New York pop-punk band, State Champs have had a busy two years since releasing their debut album, The Finer Things. It’s hard to imagine how far they have come since 2013 and it’s clear that they pretty much gave it their all to be where they are now. After several international tours and countless opportunities, they managed to successfully give a refreshing sound to the pop-punk scene. Although my teenage years are long over, I’ll always have a soft spot for emerging pop punk bands who have a good sense of humour and show passion for their music. In this interview, guitarist and backing vocalist, Tyler Szalkowski shares details about the upcoming second album, the sacrifices he has made in pursuing his dreams and more. Read on for the full interview.
I remember absolutepunk promoted your single “Easy Enough” and since then your fanbase has expanded a lot. How has this debut album shaped the band’s career so far?
The debut album has pretty much shaped us – I mean it’s gotten us to where we’re at right now. We just went in and put our best foot forward and never expected it to get this crazy and to get this far. I mean, it’s really shaped our entire future – like all the momentum we have going into this next record is all thanks to the reception from the first record. We dropped that record and it was our first full-length record. I mean we’re all pretty young – we’re all like in our mid-20s so the first time making a full-length record, we did our best and people seemed to dig it. I think we’ve kinda set the bar high so we really have to deliver on this next one but I like having that problem – I think it’s like a really good problem to have [chuckles].
Reception-wise for The Finer Things was really well-received – I really enjoyed it. In this second album, did you feel pressured into making it sound good or did you just go with how it was sounding and took it from there?
There is some pressure to do well and to put out a good record. We’re pretty in touch with our fanbase and a lot of our die-hard fans are saying things like, “How are you going to top this record like The Finer Things? It was so good – it meant so much to me.” I was nervous, I was like shit – hopefully we can deliver here, you know. I’m also the kind of guy who works better under pressure so I think having that pressure and having those thoughts in the back of my mind helped me come up with a better record and better songs. I think it’s kinda having something to lose you know – a lot of people are like, “Oh, you’ve got nothing to lose. Put out a record, whatever,” but we don’t wanna disappoint or anything like that. Going back to your first question on how our debut has shaped us – it’s shaped where we’re at and we like where we’re at and we love playing music for people and all that stuff and we wanna keep that going. You need to produce a good record and not blow it. I think we definitely have the pressure – it’s definitely there but we just kinda went with it. I think all of us work better under pressure – I think that’s a good thing, you know [chuckles].
Yeah, I know many people work better under pressure because obviously you wanna meet deadlines and achieve certain goals as well. What I’m finding is that pop-punk bands tend to release album after album and then sound really stale. What did you guys do differently in your second album?
I feel like with The Finer Things– we wrote like nine new songs for it and borrowed two from an EP just to make it eleven song; it was definitely more of a hurried record and it was a little rushed on all sides. With this one, it wasn’t rushed and we took our time with it. We had a lot more resources, a lot more time to work in general and we definitely spent a lot more time writing the songs and we experimented a little bit. We have one song from the record and we call it the oddball song – it’s kind of an alternative song – it reminds me of Anberlin or Acceptance or something – we love those bands. Why not write a jam or that kind of sound from other bands? You don’t have to be this stale thing – you don’t have to be that kind of band. You can be whatever you want. There’s definitely some songs that push the boundaries. Someone told me that when you’re pretty much making a record, you have maybe eight or nine core songs that sound like your band then you should push the limits on some songs – maybe write a more poppier song and a darker or heavier song. We kinda wrote like two or three songs pushing in different directions to see if people vibe with it, you know.
I know most bands [in the pop punk scene] sound similar. I think experimentation is pretty much key as well as consistency, so you wanna keep that original sound but you also wanna take new elements to make it sound fresh.
