Dead Boy Productions

LW- You know what you guys do is fucking tape all this shit and then take all the worst shit I say and it’ll be like when I did an interview for the Press-Enterprise.  She takes all the dumb shit I’m saying and puts that in. 

DBP- you mean the girl who does all the music stuff? 

LW- Yeah I don’t remember her name. She took all the dumbest shit I said. 

DBP- You know what she does, I’ll admit this.  She has spotlighted some bands that have sparked my interest.  The interview sucks. But the band sounds like something I might be into, so I’ll hit them up on myspace and say, ok this is what we do and they are like, “oh this is so much fucking cooler…”  I mean I’m a fucking fan, that’s where I come from.  I was actually talking to him [Reverend Dan] about this, how long have we say about fifteen years we’ve been into punk rock… 

LW- That’s awesome. You know it gets to a point where, you just gotta, you know don’t even make that decision, it just becomes you.  Being in a band especially at this level there’s not a whole lot of glamour to it, it’s hard work and you’re riding it out.  I get asked by a lot of people, “Why don’t you do something else?”  I don’t know what else I’d do.  This is what I do, this is what I’m meant to do, this is what I am. 

DBP- This is just what we were talking about at the bar, I told him [Dan Zig], I’ve been doing it just a little less than Dan has.  I told him, I’m set in my ways, this is the path that I chose, my girlfriend is the same exact way.  She goes to college, she’ll be a forensics scientist, but she’s a punk rock chick at heart.  This is the path that we’re going down, we don’t know another way.  This is who we are. 

DBP - Ok I’m going to stop so we know who’s talking.   

LW- I’m Brian from the band Longway.  I’m Trevor from the band Longway.  I’m Travis from the band Longway.  I’m Icepick. 

DBP- Icepick, Icepick, where the hell did that name come from? 

LW- That came, it’s pretty stupid how it came about.  It’s like one of those things on the Internet where you type in your name and it’ll come up with something.  I put in Travis Ferguson and it came back with Icepick.  It works for me.  (Laughter) 

DBP- If you were a rapper that name would be fucking cool.  It’d be badass, like I’m Icepick.  You got Ice Cube, Ice T and Icepick.  So we’ll go straight into it. Alaska.  Alaska and the Warped Tour, how the hell did that happen? 

LW- Warped Tour last year was a… Warped Tour had a contest for the battle of the bands and we got working on the computer just any contests of any sort we’ve ever been in we’ve always won. We did Warped Tour and won Warped Tour and we played the battle of the bands for Nitro Energy drinks and we won that.  Then we won at the Orange County music awards we won best punk band in Orange County. We are the best punk band in Orange County, you can tell Social D I said that (laughs). That’s just us working our ass off every single day and getting people to vote and stuff. 

DBP- Ok we ask everybody this question.  As far as MySpace goes, how has the helped you guys? 

LW- Amazingly.  Easiest networking tool and avenue to get your music out to fans that you could ever ask for.  Not even just to get music out to fans, but to meet other bands and to get shows.  I mean all of our shows, not all of them, but the majority of them come from MySpace.  We meet promoters on MySpace, we meet other bands on MySpace and play shows with them. 

DBP- Some of the coolest bands we hear that nobody would have ever heard about, are on MySpace. 

LW- You can be a band and record something at practice or you could be a solo artist and record something in your room and put it up the next day and have it out to anybody you want.  I hope it continues that way, you know its taking the major record label and putting them into a tailspin because it’s so easy to get music out there. 

DBP- I hear of some bands getting picked up by major labels and if you don’t have a MySpace page, they aren’t even going to look at you.   

