It is 2pm on a clear, almost summery September afternoon, yet people are already waiting outside the back door of Leeds’ ‘The Cockpit’ to catch a glimpse of, even a word with, tonight’s headliners: The Academy Is… The Chicago based quintet have just released third album Fast Times At Barrington High and are riding high a wave of popularity on both sides of the Atlantic. Yet whilst their back catalogue (debut album Almost Here and sophomore release Santi) showcases their credentials as one of the most exciting and innovative bands on the American pop-punk circuit; and even if they do rub shoulders with label mates Fall Out Boy, Gym Class Heroes and Panic At The Disco, The Academy Is… still remain somewhat undiscovered in the United Kingdom. Though some might know William Beckett thanks to his role in lending his vocal’s to Cobra Starship’s ‘Snakes On A Plane’, title song for the cult film of the same name.
Adam Siska & William Beckett
The dressing room inside The Cockpit is clean, considerably cleaner than they left the one in Manchester the previous night: ‘there was a food fight’ explains vocalist William Beckett who is sat cross legged on a sofa, whilst bassist Adam Siska pulls up a chair in the middle of the room.
Chris Boothroyd: You’ve just released your third album, Fast Times At Barrington High, how do you think it compares to your previous work?
Adam Siska: I think it’s kind of everything that we were always aiming for in making records in a sense, it accomplishes what we set for when starting this record: it’s a lot of fun to play, lot of fun to tour on. Also musically it’s out best record as well as melodically and lyrically, those three things right there, I’d say it’s out best record.
Chris Boothroyd: On your Fueled By Ramen page, it says: ‘Now that The Academy Is… have finally made the record that they want to make,’.. is there anything about your prior albums would you change with hindsight?
Adam Siska: I think that in that quote, we’ve had trial and error up to this point. We haven’t quite been entirely satisfied with our work one way or the other and this time we’ve found something that we really trust and we’re excited to play live. It’s not to say that on the first record we weren’t really proud of what we did or on the second record as well. We’re a young band that’s still growing and it’s probably going to say that next time we make a record. Which is good, because with each record we’re having fun, we’re changing; we’re getting better as players.
William Beckett: And better songwriters
Adam Siska: Hopefully each time it’ll be the record we wanted to make and accomplishing what we set out for.
Chris Boothroyd: Also your Fueled By Ramen page also gives off the impression that everybody was a lot more hands on in the recording process, and Michael [Chislett, guitarist who joined just prior to the release of Santi] added a new dimension to the band, did this make writing Fast Times easier than say Almost Here.
William Beckett: Yeah, definitely. This is the first album where Michael Chislett was a main part of the writing. Last album he came in towards the end of the writing process and helped finished some songs, but he didn’t help conceptualise from the beginning and it was really important on this album that he had that, and we could utilise his skills because he’s an incredible guitar player and a very very smart song writer as well. So we really utilised what he was bringing to the table. And we really trust each others instincts in the studio. I didn’t have to be a hawk over the guitarists shoulder in the studio and they didn’t have to look over my shoulder in the vocal booth. We trusted each others skills and the songs are written in a way that they play to each others strengths.
Adam Siska: I think another good point was having everybody involved on a project we were really comfortable with, from the engineers who we were really excited to work with and who were also a real positive energy in the studio. It was really important to work with people who brought out our creative energy. As well as Sam [Hollander] and Dave [Katz] our producers who were real fun to work with and that really helps.
Chris Boothroyd: What was it like revisiting your high school days to write Fast Times At Barrington High?
William Beckett: Well I didn’t necessarily go back to my high school days; it cites events that happened in high school, for the most part it chronicles around our senior year at Barrington up to now. A lot of the things that happened to me and us in high school during those times, essentially we broke out of our mould of conformity and became ourselves, which I think doesn’t happen as often as it should with people. So basically it’s chronicling the moment we when decided we were going to do this [form The Academy Is]. We’d do this band as opposed to [going to] college or getting a job after high school. So a lot of these things are the good things that I’m writing about on this album are the ones that mattered most when we started this band; going back home, embracing where we started The Academy Is… and when we started loving music in the first place which was when we were at high school. That was all extremely inspiring and useful during the writing process.
Chris Boothroyd: All the bands these days, especially those on Fueled By Ramen/Decaydance use the internet a lot, do you think that’s a huge part in the music business today?
William Beckett: It’s like anything you embrace. Right now it’s a crazy time just because it’s a technological revolution, a cultural switch that we’re seeing right in front of our eyes. How old are you?
Chris Boothroyd: Twenty
William Beckett: Like all of us, when we were ten/twelve years old the internet came out and we were like holy shit this is crazy! It’s something that we’ve embraced because it’s something we grew up knowing and using. It’s a tool we’ve used since we were young. It’s a great place to hear new music and to get content out. Also it can over saturate the music market. Right now we could go on myspace and start a band and be like ‘Yeah we’re called Bombshelter Suicide or something’ and we could start it right this moment, have no music and have ‘fans’ of our band, it’s things like that, and anybody with a computer now can make music, which is exciting, but it also increase the importance of quality, content and substance to your music and to your material you put out.
