TRAVIS CLARK of WE THE KINGS: It’s Time To Give Back
An interview by Sarah Kidd.
Sometimes great things are born from the ties of friendship. We The Kings is one of those great things. Originally formed in Florida and named after the middle school that they all attended, We The Kings began their career with at least one foot firmly planted in the emo camp and the other in the world of pop-punk with influences such as Jimmy Eat World and Blink 182 evident in their musical style.
Following the release of their debut album ‘Self-Titled’ in 2007, We The Kings quickly found doors opening for them with their single ‘Check Yes Juliet’ gaining rapidly in popularity. Over the last ten years the band have continued to grow in strength; releasing an album every two years, and becoming almost a regular feature on the Warped Tour.
Now with two new singles under their belt, We The Kings return to New Zealand with a very special tour that will see them play their debut album ‘Self-Titled’ in its entirety. I recently caught up with lead vocalist Travis Clark to discuss the tour and the ideas around the theme and emotion of nostalgia…
Next year sees We The Kings return to New Zealand on your tenth anniversary tour; you guys were last here in 2016, so obviously kiwi audiences made a good impression on you?
[laughs] “Yeah that was our very first time playing New Zealand, we started the tour there which was nice because we actually got to spend you know a little bit of time there. You know it’s funny, when we tour I can say that we have been all over the world; but it’s interesting because I’ve been to so many different cities but I can’t really tell you too much about that city!
I know about the airport, I know about the venue and I know about the restaurant that we ate at. I know about the hotel; but as far as the cultural thing for each city it’s tough! But that time in 2016, we got to spend like three or four days in Auckland which still isn’t like a ton of time but by comparison to what we were used to it was an eternity. It was awesome because we actually got to go and visit and do things, touristy things that we’re not really able to do in those other cities”
Are you going to get any time this time around to be able to go and explore?
“Yeah, I hope! I think we are doing the same thing where we start off in New Zealand again so depending on what time we – heh this sounds like a crazy thing to say but – depending on what time we leave Hawaii.
We’re coming from Hawaii so depending on what day the show in Hawaii is and what time we’re able to leave the next day or the day after will let us see how much time we actually have in each city over there.”
It would be great if you do get some time off over here as you are arriving in the middle of our summer, so you can hit some of our beautiful coastal beaches.
“Everybody that I’ve talked to has said just that, that we’re coming during the best weather! You know we’ve toured in some pretty bad weather, it’s either snowing or too hot or one thing or the other.
But when we tour and it’s amazing weather it’s pretty crazy how well that works on our minds! Even though we’re away from home and things like that, it still feels – in all truth – more like a vacation than normally when we’re just touring.”
The upcoming tour celebrates the release of your debut album Self-Titled which you released ten years ago. How do you look back on that album now?
“It’s funny, everybody in the band, we’ve all gone back to listen to it. We’re doing like a full world tour with it and it’s interesting because we’ve heard and we know that the vibe of that kind of tour is nostalgic; you know people are hearing these songs and it brings them back to a time that they first picked up the album, or first heard that song and where they were in their life at that moment. And for us it does the exact same thing, we think about when we wrote the songs, we think about when we recorded the songs, we think about the first shows we played as a band! You know it’s all very nostalgic to us.
It doesn’t feel like ten years – just because we have been so busy throughout the past ten years. It’s not one of those things … you know we haven’t … we aren’t one of those bands that put out one record that was extremely successful, don’t put out anymore music and then do a ten year tour as a reunion to that album. We’ve continued touring; we’ve continued putting out albums you know?
This year [2017] will mark our sixth album that we’ve released, so when you’re continuing to put out music, and continuing to tour, time doesn’t really feel like it’s that long, time kinda like flies. So even though it is ten years since our first album, it still feels like it’s only a few years ago since we were in the studio putting this stuff down and recording and things like that which is awesome, because I don’t ever want it to feel old, I never want to feel like we’re tired of what we’re doing. But every time I hear someone say like ‘You know you’re about to do this ten year tour / ten year reunion type thing’ it’s always like ‘Man that’s crazy’ it doesn’t even feel like ten years, but I know on paper that it definitely is.” [laughs]
Well it’s funny that that you use that word nostalgia because it is indeed a powerful emotion, and it’s one that resonates with all human beings. Was nostalgia a driving force in your and the band’s eyes for doing this tour?
“You know what, to be honest, when we started talking about the 2018 touring year and what we were going to go to do as far as our music, it was kind of one of those things where I’ve always wanted somebody who has come to see We The Kings to say that if they have seen us twice that it’s never the same show.
I always want it to be different, I always want it to be special and I never want us to be the band that does copy and paste tour after tour after tour or even show after show. So this kinda led to an opportunity for us to do something different and do something that we hadn’t done before, and that is to play the entire first album – and also some extra songs.
But this is an album that has never been played in its entirety outside of the tour, but will for the first time be played now in Australia and New Zealand coming up; so any fan that has come to see us before, whether it be our headlining shows or at Soundwave or at any other festivals or anywhere, people are going to be able to hear this set and say ‘Wow that was different from the last time I heard it’.
