We Are The In Crowd have just released their second album, ‘Weird Kids’, and it’s bloody brilliant. A couple of weeks back, we went down to Koko to have a chat with guitarist/vocalist Jordan Eckes about the album, how much they love the UK and how the tour went for them.
HOW HAVE THE CROWDS BEEN RESPONDING WHILE YOU’VE BEEN IN THE UK?
We love it here. We’ve always been lucky enough to get a really good response over here, and we’ve definitely grown a lot faster here than we have in the States. It’s crazy. This is our third headliner here and we’re about to do our first in the States. I remember when we first played here in 2011 with Mayday Parade. It’s crazy. And we love Koko. The sound here is always incredible and it’s just such an awesome venue. The line up on this tour is really cool. Neck Deep and Save Your Breath are awesome dudes and super fun to watch. It’s a bummer that it’s almost over. Hopefully we’ll see them soon in the States.
SAVE YOUR BREATH ARE PLAYING SOUTH BY SOUTH WEST. WILL YOU BE THERE THIS YEAR AS WELL?
I think we’re actually purposely skipping SXSW this year because we’ve been so many times and it’s basically a giant party for a week. When we go there everyone’s a little bit too intoxicated, but that’s what it’s all about. Too much fun. It’s incredible. The first time we did it we slept in our van for a week and I got extremely sick and we had to do four shows in one day and we’d have to play at 3am. But it’s such a beneficial festival because you get to meet and network with so many bands and people.
WHAT HAVE YOU GOT COMING UP AFTER THIS?
Directly after this we go straight to our US headliner which is a month and a half long and then we’re doing some other stuff I can’t talk about but it’s non stop touring pretty much all the way up until next year. We’re going to the States, then doing another tour of America that we can’t talk about, and then hopefully coming back over here.
IS THERE ANYWHERE YOU HAVEN’T BEEN THAT YOU’D LIKE TO GO?
I really wanna go to Alaska because that would be the final state because then we would’ve played every state, aside from Maine maybe, which is surprising because in my old band we played Maine all the time. We played Hawaii recently which was incredible. We did that with Mayday Parade. It’s so beautiful there. I want to move there very badly! I’m actually really excited about playing Chain Reaction (Anaheim, California) again – it reminds me of when I was a kid because I was a huge Drive Thru Records cult fanatic kid when I was 14. I remember just watching all the DVDs they put out. All the bands were forever playing Chain Reaction, and I remember when we played there for the first time I was like, “This is it! We’re playing Chain Reaction! This is incredible!” It was crazy. It’s a very cool venue, although I hear Chad from New Found Glory got electrocuted there. It’s kinda small, so it’s intimate, but we love playing intimate shows. I mean, even recently in Manchester, we played a smaller room than we do usually and I almost had more fun because it was so tight in there and we could high five the kids down the front because there was no barrier. Those shows are always my favourite.
HOW HAVE PEOPLE BEEN REACTING TO THE NEW STUFF?
It’s been crazy. We weren’t really sure how kids would react to it. I mean obviously we saw the reactions online but it’s weird because we’re coming out of a three month break between recording and sitting at home and getting our sanity back as a band because we’ve been touring non stop since we started. It’s been go go go, so this last break is probably the longest we’ve ever been home as a band. I remember the first day of this tour we played ‘The Best Thing (That Never Happened)’ and everybody was bugging out and screaming. It was a lot crazier than we thought it would be. So hopefully in the States it’ll be the same. Either way we’re all super excited about it.
‘Weird Kids’ is definitely a different album for us as a band. For the longest time we were trying to find our sound and we saw so many genres come and go. As a band we never really tried to settle on anything because we wanted to do our thing so it was never like “I’m gonna sing and Tay’s gonna sing and we’re gonna go back and forth”. It was something we just utilised, because I was like “I guess I can sing and she can sing and so we’ll see what happens”. People were so into it right off the bat, especially here. The kids got really attached to Tay as a person in general. It’s crazy to think how far we’ve come. These are probably the best songs we’ve written collectively as a band. I mean, John Feldmann pushed us so hard and we did it in less than 22 days, which looking back now seems crazy. I love John.
HOW WAS IT WORKING WITH JOHN FELDMANN? HE’S WELL KNOWN FOR PUSHING BANDS HARD AND GETTING THE BEST RESULTS.
You probably know Blitz Kids right? They’re on Red Bull Records so they recorded with him and I remember them telling us before we went in like “Dude, he’s mental, he’s great, you’re gonna have such a good time, he’s gonna push you guys so hard” and he was everything they said and more. It was a great experience. He doesn’t want you to be uncomfortable but he wants to hear the emotion come out and he doesn’t want it to seem fake or fabricated in any way. When we did our single ‘Attention’ with him, we did it in two days to test the waters and see how it would be. I remember he had me doing things I’d never done in my life. He had me on my back with the microphone, lying on my stomach, trying out all these different techniques, just to get this one take. He was like, “I don’t hear it, I don’t feel it, I need to feel it”. it was so incredible. The whole time I was just thinking, “It’s so crazy that I’m doing this right now, I can’t believe I’m recording with the singer from Goldfinger”. And not just that but I’ve been a fan of him as a producer for so many years, working with bands like Mest and Story Of The Year and The Used. I could go on because there’s so many bands.
WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’D LIKE TO ACHIEVE? WHAT HAVE YOU NOT DONE THAT YOU’D LIKE TO DO?
We’ve been lucky enough to do so many things already. I would love to be able to build up the States to the point that we’ve got to in the UK, fanbase-wise. It’s hard because obviously America’s huge but I’d love that. It’s hard right now because of the recession and kids can’t get out to the shows as much as they’d love to and venues we started out playing have closed their doors because of money. But just to do a huge headlining tour in the States would be incredible so I’ll keep striving for that. We know it’s gonna take some time, but we’re psyched. We toured on ‘Best Intentions’ and the EP for so long and we were lucky to be able to do that, but it’s great to be playing new songs finally. It’s been awesome playing this new material, because it was getting to that point where we were getting burnt out as a band because we were playing the same songs over and over again. So it’s super exciting having this new record out and being super busy touring. We’re not taking any breaks any time soon.
LAIS MW