We’re all very respect­ful of each other and know when to stay out of each other’s way, but we just love what we do, so it makes the whole trav­el­ling situ­ation a lot more enjoyable.

So you never find any ten­sion build­ing up?
Ryland: It’s not so much per­sonal ten­sion, it’s just some­times if we’ve been on tour for a long period of time, some­times we can be a little more stressed out or more short with each other, but over­all I think it’s a very good situ­ation we have.

You’ve been in Bri­tain just over a week now, how does it com­pare to tour­ing in the States?
Ryland: I would say the UK and main­land Europe audi­ences can tend to get a little cra­zier at the shows. I think it’s because the band is from Amer­ica and tour­ing Amer­ica for a couple of years before they come over to Europe. But even though we have a great group of fans in the United States, I think maybe its some­thing to do with the culture.

Do you think audi­ences over here are more appre­ci­at­ive?
Ryland: Maybe, I don’t know. There can def­in­itely be a sense of enti­tle­ment with a cer­tain num­ber of people in the United States, so maybe people are more used to it; but over­all we have a won­der­ful fan-base world­wide. But for some reason in the UK people do get a little crazier.

Have you developed a taste for the European beers yet?
Ryland: I’m not much of a beer drinker, but my friend Derek here is a beer con­nois­seur [To Derek, who is busy at the com­puter] Are there any par­tic­u­lar beers that you love when you come over to the UK?
Derek: Well, it seems like a lot of them, we can find at home, I always enjoy some of the Bel­gian beers you can get in Manchester, but I look for­ward to hav­ing them in Bel­gium as well.

Think­ing of attend­ing a beer fest­ival?
Derek: I would love to if I had time, but com­ing over with the band doesn’t really leave time to come on my own or vaca­tion, although I really want to, but I’m going to be back soon and I don’t want to get tired of it.
Ryland: We’re hop­ing to actu­ally do some of the European fest­ivals this sum­mer, so hope­fully we’ll be able to exper­i­ence that and some of the local beers.

Reel Big Fish ori­gin­ally burst onto the scene in the mid 90s with other sim­ilar ska bands that have since dis­ap­peared off the radar. What’s the secret to the bands stay­ing power?
Ryland: I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that the band has for over a dec­ade now built its repu­ta­tion on put­ting on a really fun and enter­tain­ing live show. I feel like there’s only so much listen­ing to an album you can do and then even­tu­ally you move on from it, but if there’s a band who comes through town maybe once or twice a year that you know is going to put on a good show, people tend to stay loyal to those bands for longer. And the fact that RBF has always been a tour­ing band has been a huge help in stay­ing rel­ev­ant and always bring­ing in new fans. As people tend to get older and their musical tastes change, it’s always their little brother or sis­ter who takes over where they left off, and even now on tour our main audi­ence is still the same age group that it was when the band first broke onto the scene, like 13 up to 21 or 22 years old.

As a band you play a lot of cov­ers, your last album was a cov­ers record. Do you think this also helps to attract new fans?
Ryland: I sup­pose it can but in RBF’s case it’s just another aspect of the band that people just enjoy, I don’t think it’s neces­sar­ily some­thing that people hold on to like “Oh I like Reel Big Fish coz they do cov­ers” but it’s just one more thing for fans to hold on to and won­der what cover we’re going to do next.

A recent music poll indic­ated that Indie music is dying out, do you think there could be a chance for Ska music to exper­i­ence a revival?
Ryland: I think that would be great, I would love it if it did! I think it would have a dif­fer­ent sound though. RBF sort of came on the third wave of Ska so I guess you would call it a fourth wave. I think there would be some­thing dif­fer­ent about it music­ally but…no, I’d love that [laughs] but because there’s not a whole lot of Ska-Punk bands out there that can draw a crowd as well, its one of the things that has actu­ally got harder over the years as far as tour­ing goes.

So it’s pretty dif­fi­cult for Ska bands at the moment?
Ryland: Well I think it’s just dif­fi­cult for bands in gen­eral. But I think one of the ways for a band to build an audi­ence and keep things going, it seems like all you really need to do is just stay together. A lot of these bands just seem to get so far and then end up break­ing up, where as RBF I think has come to a sort of equi­lib­rium, not only with each other, but we’ve got­ten into a rhythm of doing our tour­ing every year and put­ting out stu­dio pro­jects. That seems to help us, where as these bands just seem to get stuck and don’t know what to do; and they end up break­ing up or try­ing to change their sound.
Scott: A lot of it is also to do with per­sever­ance through the hard times. We’ve seen a lot of really dif­fi­cult shit go down in our careers per­son­ally, business-wise and things like that; you have to stick it out.

