Band: Story of the Year
Label: Maverick Records
Official Site: Click here
Date: January 27, 2004
Conducted by: Chad Malone

As I enter the dressing room of Story of the Year, there are greetings all around. The tour manager tries to find us a place to sit down and interview, and he leaves the room for a moment. Dan Marsala and I get our "how ya doings" out of the way, and the tour manager comes back in and says we have to do it where we were standing. We walk over to two pull out chairs that were sitting on top of bathroom towels with hair shavings on them. I walk over to the chair, and one of the towels has a red-ish goo on it.
DAN: That's just hair dye, it's not blood. It looks like blood, but it's hair dye.
TMF Chad: Surrre.
We sit down and begin our interview.

TMF Chad: I think we established how you're doing.
DAN: Doing well, doing very well. My voice is a little... (he rubs his throat)
TMF Chad: Yeah, after that show...
TMF Chad: How do you like touring with Hoobastank, POD, and Linkin Park?
DAN: Aww, it's been awesome so far, like uh.. we been on a bout a week now or so... maybe a little more, and the Linkin Park dudes are totally awesome. The first day they like came up and are all just like "Hey guys, welcome to the tour. Blah Blah Blah. If anything goes wrong, let us know, come straight to us, we'll take care of anything, ya know if anybody... if you have a problem with anybody on the tour, just let us know." They're just really cool guys. And like, they just come out and hang out in our dressing room and stuff. Everybody's really cool, like POD they look all tough. They're all sleeved and mean lookin', and -but like, I've been singing the last song with Linkin Park, like me and Sonny from POD, and what's his face from Hoobastank.
TMF Chad: Doug.
DAN: Doug, yeah right, and we've all been singing the last song. We've all been going on stage and Sonny's always like "Hey man, what's up dude?" He's like so nice. And Hoobastank, those guys are really cool. We've been hanging out with them a lot. It's just an awesome tour. You're kind of worried at first, because it's so big and different, ya know? We didn't know 'cause like, every band on this tour is like total platinum two million records, and we're just this little new band.
TMF Chad: Yeah, four of my favorite bands.
DAN: Yeah, it's been really cool so far.

TMF Chad: Now that 2003 is over with, give us your Story of the Year.
DAN: (laughs) The story for us is touring. That's all that I remember of 2003. We started recording at the end of 2002, and we finished into 2003. We recorded three songs in December of 2002 so, really I guess the beginning of the year was all recording. We wrote and recorded cause we started touring in April so. Yeah, just a lot of shows.
TMF Chad: You had some big tours last summer, Warped Tour?
DAN: Yeah, well we started out in April with The Used, and Thrice, and My Chemical Romance and that was awesome. That was the best first tour for the record right out of the studio.
TMF Chad: I love Thrice.
DAN: Yeah Thrice. Thrice just tops all bands on being really cool guys and just being an awesome band all together. And, we did that... then we did the Warped Tour - we did like side stages and stuff, which was fun, it was really fun. This year we're actually doing main stages so that's awesome. So that's going to be a bonus. And after that... I don't know. We've done a lot of touring this year. We did a couple of low headline days, went out with Sugarcult for about a month and a half... some stuff with Yellowcard, a lot of touring! That's our job. That's all we gotta do ya know? It's not that hard. It's what we love.
TMF Chad: Can't ask for more!
DAN: Yup!

