Emily’s Army - War
PropertyOfZack had the chance to speak with the newly signed Emily’s Army last week for a great interview. We spoke with Joey about signing to Rise Records, the band’s second album, age being an issue or not, future touring, how being related to Billie Joe affects the band, and much more. Check out the interview below!
For the record, could you state your name and role in Emily’s Army?
My name is Joey Armstrong and I play drums in Emily’s Army.The band announced in mid-April that the band had signed to Rise Records for your debut album. How did that come together? Obviously Rise has some more punk bands, but is mostly known for some more metal-type bands.
So we turned out our first album about two years ago and then we did Warped Tour last summer. Rise had a lot of bands on Warped Tour and I think they just heard about us through Warped Tour. They knew our press guy Brian. Brian wrote me and was like, “Hey, Rise has been asking me questions about you guys, would you be interested in meeting them?” We had a phone call and talked about it and then about a week later, they said they were super into it and they wanted to work with us.The Rise team is small but great. Has it been a good fit so far?
Yeah, it’s been really good. It feels more hands-on with all of the artists. Matthew is really awesome. He contacts me all of the time just to see how I’m doing and if I need anything. I think that’s really cool – how much they care about the artists.The first song was released, “Avenue,” and the album comes out in June. I think that’s the first time a lot more potential fans had the chance of hearing you, with bigger promotion from Rise and publicity. Did you see a lot of comments from a lot of new faces?
Yeah. One thing I was really looking forward to is that there are two bands on the record label that I really like, Bouncing Souls and Sharks. I really feel like our songs can mesh well with their style of punk rock. So it was cool to see some people react in very positive ways. Like I saw one comment that was just like, “I really like your alternative punk bands on your record label. And this one just adds to it.” It’s cool to see a lot of people that had never heard of us before and are into bands that we like are now starting to like us.You put out your first album two years ago. Everyone in the band is super young. With age, writing can change quickly as members experience new things and grow up a little more. What was it like writing this record compared to the last one?
The last one – it was kind of like – I mean thinking back on it, I really don’t like listening to it. I really like to be a perfectionist, but back then I was like, “Oh my god, I sound perfect.” And now that I’m – I recorded drums on that album when I was fifteen years old, and now that I’m eighteen, it’s so different. We recorded our first album when I was going into sophomore year and now I’m graduating high school. So there were just all sorts of things that changed me. What was really cool about this last album is that we really focused on the details. We did a lot of demos. The last album was just – our first album was just more experimenting with songs live on stage and just having a good time and goofing off – figuring out things. This time it was more, “Alright, we have this idea. Let’s record it.” “Ok. (A month later) Let’s add this part to it. Let’s record it and see how it sounds.” Just kind of listening back and having a lot more influences. On the last album, I feel like it was just – it was a really fun thing for us to do, just getting experience recording and seeing how the album sounds. But with this album, it’s like we all try different elements that we had all individually been studying or listening to and also elements that we’ve experienced with a whole band. Definitely touring. The biggest tour we had done before that last album was two weeks going Oregon to San Francisco. Now, throughout the year we’ve had Warped Tour, we’ve done bars, we’ve done east coast and all of west coast.You’ll be doing Warped Again right after the album comes out. Are you excited to do a much greater run of it this year?
Yeah I’m really excited. I was really bummed to leave last year. We planned it out so we weren’t on it too long, but then by the end of it we were all super bummed and wanted to stay on it the whole time. So it’s cool that – this summer’s going to be really great because I graduate and then two days later, I fly to Warped Tour and then we’re on that for a month I think. Then we have a day off and we fly to London. Then we’re going to be on tour in the UK for like two weeks.
Just curious!
