EXCLUSIVE FIRST INTERVIEW WITH MISERY LOVES COMPANY
The seemingly unknown pop-punk quartet Misery Loves Company have decided to go solo with their first major single and self-release it. ‘Save It For Someone Who Cares’ was written by lead vocalist Ryan Williams and was influenced by his high school sweetheart. The band have been busy with getting the single ready for release aswell as preparing for their debut album. Here is an exclusive interview we got with the band.
Misery Loves Company, let’s start from the beginning how and where did you guys form?
Ryan: Well, we’re all Californian born except Shay who is from Boston and during our high school years the music scene in California was huge! So I started playing guitar for a while, I taught myself to play by ear songs of my favourite band Blink 182, this was only the beginning though. In high school I was never much of an athlete or sports man so I used to skip PE. One day when a, I was sitting out on PE this goofy emo kid comes over and starts talking about Blink 182 because I had a Blink shirt on. This goofy kid turned out to be my best friend who I would go on to jam with everyday in his basement! From then on, everything clicked into place like a jigsaw, we saw Josh in Riley’s house playing drums he agreed to play when asked. That was the part when we thought, we could be something. We then got introduced to Shay, by our friend Nate and Shay played bass, we needed a bassist so it made sense to recruit him.
Riley: Y’all can think Blink 182 we formed*laughs*
Who's the ladies-man in the band?
Riley: Im gunna but-in right away to prevent Ryan from telling everyone its him *laughs*. The ladiesman.. thats a tough one actually. Throughout high school it was always Josh, every girl fell for that beautiful smile and his undeniably soft hair *laughs*. But then you had Shay, the ladies love his Boston accent and his Irish relatives.
Ryan: In truth though it probably is me..
Shay: Riley has recently been getting more attention, so watch out for that *laughs*
What was your first ever show like?
Ryan: Well, our first show was... a disaster! At the time none of us could drive so, we we’re drove about by our parents which wasn’t exactly the coolest thing in the world. The first show was at a community event in San Diego and ill let Riley tell you the rest *laughs*
Riley: The rest is a bit of a blur really! I remember being on stage and everyone in the audience were at least 40+... and at the time we we’re a post-hardcore band with a screaming vocalist so you could imagine the reaction. It gets worse though, my guitar amp wouldn’t work, so the band we’re playing without and guitar backing and everyone was just like.. “What.The.Fuck?”. Not our finest moment haha.
Ok, now onto your debut single, can you tell us much about it?
Ryan: Sure. I wrote the song originally back in high school when my girlfriend of 2 years broke up with me. Sad time in my life so I thought, hey, im gunna’ write a song about it. So I did and it turned out really bad so I took it again and re-wrote it and im really proud with what turned out. We broke out the acoustic guitar for it, took it down a gear but brought it back up with a huge climax, the chorus is really strong and powerful.
Have you got any plans to tour in the near future? If so, what destinations can we expect?
Ryan: Yeah thats something we're currently planning. We're at the stage now we're if we tour, we could gain a little more recognition but we wouldn't be able to get our music out. Its a weird situation but we agreed collectively to get a really strong debut release then look forwards from there. As for the destinations, it would really be just local, we would move around the US. We have to think realistically and we realize we are not at a level yet that allows us to tour other countries.
How difficult is it to self-release and self-produce your own music?
Ryan: Its Shay that produced it for us so ill let him answer this.
Shay: Yeah well, it is difficult I did remix songs in my earlier years and I really liked Dj-ing so I knew the basics but yeah it was really tough. The hardest part about it really is funding, its really difficult to find the money to produce the songs well enough.
Would you guys welcome a record deal or would you prefer to self-release?
Ryan: No no we would definitely look into the possibility of one when we feel we are at the right level to be on one. We're an extremely ambitious band but we know the boundaries, we not we aint gunna' conquer the world in a few months.
Josh: Although we are in no rush to get signed, we're enjoying things at the moment.
And finally, how is the debut album coming along and when can we expect it?
Ryan: Its coming along really well actually, we’ve wrote most songs now and we’re just doing a few demos of them. Its a long process, but each of us wrote songs in our youth, and we are kinda re-writing them even better this time for the album so we’re not starting from scratch on every song. We haven’t set a release date yet but we’ll just say “soon”. *laughs* Stay tuned for announcements though via our website regarding the upcoming single!
Misery Loves Company’s debut single ‘Save It For Someone Who Cares’ will be released on the bands website in the coming days.