LW- Well they can see everything right there.  They can see how many friends you have, they can see how active you are, how many comments, how many plays you are getting a day, everything’s set up for them.  It gets to a point where you play with a band and you go look at them and you say we’ve got more friends than them, we’re not playing before them.  But it’s that’s how we got hooked up with Old Shoe Records. Actually that’s not true.  We went to Old Shoe Records because our CD is in the jukebox at Johnny’s in Huntington Beach and Noah heard our CD and went up to Johnny asking who as this band and Johnny told them the lead singer was right over there and they hit us up to do a show with them.  It was kind of cool to go in and meet those guys and be like hey how’s it going, would you like a CD and their like “Dude, we’ve already got your CD, we love you guys.”    

DBP- Have your CDs gone international yet? 

LW- Absolutely.  A lot of our CD sales on iTunes or Interpunk are guys from like Germany, England, all that kind of stuff.  It’s cool, MySpace will allow you to actually see your music travel and you’ll go through your friend adds and suddenly you’ll get a big rush from like Sweden and one from Germany or Spain.  We respond to everyone who adds us or leaves a comment, we respond to anyone that adds us, so it’s kind of cool to start a conversation with them, some people’s English isn’t that great so you might screw them up a little bit. 

DBP- Have you guys ever been hit up by these promoters?  Have you guys ever been asked to go to Europe or anywhere else outside of the United States? 

LW-  Cabo, we were asked to go to Cabo.  It’s at that point where we got to figure out how to front the band.  You know people want us to play there but it’s not at the point where we can necessarily go for free.  It’s like plane tickets, I’m sure we can go down there and have places to sleep and food, but getting down there, uh, I think that’s going to be the focus as a band as we have started working and progressed that Japan and Europe by the end of the year. 

DBP- And I’m sure Warped Tour, especially this year’s is really going to help.  Now you just played the one date last year? 

LW- We played one date last year on the Ernie Ball deal. 

DBP- How many are you playing this year? 

LW- We’re actually working on going this year with Kevin Lyman this year this Thursday we get into Alaska, he’s one of the judges. Warped Tour is something I think when I remember being a little tyke watching Rancid, watching all the bands I grew up loving going to the Warped Tour and it’s gotten a little different throughout the years.   

DBP- Its kind of gone emo 

LW- Yeah, but they still got the old school stage and stuff. It’s such a great opportunity, it doesn’t matter what kind of band you are it’s such a great opportunity to play it.  It’s so cool that that kind of avenue is there to bands like us or other bands that play on like the Ernie Ball stage how are they ever going to play in front of that amount of people.  It’s concentrated on the scene, a crowd of your people.  You know you may play another festival where it may not be your crowd, but Warped Tour brings everybody from all the cultures and it’s been that way for years, I mean it’s the longest standing tour/festival. 

DBP- Well look at what it did for My Chemical Romance, because of the Warped Tour they are who they are. 

LW- Well with a lot of bands you can track their success back to it.  Look at Avenged Sevenfold they played the Warped Tour early on and eventually went onto Ozzfest to try to get a different crowd, but for a long time, that was their crowd.  You do a Warped Tour and you come back with different fans, it’s different than a regular tour, because everyone is going to be there.  You know those newer kids as much as people make fun of them or whatever, just because they’re emo kids, just because they wear tights, doesn’t mean they don’t like our music.  Like, every rockabilly kid, every greaser like Social D even though it’s different from seeing a psychobilly band.  That’s what I like about us is we can play with almost anybody.  We’re not rockabilly and can play only rockabilly shows; we’re not punk and can only play crust punk shows.  It doesn’t matter if you are fifteen or fifty you’re going to like us because its rock’n’roll, know what I mean? 

DBP- Going into your influences… have you ever heard of a band called Welt 

LW- (laughs)- Have you heard all the backing vocals on our CD?  It’s all Jason Welt.  Jason is a good buddy of mine and we actually did the mix for that album in Sacramento and Jason came down. Welt is like my favorite band; I just talked to Jason yesterday at home.  I saw Welt for the first time at a Voodoo Glow Skulls show in 1997 for Halloween, that’s how I found them.  I was with a buddy of mine from high school and I told him, this is the kind of band I’m going to be n someday.   

