Josh Beech & the Johns’ Autographed Merch Give Away

Are you a Josh Beech fan? How about a Josh Beech & the Johns fan?
If you answered yes to either of those questions we have something for you. Vestra Vera Press was lucky enough to meet and interview [read it here] the boys of Josh Beech & the John’s and they were kind enough to autograph a hard copy of their yet to be released EP ‘She’ along with one of their show cards so that we can give them away to their fans.

Interested? Well, here are the rules for our Tumblr users:

1. Follow Vestra Vera Press, just following does not get your name put it. Show support for the Josh & the John’s and reblog to do it.
2. Reblog the contest, if you’re following us and reblog your name goes down twice. If you just reblog it will only go in once. 
3. Likes do not count for the contest, spread the love.

Rules for our non-tumblr users:

1. Go to our ask, leave us your email address using the anonymous option. We will put it into the drawing only once. Make sure to let us know that you’re leaving us your email for this contest.

The first name we pick will get the signed cd ‘She’ and the second will get the signed show-card. Remember to check out their video for ‘Follow Your Lead’ and keep your eye out for the release of ‘She’ on April 4th so you can get your hands on your own copy. Good luck you guys!

On March 18th, 2011, Vestra Vera Press sent a representative out to Austin, Texas to see Josh Beech and The Johns. An up and coming band from the UK. They just recorded an EP called ‘She’. It’s available on iTunes now. On April 4th, they’ll make it available to buy the CD itself. Great, great guys. Fantastic music. If you haven’t listened, go to iTunes right now and check them out. We also gave the boys an Iron Man costume. You can see Josh Beech attempting to put the children’s size costume on here.

What’s your favorite part of touring?

Josh: Uh..Meeting the fans.
Martinelli: [laughs] Wearing Iron Man stuff.
Turnham: Yeah, wearing Iron Man stuff.

Has there been any on tour pranks or any embarrassing situations with you guys?

Josh: Uh, I don’t think there’s ever been a time in our day where there isn’t an embarrassing situation.
Martinelli: Yeah, seriously.
Josh: Yeah. We’re constantly making mistakes.

If you follow your twitter, you pretty much know something is always going on. (@iamjoshbeech @iamjohnmart @johnthedrummist )

[Laughing]
Martinelli: It’s always because you see Josh twittering.
Josh: Is that bad, is that bad? Or is that good?

No, it’s fun. It’s fun to follow you guys.
What’s the craziest thing a fan has ever done or asked you asked you guys?

Josh: Uh…I don’t know if we can say that in a magazine.
Martinelli: Tell her.. Tell her about the dress.
Josh: Oh yeah, someone turned up in a wedding dress and asked me to marry her.

That’s creepy.

Josh: Yeah, in Milan.
Martinelli: In Milan!

Oh yeah, that’s crazy.

Martinelli: That’s outrageous

You guys have some crazy fans.

[Josh moves off to have a cigarette.]

This question is for you guys anyway (Turnham and Martinelli).
When the two of you are together how do they tell the two of you apart? Do you guys have nicknames?

Martinelli: How did we get together, you said?

Sure.

Martinelli: Well, Josh has known John for ages, they were in previous bands together. And then Josh found me somehow, we became friends and we all started playing.

Do you have nicknames to tell you apart?

Martinelli: I’m sorry?

Since you’re both John?

Turnham: I’ve just been Turnham.
Martinelli: He’s Turnham and I’m Mart.

No nicknames?

Martinelli: No, no, no. We’re boring. You can give us nicknames if you want.

I’ll think about it, I’ll tweet it to you guys.

[Laughing]
Martinelli: I want nicknames. But make it something cool like ‘Danger’.

We’re going to get your fans to give you nicknames.

Martinelli: I want good ones. Yeah.

What song off the EP is your favorite?

Josh: She.
Martinelli: She.
Turnham: She. Yeah, She.

Okay, Is there a standard writing process for you guys?

Josh: Uh, It’s changing at the moment, it used to be that I would just write the songs but now…he(Martinelli) and I started writing together. And John(Turnham) comes in with his own stuff.