So apart from beer appre­ci­ation, what do you do for fun when you’re not work­ing?
Ryland: Well usu­ally when I’m home I just keep play­ing my drums [laughs] I have a little prac­tice space, and I try to stay busy doing other things music­ally and I know Scott also has his own writ­ing pro­jects that he does. Its funny because, this is what our life is revolved around, so when we’re back home it almost ends up being like we’re wait­ing for the next tour.

Is it nice to ever take a break though?
Scott: The music industry isn’t really the kind of industry where you can take a break. I mean if you’re not work­ing then you’re not work­ing. You become out­dated and passé, and the thing is if you want to stay doing this for a liv­ing then you don’t really have free time, you just have time that you’re not ded­ic­at­ing to a cer­tain pro­ject that you’re ded­ic­at­ing to another pro­ject. I get a few hours out of the day that I have for per­sonal use and the rest of it is doing some­thing else. I think a lot of the people that we look up to are people who are always work­ing. That’s the example that’s been set forth by the suc­cess­ful people in this industry; always be work­ing. If you want to make music for a liv­ing, you’ve got to prove that you’re worthy and get your work ethic.

“The thing to be said too about bands that stay suc­cess­ful in this job is that each one brings some­thing unique to the genre”

Are there any bands that you haven’t toured with yet that you’d really like to?
Ryland: I sup­pose there would be tons of bands, I don’t know if it would make sense for Reel Big Fish to tour with any of the bands I’d love to tour with.

Any­one in par­tic­u­lar?
Scott: [to Ryland] You can say it.
Ryland: I’d love to go on tour with the Foo Fight­ers, or Mars Volta.
Scott: Zappa plays Zappa.
Ryland: Yeah, there’s all sorts of bands I’d love to tour with but it wouldn’t neces­sar­ily make sense with Reel Big Fish.

How are you find­ing the tour with Sonic Boom Six?
Ryland: It’s going great, the audi­ence seem to like them, and we really like them as people so it’s fun. This is our second tour with them and they’re going to do the whole thing through Europe with us as well.

Any rivalry going on between the bands?
Ryland: There tends to not be a real rivalry with us, I think because we’re so in our own world that I guess we don’t really think in terms of that. We just do what we do. I guess I can see how bands would try and outdo each other, but we just really get up on stage and just play [laughs]. It’s funny because when we toured with Less Than Jake in the States in 2007, I was won­der­ing if there was going to be a rivalry. And it was funny because it was a co-headlining bill, so we’d altern­ate each night who was going to close.
Scott: Didn’t we do Aus­tralia with them too?
Ryland: We did Aus­tralia and Canada with them, hope­fully we’ll do Europe and the UK with them as well.

And you guys are the two biggest names in Ska-punk as well…
Ryland: Yeah, I thought there would actu­ally be a rivalry with them, but right away both bands were jok­ing with each other like “you guys close tonight, no you guys close tonight, no I don’t want to” so in the end it’s just people play­ing music.
Scott: The thing to be said too about bands that stay suc­cess­ful in this job is that each one brings some­thing unique to the genre, so we’re not like most fuck­ing bands that sound exactly the same and are com­pet­ing with fuck­ing hair­cuts and tight pants, like you said Less Than Jake and Reel Big Fish are the two most pre­val­ent bands of our genre and our age group, and we’re not com­pet­ing because we’re two sep­ar­ate bands that bring two sep­ar­ate vibes and ener­gies to the stage.

So could it be said that you’ve las­ted so long because you’re not afraid to do some­thing dif­fer­ent?
Scott; Yeah, well that’s some­thing that’s always a part of grow­ing up in our scene; that every band was fuck­ing dif­fer­ent. The bands we looked up to and the bands we dug didn’t sound any­thing like us, and that was awe­some. It’s not like that today.
Ryland: And even if there was a band that did come out that soun­ded like us that star­ted becom­ing pop­u­lar, we’d be excited because that just means it’s another band that we can go on tour with and not to sound cheesy or any­thing but as a band we’d look at it as if we’re in it together, so if any­thing we can only help each other out.

Do you like to think you’re influ­en­cing younger Ska-punk bands that might be com­ing onto the scene?
Ryland: Yeah, there’s all sorts of kids that come up to us and say “we star­ted a band because of you guys”
Scott: And not just Ska-punk bands, you’d be sur­prised at fest­ivals the bands that come up to us like “dude I loved you guys when I was a kid!”

So after the tour, what’s next for the band?
Ryland: Well we’re doing Warped Tour in the states this sum­mer, like I said hope­fully we’ll be back to do some fest­ivals in the UK and Europe, and hope­fully a new record of ori­gin­als. We’re also work­ing on a Greatest Hits, so we’re work­ing on all sorts of things.

You’re old label released a Greatest Hits that the band didn’t approve of, will this one be more per­sonal?
Ryland: Yeah we’re work­ing on our own pro­ject, so it’ll hope­fully be put together later this year.