Korn‘s Jonathan Davis was so excited by ORGY that he created his own record label …
After taking a step back from their busy touring lives, along with some much needed R&R, The Story So Far have released a serious contender for album of the year. We caught up with Kevin Geyer, the bands guitarist, to find out the details of the new album, what’s been going on in their world, and whether or not we’ll see them back on our shores soon.
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If you’re curious on how the album rated in the Hysteria world check out our album review here, before reading about all the inspiration and motivation for the album below.
Your new album Proper Dose has just been released. How are you feeling about it?
Yeah, officially here it comes out tomorrow, because it’s tomorrow for guys already … I’m pretty good, honestly we’ve been sitting on it for so long so, in my mind it’s already out, and I’ve heard there’s a leak out there … so the sooner the better you know? It’s good for the wait to finally be over. I’m already fairly disconnected with what people will think of it. I’m just glad it’s out there.
The album was announced in July, how long had it been in the works at that point?
Writing we spent almost maybe a year, just writing like little riffs and stuff, because it had been like almost three years since our previous album, well by now three, so yeah maybe like a year before now, we were writing stuff and then went into the studio in April last year … so, by July we were maybe half way done with the record.
Listening to the album, and the bands discography in general, it feels like everything before now was the band growing up, and then with Proper Dose it was the coming of age, what was the writing process like for it?
You kind of hit it on the head with that. I think that’s how we all feel about it, but the writing process wasn’t that much different to what we’ve done in the past. Myself and Ryan, our drummer, kind of do the bulk of writing the instrumental stuff, and like arrange it as a group and then Harper will do his lyrics and melodies and stuff as like a final addition to the songs, but I think the only difference this time around is that usually we have a deadline, and we kinda didn’t want to settle and just be like “Alright, it’s done now”, so we took a lot more time and we were more comfortable with like scrapping songs that we weren’t totally happy with … pushing ourselves to be happy with it, not just give the record depth.
After the success of your self titled album, was there a bit of nervousness to go in there and try some new things while recording?
Yeah … I mean, I don’t know if we were as nervous as we were kind of just determined to not put out the same record again, because our first 3 records we definitely had our sounds, and an identity to live up too, and we tried to keep that in mind with this one. I wouldn’t say we were nervous as much as excited to just kind of continue that while also doing some stuff that was new for us.
When I first heard the title and listened to the album, the whole Proper Dose concept kind of reminded me personally of adjusting to the right level of meds, but then there’s songs on the album like Keep It Up which almost explicitly mention overdosing, what were the big inspirations for this album?
Well … lyrically I can’t really speak for that, but Parker obviously went through his own stuff, as far as like his lyrical content and stuff goes, I wouldn’t want to speak on behalf of that, because that was kind of his issues that he was handling and he came out on top … I think it worked out for the best, for the content of the record for sure, he’s obviously in a better state now. Musically, we were just kind of trying to do what we know we’re good at … as well as do things that we wanted to do and find, kind of the perfect marriage between those.
We made the mistake of burning ourselves out really bad in like the first 5 years after our first record, we were on tour like 9 months out of the year, that really took a toll on like whether or not we even wanted to be a band after that.
[ Kevin Geyer ]
There’s definitely a balance and equilibrium of different feelings and musical tones in the album, between punchy punk rock notes, and then some almost indie rock features, is this the direction you always thought the band would go?
I don’t know if it was as much as a conscious thing, over 11 years, our taste has for sure changed, one of our original members, his brother was in Set Your Goals so they were like a huge influence when we started and like obviously we grow up and our music taste changes, and we still wanted to retain that identity that we started with but we all sort of evolved what we listened to like The Beatles, and I know Parker is really into Oasis, we kind of just write until we figure out what we like, I think that’s the criteria we hold ourselves to, if I would listen to this on my own without knowing it’s our band, we kind of just write to what we want to hear. It’s not like conscious, it’s more of a do what feels comfortable for us. We cut a couple of songs that were like … they felt a little too ‘The Story So Far’ for lack of a better word for it, it kind of felt like we were mocking what people were expecting from the band, so we scrapped those, and we kind of were like well this is what I’ve been listening to, so I’m going to do this. It was much more of a natural thing, then like a deliberate change in direction.
In the press release you guys chat about taking some time, to pause, reflect and slowdown are you coming at touring with a different approach?
We’ve all grown up a lot since we’ve been touring so I think we value our time at home, like hanging out with your girlfriend, we want to get a good balance. We made the mistake of burning ourselves out really bad in like the first 5 years after our first record, we were on tour like 9 months out of the year, that really took a toll on like whether or not we even wanted to be a band after that. I think we found a good middle ground, to be able to tour, make money, and live our own lives. While not like dreading like “Oh man I’ve gotta get back on the road!”, and be away from all the things that are like comforts.
Like I mentioned before, the album really came across as the epitome of growing up, and being an adult now. Did you ever find you got lost in your early 20’s because of the constant touring and stuff, like you guys are still in your mid-20s, to be a band for 11 years, is a lot …
Yes and no, I feel like, well we all grew up in a fairly suburban little bubble, and the town of Walnut Creek, where we all come from is pretty much the epitome of suburbia … it was kind of like, we got on tour right out of high school and like it was like oh now we’re like travelling for our career right out of being like suburban kids, it’s like doing whatever we want, everything’s already taken care of. So in that sense it was kind of like we had to fend for ourselves on the road, but also you know you still don’t have that many responsibilities, you play the show and you don’t really have anyone to answer too, so it’s kind of a little bit of both … It was kind of very romanticised the whole on tour, young kids having the time of your life, as well as, being away from home and having to figure that out, you’re not just on your parents dime anymore, you gotta figure stuff out for yourself. So I think this is a combination of that process,
I know you were in Australia fairly recently, but do you have anything planned soon?
I don’t know if I’m liable to talk about the uh specifics … haha but we’re definitely planning on being there within 2019. We’ll definitely be touring on this record, you can plan on that.
Excellent well thank you so much for taking the time out. Was there any final words you wanted to put out about the album?
Well shit … I feel like you covered all the bases haha, just like lyrically and I don’t want to speak on it too much, well because it’s all Parker’s experiences and stuff, but it definitely seems to resonate with a lot of people and it seems to be a theme with a lot of people these days with the whole Opioid crisis, I guess I’m just glad that relevance seems to help someone else in that aspect you know, if they’re going through something similar, and they can hold on to that and see a way out you know, otherwise like musically we’re just stoked to have another record that we can enjoy playing. There’s really no part of Proper Dose that we settled on, and we’re all really proud of that.
Order and stream Proper Dose here.
