Buffalo’s very own Every Time I Die are making a hometown appearance on October 23 at the Evolution Entertainment Complex in Depew, along with Poison the Well, Underoath, and Maylene and the Sons of Disaster. Generation recently talked with guitarist Jordan Buckley of Every Time I Die about their new album, The Big Dirty, their Buffalo hardcore roots, and the future of the Sabres.
How’s the tour going so far?
Oh, it’s great. Every tour, there’s always an asshole, or two or three or four. I’ve never been on a tour where there hasn’t been one, like, ever. Honestly, this is the first one—there isn’t a bad dude in a band, there isn’t a bad crew member, tech, no one. So it’s like that thing, there’s always one crazy person on the bus and if you can’t find him it’s you. So I’m hoping it’s not me.
Is there a difference when you guys play Buffalo shows?
Yeah, we’re always nervous when our families are here and our friends. It’s Buffalo and California, because my girlfriend is from there and our roadie is from there. So it’s always a little crazy to come back here, and also Southern California where our other family is.
Do you get a better reaction?
Oh yeah, the crowds are always crazy, it’s great, we just get kind of nervous. My dad is taking the whole tour out for Chinese buffet before we play [at Evolution], so yeah.
Buffalo’s hardcore scene is very well respected and is gaining notoriety. How has that affected you?
Yeah, the scene gets respect, bands like Snapcase really started it and Buried Alive gets a lot of attention as well.
Do the positive reviews for The Big Dirty add any pressure or change how you play?
No, it takes the pressure off. We know that people like what we’re going to play so we know we can go out every night and play things people are going to like.
What is popular in the scene changes on almost a daily basis. Do you pay attention to that when you write?
Not in the studio, but on tour. It depends who we tour with. Some places we’ve played, there are like 400 people and other nights there are 2,000 and who knows, in a year we could be back playing to 400 again.
I know you were nervous about coming back to Buffalo after releasing Gutter Phenomenon because the sound was so different. How did that work out?
It was so stressful to write, if it had bombed I wouldn’t have been surprised. The Big Dirty was just fun to write. Me and Andy [Williams, guitar] and Mike [Novak, drums] would meet up for hours each day for three months. I was never like “Aw, I have to go to practice,” it was like, “I’m really excited to go in and show everyone what I have.”
How is it writing and recording without a bass player?
We write our songs with no bass and no vocals and that’s it. In the studio, there’s definitely been a few times where it’s sounded wrong because there’s no bass player. But on this record, it’s like, we’re going into the studio completely confident, completely stoked about every song, and there’s no bass. And then you add the bass and they’re even better!
Yeah, I was wondering who recorded bass for you.
Yeah, [our producer] Steve Evetts played, he’s a great bass guitarist. He produced a few great Snapcase records, a few great pop-punk records. He had a great tone, he’s just a great player.
All of our guitar players have been just guitar players. They’re all like, “If I can play six strings I can play four.” We’ve never had a straight bass guitar player.
Out of all the festival tours you’ve done, which was the best?
Warped Tour, for sure. We did the full thing two summers ago and we did a week or two, wow, like five years ago. In 2006, we did the full, every day tour. We got to do main stage half the time and the Hurley stage half the time, which was just as cool. The people, the bands, the kids, everything is just so much more positive than the metal tours. The metal tours, man, kids demand entertainment where the Warped Tour crowd just kind of goes with the flow and loves it. The Ozzfest kids are like, “it’s 9:30 in the morning, I just paid $80, my fucking hair is long and black.” But I think everyone kind of knows what they’re getting into with that.
Any Sabres predictions?
I heard they’re not going to do so well? I don’t want to be a fair-weather fan, though, I’ll root for them, I’ll root for the Bills. The hardest thing about last year’s Sabres was the amount of fair-weather fans. Me and my friends used to get $15 cheap seats and go watch the Sabres any game we wanted to. Last year, every game’s sold out, you had to buy hundred dollar tickets, and people acting like they knew about the Sabres who hadn’t paid attention the year before. That was rough. I have a feeling that a lot of people will be gone this year because of all the trades, maybe that’s one positive thing about this year, that everyone hops back off the bandwagon. Maybe I’ll actually get tickets this year.
Any word on the Christmas show? Will you guys be coming back for that?
Oh, yeah that’s going to be an annual thing. The last two years were so fun that there’s no reason not to do it every year.
