Interview with Ryland Steen, drummer for Reel Big Fish
What are you specifically looking forward to about the Warped Tour? How many times has Reel Big Fish played it?
I’ve been drummer for three years now. The band played Warped Tour in 1997 and 2002. The band is on the every five, six year rotation [with Warped Tour]. It’ll be good. I feel like Reel Big Fish is just as popular today as they were in their heyday. It’s good to do things like this. It gives you a whole new market, a whole new generation of kids.
I’m really excited about playing with the other bands, The Beat Union, Say Anything, The Aggrolites—they’re all good friends. It’s my first [Warped Tour]. I’m definitely excited, being able to hang out with friends all summer long. When you get to know people in bands you never get to see them because they’re in bands, too. From what I understand, it’s just a pretty crazy summer vacation. You play your half hour set, then you are free to do whatever you want.
How does The Warped Tour differ from other festivals you have played?
We always go to Europe during festival season. We played Bamboozle Left Festival [in Irvine, Calif.] a couple weeks ago. These shows are “no sound check, throw instruments on the stage as fast you can and play as many songs as you can” shows. It was Bamboozle’s first time on the West Coast, with a Warped Tour set up: a bunch of stages, a lot of bands.
I would hope to get some sort of jam sessions with other bands going. I can only hope there’s a tent backstage where people can jam. At Lollapalooza backstage they had a big tent where people would just jam. I’d love to have a jam session, double drums with Josh Freeze of The Vandals and Dave Singer of Beat Union singing.
Have you ever played in a venue as big as Mile High Stadium?
I’m guessing it’ll probably actually be in the parking lot, then you get to thinking, “Well, where does everybody park?” I would just tell people to bring lots of sun block and money for water.
Has having so many members in the band over the years had an effect on how the band operates? I would imagine a Les Claypool scenario where whoever’s been there the longest just writes the music and everyone else just plays it.
The three main, original members—Aaron, Scott and Dan—they’re the oldest members, core guys. Aaron has always been the main songwriting force in the band. He’ll come in with the song basically set up and give ideas: you play something like this or that. The actual songwriting he starts with. It’s cool. It works out well. Aaron is one of those guys into suggestions. He’s cool with that—not a dictatorship, more of a democracy. Sometimes it is better to have the one person who picks up the ball and runs with it. The band is happy about current situation.
They’ve been doing it since they were 16, 17 years old. When [RBF’s 1997 mainstream hit single] “Sell Out” came out, the oldest member was 22. If you still put on a great, energetic show and people still like your music, it doesn’t matter your age. The RBF crowd keeps recycling. They get older, they feel they need to listen to more “serious” music, and so they pass our CD’s on to little brothers and sisters. Then they come to shows and the crowd recycles to younger kids. It’s one of the reasons RBF is still just as big today as ten years ago. It has become more of an institution or cult. It’s not about the hit single. People know what to expect, so it works out good for us to keep in with young kids. It’s kinda cool, makes you feel very relevant, and it’ll be fun to do Warped. We’re just as relevant today as ten years ago. We did a summer tour with Less Than Jake last year, and people say ska punk is dead, but we were doing two thousand tickets a night.
What do you think the future holds for Reel Big Fish?
The band still tours six to seven months a year. A month ago we got back from two months in Europe—over 60,000 ticket sales over the whole tour. We’re still going strong. It’s a working band: constantly touring, new fun recording projects, looking at split EPs or a covers record, possibly a tribute to Poison. Also, we’re still touring for our latest, Monkeys for Nothin’ and The Chimps for Free. We’re just gonna keep recording and keep touring. We’re in a great spot right now.