Nick Diener of The Swellers (USA) talks about farewell tour, Soundwave and life on the road

Residing from Flint, Michigan, The Swellers have called it day. With their farewell tours coming up, as well as being part of the massive lineup for Soundwave next year, it’s safe to say that the band will be saying goodbye with a bang. With constant label switching, band members coming and going as well as being broke half the time, Nick Diener has no regrets about anything.

What initially started your passion for music?

“I don’t know. Just having music around the house. Watching MTV, things like that. And then I kind of just kept playing around the keyboard one time and I realised I could play a couple of notes and melodies and I was just completely blown away that I could play what I heard and it was kind of some WWF wrestlers entrance music, like the theme songs and I was like “Oh I need to figure out how to play that on piano” and then next it was Christmas carols and then I was like “Oooh, I’ll figure that out”. But yeah, as the years went on, I was like, keyboard is not exactly rock and roll and I needed to get a guitar so I could play what I could hear on the radio. And yeah, from then on, music was pretty much a full time thing when I was 10 years old when I picked up my guitar for the first time.”

In your band’s journey, many band members kept on coming and going. How did you and your brother deal with this?

“Well my brother kind of dealt with it by freaking out and I dealt with it by being overly optimistic that things we’re going to be okay – that’s how it usually goes. My brother would be going around like “Ahhhh, we’re screwed. This sucks” and I would be like “It’s fine! We’ll all be fine!” when the reality was kind of in the middle of those two reactions but lucky we had enough friends that were just good dudes and good musicians and people referring us to other people. We never really went for that long without having somebody. Like if someone left the band, we would call somebody and then the next day we pretty much have a new band member. I’m not saying that everybody was easy to replace but it was kind of like we always had somebody in the back of our minds. Like hey, if we ever needed a guitar player for some reason we should call Brian or if we ever need a bass player that guy from Canada would be great. It just so happened that we got to be in our band with some of our best buds.”

With constant switching from label to label and going through financial instability, how did you guys find motivation when you were consistently living off pay cheque to pay cheque?

“I think basically all we really had was all the songs we were writing so whenever we had a great new song, we kinda get together and we would get that feeling where we would go, “I wonder what it will sound like if we got this recorded in a studio?” So it was kind of like, “Oh crap, we have to make a record” you know, regardless of if anybody punched it out. So times kinda got tough. Like 2013 was probably that year where we were like “Oh crap, what’s next?” but yeah, we had a bunch of songs and we used our own money and stuff to record in a studio and luckily we signed with No Sleep Records and we put out the record and it all just kind of fell into place. We had the mentality of just doing what you gotta do. We never really made much money as a band like at any point. But yeah, sometimes we were kinda stuck, we would go “where do we go from here? Who’s gonna be putting out the next record? Are we still going to have a booking agent? A manager?” So yeah, it was kind of a lot, we got through somehow.”

You also managed to release a record independently. What made you motivated to try out new things?

“It’s [music industry] a terrible business. It’s a terrible business model. I mean we got four dudes in a band, spending thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars on gas, and plane tickets and then making pretty much that money back plus a little bit and then you’re all excited and then you get home you realise, all this money for taxes, merch debt, or the label wants this [money owing]. You know, it’s a lot of ups and downs and it’s kind of just like, ah, we don’t really know how to do anything else except for make music and being musicians and write songs and make records so we were gonna do this [being in a band] for as long as we could but I think we kind of got comfortable enough as adults and human beings that, we could step away from the band and still be okay and give it a breather.”

What has been the most encouraging thing fans have ever done for you?

“Honestly, just showing up. Just coming to the show at all. It still kind of blows my mind, especially when they tell a friend and they come with a person or two other people. It’s cool that we’re a small enough band. On Twitter, Facebook and whatever, people say stuff like “Are you going to do a meet and greet? Can we take a picture with you and can you sign something?” He exclaims, “We’re not doing a meet and greet! You can just come out and hang out with us. You know, we’re a small enough band and we can actually have a conversation with almost everyone for the people who come and see us. At least until you know, when security wants to kick us all off or something.

“So basically, when we played in New York when we headlined, I just sat on the front of the stage. A bunch of fans came up to me and stood around me and we all just kind of chatted about the band and you know, what we’ve done for them. I kind of talked about what they do for us and we have this great mutual respect and understanding for everything. People who are able to share stories to me of what our music did to them is gratifying. It’s kind of a blessing of being in a smaller band I guess. Being able to have that instant connection with somebody, instead of just reading emails or something like that. I think just the fans being there and actually not being afraid to talk to us is probably the best part about it.”

When it comes to touring, what aspects do you enjoy the most about it?

“Oh man, now that I’m not on the road, I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I really just miss walking up to a random house every night or you know, just one of our friend’s houses or something and sleeping on the floor or couch. Kind of hanging out for a couple of hours before we go out and play. Meet a person everyday and seeing how other people live, just everybody being so hospitable. I think that’s my favourite part. The actual show is kind of boring, you kind of go in and you wait around forever. The only cool part is actually playing and then a couple of minutes when you get to talk to people after the show or whatever. I’m just going to miss not being able to see my friends all the time. Every 2-3 months in between tours we would get to see everybody.”

Do you have any particular tours that stand out for you?

“I can’t think from the top of my head but whenever we talk about people taking care of us, really making sure that, we’re being taken care of as a band. When we came to do Counter Revolution in Australia in 2011 it was really, really awesome. The tour that we did with Paramore, same thing. You know they definitely pampered and took care of us and made sure that we were all comfortable. That’s like the number one thing you don’t get on tour. You don’t really get caring comfort and everybody’s out themselves. You kinda make sure everything is gonna be better for you, it just makes the whole experience so much better.”

With Good For Me’s release, I think it’s super adorable how you guys sent out handmade drawings with every preorder to promote the album. What does this record mean to you?

“When we did that record [Good For Me], our bass player [Anto] is definitely an artist so he’s drawing stuff and just being really silly. I don’t know who’s idea that was, it might’ve been his but you know we just kind of went “we should just do a hand crafted piece of artwork” good or bad included with it just cause at the time it was kinda cool to do things with preorders and it had a lot of things to do with nostalgia and kind of just being brought back to when you were a bit younger and things were easy and better. Having silly drawings with everything seemed to go hand in hand for us and the record so I think that was pretty cool.”

I’m sure you’re keen for Soundwave. When it comes to festival shows, what do you look forward to?

“Just looking forward to hanging out with all of our friends. There’s so many good bands we’ve toured with before, even some friends from back home [Michigan] and they’re gonna be there as well. Last time we did the Soundwave type of tour, we just kind of hung out at the hotel and saw the sites with a bunch of different bands and went to the beach, things like that. So it’s just pretty much non-stop hangouts the whole time.”

What is the most rewarding aspect of being part of a band?

“I think it’s definitely kind of a personal thing that you make the songs, you record ’em and then when you finally hear the final recording, that’s probably the most rewarding thing to me because that’s something that’s gonna probably outlive me. That stuff will last longer before I get to even last and it’s kind of my recorded history of being human I guess. It’s kind of crazy when you look at it that way. It’s cool to be remembered compared to what other people have to do.”

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The Swellers will play Soundwave Festival next year: http://www.soundwavefestival.com/

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