PropertyOfZack Interview : : We Are The In Crowd
Following the release of their new music video featuring Alex Gaskarth, PropertyOfZack is stoked to be posting a new interview with the band that reviewer Jesse Richman conducted at this year’s SXSW Festival. In the interview, Jesse and the band discuss Best Intentions, touring, the decision to redo a song from their album with Alex Gaskarth, recent “drama” regarding Hopeless Records, and more. Check out the great interview below!
Can I get a quick rundown of your names and what you do in the band?
Tay: I’m Tay [Jardine], I play the kazoo and I sing.
Mike: New talent?
Tay: Yup.
Mike: I’m Mike Ferri and I sing.
Jordan: I’m Jordan [Eckes] and I play guitar and sing.
Cameron: I’m Cameron [Hurley] and I play guitar. I’m just going to start saying I do random things.
POZ: We’re going to put that kazoo thing on the interview and that’s going to end up on your Wikipedia page.
Mike: Actually, the three of us got kicked out of the band on Wikipedia recently. We didn’t know why. We were ex-members. They had Jordan playing for Guns N Roses.
Jordan: Yeah, I was in Guns N Roses for like twenty minutes, I took a picture of it.
Mike: And they love to create new ex-members, like dudes that were never in the band. Apparently Goot was an ex-member of our band . He was under the ex-members.
Tay: And Alex is a band member now.
Mike: “Alex Gaskarth joins We are the In Crowd. Headline: “When Two Singers Just Isn’t Enough…Get Three.”
Best Intentions has been out for six months now. How do you think it’s gone over with the fans so far?
Tay: We were really surprised with the outcome of all that. The record came out the same week and the same day as like a thousand other bands that are way bigger than us.
POZ: Yeah, that’s a tough time to release.
Tay: Yeah. So we were really worried about it. But it seemed very positive and it was more than we had hoped for.
Mike: I think everyone wants their first record to be like the …Is A Real Boy situation, where it becomes this instant cult classic. That didn’t happen, but we’re still real pumped on it.
It seems to be building pretty well. You guys have been on the road the entire time since it came out. How has it been touring?
Mike: It’s been a lot of fun. We’ve been doing a lot of touring.
Jordan: I think it’s because we did a lot of international touring. It was almost like inspiration to keep going.
Cameron: It’s not like domestic touring got boring. But the international touring brought something new to it.
POZ: How was Brazil?
Tay: It was beautiful. It was a little scary.
Mike: Yep, terrifying. No, we had security with us. It was crazy. The kids there are a lot different than they are here. They are really touchy-feely and super crazy. So yeah, Tay had a Justin Bieber moment. You got Biebered.
Tay: I got Biibered.
Mike: It was like a red carpet type of creepy thing.
POZ: I guess they just don’t get a lot of American bands down there so when they come it’s a really big deal?
Jordan: We open up the van to get out and it’s like “AHHHH!”
Mike: This girl one time makes it through the fence.
Tay: This is a good example. I had a whole wrist full of bracelets and they’re gone. They were snatched. They are all gone. And they were given to me by my fans. But they were taken as well by fans.
Mike: Their enthusiasm makes me enthusiastic, but I’d like to leave with my skin.
How’s the Every Avenue Tour going so far?
Jordan: It’s good. We only have…
POZ: Yeah, you’re in the home-stretch now.
Jordan: It’s been a while. It’s been like almost five weeks.
Cameron: The tour did go by really, really fast. I don’t know if it’s because we left like halfway through. It’s been really fast and a lot of fun.
So, this is the first of something like fifteen interviews I did while I was down at South By Southwest this year. Most of them will be running on PropertyOfZack, with a handful on a new site I’m going to do some writing for that will be launching at the end of next month. This is probably the only one I’ll be posting here on the blog proper, but I’ll be adding them to the soon-to-be-renamed Reviews Page just like everything else I write for folks other than myself.
This is the first time I’ve done interviews in close to a decade, and I had a blast doing them. It was a really tough setup; the PR agency we were working with basically held an interview day, where you’d sit with one band for 10 minutes, then another would rotate through, then another til you’d hit all of their acts. Which meant there was no way to adequately prepare for each band (I felt bad but I think the bands understood that as well, from the setup). So I asked a lot of stock questions, and wasn’t as prepped as I’d like to have been, but I still really enjoyed the experience. I’d like to start making it more of a regular thing for me.
So yeah, enjoy this one, and be on the lookout for more!
We Are The In Crowd, Alex Gaskarth Song Stream
We Are The In Crowd have officially released a redone version of “Kiss Me Again” that features Alex Gaskarth from All Time Low on vocals. Stream the song below by clicking “Read More!”
A few thoughts on this:
1) If I were Jordan, I would be pissed right now. There are times when it’s a good thing to take a little ego hit when it ultimately might be best for all involved, but I don’t think this is one of those times. The one thing that makes WATIC really specially is the whole co-vocalists aspect, the interplay between Tay and Jordan, the differing viewpoints within the songs. A move like this basically turns WATIC into “Tay And Her Backing Band”, and while I think Tay is great, why underplay the one thing about your band that really makes it stand out from the crowd? I’m sure it’s no good for Jordan personally, but I suspect it’s also no good for the band as a whole.
2) As I wrote back when I reviewed the album upon it’s release, Kiss Me Again feels like it has the potential to be a breakthrough pop hit. It reminds me a lot of Shania Twain’s mid/late 90s megasingles. WATIC are a new enough band, unfamiliar to enough people, that they aren’t quite stuck in the “scene” ghetto yet, and I really don’t understand why they would voluntarily put themselves there. All Time Low are the biggest of the “scene bands”, but they’ve basically flopped on the bigger, mainstream pop stage. We The Kings brought in Demi Lovato for We’ll Be A Dream; I’m not sure who the male equivalent to her is right now, but it would seem to make a lot more sense to tie the song to someone who can pull it into mainstream pop territory, rather than someone who might well push that kind of acceptance away. I get that Gaskarth is Hopeless’ version of pulling out the big guns, but I think his presence here might do more to harm than to help.
3) It’s still a really good song.
4) What the fuck do I know? This is why I’m some guy who says stupid things about music on the Internet and not a record exec.
