Photo: Facebook / All Time Low / Wenn
Pop-punkers All Time Low are going from strength to strength. Since leaving major label Interscope, they've resigned with their home-from-home Hopeless Records, and have released their latest album Don't Panic to critical acclaim.
We caught up with Rian Dawson and Jack Barakat ahead of their first show at London's O2 Shepherds Bush Empire in order to have a chat about whether they make diva demands now that they're successful, sharing a stage with Green Day and just how Jack can sort out his ingrowing toenail...
Hi, All Time Low! Congratulations on the first of three sold out nights.
Rian: That's cool sounding. I don't think we've ever said that before.
Jack: We should do, like, twenty nights in a row.
Rian: What we're going to do next is just play smaller venues and be like, 'ten sold out nights at Academy 3'.
Do you feel any pressure to outdo yourselves each night?
Rian: We're pretty bad, so the bar's always set pretty low. So each night if we can just do not a lot worse than the night before, we count it as a win in our book.
Jack: No, we've got to rehearse tomorrow so we can do different songs.
Rian: We've got to switch the set up a little bit, but for us, that means changing, like, one song.
Okay, so sold out nights mean that you've now become successful. Are you going to make some rockstar demands?
Jack: Yes!
Like what?
Rian: Well, on our rider we have... f**k, I can't think of anything. That's how not rock star we are.
Jack: Before this tour, we had a lot of food on the rider and a little bit of alcohol and we kind of switched it around.
Rian: So now we just have all alcohol. We're really not rock star guys, unfortunately. Because I really wanted to have the stories of the heroin and the drugs and the sex and the massive success but we don't have any of that, unfortunately.
Jack: I've got a bad back.
Rian: Yeah, [Alex Gaskarth] has the flu. I've got a hair cut. We're pretty--
Jack: I've got an ingrowing toenail I can't get rid of. It's crazy.
Rian: So if that's the kind of rock star s**t you're talking about, there's a lot of it.
Maybe you should put some ingrowing toenail solution on your toenail, Jack.
Rian: Is that a thing? Solution? They have solution?
Jack: Gotta get me some of that.
Rian: He's got a lot of toenails.
Jack: I'm just going to cut my toenail off.
You split from Interscope and rejoined Hopeless to release Don't Panic. Was that a difficult decision?
Rian: Not really. It was barely a decision on our part - the decision had just been made by everything that was happening. Like, a lot of the people that we were with when we signed to Interscope had been either replaced or fired or let go or reassigned and none of the people that kind of believed in us and said 'we can do this together' were still there. So for us it was like, this is a whole different label. Why would we stay, when these people don't really know us? We knew the people that we signed with.
And so at the end of the day, it was really - it was almost amicable. We were like, look, this isn't the same label we signed with, you don't really have much interest in our band, let's just split ways. Let's not make it all lawsuit and all that. And they were like, alright! And it was truly that easy. It was much worse on the outside than it was actually on the inside, everyone was like, 'what the f**k, they're done', and for us it was just the right choice.
Jack: [in a terrible British accent] Came back stronger than ev-ah!
How much do you think that benefitted Don't Panic?
Jack: We definitely got a lot of press out of it.
Rian: I think once again the outside people - press, media, fans, whatever - created their own story of why Dirty Work was what they thought it was. I think if we were still on Hopeless we would have still made the same record. We're proud of that record, every unit. But what came along with it was the story. You know? We could've released the most punk rock record we've ever done and people would still be like, 'oh, it's Interscope that made them do this'. It didn't matter what we did, the story was told before it was made.
But I do remember being that kid for Blink-182 when they put out Enema of the State on Geffen and I was like, 'oh, they sold out! This is stupid, this isn't like Dude Ranch.' And then I blasted it the entire time I was typing all that stuff online. It's just something that happens, if you have any sort of rock or punk or whatever it might be then people get a bad taste in their mouth when they hear about a major label. Which is fine, but that's all it is in our mind.
Last time I saw you was at Under The Bridge, and the album hadn't come out yet. How has the response been since then?
Jack: It was awesome, that was actually the first night we ever played 'Somewhere In Neverland' which was cool.
Rian: It was awesome. And it was [part of the World Triptacular] which was all really small venues. The one in New York was really kind of s**tty and the one in Japan was just a bar and this one was like a night club! But the reaction's been amazing, like I said, the reactions to the new songs are far beyond most of our older songs and the kids are really excited and they want more and more of that so we couldn't ask for more.
You're supporting Green Day in June. Are you excited for that?
Jack: Yeah, I think it's a dream come true. We've always dreamed of playing with a band like Green Day and I'm just honoured that we got picked.
