When Mayday Parade released their first EP, Tales Told By The Dead they did what not many unsigned bands have ever been able to do, and they got on Warped Tour and sold 50,000 copies. Now, they’re one of the world’s most celebrated outfits of their genre and I got to have a chat with guitarist Alex Garcia just before they left for their Australian tour. We spoke about all things independent sales right through to what it’s like to now be a signed, touring band. Check it out below.
Hey Alex, you’re speaking with Craig from Beers with the Band in Sydney Australia, how’s it going?
Good man, how are you?
Yeah good thanks mate! First of all, happy birthday for recently!
Thank you very much, I appreciate that.
Are you one of those guys who likes to celebrate your birthday for as long as possible?
I don’t think for a long time, but I like to celebrate for, y’know, around it, absolutely!
Of course, make the most of out of it! So, sold out shows in Australia already! Are you guys getting excited?
Yeah, I’m very excited! I think it’ll be a lot of fun. I love coming to Australia, so yeah, I’m very excited about it.
What’s your favourite place when coming to Australia? What sticks out for you the most?
The beach is always good. Any beach. I’ve been to the beaches in Perth and in Sydney, but the people are always really nice. I think Melbourne is my favourite city to visit.
Yeah, I agree there
It’s just a great place in general.
Well you guys have been here for Soundwave as well, and I guess you’ve heard the news that Soundwave isn’t a festival anymore. Out of all the festivals in the world, which one would you say has to come to Australia?
Hmmm. Well, I think the obvious one is Warped Tour.
*laughs*, yeah, perfect!
Yeah, Warped Tour would be awesome for Australia. I wonder if that’s gonna’ be a thing or not?
Yeah, who knows man. It’d probably be really hard to bring all the bands that go on Warped Tour to Australia. I don’t think logistically that would be able to happen.
Well they’ve just done a smaller, scaled back Warped Tour in England and Alaska as well. We didn’t do it, but this year they did it.
Speaking of Warped Tour, you guys have wrapped up another one, how do you survive such a long tour?
Well, I mean honestly playing in the band is one of the easiest jobs on the tour. But uh, I dunno. I kind of like to get into a routine and stick with it, so once I find a routine I usually try to find my place and kind of stick to a routine and focus on that. It’s honestly a little troubling to leave the tour when you break that routine, y’know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah of course. I mean you’re gonna’ break the routine as soon as the tour is over, so how does it feel to get back into normal life?
It is a little weird to go back into the real world, so to speak. Yeah, it’s kind of like a little period of readjusting, y’know?
Yeah, of course. Did you guys get to check out any Australian bands on Warped Tour at all?
I’m friends with Tonight Alive, those guys are great. And I made friends with the With Confidence guys.
Oh, nice! Yeah they’re a lovely bunch of kids.
Yeah, they’re really nice!
Warped Tour was kind of their first big overseas adventure, did you show ‘em the ropes?
Yeah, I tried to. It’s exciting to see anybody new to Warped Tour come and try to do it and see their reaction to it.
Yeah, how would you say they went on tour?
I would say they did pretty well. I mean they definitely have a lot of buzz about them and have a lot of people’s attention. And that’s a great thing, I mean that’s more than what a lot of other bands have on Warped Tour, so I feel like they have a leg up. I hope they had a really good time!
Yeah, it seems like they did really, really well and they loved it. Being on tour, do you guys get a little bit messy with any tour pranks?
No, no tour pranks, I think we were never that kind of band. We have a little bit, but not really. Nothing too crazy in the past couple years. If we’re going on last, whatever we do to the other bands, they can retaliate *laughs*.
What goes around comes around, right?
Exactly!
Let’s speak about the music! You guys released your debut EP Tales Told By The Dead, which sold 50,000 copies without any label support. How the heck did you guys do that? It’s amazing!
Well we sold 11,000 on Warped Tour in 2006, so that was kind of the thing was that we were able to sell that many CD’s on Warped Tour, and that really helped jump start our career.
Yeah, for sure. Do you have any words to say to any young and up and coming bands that want to achieve this kind of goal independently?
Well, I know it’s a lot harder to do that on Warped Tour now, but I think the basic attitude is still viable where you gotta’ hustle. If you hustle and try and really work, you just get out and do it. I mean, we dropped out of school and quit our jobs and all that. I’m not saying to quit your job or drop out of school *laughs*, but I think at the end of the day we sacrificed a lot and worked really, really hard and hustled to try to figure out any way that we could do it.
So definitely don’t quit your jobs and drop out of school and just go on Warped Tour, but if you can, maybe do that?
Yeah, maybe *laughs*. No I think we were smart about it. We knew the risk, but we knew that we could make money and do Warped Tour at least. We knew that for sure because we had a member of Mayday Parade do that the year before with a different band, so some of the members of the band already had experience doing that. So it wasn’t like ‘oh, let’s hope we can make any money or actually do this’, it was calculated.
Yeah, for sure. Smart risks! Well you guys released Black Lines back in 2015, are you guys one of those bands that are just constantly writing new music? Or do you just tour and then when it comes to write you knuckle down and get in the studio?
I think that we are a band that’s always writing. Everyone writes individually in the band, everyone’s always actively doing it.
Have you guys got anything special lined up for this tour? Maybe play some new, unreleased tracks?
I’m sure we’ll do something special, I mean this will be the first time that we’ve been in Australia with Black Lines, so we’ll definitely play a lot of that but we definitely want to play some old songs, too.
Perfect! Well, we’ve all been super excited about this tour for a while!
Yeah, I’m excited, man! I always love being in Australia.
Thanks so much for your time, man.
Thank you for your time! I really appreciate it.