E: Mike, All Rights Reserved has been making some earworthy music for a decent amount of time now with a release on Pumpkineater Records... was the success of this most recent release any sort of good sign for the success of your overall career as a group?
Mike: Yeah, we were really happy with the success of our EP. Our goal was to sell five thousand copies of it within a year, and we are just about at that mark after nine months. It's pretty exciting to me because I wasn't expecting it to sell close to that amount�it was just a far-fetched figure in my mind. We are all really happy with the success of it, and we just hope we will have more success with the release of our full length.
E: You guys are just about to set out on tour... why don't you tell me a little about that?
Mike: We are about to head out on the "Don't Cry Just Dance Tour." It is going to be featuring My American Heart, Cartel, and A Second Chance. All these bands are great bands and they are doing really well for themselves, so we felt that this would be a really successful tour for us to be doing. PureVolume is also helping spread the word for the tour by sponsoring it. It will be hitting most of the US, so we are really excited since we haven't been over to the West Coast yet. We are also really excited to meet some new bands and make some new friends. All of these bands rock, so anybody reading this should definitely check them out.
E: Have you done tours like this before?
Mike: We've toured extensively on the East Coast and the Midwest, but never with so many bands. This tour should be a little different in that sense, since we usually only go out by ourselves or with one other band.
E: Do you think that there will be a pretty good number of kids out to see you, with the success of the EP?
Mike: We are hoping so. We draw really well down the East Coast, and really well in certain spots along the Midwest, so at those shows we are expecting to have great turnouts. I am really curious to see how many kids are at the shows for us on the West Coast. I know we have sold a number of CDs there, so we're hoping to see some new faces singing along!
E: Has new material already been written for the next release?
Mike: Yes, we have four songs completely written with the full band. Jordan and I also have a ton of material we have been working on as well. We are also going to redo "Drown With Me," which was featured on the Smartpunk Sampler this summer at the Warped Tour�and is still for sale up on Smartpunk.com. We are really excited about the new material; I think it will change many people's opinions of us.
E: How much has your line-up changed since the band started?
Mike: We formed about five years ago, actually, when we were all freshmen in high school. We had an original bass player for the first few months, but he was soon replaced by Dan. Since then, we have had the same line-up.
E: Was this band a pretty serious thing for you back then?
Mike: Not at all. We thought it was, but it definitely wasn't. We were still learning how to play our instruments back then. We finally began taking the band seriously last summer when we went on our first tour. We recorded and released our EP in November, and we have been touring non-stop since.
E: What made you decide that your next release should be a full-length instead of pushing out another EP?
Mike: We just felt that the smartest thing to do would be to release an EP so people could kind of get a feel for what we are about and to make our mark. It was to get ourselves out there, let people know we exist. Now that our presence is felt, we would like to release a full length that really demonstrates what we are about and to show our growth in the past year.
E: Well, that should do it... anything else you can think of to say?
Mike: To anyone reading this, please come out to a show on our upcoming tour and say hi. We would love to meet some new people and make some new friends! Thanks for the interview, Robby! |