Do you have any plans for a full length album?

Josh: Yeah, we’re writing it at the moment.
Martinelli: Yeah.

Awesome, I can’t wait for that.

Josh: Actually we expect it to be finished by August.
Martinelli: The deadline is in August.
Josh: Yeah August. Because we expect to have it out by October.

Who would you consider your musical influences?

Josh: Uhm, Thrice, John Mayer, Deftones, The Beatles.
Martinelli: Uh, Barry White.

That’s a good range right there.

Martinelli: It’s getting much better just now.
Josh: Blink-182

What motivated you to pursue music?

Martinelli: Thrice brought me to music

I’ve seen Thrice a couple of times actually.

Martinelli: I’ve seen them up from seventeen times. That’s how much I love them.

I totally understand.

Martinelli: They brought me to music.
Josh: Uh…The Beatles really.
Martinelli: Pink Floyd.
Josh: Yeah, Pink Floyd. My mum used to blast Pink Floyd when I was a little.
Turnham: The Beatles for me, my mum was a Beatles fanatic.
Martinelli: Yeah, like Josh said the Beatles. They were an amazing band.

If you weren’t in a band or modeling what would you be doing?

Josh: Uh, probably working in Starbucks
Martinelli and Turnham:  [laugh] Starbucks
Josh: No, but seriously I think I would be doing something helping animals, really.
Josh: I love animals.

How do you think the music scene in the UK differ from the US?

Martinelli: They’re mental here.
Josh: Uh..I think like..the UK to the US? It’s hard to tell at the moment because we’re only just coming over here. This is our first time ever playing here. It’s like we’re a new band. And they don’t know who we are. We’re trying to build it up and I think time will tell. Everybody who we’ve met who’s come to our gigs is like been so nice. It’s like really lovely, warm people.  We’ve all been in bands previously that weren’t quite big. When you’re not big, people just fucking talk all the way through. Shit. In England they do it the whole time. Here they don’t. There’s a lot, yeah, a lot of respect. More respect for musicians, I think. So, I’ll have to say it’s better in the US, I think.

This is for Josh. Do you know you have fan blogs on the internet?

Josh: Uh…yeah, he winds me up about it.
Martinelli: Yeah, it’s quite funny. It’s funny.

An owner of one of the blogs (Karla from Josh Beech Daily), asked us to ask you a question.

Josh: Okay?

She wants to know what your favorite Jeff Buckley song is.

All three: Oooh.
Martinelli: That’s a great question.
Josh: Grace.
[Pause]
Josh: Oh..wait.  Is it Grace?
Martinelli: Are you sure? Yeah, it’s probably Grace because Grace is so good.
Josh: Is it Grace that uh [hums melody]? Is that it?
Martinelli: I have no idea.
Josh: Oh and Last Goodbye is so sweet. [sings lyrics] No, yeah. I would go with Grace.

For the two of you (John and Mart). On the internet, we can find anything out about you. We need a couple of facts about you guys(John and Mart).

Martinelli: Couple of facts. Okay, uh I don’t know about this.

I have you on record.

Martinelli: Oh, I know. No, I know. I’m just trying to be reasonable. But…a couple of facts.  Want to help us, Josh?
Josh: With what?
Martinelli: She wants a couple of facts.
Josh: What? About you two?
Martinelli: Yeah.
Josh: He likes pasta. And his first band played in Japan before he was like [mumbling] seventeen[?]
Martinelli: And uh, I like brunette girls.
Josh: You can have a go, because he likes brunette girls.

Well, that’s another one. They’re going to come following you.

Turnham: I like blondes.
Josh: I don’t have a fancy
Turnham: When I’m not playing music with them. I work for Green Smoke Records, a Hip-Hop recording company in the UK.

Okay, well that’s all the questions. I guess we’re done.

Josh: It’s done?
Martinelli: Well make up more questions!

Yeah, how are you going to put me on the spot like this?

Josh: Oh come on.
Martinelli: Think up with something really weird.
Josh: We don’t mind because you’re really cool.

