Every Time I Die: Interview

In-person interview with Jordan Buckley of Every Time I Die

By Aniruddh "Andrew" Bansal

August 11th 2010, Pomona Fairplex, Pomona CA

Andrew: You guys put on a good show today.
Jordan: Oh thank you! Thanks for checking it out man.

Andrew: How has the tour gone for you?
Jordan: It's awesome. I love it and I don't see why anyone wouldn't. It's great playing in front of kids, get to do that every day and play to a bunch of completely out of control kids at various points in the day. Sometimes it's a little too early and at other times it feels a little too late, but it's always amazing and fun, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Andrew: Do you change up the songs that you play in your allotted half an hour every day?
Jordan: We change a little bit, like we added a cover and took out a song. We have five CDs so you've got to give the kids what they want to hear, but at the same time if we get bored playing a certain song, we'll play something new the next day.

Andrew: Which cover did you play?
Jordan: We've usually been doing "tourette's" by Nirvana. It's a minute long and it's awesome. So it's fun to play.

Andrew: What did you think of the general crowd reaction while you played your music?
Jordan: Kids lose their minds and it's great. It's weird because that's how we gauge how good a show is. If everyone looks like they are hurting each other, then that's a great thing to us, which is odd, which is just how it is. The Warped Tour just gets rowdy. They get wild and it's fun.

Andrew: Your latest album is called 'New Junk Aesthetic'. What was up with that name?
Jordan: (Laughs) You know, Andy [Williams, guitar] thought of it. It's more of just how you perceive what you're doing and what you're listening to, and how it's completely up to the listener to decide what's good, what's bad, what's junk and what's not. Sometimes trends that make no sense start, and it's really just up to your interpretation to decide. So it's like saying, here's our new way to doing things, may be you'll think it's junk and may be you won't. But we love it.

Andrew: How would you compare the music on that album to your previous four?
Jordan: You get better at things when you're doing it for over ten years, you know. We're better at knowing what someone else doesn't and we wrote those songs even quicker than normal, just because we got so used to what we do. All of a sudden we knew what would work and what wouldn't, even before we tried it. Songs were coming together in like a day or two at a time. So it's great and it's cool that we've gotten there. To master something it takes about 10,000 hours of practise, so I'm pretty sure we're almost there if you add up all the shows we played.

Andrew: That album came out last year. This year have you been doing anything in the studio, writing or recording?
Jordan: We don't write on tour. We just wait until we get home and then we decide it's time to write. We've never written on tour. We're just going to tour until stop then we're going to write, record and tour for a long time. We're going to keep doing that over and over again for the rest of our lives (laughs).

Andrew: Right! Some bands write and record on tour. I don't even know how that works. How do they get the peace of mind to do that?
Jordan: Yeah there is a lot of free time, but you have to be in the right atmosphere and the right environment. I'll write riffs but we don't ever write songs. I'll sit down by myself with my guitar, but where would I sit down with our drummer you know? Our drums are in a whole other truck. We have to go into another truck, set up and jam outside? It's just not conducive to writing.

Andrew: On this album you worked with some guest musicians, Greg from The Dillinger Escape Plan, Pete from Fall Out Boy and Matt from The Bronx. How was it working with those guys?
Jordan: It was great because they were all so close to the studio. Anyone we knew that was close to the studio and asked if he could sing, we said yeah. We've been in a band for about 12 years now. We've made a couple of friends and when they heard we're in the studio, it was like, hey just come and hang out, play some video games, we'll get Jamba Juice and you could sing on the record.

Andrew: I believe the album was leaked before its release. Would you agree that it's something that's unavoidable these days?
Jordan: Name me one CD that didn't leak before it came out, because I can't think of one. That CD only leaked like a week before too, and that's unbelievable. The new 'Against Me' leaked three months before it was supposed to come out. It's just a nightmare. It's tragic, it really is but no one has done anything to stop it, so why bother?

Andrew: The Iron Maiden album leaked just this week, less than a week before the scheduled release, so I think that's pretty good.
Jordan: Yeah, if you can get it a week before then that's a success for the record company.

Andrew: I would say that the music you guys play is kind of technical hardcore mixed with Southern rock. Would you say that it's a correct description?
Jordan: Yeah I guess, but when you label something you limit it. So I don't like labelling it and putting it in a genre because that already comes with restrictions. I like the fact that we do whatever the hell we want to do, whenever we want to do it and that a lot of people have taken a liking to it without it necessarily needing a name, genre or label.

Andrew: What other tours have you done this year other than Warped Tour?
Jordan: This year we did a headliner with Four Year Strong, Polar Bear Club and Trapped Under Ice then we headlined another short tour with Norma Jean and Cancer Bats. We went to Australia in January and we went to Norway to one show, which was awesome. We're going to Europe after this tour.

Andrew: What do you think of some of the other bands on this tour? Have you had a chance to check them out and was there something you liked?
Jordan: Yeah, a lot of our old friends like Four Year Strong are on. They didn't play today but they were on pretty much the whole thing. Dillinger Escape Plan, Alkaline Trio, Bring Me The Horizon whom we toured with in '09 and we're good friends with, so a lot of good friends and nice folks.

Andrew: What would you say about your influences?
Jordan: At this point, we just influence each other. That would be kind of weird, 12 years of just constantly trying to reach the point of one band or one person. You change and you take inspiration from different things. It really depends on what kind of point in your life you're at.

Andrew: How do you look back at the 12-year period in Every Time I Die?
Jordan: In general, what I do blows my mind. I get to travel the world with my best friends and do what I love to do. No one thing is going to top how great that is as a whole. Yeah, there is stuff that sucks, then there's stuff that is completely amazing. I still love it. We lost a drummer because he didn't like doing it anymore, which is great because I don't want to be in a band with anyone who doesn't want to do it anymore. I want to do this everyday and when I stop wanting to do that, I hope I stop doing it, because there's no point doing it if you don't enjoy it. I see people, and surrounded by people that complain and want to go home. Fucking go home then, you know?

Andrew: On this tour you've travelled around pretty much the whole country. Anything really funny or weird happened that you could share?
Jordan: If you're looking for one thing, our drummer almost caught an alligator one day. That was pretty sweet. Then our sound guy went swimming after the alligator. That's as good as it gets, when your drunk sound guy jumps in a pond after an alligator (laughs).

Check out the band's official website.

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