DBP- I’m actually a huge Welt fan.  I know some people say “ah they sound like Social D” but I’m like no, no they sound like Welt.  If you know your music, if you know Welt, then you know Longway.  They are a mirror image of each other. 

LW- What’s kind of good and kind of bad is there are a million bands that sound just like the bands on the radio.  Not that there is anything wrong with that, not my thing, but you start to go to shows and they are sound the same.  Listen to them on the radio and you can’t tell them apart.   With a band like us, the only comparison we get is to Social D because that’s the only thing to compare us to.  There is nothing else this nation knows beside Social D.  None of our songs are like Social D songs.  I talk like this and I sing like this too and I can’t help it, that just the way it comes out. 

DBP- I can relate, I mean if I didn’t know Welt, I’d probably be one of those kids saying they sound like Social D and that’s cool, there is nothing wrong with that but I know Welt.  It’s not bad to be associated with a band like that.   

LW- And look at all those radio bands, they might be around for two more years, this isn’t going to die, you know what I mean, this kind of punk rock isn’t going to die and hopefully we’ll be here to carry some sort of torch so people don’t forget about it.  It’s like what Welt did for me.  I was already a Social D fan, but Welt showed me a different direction, you know, and I don’t know how to explain it, it’s just different than Social D.   

DBP- You can’t say it’s a different style of music, because it is very similar, but you can’t say… it’s just different and that’s good for me. 

LW- I think the even our new record and the new stuff is even different than Welt.  It’s still in that same area and same genre and Jason and I have similar voices, he goes a little higher than me and I’m not going to say why, it’s hard to sing his backing vocals.  That guy is a singer dude.  He’s a pro and he’s also a really cool guy to hang out with, but we’ve been friends with him for years and years and years.  He’s actually got a new band called Trackside Poets and they’re hoping to come down soon.  I just did their artwork for them.  They’re hoping to get all that together and come down and play shows with us.  We were hoping to play with them when we go up this weekend, but it just didn’t work out.  Yeah Welt’s my favorite band.  That’s how I met Toby from the Street Dogs, he was the guitar player for Welt.  He actually told me years ago when I started this band about six years ago that its pretty good, they sound like Social D.  He told me “Dude when I started Welt it used to piss me off so bad when people said we sound like Social D.”  cause you don’t, if you know it, you don’t.  Welt songs don’t sound like Social D songs, it’s just in the same area.  We’ve got growly voices and shit, we’re playing punk rock with power chords and there are not a lot of them in the same song.  So anyway he was saying it used to piss him off then he realized that Social D is a badass band so they’re just saying we’re badass.  That kind of helped me back in the day because this is what I wanted to do.  I played with other bands, but I never got to do what I wanted to do.  That’s why I started Longway, because I couldn’t find what I wanted so I decided to make it.  If we can be lumped in with bands that I think are badass, that’s awesome.  I’d rather be lumped in with those few bands that are really good at what they do than a million bands that all sound the same and play the same song over and over again.  I think if you look at bands like Welt and like us I think there is so much honesty in the songs and not necessarily writing something that’s for the radio… 

DBP- You write from the heart… 

LW-  Can I tell you a secret, I was crying on the inside and that’s where the song is coming from (laughs) 

I knew you had a little emo in you. 

You know what that is, it’s just I’ve been gaining a little weight and I haven’t bought new pants (laughs) 

DBP- Here’s something off the wall, how many CDs do you have, how many bands that did that for you?  Those bands that touched you in some way, inside, in that, that, preacher way (laughs).    How many bands have done that for you? 

LW- There’s more bands like that that are more the reason I’m playing music today than bands you can talk about in normal conversation.  I started playing guitar when, like Nirvana was the band that made me want to start playing guitar.  When I started playing guitar there were two types of guitar players.  The type that learned by playing Nirvana and the type that learned by playing Metallica. The guys who learned to play Metallica are really good right now and the guys who learned to play Nirvana are like me.  I always played with guys that were older than me and so I was like the eighth grader, ninth grader playing with guys who had been out of high school for a while.  They’d give me stuff, like the Voodoo Glow Skulls.  You know you don’t start punk rock. 

