Ryan Nimmo Of Failure Anthem

Written By: Brandon Delano

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Side Stage Magazine: So you released “First World problems” back in January.

Ryan Nimmo: Yes we did, January 22nd.

How has the album been received?

Great, the reception has been cool. Every single show we see more and more people singing the songs and coming up to us saying they enjoy the record. You can’t really ask for much more than that when you put out a record, so it’s awesome.

You’re currently out with Buckcherry, what do you have lined up after this tour?

Yeah this is week four of this run, Buckcherry drops off at the end of next week and we do another week or so with Nonpoint. I think after that we’re off for ten or twelve days, then we have Taste of Madison, then we have two other tours we’re going to announce shortly after that, so that should run us thru the end of the year.

You guys are from North Carolina.

Yup Greensboro.

What did it take to break out of the Greensboro area?

You just have to get out and tour your butts off, nothing comes easy anymore, not that it really ever did. But you know we were in a great position our management team, and our booking agent and label have been fantastic. They push us as hard as we push ourselves to get stuff done, so getting out of Greensboro hasn’t been super tough for us because our work ethic and our teams work ethic are equally matched so it’s good.

So you recently had a change in vocalists?

Yeah, we found out J.D. was leaving four days before this tour, so we have a new vocalist Chris Pierson. We played a couple of shows with his old band, Brother Grey at the end of last year. We thought his voice was killer, we had hung out with him at shows, and we thought he was a cool dude. He was the first guy we thought about, and we literally called him on a Friday and were like hey man this just popped up what are you doing? He said sounds like I’m coming to North Carolina. So we knocked out two rehearsals and then hit the road.

So he was able to step right in?

He took everything in stride, and boom it was great.

What do you think will be the next single released from the album?

I’m not sure yet, we just put out “First World Problems” in the middle of June, and that’s starting to crack on the radio charts right now. “Paralyzed” did very well, and this one is looking like it might match it, which is nice. Then we might do a slower song next, we’ll have to see.

I always ask bands when it comes to recording an album what do charts mean to you, and if they are in the back of your mind when you are writing and recording.

No, not necessarily. When we write songs and we write records we don’t take into consideration the thought of, yeah this one might be a hit, let’s write this one. It’s literary, hey we like how this song is shaping up let’s continue to develop this idea and see where it takes us. You know we’re incredibly proud of our first record, we love very song on it. I think we had twenty-four songs that didn’t make the record, so I think we wrote thirty-five songs for the first record and we dwindled that down to eleven. Every night we play a song that’s not on the record that’s just a banger opening song called “Straight Jacket”, so you know even the songs that didn’t make the record we love. So that’s the number one thing we think about when we are writing a record or getting ideas together not like where’s this going to chart, it’s do we like what we’re doing.

So the album has only been out for a little over six months, but at what point do you start thinking about the next record?

We’re constantly writing, Kyle owns a studio in Greensboro, and we have a travel rig that we bring with us so if we’re ever in the van and we have ideas, we’ll just grab a guitar out of the back and start recording ideas while we’re going down the road. You always want to live in the moment of the record you’re in, but you also don’t want to wait until you get to the end of your record cycle and the label is like, ok you have two months to get us a new record. So we’re constantly working on new stuff.

So you said you had a lot of material that didn’t make this album, will it be included on the next album?

There will be at least a few from that batch of songs that will make the next record. But we’re writing some really cool songs we think.

So when you have so much material that didn’t make the album, as the band tours and grows do you come back to that material and see if it fits where you are as a band at that time and rewrite them?

I don’t think you would ever want to cancel out a song because of where you are at a certain point in time. I don’t think if we were to write thirty-five more songs, we would automatically say we weren’t going to look at the old songs. There might be riffs, vocal ideas, or anything we can take from those old songs and put them into new songs. Everything is constantly evolving, and constantly changing, so that seems to keep everything interesting.

You mentioned you had two other tours lined up can you give any details of them?

