Brennan Schnell was able to catch up with singer Bryce Avary of The Rocket Summer at the Toronto stop on September 27th, 2008. Learn what inspired Avary to play, his thoughts and feelings on his new clothing line, what his influences are, and information about the new album.
Bs: The first thing I have to ask is: If you could explain your clothing line and where you got the idea.
Rs: Well, one day I was thinking and I had this idea, kinda like a divine thing, and, uh. Yeah, it’s just a clothing line with a whole bunch of things that I’d never thought I’d do. But the main idea behind it is to kinda encourage people to get involved. We want to be the clothing line that everyone wears, and we want to make really cool clothes, we want people to wear our clothes without knowing that the basis of it is fundamental. When you get to the website, you can read about while checking out our clothes, and when you buy the clothes, you get to pick where you want your 25% to go. So, I think it’s a really good idea, a really slow build, so I’ve brought it out on tour and hopefully it’ll take off beautifully. That would be great.
Bs: I think it’s actually a really good idea. I haven’t seen too many things like that. A lot of bands do things that you purchased on a certain item, a percentage of it goes to charity, but when I read that, I thought it was ingenious. It’s so creative, you’re letting people kinda pick where it’s going to and it’s all going to a good cause.
Rs: We’re planning on making really good clothes, you know. We’re 100% a clothing line, we’re not anything else, you know. And we’re partnering up with charities and we encourage people when they buy stuff to pick where it goes. But at the same time we want to make really cool clothes. Right now we feel like we’re in our infant stages and it’s exciting to see, you know, where it could potentially go.
Bs: Hopefully it’ll get really big.
Rs: We need an investor, you know, cause we don’t have any money. And uh, so far, we don’t have much, so we need like someone to go, to give us, like $500 000 so we can, you know, hire people and put ads in magazines and do the proper stuff to make us blow up. Right now it’s still word of mouth and the only advertising we have is only within Rocket Summer. Which is good, I’ve been talking about it after our shows and the majority of our fans have no idea what it is.
Bs: Well I guess I’ve actually seen it on a few websites. It was in the month of September, I don’t know if it was announced but I had seen it for sure. I noticed it somewhere and it impressed me. Just coming up with something like this; I was just flabbergasted, like, what an amazing idea. I think it’s really good and I hope it takes off.
Bs: So, on another note.. How’s this tour going so far?
Rs: It’s going really good man, so far so good. Tonight is going to be incredible, I think. We always can’t wait to come here, it’s always one of the best shows, I’m not joking.
Bs: It’s just the border that’s a pain in the ass.
Rs: The border is always a little stressful, but this time it wasn’t that bad. We just all had to get up at 6:30. Sleep to me is like going to bed around 5, so I got in bed but couldn’t sleep. I finally fell asleep like literally when we got there.
Bs: Any new music? Cause I heard that after the tour you were going to record?
Rs: Yeah, I’m writing a lot write now and we’re getting ready to record in January. I’m really excited about it and I’m kind of trying to enjoy this tour at the same time. This tour is like the reward, you know? Out of all the touring we’ve done, this is like.. OUR tour, and as soon as this tour is over, it’s going to be pretty intense.
Bs: How long do you think it’s going to take to record?
Rs: We’re planning on starting pre-production in January and being done by March.
Bs: Any new influences, or has anything changed on the new material that you’ve been writing?
Rs: Yeah, it’s a lot more epic. That’s pretty much all I can say. It’s going to be epic.
Bs: What are your main musical influences?
Rs: Lately, I listen to a lot of folk and it’s not kind of what I write .
Bs: Any particular bands, even growing up?
Rs: Well growing up I was really into the American indie-rock scene like Supertramp.
Bs: A while ago, before this even started, when your stuff came out, did you picture where you would be today, touring all over?
Rs: I was always striving for this, and still striving for more, but I think that deep down in my heart I always believe that it could happen. But to be on stage on a night like tonight in Toronto, where it’s probably going to be sold out, it’s pretty surreal. There’s like a really humbling, thankful moment. I knew I was going to do this, but whenever there’s a moment like this, I’m so extremely grateful for it. You have to believe in yourself if you actually want to make it.
Bs: It’s hard work for sure, it’s not easy. Even anything in life, if you put your mind to it and you work hard enough, you’ll get there. So, if there were any particular band ever that you could go on tour with, who would it be? Even if they’re not together right now..
Rs: Maybe The Promise Ring..
Bs: Anywhere that you haven’t travelled yet that you’d like to perform?
Rs: We still haven’t gone to Australia.. it seems pretty wild and we feel like we have a lot of fans there. Before we went to the UK, we were getting tons of messages on Myspace from the UK, and it was so much bigger then we thought it would be. And that kind of thing is happening now, we’ve been noticing, for Australia. It’s weird because we don’t even have any records out in those places, not even in the UK and we go there all the time.
Bs: Now, downtime, while your on tour.. if you have five minutes, if you’re not sleeping, what do you do?
Rs: I like to ride a Vespa. I don’t know, these days I’ve actually been learning how to do some things, because for the people that I have in my life right now that know me very well, know that I don’t have very much downtime. We had like six weeks between this and our UK tour and during that time I put together a music video and directed it, launched a clothing line, and wrote songs in the meantime and got ready for this tour. But I don’t think it’s very healthy to do that, like I’m seriously realizing to stop doing that. I’m kind of a work-a-holic.
Bs: Was there anyone growing up that really stood out and pushed you to keep doing what you’re doing, or did you just pick up an instrument?
Rs: I was really influenced by Billy Corgan from the Smashing Pumpkins … and Rivers Cuomo from Weezer. Those were like my influences for a while. Actually, Daniel from Silverchair, when they came out, I was like twelve or something, and that was like the dream. You know, like sixteen years old, touring the world. In my younger years, it just really pushed me to do that. It’s cool because Silverchair has turned into a really good band. Their new album is genius.
Bs: I have been listening to Radiohead a bit lately. It’s just so creative, the things that he does
Rs: Radiohead was my 14 to 16-17-18 years, all I did was listen to Radiohead. It was the only thing I did. I would get home from school and just listen to the albums and that’s all I did. My walls were covered with Radiohead posters. I still love Radiohead. I love all their records but there was something about ok computer, it was just like this fantastic, genius album, with so many well written songs, that you can remember, not that you can’t remember their songs or anything, I think that their songs have gotten better, and that was really cool too.
Bs: For your latest video, how much fun was that?
Rs: It was amazing watching it. Like I said, I put that whole thing together, paid for it, I did everything for that video, except I didn’t film it. It was pretty bizarre to make a video for not that much money and it looked just as good as the videos that cost a hundred thousand dollars. It was really cool and we were really lucky to get all the people in the video, all of our friends and the cool part was the real people. That was something that I really wanted to do.
Bs: Was it easy to gather up everyone?
Rs: It took like three months. We filmed the first thing in May, and then it was done in August. It was cool though, there was supposed to be even more people in it, but then the days came, scheduling got screwed up and some people couldn’t make it.
BS:Well thank you for your time and good luck tonight.
Rs: Thanks.
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