Really weird? Ask each other weird questions. Go.

Josh: What color is your penis right now, mate?
Martinelli: Really, really red.

I’ll be sure to include that. that’s another cool fact for them to know.

Josh: Uh, And also you should put We love partying. Like some of the videos of us on the internet, right. Don’t take them too seriously. We’ve never actually killed anyone, that’s a lie.

Now we have that on record.

Josh: None of us have girlfriends.

Well there, you go something else your fans would love to know. Now you can only be bombarded and you can only blame yourselves.

Martinelli: That’s alright.
Josh: Bring them on.
Martinelli: We’ve only done it to ourselves.
Josh: You want to meet our guitar tech guitar tech, Dan Lancaster?
Dan: Hi

Well, since you’re here you’re going to have to give us a fact about yourself.

Josh: Uh, He is the first official member of the crew.
Martinelli: Yeah, yeah. He’s a pretty big deal.
Josh: I’ll tell you a fact about Dan Lancaster he’s probably the worst guitarist out of anyone in the band.
Martinelli:  The worst guitar tech ever. [Laughs] Well, that’s something you want in a guitar tech.
Josh: And he likes, what color girls? Oh, yeah he likes tall girls.
Martinelli: Tall girls.

Alright, tall girls. They’re going to be all lining up and you’ll only have to blame yourselves. But I think that’s it.

Martinelli: Thanks a lot.
Turnham: Yeah.
Josh: Thanks so much.

Great interview. Lots of laughs. Check out the contest here.

VVP would like to thank Josh Beech and the Johns as well as their manager Jack for this interview.

-Kari

Interview of Pat Gillett from Down With Webster

So I think that this interview is really cool, because we asked fans of Down With Webster to send in any questions that they have for you. All of these questions are straight from the fans.

Oh wow. That’s so awesome… that’s actually really, really cool. Good!

So how’s the 3OH!3 headlining tour going so far?

3OH!3 is amazing because we couldn’t have asked for a better band to be on the road with. They’ve been really cool. They’re basically like the guys we went to high school with and got along with really well. They’ve been really good to us, so it’s amazing. Big shows every night.

What’s your favorite part of touring?

My favorite part of touring is definitely just playing the shows, to be honest. I mean, the rest of the day is not always that exciting. It’s kind of like Groundhog Day. You’re in a new city every day, so you know, you get some time. You get to see some new places. I like those kinds of things.

What’s your favorite city in the U.S. to play?

I don’t want to sound just like an ass kisser, but I do like San Francisco a lot. I like New York a lot. I like LA, Chicago. I went to Reno yesterday; that was hilarious.

Why was that?

Just ‘cause I was in Reno. That’s why. Haha.

Do you have any plans of slowing down, touring wise, or are you planning on doing a spring or summer tour?

Absolutely. When this tour is done in December, we’re going home to finish up our record and do the Christmas thing with our family. In January—hopefully the record will be out in January or February—we’re going to be doing a headlining tour across Canada and the Northern States. Whether we get down to Cali…hopefully! But after that, hopefully going to the UK in the spring.

Any plans on doing Warped Tour again in the future?

You know what; Warped Tour was really fun for us. We did it not this summer but the summer before, and we would totally do it again. There was something to do with our stage got mixed up, and we were on a different stage. The logistics just didn’t work out this year, but that’s possibly the most fun you could have being in a band. It’s like summer camp for bands, because you’re just hanging out with so many other bands.

So back to basics, how did you all start as a band?

Me and Tyler, who plays bass and keys, were in a music appreciation class. We got the final project, and it was to start a band. It didn’t have to be a real band, and you could’ve just made a poster or think of a name kind of thing. We thought we should try to start a real band. We got our instruments together, came up with the name Down With Webster, and won the school talent show. From there, it was just a matter of finding all the other guys around the neighborhood, a lot of whom we were already friends with. You know, I was friends with Bucky and Cam, and we were like, “Okay, you guys come into the band now.” So basically it became a big after-school club house all through high school. Every day after school, we’d go to Tyler’s garage and hang out.

