FOUR YEAR STRONG INTERVIEW WITH Vocalists and Guitarists Dan O’Connor and Alan Day WRITTEN BY Brendan McBrayer
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’ve always had a sour taste in my mouth revolving around the reception surrounding Four Year Strong’s last LP, In Some Way Shape or Form. I thought the album had some of the band’s biggest songs of their career on it, but some chastised the band for “slowing things down.” There are those of us who saw growth and respected the band for trying something new, but as always the squeaky wheel gets the grease. After learning what I did about the album itself and the creation that went into it, I hope at least one of those detractors will change his or her mind.
First, the band signed a very exciting deal with Universal Motown records, where a good friend had recently taken up residence and made it his first mission to get FYS out to the masses. The label folded halfway through recording, and the LP wound up in the hands of Universal Republic through a merger inheritance. FYS was dropped after the riff heavy pop punk band could not match the initial numbers of Taylor Swift or Lil Wayne. Dan and Alan wanted this new LP to not only feel and sound different, but to be created differently as well. The last thing they wanted was to write another Rise or Die Trying. It would have been forced, and trying to recreate songs they had written six years prior wouldn’t have worked. Four Year Strong are incredibly thankful for their fans, but they won’t pander to a certain vocal part of their audience. Dan explains, “we are not creating art for the sake of making money. That’s when this all falls apart: when you lose the passion for what you are doing and make an album specifically to make some quick cash. I’ve seen it before and it’s how bands lose everything in the end. FYS want to write songs to make the fans happy, but we have to make sure it’s sincere. If we write insincere pop punk songs with breakdowns, people will catch on and the show will be over.” Alan explains that many thought that they changed their sound to
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get on the radio, build a bigger audience, and appease the masses. He admits that you always want more people to hear what you are doing, but it’s not at all what they were doing. Says Alan, “Sure, that’s every band’s desire deep down inside. Sure, you always want more people to hear what you are doing in at least a tiny way.” But he has a big problem with those who would say the album was trying to be radio rock. Dan adds, “Over the ten year existence of the band, we had never really written any midtempo songs, a decade is a long time to do the same thing every day. So we set out, for the first time in the band’s history, to write some honest midtempo songs, to write some darker songs, to play around with guitar FX, and to write some songs where lyrics and melodies came first, a thing we as a band had never attempted before.” The shift in the lyrical composition of the album came naturally when the two vocalists tried to write narratives that would further connect with the fans, rather than spout the typical “my friends are awesome” diatribe that litters the current pop punk lyrical landscape. Dan says, “To be an older band in this scene that isn’t as big as say, A Day To Remember or Pierce The Veil, if you aren’t making that kind of income where it’s easy to just show up every day, then your hearts need to be in this and you need to believe in what you are doing.” (Dan clarified that he was not saying that ADTR and PTV don’t pour themselves into their records, but it’s important that when the money isn’t there, at least your heart is.) They had to evolve as people, and as songwriters.
Dan says the songs are “five fast paced, technical songs, and fans who are calling out a return to form are getting what they want out of them, but these songs wouldn’t sound the same had they not gone through the growth and evolution coming from the In Some Way Shape Or Form sessions.” They incorporated what they learned about songwriting with the energy they had when writing Rise or Die Trying and Enemy of the World. Alan wants people to know that In Some Way Shape or Form was the band honing their craft, learning how to write actual songs that would have longevity, and giving each song the attention that it deserved. He says all their old songs were trying to be fun live songs. Dan adds, “The first two albums were written so kids could learn the songs
Four Year Strong has a new five song EP called Go Down in History, recently released on Pure Noise Records.
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and come to shows and have fun. In Some Way Shape Or Form on the other hands was written as a good solid listening record that you could put on at home and thoroughly enjoy.” What’s important for those crying out for Rise or Die Trying Part II to know is this: the band is actively incorporating both of these aspects into their new music. The evolved songwriting and confident lyrical voices will stay, but they will recapture that “fun” energy. Four Year Strong are doing everything they do for the fans. They are truly a class act. They are trying to make people happy, while staying true to who they are as people. You could not ask for a better bunch of levelheaded dudes to be one of your favorite touring bands.
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Photography by Joe Calixto
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