I don’t want people to think that it’s different as far as the entertainment level; we really pride ourselves on having an even better show than we can possibly translate through album recordings. We always want to take our live shows to the next level and then to the level after that and the level after that every time that we do a different tour or play that same city. We just don’t want it to be the same exact show; so as soon as we started talking about the tour it was an opportunity for us to play something different.
The feeling of nostalgia is like you said, very powerful, so I want to celebrate that emotion but at the same time I want everyone to be very present and very in the now in realizing that that album and that music was beautiful and it was perfect in every way in my opinion because it is who we were ten years ago. But then I also want everybody to be very present in the fact that we are still putting out music and still touring and that this isn’t like a reunion tour that says farewell to everybody; this is just kinda like a fun tour for us to do for the fans that found out about us ten years ago or more specifically from that album.”
Now in keeping with that theme of nostalgia, your latest release ‘Self-Titled: Nostalgia’ is obviously not a new album, can you speak as to why you decided to release it? I must say first though, that I love the track ‘Stay Young’ due to the fact that it features your daughter Kinsley.
[laughs] “I’m actually standing in the studio where she recorded that part for the song. That wasn’t planned, I was just checking the mic to get levels right and she came in. She always comes in – it’s not like a rare thing – while I’m recording or while I’m playing and she just hangs out with me in the studio. It’s so cool to have her. But this time while I was actually recording she came up like right at the bottom of the microphone and was like ‘Check, check, check’ and I left it in the song because I just thought it was the cutest thing I had ever heard in my life [laughs]
But I think you know it kinda goes in line with the ten year tour; we want to do something like a thank you to our fans for all the support and we talked about – as a band – what kind of album we wanted it to be. Because electronic dance music is very popular right now a lot of people were like ‘Hey should it be kind of like remixes and we’ll get DJ’s to remix it’; or ‘Should we do what we did for the ‘Somewhere, Somehow’ album and just do an acoustic version of every song on the album with it stripped it down’ or ‘Should we do it this way and try to record it with a full band as if we were recording it today and just see how it would turn out differently’ and I think that the consensus was everybody wanted to do it a different way so I kinda just went ‘Hey, well why don’t we do that? Why don’t we have some songs that have an electronic feel, some songs that are stripped down, some songs that sound folky and some songs that have like an urban/hip-hop feel to them’ [etc.]
Each song that we did, we just started doing the basic track for it and then every song we were like ‘Oh this would be cool if we did this kind of style!’ and then the next song would be ‘Oh this would be cool if we did this other kind of style’ and that’s how the record came to be! But the aim of it, the roots of it were just ‘Hey, let’s do something really cool for the fans that they would like’ and some fans were like ‘Hey I like this version better, like don’t get me wrong, I like the first version and that’s what got me into you but ten years later this is the kind of music that I like!’ and it was kind of cool to get those compliments because it is the same song but it’s just done completely differently.”
Your last studio album before that was back in 2015 [Strangelove] can New Zealand fans expect to hear any new material – are We The Kings currently working on anything at the moment?
“Yeah, well we kinda released like a hidden style track on the Self-Titled: Nostalgia album, it was a track called ‘Planes, Trains & Cars’ and that’s one of our new songs that we have been recording. We had it ready so we were like ‘Hey why don’t we just put it on that album’ you know even though it’s for an album later down the road, why not put it out if it’s ready?
So we put that out and ironically that sound is similar to the sound we had ten years ago where it’s very guitar driven, very upbeat. So that song was just like a hint to the album and also I just – literally this morning – I sent all of our files for a song called ‘Festival Music’ to be mixed by our mixing engineer and once that’s mixed and matched we’re going to release it [out now].
So there will be a lot of news music even though this tour is the ten year anniversary tour, we are still releasing new music that we’ll definitely play live and you know will definitely feature over the next couple of months.”
And that’s really cool – as you were saying – this tour is like a thank you to the fans while reaffirming the point that you are a current band who are still producing and releasing new music.
“It’s funny, I know I feel this way, but in this day and age it’s so easy to find new music. You know with Spotify and Pandora and with how the internet works, ironically it’s harder to keep up with the bands you were a fan of. So if you’re not a diehard fan that’s constantly checking up on your favourite band then it’s hard to know what they’re doing, so if doing a ten year tour brings those fans back then it’s kind of our way of saying ‘Ok, this is great opportunity for us tell the fans what we’ve been up to for the past ten years’.
It’s for those who went into college and university, or went into their jobs or started a family you know and aren’t able to keep up with music the way they used to; this is like our opportunity to re-introduce them to We The Kings and I think that’s a really special task for us to do”
So lastly any message for your New Zealand fans?
“I’m just excited to re-unite with these friends and fans that we made in 2016 when we came; so just be ready for an even better show then last time and if they didn’t get a chance to go the first time, now is your opportunity! [laughs] We love you all and we are so excited to come!”
We The Kings hit Auckland’s Kings Arms tomorrow night (31st January 2018) before flying off to Australia. Tickets to the show are still available, but get in quick as they are selling fast!