What was your original sound like when you first began?

When we first-first started, it was a lot of instrumental stuff. It was kind of like funk or blues or…just like stuff you technically could rap over. I didn’t really know I could sing, so I started off kind of rapping a bit and other guys would rap a bit, and we’d sing together when we needed to. Over the years, we kind of just figured out who enjoyed doing what, and who kind of had a knack for doing what.

So what was the kind of sound you went for on Time To Win Volume 1?

We just went for whatever sounded good. Nothing about our band has been super premeditated that way. We’re seven guys with seven different tastes in music, so our kind of ideology is just that if everyone agrees on something, it must be pretty universal. Hopefully everyone else can appreciate it, because it has to go through seven different filters before it gets to the listener.

So what similarities or differences were there in the new album?

I don’t want to use the word “edgy”, but the new record is definitely a little bit more grown up. It’s a bit more mature but definitely still catchy, still pop-y. Hopefully, but I think that the songs will translate better live. We definitely tried to make it sound more like a band playing right in front of you. But, there are still all kinds of electronic elements to it. Not as much sampling, I guess, as the first record. There are definitely a lot of cool studio tricks and stuff. Stuff that hopefully will translate really well live, and so far it has while playing some of our new songs.

Are there any collaborations on it?

Not as of yet; jury’s out. We met Timbaland right before our last record. He’s such a busy guy. We’d definitely love to do something with him, but for this record, chances are that it’ll probably just be us. I mean, there are seven guys, so it’s as if every song is a collaboration between seven guys. Frankly, I’m not opposed to keeping it that way for a while because in a lot of my favorite records of artists, I just want to hear what they have to say. I don’t necessarily always want to have nine zillion features on a record. It kind of makes me think, “Did you not know what you were going to do on your record, so you had to call everyone else in?” I think that if this record doesn’t have any features, hopefully it’s stronger because of it.

So several people were wondering: what would you be doing if you weren’t a musician?

I don’t know. Homeless. Haha. If I wasn’t playing music…Wow. I don’t know, man. Nothing. I’ve never even thought of that in my entire life. I can’t even answer that question. Uh. An astronaut!

During a typical Down With Webster show, who do you think acts the craziest and most hyped up?

On any given night, I mean Kap’s job is to act the craziest, because he’s the hypist. Sometimes I’ll look over though, and Marty’s spitting water up into the air and flipping out. Sometimes I go crazy. Sometimes Bucky goes the craziest. I don’t know.

Speaking of crazy, what’s the most insane thing a fan has ever asked you?

You know, fans ask us very crazy things all the time. I’m sure that if I were to think of the craziest answer, I wouldn’t be able to repeat it for your audience.

What is your biggest fear and your biggest pet peeve?

This is going to sound really stupid. My greatest fear is getting a paper cut in the eyeball as a form of torture.

Like in the movie Jackass?

Yeah, yeah. I actually saw that one, but I had a fear of it before I saw that, and it scared the crap out of me. Anything involving my eyes very much frightens me. My biggest pet peeve is people who think that they’re the shit. Fuck that.

Anyway, when can your fans expect an online store?

An online store? Good question! Um… I don’t know the answer. Soon, I hope. We kind of control our own merchandising. We haven’t been able to really justify doing an online store just because we haven’t had enough orders. If you request it, we’ll have it! We’ll probably have it for Volume 2. Then fans should be able to get some stuff.

So any last things you’d like to say to your fans?

Go online, and check out the touring schedule! If you are near a show with Down With Webster and 3OH!3, definitely come out and check it out because it’s going to be awesome.

So that was the interview! Thank you to everyone who sent in questions. I hope we got all of yours in, and that you liked the answers he gave!

-Megan

Hey everyone. So several weeks ago, myself and a friend of mine had the amazing opportunity of interviewing Anarbor. We’ve been extremely busy for the last few weeks with a bunch of technological and academic issues, but we finally got it transcribed for you all to read.
Anyway, they are definitely some really cool guys. Check them out here! And also, buy your tickets now to see them on the rest of the Vultures Unite Tour with headliner VersaEmerge and supporting acts The Dangerous Summer and Conditions here.
So here’s the interview. I hope you guys enjoy it. 