Adam Siska: The internet is a cool way of finding bands, but it shouldn’t be the only way for purchasing music or just listening. I still buy records and take pride in doing that, that’s the problem with computers. I encourage people to buy music in record stores, have a look around, find an album cover they like, check it out and communicate with your friends. I think that’s more important than communicating over a messageboard, it takes a little bit of the personal side out of loving music. It’s something that you plug your headphones into. Computers have made music be something people do alone in your room at night and its meant to be shared with friends.
Chris Boothroyd: But with myspace; take tonight for example, you can find out the support bands, search, find their page and check them out.
Adam Siska: Which is awesome. I remember the early days of the internet there was a site CDnow that I always used to go to and they’d give you a ten second clip of a band’s song. I’d check out all these bands, found out lot of bands I really liked. Myspace is a lot like that. There are previews of tracks from bands for you to check out. But they shouldn’t be the only songs you listen to; you should go out and buy a hard copy of their record I think.
Chris Boothroyd: Can you give you the low down on the support for tonight: The Maine and We The Kings?
Adam Siska: Both the bands are really fun musically, which is what we were aiming for with this tour: to put on a show where we knew our fans would be all really excited about the bands and have a really good time watching the bands. And we have a lot of fun hanging out with them isn’t that right?
William Beckett: We The Kings and The Maine, both bands, are a blast to hang out with.
Adam Siska: I find the best place to meet a new band is overseas, especially in the UK. There’s a bond you form with in a different country with other bands because most people turn their phones off and they just want to hang out in a foreign country and have a good time, so it’s a lot of fun to tour with your friends in different countries. There’s that celebratory vibe that’s just in the air, everybody wants to have fun.
William Beckett: Plus a lot of these kids in the other bands are under 21 so they can drink here legally. That’s fun. It’s fun to go out with the guys, chill out, have some beers.
Adam Siska: And we’re not breaking the law.
William Beckett: Because we’re such law abiding citizens.
Chris Boothroyd: So you’re planning on going out tonight after the gig?
Adam Siska: Yeah, this place turns into a club?
Chris Boothroyd: Yeah, yeah it does.
Adam Siska: Usually when we’ve played here we’ve gone out and it’s been pretty fun. They play good music here: The Smiths, Babyshambles, though I prefer Pete Doherty’s old band, but that’s fun to dance to. They play a lot of rock music.
Chris Boothroyd: They’ve a few different rooms here. One will be metal and hardcore, the other will play a mixture, and another will play American pop-punk stuff.
Adam Siska: Yeah, which is cool. You can hear diversity in music. A lot of the places if you go out in the states it’s always Fergie and…
William Beckett : My hump my hump my humps! [sings]
Adam Siska: Especially if Gabe from Cobra Starship is DJing, then it’s guaranteed three hours of complete rubbish.
William Beckett: Complete 90’s crap. How many times can you hear Informer by Snow or Barbie Girl?
Adam Siska: That’s one of my favourite aspects about going out in the UK, you can have a beer and listen to a song you like which is pretty rare.
Chris Boothroyd: Carrying on about the internet, where does the concept of The Academy Is… TV come from?
William Beckett: It started when we started the band pretty much. Once we started touring we started doing it, I used to film and edit them back in the day, then John Walker, now bass player in Panic At The Disco, a friend of ours from back home, he came out for a season right?
Adam Siska: Yeah, it was six months he was out with us, two tours.
William Beckett: And now we have Jack ‘The Camera Guy’, he doesn’t like to talk about his last name. He likes to keep some mystery.
Adam Siska: I think it came from us being, I wouldn’t say bored on tour, but for an excuse to do something fun, keep us together, making videos of us goofing around or talking about whatever; anything at all. And it just came as something we wanted to do to show our fans whatever, whenever we had the chance. It was pretty relaxed at first, now we put it up every Sunday and it’s a little more organised and luckily we’ve got Jack who is really passionate about it and helps us out a lot. It started out as something we wanted to give to our fans. If you didn’t get to talk to us outside the gig or if you’re bored at home you can go to our website and share a moment with us and interact. Although we take out music seriously, we don’t take everything in life seriously. We like to have a good time and goof around, occasionally get in fights with the Kings [We The Kings], stuff like that.
Chris Boothroyd: Going right back to the beginning, how did The Academy Is… start?
Adam Siska: I met William when I was twelve years old, he was like fifteen I think then, right before you got your drivers license?
William Beckett: Yeah
Adam Siska: So he was like fifteen and he was playing drums in a band with my older brother. I was definitely, pretty, what’s the word? …infatuated in the most hetro sense I can think of. I always liked him right off the bat; he knew something about music that I didn’t know. On his drum kit there were stickers of all these punk rock bands that I didn’t really quite know and I was like ‘who is this kid?’ So I defiantly wanted to start a band with him, especially a year or so later when he started playing guitar instead of drums and he was writing songs that were really good. And I’d been trying to play in bands for the last couple of years and they were all pretty bad, he was writing and I came to him and said ‘we should start a band’. We had tried for over a year, just covering songs and then it turns out this local band that we were big fans of had broken up and a friend of ours knew Mike [Carden], their guitar player. As soon as well all started playing together there was definite good chemistry there and songs started coming together pretty fast and we were having a lot of fun so that’s how the band began. Eventually we found The Butcher, he was playing drums in a band from Milwaukee that we liked, they broke up and we stole him. It was a similar scenario with Michael, he was playing with somebody else we knew and our former producer Butch Walker was friends with Michael, so we met him and became really interested in playing with him and we were happy ever since.