Rian: Yeah, I was gonna say, a lot of the times - this might sound conceited, but a lot of the times the agents kind of pick the bands. But in this case, Green Day actually sought after us. We've played with them a few times at festivals last year and they told their agent - actually, he's our agent too - that they wanted us to have it. So it's like [Jack] said - it's flattering, it's humbling, it's an honour to share a stage with them and to know that they have like even five percent of say in it...
Jack: To think that Billie Joe uttered the words 'all time low', that gets me a little wet in the pants.
So what's next?
Rian: What's next? The same thing as always, we just want to keep getting bigger and bigger. What's been ideal for us is that our fanbase has been the same - we've had fans come for the past ten years and they're still coming, which is awesome. It's just like this whole snowball effect but we always keep our old fans, which is very important to us because they were there when no one else was. If we can keep doing what we're doing, we're the happiest two guys! The other two, however, don't want to be in the band anymore and they're probably leaving soon.
Jack: Me and Rian are going to keep going, though.
Rian: We're going to keep going.
As long as you keep the band name. Like half of Panic at the Disco did.
Rian: We'll have an issue though due to like, copyright and stuff so we'll have to respell it. All Time Low, maybe L-O-U-G-H.
What do you think about the Fall Out Boy comeback?
Rian: Awesome.
Jack: I just watched them, they did their first live performance yesterday on TV on Jimmy Kimmel, and it was awesome. Really, really f**king cool.
Rian: That's another band that, you know, they took us out before they went on hiatus and they were so nice to us and they kind of guided us on our career.
Jack: Took us under their wings [they both start pointing to their armpits]
Rian: We're pointing to our wing. So hopefully there's no plans yet but we'd love to share the stage with them again and do something like that.
Jack: If they can afford us! HA HA HA.
You formed in 2003, and that means you're going to be ten years old. Does the band have troubled teenage years ahead?
Rian: Oh wow, that's a good question. The band's teenage years are coming up.
Jack: I hope I grow armpit hair.
Rian: Hopefully it'll go a lot smoother than our teenage years went. They were confusing times for all of us.
Jack: I wore a lot of make-up, it was weird.
Rian: He was the second guy in our school to wear girl pants. But back to your question, I think we've been lucky enough as a band that we've never really had any internal issues. We might squabble about a few things - about what to put in the setlist, about what song we should or shouldn't play - but you know, considering we are where we are and we tour as much as we do, we've never really had a fight or anything big.
Jack: Rian's the mediator.
There's some interesting news today where Chubby Checker is suing a phone app because it's using the name Chubby Checker and it's for women to find out how big their date's penises are without asking them.
Rian: How does that work?
I think they put the shoe size in and it tells them so they know what to expect. If there was an All Time Low app, what do you think it would do?
Jack: Oh my God.
Rian: That's so funny, I had not heard that story. That's a cool app.
Jack: So an All Time Low app? It would probably be just like our naked bodies and you could like photoshop yourself in the middle or something.
Rian: It would tell you how small our penises are. [Jack starts trying to show small his penis is with hand gestures] What is that?
Jack: That's the size of our penises and I'm trying to... But yeah, it would just be like a bunch of us naked and you could just like put yourself in the picture. And it would be our way to see a bunch of naked people because -
Rian: They think that we're doing it for them but in reality they're doing it for us.
Jack: We see all the pictures.
So it's February now, the time of year when all new year's resolutions go out the window. Have you done anything stupid so far this year?
Rian: Yes. But I think I stopped making resolutions back when I was like, eight.
Jack: I've never actually successfully done a resolution. Do you know anyone who has?
Rian: I don't think we've had a lot of time to mess up yet or do anything too stupid.
Jack: I haven't done anything correctly.
Rian: Jack's done a lot of stupid drunk stuff.
Any stories to share?
Jack: No PG ones. Definitely yelled at some people I shouldn't have yelled at.
Rian: Oh yeah, that's true. Jack drinks a little bit and then he wants to stay at a venue, even though we have to get to the next venue, and it becomes kind of like a big fight. That's our big fight, is him wanting to stay an extra hour.
He can stay as long as he likes tonight.
Rian: We're good tonight because we don't have to go anywhere. He'll do that child thing where he'll stand outside the bus and be like, 'You're not leaving without me!'
Jack: They're NOT going to leave without me.
And finally, if you can achieve one thing over the next year?
Rian: As a band, I'd like to get in tighter with the Green Day guys, I think that's a relationship that could really benefit us, obviously, and it would still be a dream come true to have them take us out on stage or somewhere else in the world. And just to kind of take these shows that we have with Green Day and get new fans. It's tough to get new fans where we are right now and that's the way to do it. Jack wants to have sex.
Jack: I just want to break this damn virginity thing!