TMF Chad: Give our readers your best pitch to go out and buy your CD.
DAN: (laugh)
(another band member chimes in about being on David Letterman)
DAN: That's weird. You heard that. On the record! We're gonna be on David Letterman, why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you buy the album? (jokingly)
TMF Chad: (laughs) There ya go, the perfect plug.
DAN: Well, see us live, first of all. In order to get the feeling, the REAL feeling of the songs. Because, I dunno, it's like the album is good, and we're happy with it, but it doesn't really capture the live feel as we wanted it to. I mean, but it's got the energy. That's all we're about, we're just about having a good time and putting all our energy into something and having as much energy as the kids - just having a good time. And, just rockin'. See ya gotta see the show, then you need the album so you can learn the songs to come back to the show and do it again and sing with us.
TMF Chad: That kind of answers my next question, which is. Do you prefer the artistic side of the studio or the energy from a live performance?
DAN: Umm... I don't know. I think it just depends on what you're doing at the time, like now... (a piece of spit flies out of his mouth and lands on his leg) I just spit on myself. Like now we're kind of at that point where we're ready to start writing again, but while we're wrote a bunch of stuff we recorded and it's just like "Ok, we've been sitting too long." We've been sitting in the studio totally ready to go out and play. Ya know, playing shows is awesome. Thats why people start playing music. Thats why we, all of us started playing music in the first place was just to... I mean going to a show is one of the coolest things in the world ya know? Seeing a good show and actually having a band play for you... like just... getting a good feeling. It's an awesome experience. That's why we all started playing music. But I mean writing is awesome, recording is really awesome. And we're definitely going to be ready soon to start doing that again. Its like…you get a little bit of both. Anything gets old after awhile.
TMF Chad: Best of both worlds.

TMF Chad: If you could hire any female actress to be an obsessive roadie for you, who would it be?
DAN: (laughs) A roadie... a female actress roadie... (laughs) that would be funny. Jennifer Aniston. She's the best. She's my favorite actress. I mean she's hot.
TMF Chad: This is very true.
DAN: She's just a good actress. I really like her. She's good. She's very good.

TMF Chad: After reading your other interviews you guys seem to bring up being rather accident prone. Do you think it's a curse put on your band?
DAN: I dunno. If you could see my finger on the tape recorder...
(Dan holds up a finger with a completely black finger nail on it)
TMF Chad: Oh geez!
DAN: This happened about a week ago. And I was running on that stage... cause it's real long, so we're always running , and I tried to do a little jack thing and have fun but I like jumped from, those like speakers in front and I kinda jumped across the little corner back onto the stage, and my foot missed the stage. And I was like whoa! I had the mic in my hand and my knee landed on it. I broke the mic and my nail is all black... you (to the tape recorder) can't see that, but yeah it hurt bad. Then, I sprained both my ankles at the beginning of the show two days ago. I don't know what happened, my ankles just gave out. I just ran to one side, I stopped and one ankle went BOOM! (makes a gesture with his hand and wrist representing his foot and ankle and shows a horrific example) and I was like Ow! So I turned and the other one went BOOM! And I was like Ahhh! I was like "What the hell!?" It was before the song even came in.
TMF Chad: God!
DAN: So yeah, I don't know. Maybe we are cursed. But I dunno. Lately we haven't had any serious injuries. Just little ankle twisted, and I fell on my finger. But I mean, nothing like... no hospital visits for the last couple tours actually so. I should probably knock on wood or something.
TMF Chad: You have ESP or something because you keep answering my questions before I get to them.
DAN: (laughs)
TMF Chad: My next question was going to be if anyone has been in the hospital yet this tour seeing as how it's not even two weeks underway.
DAN: No hospital visits... We all have shin splints. I don't know if anybody know what shin splints are. Dude, it sucks bad cause it's just from jumping and stuff. It's just like impact and stuff when your muscle tears away from your bone or something but, that happens to me and our guitar player Ryan a lot. That doesn't go away, the only way for it to go away is like rest... like rest your shins. But we can't rest... we'd just have to stand there (on stage) and we aren't just gonna stand there. We do what we can. We wrap them up, take some Tylenol before the show or something. Mine haven't been bad lately so that's good. Everything's been good on the whole lately.
TMF Chad: That's good, good.

TMF Chad: Shameless Self Promotion... good or bad?
DAN: (laughs) I'd say it's alright. I mean... Jason Newstead wore a Metallica shirt at every Metallica show for his whole career I think. Nobody ever made fun of Jason Newstead.
TMF Chad: (laughs) That's true.
DAN: Yeah, I dunno. I always used to sport Story of the Year shirts all the time. I don't really do it anymore, and I don't really talk about the band too much anymore. I try to act like I'm not in the band whenever I'm not in like a musical type of thing cause I just wanna lay low and not be that band guy all the time. So I dunno... it's all good.