So we read somewhere that your original name was Troop 101. Is that at all true?

SLADE: Yeah. That is.

Will you tell us a bit about that?

SLADE: Yeah. Well, when we first started out, we needed a band name. We didn’t really have a name, and it just sort of came up.
ADAM: We’re not very proud of that…
SLADE & MIKE: Yeah… haha.
ADAM: We were so young. We changed our name for a reason.

When did you change it?

MIKE: Back in 2003.
ADAM: No, no. It was in 2006.
MIKE: Oh yeah! We formed in 2003. That’s right.

So your first few EPs gave your band a lot of exposure and some awesome opportunities. How has this new full length been for you so far?

SLADE: Great! We got to go on Warped Tour, and we toured off of it. That was also our first U.S. tour off of it. So far, so good.

Have you guys ever done a headlining tour?

SLADE: No. Not yet.

Any plans for that?

SLADE: We hope so. Nothing’s for sure yet, though.

So seeing that you guys are on the Vultures Unite Tour, have you guys done any good tour pranks yet? Those are always fun to hear about.

SLADE: Not on this tour. You know, usually you do those at the end.
MIKE: Yeah. We usually save those for the last days.

Do you have one that’s memorable?

SLADE: We used to have wars where we would just chuck like Pepto-Bismol…
MIKE: Or like soda, cakes, basically anything. We would throw anything that we could at each other’s vans.
SLADE: It was really scary, because we’d be on the road.
ADAM: Yeah. We weren’t being very safe on the road.
MIKE: Yeah! We were, like, on the highway!

So do you have one place to play that you would call your “all time favorite”?

MIKE: I honestly love playing California. Anywhere in California is my favorite place to play. We always know we’re going to have a great show.
SLADE: Chain Reaction is great. We always love playing there.

Over the summer, you were all on MTV’s Silent Library. How was that experience?

SLADE: That was funny.
MIKE: That was really, really ridiculous.

Well, you got everything, didn’t you?

MIKE: Yeah! It was awful.
SLADE: Yeah, but it was pretty good. It was definitely a good experience. I mean, we got the money, so we’re happy. We got a whole lot of money.

If you were to choose a part that you would absolutely never do again, what would it be? No matter how much money you get?

ADAM: All of them. Yuck.
MIKE: The eating ones were so gross and so hard. They were bad.
SLADE: Yeah, if we didn’t have to do anything with eating, it would’ve been a lot easier.
ADAM: If I had to do the fish one, I swear I would’ve barfed.

Who do you think had it the worst?

MIKE: Me! I had, like, 4 bad ones I had to do. I had to do the eating one that we all had to do. Then, I got picked, like, 6 times.
SLADE: I think Greg got out of the eating one. Maybe? I don’t remember.
ADAM: Yeah, and Tom had to do that shrimp thing.

The shrimp waffle?

ADAM: Ugh. Yeah. That was gross.

So anyway, you guys released a new lyric video for your song “Mr. Big Shot”. Whose idea was that?

MIKE: It was kind of a collective thing. The new Google app that they came out with, we all thought, “Wow, that’s kind of cool. We should maybe use this for something.”

How did you create it?

MIKE: Well, how it worked was we got all the clips by posting on our Tumblr something like, “Hey. Tweet us your favorite lyric from ‘Mr. Big Shot’.” And then we did all these different things, like posting pictures on our Tumblr, and we purposefully did that to set it up.

Do you run your own Tumblr?

MIKE: Yeah. We all log in; we all have access. It’s cool, because it has those applications for pictures and songs. We can just send them straight to our Tumblr.

On another note, do you all have any advice for budding artists?

SLADE: Keep at it. You know, you got to work for it.
MIKE: Don’t try to take the easy way out.

What would you define as the “easy way out”?

