British metalcore band While She Sleeps is in the midst of just its second North American tour, the Vans Warped Tour.
Lead singer Lawrence Taylor, who joined the band in 2009, and bassist Aaran McKenzie took the time to talk to MStars during the Warped Tour's stop at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, N.J. on Sunday.
Mstars: Are there any differences coming to North America your second time? Are you more used to it?
McKenzie: This is our first ever Warped Tour. It's been a great experience so far. It sounds a bit weird but as young musicians growing up we've always had an eye on the Warped Tour and sort of followed it. For us to be over here and be a part of it is really great.
Taylor: (We've been following it) since we were like 14, so just to be over here just playing shows in America is wild in the first place.
You're here and you see guys like Reel Big Fish and The Used and guys that have done this before...
McKenzie: Yeah, bands that we grew up listening to those guys.
Right, so it is almost surreal just playing in the same venue as those guys? Did you ever imagine you would be in that position?
McKenzie: Yeah, it always is because you grew up listening to those bands and then you'll pass them backstage or you can be sitting next to them in catering and shit. You're like, "Whoa, this is a bit surreal." You're very grateful to know where your band is at the time and how much work you've put in because it's easy just to forget where you are and then you see one of your idols walk past or something or bands that you used to listen to back in the day and it kind of like brings you back in, brings you back to reality. It just makes you grateful for what you're doing, really.
With this being your first Warped Tour, did you guys have any butterflies or jitters going up on stage? When you actually got up there and it was like, "We're actually about to perform?"
McKenzie: The first day, yeah, because it was like, "Oh, it's our first show in Warped Tour. We've always known about Warped Tour for years and years." But then it's always that once you get the first one out of the way...[to Taylor] The first show was pretty shit, wasn't it?
Taylor: It's like once the first song is out of the way. Once you've walked out and the first songs out of the way, you're in the zone then. You know what you're doing and yeah, just having a great time I think and rocking the stage.
How did you guys get together and how did you wind up here?
Taylor: The band's been going since these guys all met when they were in the second year of secondary school jamming in like young punk bands and bands that surrounded that...I'll let [Aaran] take it from here. A few years later, they met Aaran.
McKenzie: I've known (guitarists) Sean (Long) and Mat (Welsh) from skating like years later. And then I met (drummer Adam) Sav(age) at college. I used to be in a different band from those guys. They started While She Sleeps and then the bassist that they had at the time was lagging behind. He never turned up to practice and then they got me like six months after While She Sleeps first started.
And then we just started playing shows locally and that's how we met (Lawrence), through bands that he was playing in. We're really into partying, so that's how we kind of got along.
Taylor: [Laughs]
McKenzie: That was the main ingredient, I think. We all got on really well cause we all like a nice drink. So we just grew friends from that and...in the end of 2009 when we got our first actual tour offer and it was like, "Well, are we gonna do this? Are we gonna go full weight at this, or what?" So we all quit our jobs and moved into The Barn, which is like Mat's dad's house kind of thing, like a separate building.
It sounds really cliché but we just went on tour and we had no money. We just kind of bought our own band and just kind of did it by ourselves for years.
Taylor: It was like the defining moment of While She Sleeps, I think, because without us all going, quitting our jobs and just sort of proving to people around us and our families and ourselves that this is what we wanted to do enough to just cut our ties and be like, "We'll make it work however it will work. We'll try our hardest." So just...living really rough, it just proved to us that we had it in us to keep this rolling. We played loads of local shows together and a couple of years later after releasing a debut album, we're still here.
McKenzie: Which kind of makes you, when people say, "Oh, you're so lucky to be on Warped Tour. You're so lucky to be on Warped Tour, to be doing this, doing that," it's like, "Yeah, but I lived on two pound a day for a good two years." It was a struggle.
Taylor: We are very lucky to do it, but I think we have worked to get here as well.
McKenzie: Back then it was struggle and strife, now it's loving life.
Are you working on something new now?
McKenzie: We're actually writing at the minute as we're on the road. We've got like a little port-a-studio in the back lounge and we're just kind of writing as we go along. Sean's probably in there now. He's the main writer and we just piece stuff together because we're going into the studio a few weeks after we come back off Warped Tour, so we need to get everything together and prepare the stuff to go in there.
Taylor: We recorded our first sort of mini-album EP style ourselves at the place Aaran mentioned, The Barn, which was like our little squat, our punk squat at the side of our guitarist's dad's house. So we recorded that completely ourselves and then after we toured that cycle in the UK, we went into the studio after that and recorded our first full-length, which is called This is the Six, which is out now. We have that on Warped Tour with us. And then, yeah, we're piecing together out third CD, but it's our second full-length album.
