Andy recently had a few words with Ty Vaughn and Josh Baird from Broadway Calls, after their show in Brighton with Cobra Starship and All Time Low.
PT: Let’s start from the beginning. Who are Broadway Calls and what are you all about?
Ty: We’re just three guys from the Northwest of the United States. We’re a pop-punk band. We’re not like a ‘modern’ pop band, not super produced and polished.
Josh: We’re more in comparison to Dookie-era Green Day than modern pop-punk.
PT: You’ve been in the UK for the best part of a month now. What have been the best parts of your time over here so far?
Josh: The scenery! Besides the shows, the scenery is awesome. We got to hang out in Leeds for a while, like four days. There’s a lot of college kids there!
PT: Out of the three bands on this tour, you’re the least ‘poppy’ of the three. Do your prepare shows differently when supporting the likes of All Time Low & Cobra Startship, as opposed to heavier acts?
Ty: I don’t think we prepare differently, but it’s definitely different. The average age at these shows is like fifteen, and you know, you’re a girl. Heavier bands tend to attract an older crowd, people who are more our peers.
Josh: We definitely feel more comfortable with heavier bands, it’s how we started. Our first tours in the states were with hardcore bands so we know how to handle them better. At the same time, older people are jaded! Younger people tend to be just finding out what they like, so are a lot more open to hearing new music.
PT: You recently played the Give it a Name Festival. Did you have much of a chance to check out the other bands playing, and if so who impressed you the most?
Ty: A band called Failsafe! They were awesome with MC Lars. We’ve been talking to a band called Never So True and we did an off date with them, and they were awesome. I really like Tonight is Goodbye as well. We also found this band called Save Your Breath who are amazing. They were just awesome guys, they let us put all their tracks on our Ipod so we could listen to them all the time on the road, that was really cool.
Josh: Yeah they’re probably one of our new favourite bands.
PT: Have you had much of an experience playing festivals? How do they compare to an ordinary club show from a band’s point of view?
Ty: No this [Give it a Name] is definitely the first. The only thing we did before this was Bamboozle Left. We’ve got the Warped Tour coming up so I guess we know what we’re in for now!
PT: Your self-titled album has just been re-issued through Adeline Records. How did your relationship with Adeline arise, and what made you decide to re-issue the album with them?
Ty: They just got ahold of us. An intern went to one of our shows in California and they made their way up the ladder, and about six months later got in touch with us. They just wanted to re-release it and we knew we weren’t done touring on the album just yet. We haven’t been to a lot of places, we wanted better distribution and Adeline were able to offer it.
PT: Have you met Green Day yet?
Ty: No! We came really close in LA at a Pinhead Gunpowder show. We could have, but we really blew it!
PT: Are you still in touch with the guys at Smallman records, and what was their reaction to you re-issuing the album on another label?
Ty: They’re a Canadian label and we’re still with them over there. We never did keep in touch even when it was on their label, and we’ve always done our ow thing. Things were always pretty separate between us and them, but everyone was happy with how it went.
PT: You’ve also released the album on Vinyl as well. How important do you think vinyl is these days in terms of exposing new music?
Josh: I think it’s now more important than ever.
Ty: Yeah it’s definitely picking up, especially in the States.
Josh: CDs are like dead over there. People are either downloading or buying vinyl. If they want to have the tangible record, they’ll buy the vinyl. It’s cooler, it’s more of a collectible. It’s more punk rock!
PT: When you return to the States, you’ve got a few dates with Alkaline Trio then you head out on the Warped Tour. It’s your first time playing the festival this year I believe. How do you prepare for such a long and busy tour?
Ty: We’ve been going to Warped Tour for a while. We went to our first one together in ’97, to see Social Distortion, Sick of it all, Blink 182 when Dude Ranch first came out, and we’ve been going every year we can! To play the entire tour is a complete dream come true.
Josh: I think it’s still going to be a challenge every day, we don’t know where we’re going to be, and playing outdoors is a whole new thing for us. We’re probably gonna sound shit every day on stage, but we’re going to have some fun with it!
PT: I imagine you must be pretty stoked for it. As people who’ve been to warped to lives as spectators before, describe the Warped experience for us in the UK, we don’t have anything like it over here.
Josh: We live in kind of a rural area, so we’ve only experienced the smaller shows, usually about five or six thousand people. The ones in California can be pretty big. It’s just six stages, at least 60 bands a day. If you’re a kid you either try to find new bands, or map out your day to see your favourites. It’s definitely an experience!
PT: Are you currently writing material or are you concentrating solely on touring the current album?
Ty: We’ve written a couple of new ones, we’re going to release a split 7-inch with a band called Teenage Bottlerocket, but other than that not really.
Josh: We’re not satisfied with the touring we’ve done for this record yet. We think there’s a lot more people we can reach with it, before we can be like ‘OK let’s go do another one’.
PT: Right, what else can we expect from Broadway Calls in the coming year? We’d sure like to have you back over in the UK again soon!
Ty: Rumour has it we’re coming over again in August. Hopefully Reading and Leeds, that’s the word on the street, so we’ll have to wait and see!