Chris Boothroyd: Which bands do you appreciate and look up to?
William Beckett: Which bands? Smashing Pumpkins. They’re one of the bands which we love.
Chris Boothroyd: You did a cover of one of their songs, what was it like doing that?
William Beckett: A lot of fun.
Adam Siska: Covering ‘Mayonnaise’ was a lot of fun. It’s one of my favourite songs of all time and covering it, I guess was a way to pay tribute to them by doing that song which was really cool. Other bands we respect? There are bands we look up to even now, Foo Fighters. Dave Grohl, he’s just somebody to look up to. All the other bands on our label: Gym Class Heroes, Panic At The Disco, Fall Out Boy because we’re all friends and respect what each other are doing. Oh, and Cobra Starship.
Chris Boothroyd: William, what was it like working with Fall Out Boy on ‘Sophomore Slump Or Comeback Of The Year’ and Gym Class Heroes on ‘7 Weeks’?
William Beckett: It was an honour to be a part of both those albums. I actually just sung something for the new Fall Out Boy album (Folie à Deux) as well. Its fun to collaborations and an honour to be asked by your friends you respect to be on albums because they’re such a personal and important thing, they take their albums seriously and we take our records seriously. It’s fun to be on tour then sing a part that you wrote for their album and collaborated on and have fun with it. For the Gym Class one that was perfect. I was inspired by Travis’ lyrics, he’s a great lyricist and I just wrote in response to what he was going for in the song. It was great fun and a little outside of what we do in The Academy Is… so it was really gratifying and I’d like to do that more often hopefully.
Adam Siska: I’m really excited about the new Jack’s Mannequin record coming out in a week or so. We really happy to have Andrew (from Jack’s Mannequin) to come in and play piano on one of the songs on our new record, like he [William] said it’s a lot of fun to do stuff with your friends
Chris Boothroyd: Do you plan to do those bits live when you can?
Adam Siska: Yeah, we try and do cameos and go onstage where we can, go onstage and have fun with our friends. Unfortunately I don’t have the best voice so it keeps me from coming out and singing, but this guy [William Beckett] here…
William Beckett: You’ve sung with Jacks Mannequin before
Adam Siska: Yes I have
William Beckett: Onstage, in front of people.
Adam Siska: To be quite honest I may have fake singed. They could have put my mic down low. But yeah, I’ve occasionally done rap appearances for Cobra Starship.
William Beckett: You’re a great rapper…
Chris Boothroyd: You’ve played some big shows in America, such as the Honda Civic Tour [alongside ‘Fall Out Boy’, Cobra Starship, +44 and Paul Wall]. What is it like coming over here to the UK playing smaller shows and do you prefer these over the bigger ones?
Adam Siska: We like both sides of it as a band. We’re all big fans of going to small clubs and seeing bands, I’d say more so that seeing bigger bands, but we like both sides of the coin, we like both sides of the pound you could say. The Honda Civic Tour was a lot of fun, it was the most exposure we ever had in America, which was a real fun thing for us playing for people who hadn’t heard of our band before. But to come over here and play The Cockpit in Leeds is one of the most exciting things we can. This is one of my favourite venues in the world, all our shows hear have been a lot of fun. We’ve also played at Slam Dunk Festival here in Leeds in 2006 with Fall Out Boy and Thursday. That show was unbelievable, it was one of my favourite shows, probably better than any show on the Honda Civic Tour. We love playing any venue as long as there are people excited to hear us play.
Chris Boothroyd: Any plans for the show tonight?
Adam Siska: Well last night we played a few songs off the new record we haven’t really done that much.
Chris Boothroyd: Cheers guys, thanks for your time.
Adam Siska: No problem
William Beckett: Thank you.
The interview winds down and the formalities are concluded. Photographs are taken and William and Adam ask if there are any song requests for tonight, to which I reply ‘Skeptics And True Believers’ and a contemplative ‘oooohh’ is given off by Adam leaving some hope that they’ll play one of my favourite songs. As Adam opens the stage door to let me out, William Beckett walks past and is seen by a number of fans still waiting outside; a fanatical wall of noise arises. It may appear to some that The Academy Is… William Beckett considering being the frontman with enough stage presence to fill the biggest venues. Girls want him and honestly, guys just want to be him. Yet getting to know how they tackle writing songs and hearing just how much mutual respect each band member has for the other it is clear that The Academy Is… a cohesive machine, with each member being an integral part, contributing to the fact that The Academy Is… are one of the most exciting bands out there and have a creative and promising future to look forward to.
http://www.fueledbyramen.com/bands/index.php?id=35
Chris Boothroyd.
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