TMF Chad: If your band story of the year was a movie, give us your tag-line.
DAN: We Will Rip Your Face Off.
TMF Chad: (laughs)
DAN: That used to be what we put on our flyers.
TMF Chad: The ones you used to say Metallica was coming to the show?
DAN: Yeah! We used to do that too. We were like "Eve 6 will be there!" And, we'd just put the most random bands. And, at the bottom we'd put We Will Rip Your Face Off.
TMF Chad (laughs)
DAN: I don't know why, but that was our slogan.
TMF Chad: Gotta have something.
DAN: Represents the intensity.

TMF Chad: It's easy to see you're influenced by 80's hair metal bands, especially Metallica.
DAN: Did you see the cover?
TMF Chad: I missed it, I've heard about it on the message boards and I really wanted to see it, but yeah...
DAN: Yeah it was fun, tonight was really good. It was a Metallica cover. We're trying to keep it secret, but you can know on the internet... it's Enter Sandman. It was fun tonight. But yeah Adam's favorite band is definitely Metallica, also Pantera.
TMF Chad: Yeah, those used to be two of my favorite bands back in the day too.
DAN: Yeah we watched A Year and a Half in the Life of Metallica like once a week... that video. It’s the best video ever made. But yeah, I was born to like Guns 'n Roses and Skid Row. Skid Row was always my favorite band, I don't know why. Sebastian Bach, he's the man. Yeah that's the reason I started liking that type of music, rock in general, that's what got me into it. Until Nirvana came out, ruined that whole 80's thing.
TMF Chad: (laughs) How would you say that the 80's have shaped your recordings and your live performance?
DAN: It definitely shaped the live performance. I doubt... I dunno... with the recording maybe. We didn't get to do a lot of guitar stuff, like Feldman, our producer, he's not into guitars a whole lot, like every time we do some 80's metal squeal, he's like "What's this Whitesnake shit, dude? What are you doing?" and we're like "Dude it's awesome!" and he's like "Nah man, that shit’s not cool." So it didn't really come across in the recording; but , anyone can see it in our show. 80's metal was all about the show, bands were running around slamming over each other and swinging their hair. I mean we don't have cool hair to swing, but I mean, It was all about fucking... watching the band just kick ass. I mean we aren't totally 80's, we're not like cheesy, but we definitely like to put the energy into it, and really try to impress people. Just be into it as much as the kids, ya know? I just hate it when a band is just standing there and just playing their song, sometimes you can tell they are really into it and it's good as long as you are into your music, but it's always better give somebody something. That’s what we get from the 80's.
TMF Chad: Gotcha.
DAN: We did steal a few moves.
TMF Chad: Did you?
DAN: We have these Poison and Skid Row DVDs... no actually they're on VHS. But, there's like uh... I dunno, we don't really do it anymore, but like Ryan will do a summersault and someone will jump over him, and we got that stuff from Poison. And they'd do like these weird back-rolls and just summersaults and all kinds of weird stuff. We definitely stole a lot of that from Poison. The guitar spins ya know...
TMF Chad: Sounds like that'll put ya in the hospital too. DAN: Yeah, that'll do it to ya!

TMF Chad: Until the day you die, what do you vow to do?
DAN: (to himself) what do I vow to do…(thinking) what do I vow to do-have fun. Never be old. I don't ever want to grow up. I don't care if I'm 100 years old. I refuse to eat normal food. I still eat like I'm a 10 year old kid like I'll only eat like -we eat bad fast food all the time. And like I still get it just plain like cheeseburgers just plain and just fries. I'll be really picky, like I'm still 10 years old. I haven't grown out of that whole food thing, I dunno, but I think it's cool. I just wanna stay young and have fun the rest of my life.
TMF Chad: Maybe you can be a representative for Toys 'R Us "I don't wanna grow up."
DAN: Yeah!
TMF Chad: That was dumb, I don't know why I said that.