DBP- What band made you… Nirvana.  What did that for you? 

LW- Well I think Nirvana for that genre.  Nirvana’s the kind of band that can take you from Michael Jackson to Nirvana.  So that got me started, but as far as finding my own sound for this band and stuff, it was like the Social Ds and Welt and Los Infernos.  But like for me for the sound that we have now Welt was a huge inspiration just because it was fucking badass.  It’s honest punk rock.  It’s not crust where I can’t understand what the fuck you’re saying, and its super fast and there’s no melody to it.  I mean there is melody to it, but not in a gay way in a really cool and it makes you want to sing along.  The voice is cool and it makes you realize that you can be in a band and not have to be a “singer.” you don’t have to have a pretty voice and still do stuff that is pretty good and not necessarily screaming or yelling.  Social D is obviously an influence and Los Infernos and the Generators met the Generators eight years ago and they were awesome. The cool part is we get to play with all those bands. It’s weird we’re playing with the Generators and playing with Bad Religion and these guys are buddies, it’s fucking cool to do that. Like all the bands that I had on my goal list to play with, we played with them. I mean even if we never not have to have our day jobs or buy a big house, we still get to play with people I grew up listening to.  These guys were rock stars to me and I get to play with them, hang out with them. They know our names and call us on the phone and ask us to play shows and they want us to open for them.  To some people that is worth more than money.

You know my parents listened to like the fifties and sixties rock and roll.  As a kid I listened to like AC/DC, you know Rolling Stones.  Then I heard Rancid one day, I had a kid that gave me a CD, then I started getting into everything else.   

DBP- It all starts with one band and then it opens up a whole avenue. 

LW- What about you?  Dude for me it was different.  He got Nirvana, I ended up with the Blink 182 bands.  That’s where I started playing guitar It was easy to play I could listen to it and go online to get tabs to start playing.  But it’s the same thing, started going to shows started getting into bands like H2O.  Start getting into bands like that.  AS you grow up, you see the transitions and there are still bands that are still out there working their asses off that get me excited to play music.  Like going to see a band like the Street Dogs and they’re not a smaller band, but bands like the Street Dogs and Far From Finished.  I go to a show and watch them and I leave going fuck I want to play right now!  I play music and it’s cool to see a live show come back to music.  It just makes us want to work harder and better because we are a hardworking band, but you look at those bands and they’re doing the stuff we want to do, that we need to.  It’s great to do something and get re-motivated.  Even within the band.  Like this guy came into the band and it re-motivated me to work harder because you get that excitement. You get people into it and this guy, is always on time, which is rare in a band.  He takes care of all the merch, he’s the muscle when we got to get paid at the end of the night, like where’s my money!  This guy is the responsible guy and we all kind of have our parts.  Trevor makes sure you get a front row seat no matter where you are.  He’s fucking on table, if there is a bar where we’re playing he’s going to be on top of it.  If you’re in the back because you can’t get to the front it doesn’t matter.  You’ve got a front row seat because Trevor will be right in your face.  There’s a stage everywhere in every venue because he goes out everywhere.  You’ve got me, the ultimate fat, sweaty front man and this guy takes care of all the shit that we don’t want to take care of.  We’ve finally got a, I think that was part of the problem for the past five years was rotation.  You’ve always got somebody in the band that shouldn’t be there because they didn’t play good, or have stage presence or it was the wrong style of music but you have to have somebody to play.  It’s hard to find somebody to play and it’s hard for people to play.  I think know we actually have a lineup where everybody has a job, everybody’s motivated, everybody takes care of their shit and it moves so much faster and so much farther.  Old Shoe records helps out a million times over.  We’re so stoked to be with those guys and we so lucked out to got to be with them kind of at their beginning.