Yeah for sure. There’s no point pigeonholing yourself like, “We’re a pop-punk band – we can only write songs and the Key is D. We’re only gonna play like drop-tuned guitars.” The way I look at it is, at the end of the day, you’re the one that’s gonna be buried with this record. You’re gonna look back and say, “I made this record.” People will forget it probably but you’re the one who’s gonna be like, “Man, what if we tried to do something differently? What if we tried to write a song that sounds a bit different? What if we tried to experiment?” And I really dislike ‘what ifs’ so we just went for it [chuckles].
Yeah, sometimes you just have to drop everything and just go for it and that’s how you succeed in life.
It is. You just gotta be bold – it’s really what it is.
I read in a past interview that you dropped out of school because you wanted to fully commit to this band. Would you say things would be a lot different for State Champs if you stayed at school?
Yeah 100%. Derek[DiScanio] and I dropped out of school. I was like on-track with an American History Degree and Derek was going for graphic design. In the early stages, dropping out was a really big deal. My parents weren’t happy but they understood – even my advisor at university. My advisor from uni was like, “You should drop out.” Turns out he was this punk/hardcore fan – Fugazi shows and all that stuff and I was like, “Really? You used to be into that stuff?” He’s like, “Oh man, I love punk.” So it was a crazy thing and I told him, “Listen man. I can either go on tour or I can go to school, I don’t think I can do both.
Online schooling is really hard.” and he was like, “Listen man. You should just go for it – just drop out. You could always come back. You can probably do online schooling but I’d rather see you go out there – live your dream, have a blast, touring and then come back and we can do some classes in four, five or ten years – whatever it might be and then you’ll get your degree. He really helped me drop out of school which was funny cause he get’s paid by the school to keep people in the school. He convinced me to drop out and follow my dreams and I’m just like, “This is awesome. This is exactly the edge I needed.’
So I go home and tell my parents that I won’t be going to school. Overall, they weren’t happy but they totally understood. If we didn’t do that [drop out of school], we would’ve missed out on so many opportunities and I was like a year out so if we didn’t tour for an entire year. We would’ve missed out on so many networking opportunities – all of the friends and bands we would’ve made. There would’ve been just so much we wouldn’t get much to experience or learn and I think that all of this is one culmination of everything that has happened. Without that year of touring – who’s to say we’d be here or that anyone would even care for our band? Because maybe they wouldn’t have found out about us ’cause we didn’t play their show that they were going to, you know what I mean? I think it was very important and probably one of the most scariest things of my life; just abandoning all security, dropping out of university and joining a band and touring in a band. It was worth it all though and it definitely paid off.
Of course. You probably weren’t expecting that support from your lecturer/tutor. It’s awesome that he actually encouraged you to just follow your dreams. I think you need that support especially if you’re going after something that’s either a hit or miss.
One thing I attribute from our success is how awesome our parents are. All of us have really great parents- you have this really strong support system at home and they aren’t charging you for rent. You have them and they’re there to lift you up and I think without having our parents to be as supportive as they’ve been would be much, much harder.
Yeah. Nowadays society pressures young people to do well in life. Those pressures add to yourself and you have all these doubts in the beginning especially when you’re following your dreams. Obviously when you get the support that you need from your family and friends, it sort of helps and it’s encouraging.
Society is all about – something I read on the internet is – one of the biggest mistakes you can make is thinking you have to have your life figured out in your 20s and it’s like, I’m 23 years old – I don’t need to know what I’m doing for the rest of eternity. There’s so much time to be normal later. Another quote I really like is, “You have eternity to spend inside the box,” that sounds grim but someday you will die and you will be in a box so you have eternity to spend it there; you may as well think outside of it now.
Absolutely. I know this sounds really cliché but you only live once.
You really do. I mean, if you think about it, if I never dropped out, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Yeah I know! How crazy is that? That is insane [laughs].
[laughs] It is. Wild thing.
I know you guys had a great time last year. You did such an awesome spin to “Stay The Night” for the Punk Goes… album and then you also made a cheeky little acoustic EP. Do working on different projects keep the ball running when it comes to the creativity of the band?