MIKE: Don’t always do what everyone’s doing just because it’s cool at the time. Do something that you know that’s right and something that’s going to last.

Awesome. Any last things you’d like to say to your fans?

SLADE: Check out our stuff.
MIKE: Check out the new album!
ADAM: Check out the album. Come see us at a show, and say hi.
SLADE: Yeah. Check us out on Warped Tour… on Warped Tour? What?
ADAM: Yeah. Go see us on Warped Tour!
SLADE: No! Vultures Unite Tour!

So that was it! Hope you enjoyed it.
CONTEST: Also, reblog this interview in order to win a free signed poster by Anarbor! Contest ends by the end of the week. You can reblog it as many times as you want. The more reblogs, the more likely you are to win!

Here’s the other half of the You Me At Six interview. Next time, maybe we’ll take shorter interviews, or maybe we can take videos and post them instead. Let us know what you’d all prefer!

Is there a standard writing process that you all go through?

DAN: Well, there’s a few, I guess. Sometimes someone will come up with just a tiny, tiny idea for something, or someone will come with a full song idea, or Josh will write a melody for a chorus or a verse and chorus. We all then get together as a group at our practice studio and sort of bash heads together from there. The songs sort of come out that way.

JOSH: Pretty much!

How is the music scene in the UK different from the one in America?

JOSH: It’s quite different. It’s not as big since it’s a far smaller country. I feel it’s a lot more varied in the UK. I feel in America a lot of the bands, without being disrespectful, sound maybe the same or quite similar. Where as, in the UK, that there is one band per genre that does well, you know? There’s lots more. It’s growing. I think it’s cool that a band like us, Bring Me The Horizon, and Enter Shikari could go on this tour. We are sort of opening the door for other UK bands to potentially come on the Warped Tour. So, it’s cool.

Was there any one person who motivated you to want to be in a band?

DAN: Well, I guess the reason why I got into rock music was most people just grow up listening to the radio. The radio in the UK is just pop nonstop. So, I guess it was my dad, because he used to play me old songs by Led Zeppelin and bands like that. When I joined this school, you could learn how to play an instrument, and my mom thought that I should learn to play the drums. I loved it. That’s how I got into music. When I went to college, I always wanted to be in a band. I then joined this one, and here we are.

JOSH: Yep. Mine’s very similar; just through family members. My sister is a budding pianist, singer, songwriter kind of thing. I used to play video games on the play station in the back room, and she’d be practicing away. My mom told me to go learn an instrument, because she thought I might find it useful. So, I played guitar, and here I am, I suppose.

What’s your favorite song to perform live?

JOSH: You know, I really like playing “Trophy Eyes” for some reason. Basically, all of the songs from Hold Me Down. I love playing the songs from Hold Me Down. I feel like we’re kind of over playing songs from Take Off Your Colours now since we’ve been doing it for like 3 years, but we primarily only play it because there are people who’d like to hear the songs off of that CD. I guess that happens with all bands, though. Once you’ve written a new CD or a new set of songs, you want to play them rather than playing old songs.

Do you have any specific goals for your band this year?

DAN: Well, to me, we’ve already achieved our goals just by travelling the world. That’s always been sort of a big thing for our band. It doesn’t matter how big we get, it’s how long we can make it last and how long we can keep doing this for. The fact that we get to travel the world with our best friends, that’s just great. If along the way, we become a successful band then that would be the icing on the top really. Is that the saying: icing on the cake? Yeah. Why did I say “on the top”?