TMF Chad: When you're on the road and you start to miss home, what do you do to ease your mind and fill your time?
DAN: Well it's easier for me cause my girlfriend is our merch girl and she's over there (she waves) so she's always kinda with us. She's actually not going to do anymore after this tour so maybe you need to ask this in a couple months. But for the rest of the guys, I dunno. It's really cool cause everyone in our road crew is all of our friends from St. Louis like our Drum tech doesn't play drums, he's never touched a drum in his life until we brought him out. He was like our best friend from HS and we all worked at Papa John’s delivering pizzas together. But, we made him come out and we're like "Dude, we'll pay you as much as we can just come out and just set the drums up how hard is that?" And, he figured it out and he's good now. He's just our friend, our tour manager is a friend from St. Louis-everybody. we brought every one of our friends out to make it sweet. We don't even care about having professional people we just try to have all our friends so you don't miss home as much cause your friends are here.
TMF Chad: Brings good vibes too.
DAN: Yeah, and we try to fly people out as often as possible just to hang out. Recently... now that we're big enough to have a bus now. We can actually fit more people in. But, other than that, we just play video games and talk on the phone a lot.
TMF Chad: What video games?
DAN: Tony Hawk Underground. That's what I play. There's a lot of Halo that goes on too. We have a Playstation 2 and an Xbox, so yeah, other than that we're on a game called Need For Speed Underground and we've been playing that just cause we're on it. Not very many games really. We watch TV. We sit. We hang out really. We're just sitting around, cause we're all friends. We've been friends forever so we can have fun just sitting around.
TMF Chad: That’s sweet, that’s good.
DAN: Yes, it is a good thing.

TMF Chad: What's a one hit wonder you'd like to see make a comeback?
DAN: (thinks) Really like to see make a come back?
TMF Chad: Yeah
DAN: Most one hit wonders weren't very good though.
TMF Chad: Probably why they were one hit wonders in the first place.
DAN: Yeah. Hold on, I can get one.... I know there were some 80's one hit wonders that should have been better. Most bands did alright. There was this one band called Firehouse.
TMF Chad: I like Firehouse.
DAN: They weren't a one hit wonder, they had a few hits. I had that tape I just loved Firehouse. Slaughter -Slaughter was pretty big. They had a couple albums full of good stuff. Remember Chumbawumba?
TMF Chad: Ha! Yeah, I remember them.
DAN: That song was horrible, but ... they should have continued on. Those dudes with the "Who Let the Dogs Out" song, good thing they were a one hit wonder. Story of the Year! I wish they would come back... with that one hit they had... they just kind of died out after that. (laughter)

TMF Chad: The last group of questions are a word association... I say a word and you say the first thing that comes to mind.
DAN: Alright
TMF Chad: "Music"
DAN: Life... every day, all the time, that’s all it is, music! We either play music, listen to music, or are writing music, thinking about music, or talking about music, or...
TMF Chad: Next word.. "Life" (laughs)
DAN: MUSIC! (laughs) No... um... friends. Friends are life.
TMF Chad: "Awesome"
DAN: Enter Sandman covers by Story of the Year, that is awesome!
TMF Chad: "Horrible"
DAN: Ooo. what am I thinking... what comes to my head.... uhh...
TMF Chad: Pickles?
DAN: ONIONS! You gave me a hint there. I can do pickles, no onions, onions are horrible. And Mayonnaise! No mayonnaise, mayonnaise is the worst! Half of us like mayonnaise half of us hate it.
(Ryan Phillips puts a CD in a boombox and it plays for about 5 seconds then he stops and sings "Comin' at you like a thunder bolt!")
DAN: That’s Ryan. He's our guitar player... he's very odd.
RYAN: And fuckin' hot!
DAN: He's good lookin' though.
TMF Chad: (laughs) The last one is kinda fun... "Corey Feldman"
DAN: Fuckin' YES! The Burbs. The Burbs. The Burbs with Tom Hanks. That's all you gotta say about Corey Feldman. And, The Goonies! and um... License To Drive! And every other good movie that he's in. Corey Feldman is the man!
TMF Chad: He needs to make the comeback!
DAN: Dude, he definitely does! Well, he was on that show, that reality show. He didn't seem how he used to be, he seemed like a wuss on that show. I dunno, but he was awesome. My favorite movie ever is The Burbs. That's a good one!
TMF Chad: Well that's just about all my quest-- (the tape recorder turns off)

After the interview, Dan and I discuss our mohawks and look for some promotional photos for them to sign. We hang out for a little while longer, take a few pictures, I thank him for his time, and we all part on the best of terms.