Well they’re confirmed just not announced, but if you go to www.failureanthem.com, some of these dates make it up on our page before they’re announced. So you might be able to catch a date or two and be able to figure it out. The next tour, I can say we’ve toured with both of those bands before so it will be a good reunion tour. Then the one in the fall we’ve toured with two of those bands before, and that’s a five band bill so it’s going to be a huge tour.

Being a newer band who has recently broke out, what advice do you have for bands trying to break out as well?

Just keep playing, don’t let other people’s opinions or other people’s ideas of what they think you should be doing get in the way of what you want to do. Play your butts off, tour when it’s smart, get on your social media game like crazy, and just keep pushing and putting out fresh stuff.

Another question I like to ask, is what is your take on online streaming sites, and if that helps or hurts a band.

I mean I guess no one is really selling records anymore as far as physically. The majority of record sales, and at least in our experience is going to be at shows. So it’s really hard for anyone to compete $10 a month and listen to anything on Earth you want. I mean I’ve had a Spotify account for years and I love it, I mean that’s all we listen to in the van. So it’s a double-edged sword just like Napster was when it came out. It gave artists the opportunity to reach as many people as they wanted to or could, but monetarily it’s kind of a drag. But you don’t always do things you love for money. I would say if 99% of musicians were in it for money these days, there wouldn’t be very many musicians left.

Right and these days MTV doesn’t play music anymore, and there’s no more shows like Headbangers Ball.

It’s crazy how with YouTube popping up, what fifteen years ago now to how that has devalued the music video. You’re right you don’t have the TRL, or Headbangers Ball anymore. They don’t do the early morning video shows like they used to. It’s just crazy how the internet killed the video star.

So what is your take on YouTube, and how your show tonight might be uploaded to it before you’re done loading out tonight?

You’re right, and it’s that double-edged sword again. I’m never going to complain about somebody being able to type in our name in YouTube and watch us. You’ll never be able to download the feeling that comes from a live show. So if someone goes on and checks out whatever band they want to see and they sound good on YouTube, then the chances of them going to an actual show are probably higher.

So what do you think when you look out from the stage and all you see are people with their cell phones up?

Take the good with the bad, nah I love it. It makes you feel like you’re fresh and they want to have proof that they were at this show. Whether that’s, hey check out this cool band, or this is my favorite band ever. It kind of gives you a sense of validation.

For me I like to be there and watch the show and not watch it thru the back of my cell phone.

Well it is funny, I’ll go to shows and be in the crowd and I’ll catch myself watching whats going on stage thru someone’s phone in front of me. You can’t get around it, I was at a The 1975 concert recently, they’re arguably the biggest pop band on the planet right now and during one song he said everyone put your cell phones away or I’m going to stop this song. I think he did say, I’m not doing this just to be some rock star this song just means a lot to me. But I’m never going to have an issue with people having cell phones at our shows because in the end they’re promoting us.

So what are some of the bands your listening to right now?

Well let’s look thru my Spotify real quick. I listen to a lot of R&B stuff, Frank Ocean, and this dude named Black Bear. We’re good friends with the guys in Sons of Texas so we listen to them all the time. We listen to Story of the Year, Filter, we’re all over the place. We’re really good friends with this band coming up right now called Cane Hill, they’re blowing up so we’ve been jamming that real hard. A lot of times I just listen to friends bands because that just makes me feel like I’m at home when I’m out on the road.

What do you think about the reemergence of vinyl?

It’s awesome, though I will admit I own a lot of records but I don’t own a turn table. It’s something I’m going to get around to eventually. When bands come out with these limited edition pressings of records I’m not going to pass it up. It’s more of a novelty, I can see records being more viable I guess, I mean there are bands printing cassettes again, and I can’t even tell you the last time I saw a Walkman. But hey whatever moves your music and gets it into people’s hands that would not have normally listened to it I’m all for it.

Well I appreciate you taking the time to talk with us for a bit.

You’re welcome, anytime.

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