For sure. The “Stay The Night” thing we did in like a day and we just kinda banged it out. It’s always like whenever you jump back into things, you see how quickly you can just pump out material. I think with each and every record and song you write, you start getting better at it. Doing that Acoustic EP, I came up to Derek and went, “Hey man, we have to write two new songs for this. How are you doing?” And he was like, “No this is exactly what I need. I really needed to get back into it – writing some more songs.” To him, it’s kind of therapeutic because he writes all the lyrics. I think he was just really in need of something like that ’cause you spend two years between record cycles and it kinda get’s ‘bleh’ you know? You’re just stagnant on your creativity and more so just doing live stuff. Doing little projects definitely helps keep the creative ball rolling upstairs. We’re always writing anyway – we always write songs, here and there. When we’re home from tour after a couple of weeks, we’ll get together and write. You just have to keep it going ’cause otherwise, I think you’re gonna go crazy [chuckles].
For sure. I found this freaking hilarious but I was watching an episode of the skit series on Alternative Press, “The Shot Boys.” The episode about the crocs – that killed me, man [laughs]. How did this series come about?
We definitely have a pretty good sense of humour – we’re like huge fans of Seinfeld and Arrested Development and all of that stuff – it’s all stupidly dry humour but as long as you sell it – it’s funny. We tried to have fun with it and essentially we had brought out the videographer, Elliott Ingham – the guy who shot it and he was like, “Guys, I’m so tired of making the same old tour vlog with like footage and footage of you eating. Let’s just do something fun.” So Ryan [Graham] was like, “We should do a sitcom!” Ryan basically took this and ran with it and he wrote all the scripts out. We wanted to do something different and just change it up and I think kids would either think we’re absolute idiots or that we’re funny but that’s good enough for me [laughs].
Seeing as you’re playing a couple of stadium shows with 5 Seconds of Summer (5SOS) as well as some intimate shows next week, what would you say has been the biggest learning curve for you guys while on tour?
I mean, this next tour will be our biggest learning curve because we just finished up a tour with All Time Low which was incredible – it was like the best tour we’ve ever done. Everyone was really nice but even getting used to those rooms for two to five-thousand capacity was challenging; but these 5 Seconds of Summer shows are like eight-thousand to like eighteen to fourteen [thousand], depending on which venue. We’ve been at home googling photos of the venues, thinking like, “Oh my god – how is this gonna happen?”
Aside from that stuff, I think the biggest learning curve was probably when we first started touring; you kinda have to learn how to tour. You have to learn tour etiquette and there’s a lot of unwritten stuff that bands don’t really talk about. Things as simple as if you’re an opening band, don’t park your van at the venue – specific stuff like that. There’s like a lot of etiquette that we had to like learn and pick up on and we had bands that helped us on our first tour. We had like Knuckle Puck and Forever Came Calling really whipped us into shape and showed us the ropes. Once you learn it – it’s like you get it. You leave home with your backpack and your clothes, your laptop and your headphones and you’re good to go.
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State Champs will be supporting 5 Seconds of Summer on their Australian tour starting this week. Dates are below:
Saturday June 20th – Allphones Arena – Sydney, Australia
Tuesday June 23rd – Entertainment Centre – Brisbane, Australia
Thursday June 25th – Rod Laver Arena – Melbourne, Australia
Saturday June 27th – Entertainement Centre – Adelaide, Australia
Monday June 29th – Perth Arena – Perth, Australia
For ticket details, visit: http://premier.ticketek.com.au/
Plus they will also be doing their own headline shows!
Friday June 19th, The Bald Faced Stag – Sydney LIC AA
Sunday June 21st, The Cambridge Hotel – Newcastle LIC AA
Monday June 22nd, The Brightside – Brisbane 18+
Friday June 26th, The Evelyn Hotel – Melbourne 18+
Ticket details can be found through here: http://www.oztix.com.au/
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