What bands inspire your music?
JOSH: The Ghost Inside.
DAN: We love The Ghost Inside.
JOSH: We love The Ghost Inside.It’s funny, actually, we’ve – for the last year or so, we’ve been into this band called The Ghost Inside. And we were introduced to their singer, Vigil, when we were out doing some shows before Warped. And I asked, “Can you do a song with us?” and it was just really cool! It’s really strange cause like… I love this guy’s band, and I’m singing a song with him! They’re really cool dudes.
DAN: Other bands like… We’re big fans of Jimmy Eat World, Taking Back Sunday, Brand New, Thrice… That kind of stuff.
JOSH: It’s always been strange to me. We’ve toured quite a lot with Paramore – a lot overseas and in Australia. We’ve basically toured with Paramore everywhere but America. And I always felt really strange, because I was one of a very select few who first heard of Paramore in the UK. So when they came over five or six years ago, I remember me and my friend Liv, we went and saw them – and she was from the very few people who knew who they were. So I’ve listened to them for years, and to tour with them, I’ve always found it very strange because I’m like… “God, I love this band.”
DAN: An uber fan.
JOSH: Uber fan! Being able to tour is awesome, cause now I’m just like, “Oh God! Not another Paramore song coming on!” but in a good way, because I’ve heard them all so many times! But it’s cool, though. They definitely – not to say their music so much, but the way they are as a band, what they’ve achieved, definitely inspires me to want to, potentially, one day do some of the things they do.
DAN: Especially since they are one of the biggest bands in the world right now, and they were over in the UK like last month. We were doing this festival together and they’re just normal people like everyone else, you know? They come into our dressing room and we play –
JOSH: They took our sign off our door for no reason.
DAN: Yeah, they pranked us. They’re just normal people. They’re not (uses air quotes) “rock stars” at all. So, yeah… that’s good.

How were you discovered?
DAN: Well, we weren’t really discovered.
JOSH: We weren’t, no.
DAN: It was kind of like…
JOSH: We weren’t discovered until very very recently. I think that’s the main reason there’s very few decent major label deals going on with bands, especially going on at the moment. When Virgin signed us, we’d already sold fifty-thousand CDs. We were headlining venues with fifty-thousand count across our country. They came to us and said, “We have to sign your band.” We didn’t want to sign to a major label, ever. But then it was just like…he knew so much about the band. He was obviously a genuine fan of the band. Since that day, he’s been pretty supportive behind a lot of decisions, so I guess it’s kind of how our management has a lot of power since it is one of the biggest management companies in the world, you know? Like they do Iron Maiden, for Christ’s sake. Bring Me the Horizon’s kind of stuff. So I think they’ve definitely helped us, because they’ve worked with a lot of heavy music in the past, and here they were working with a rock/pop band with melodies and shit. And they were just kind of like, “Oh, we can do so much with this band that we’ve never been able to do with another band before.” So, I guess it’s us being discovered, in a sense, being those two occasions.
DAN: Yeah, I guess in the very beginning, we used to tour so much in the UK that our fan base just grew and grew so organically. So it was all just us and our MySpace, really, and stuff. So that was really cool.

So MySpace was your main…?
DAN: Definitely, like three years ago, it was the reason why we could travel around the country and book shows and stuff; whereas, now, you can’t rely on MySpace.
JOSH: There was a time when bands like From First To Last were massive, on Warped or something, because of MySpace. The bands, I think, on MySpace were big everywhere, you know? And I don’t think that really happens anymore. You know what I mean? We’re really big in the UK, but no one knows about us in America, you know? But you think “We’ve got quite a few fans on MySpace.” That hasn’t really, totally transcended to America. That kind of thing. So, I don’t think that’s the case anymore. Oh well!
DAN: MySpace seems to be dying out a little bit.
JOSH: Tom [Anderson] made his stupid amount of billions of money and… brought the world together, so he’s done his job, then.
DAN: Yeah, I’m sure he’s doing fine!

Do you have any last words?
DAN: Check out our new album. It’s called Hold Me Down.Came out…what, Monday, I think it came out? Seems like a long time ago.
Seems like a long time ago… I don’t know.
DAN: Yeah… shh. Oh! It came out digitally a while ago –
JOSH: Oh! Yeah, it came out digitally a few months ago, but it’s physically out now.
DAN:  – and the actually CD is physically in the shops now. Yeah, so go check that out! Thank you!

Speaking of MySpace, check them out here! Also, if you liked the pictures in this photoset, check out the rest here. We hope that you enjoyed this two part interview, and hopefully you read it all!

-Megan