Story Of The Year
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Story Of The Year

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That tour comes to Australia in late June, taking in the three main cities on the eastern seaboard. Lead guitarist, founding member and budding documentary film maker Ryan Phillips, speaking from his home in St Louis, is very happy about the prospect of returning to Australia for the first time in quite a while.

“Oh dude, I’m so excited man,” he states sincerely. “We’ve been doing this for a long, long time, and Australia’s been one of our biggest and best fan bases and most enthusiastic markets worldwide. We love it dude, we love your country.”

No stranger to our shores at all, Ryan struggles to remember just how many times they have toured our country. However, he has some very vivid, if slightly corny, memories of previous trips the band has made Down Under.

“I was thinking about that before I got on the phone. I was trying to figure out just how many times I’ve been there. Somewhere between four and maybe seven?” he hesitates, laughing. “We’ve been there maybe five, six times. Something like that.”

“I’m American, and super fuckin’ cheesy, but one of the things that we always do when we come there is always go to the zoos where you can hold koala bears, and see crocodiles and kangaroos and all that super cheesy touristy shit,” he recalls, laughing again. “Where I come from, we don’t have anything like that. You guys have all these crazy poisonous animals and koala bears and we don’t have anything like that. I’m not embarrassed to say that we love that shit.”

The tour is a continuation of the ten-year celebrations of the release of their debut album, and again they will be playing that album in its entirety on this Australian trip. However, Ryan tells us that fans of the albums that followed need not be concerned, as the band are playing a rather long set and including several tunes from subsequent releases.

“We play the whole album, but we like to throw in other songs, some of the other fan favourites, we’ll probably switch shows up on a nightly basis,” he foretells. “It’s awesome, I grew up with these songs, and that album kinda changed my life. That album is the reason I’m talking to you right now, it’s also the reason I’ve been to Australia five or six times. So to re-visit those songs and re-record them and play them on a full tour, it’s been really awesome.”

The band’s debut album is more than a decade old now, and in fact you can trace the origins of this band back to the mid-‘90s, but Ryan’s enthusiasm for the band and music in general is still flowing out of him.

“I feel fucking great, dude!” he states. “I still love being onstage, I still love music as much as I ever have, and I’m still as passionate about creating art and music. I don’t know man, I’m just stoked. I feel good!”

And music is not the only creative pursuit that Ryan is involved in. He also has his first documentary film coming out soon, which he has made with the band’s bass player Adam Russell. In fact, he is combining his love of music with this newfound interest in movie making.

“We’re wrapping it up now,” he explains. “We crowdfunded the whole thing. It’s a film about this digital revolution, and the effects of the technology on music and art, and kinda where we go from here, and what the future is for this crazy, fucked up, awesome industry that we’re all in.”

They have no release date for the film yet, but it will be released at some stage this year. Despite the fact that the band members all have other projects on the go, Phillips tells us that there are stirrings of a fifth Story of the Year album happening as we speak.

“There’s a lot of stuff going on with us, but we have been talking about starting that new record,” he says. “We’ve been passing music back and forth, so there is music in the works, and hopefully we have a fifth record, at least on the way by the end of the year. I can’t say what form it will take at this point, or anything about its direction, but that’s definitely on the cards.”

Any parting words for your many Aussie fans in the lead-up to the tour? “Honestly, just a great big thank you for sticking with us, in this day and age it’s not too easy, and Australia has defied the odds,” he gushes. “You guys have been such a loyal and strong fanbase. I stay in touch with a lot of Australian fans on Twitter and Instagram and all that, and it’s just amazing that the fire is still burning. I’m excited to come back, man, it’s one of my favourite places on earth.”

BY ROD WHITFIELD