You were either jamming hard to Reel Big Fish in your earlier years or you might have Googled the band name upon first learning about the group from the Dillo Day announcement. Whether or not you know them, get it here straight from the source.
North by Northwestern caught up with Ryland Steen, drummer of Reel Big Fish, who took a day off from recording a new album in Orange County to talk about the ska community, what to expect on Saturday and how their new album is coming along. Oh, and getting really drunk at Reel Big Fish shows too.
For all the students who aren’t familiar with Reel Big Fish, could you give me a little history of the band?
The band got going all the way back in ‘91 with the original bassist Matt Wong and the singer Aaron Barrett. It was sort of the typical way most bands get going in high school: You’ve got nothing else to do. If you don’t play sports and you want to be popular then you’ve got to play music. The whole scene that was going on in Orange County around the early '90s was the ska thing was really coming back again. There was this great energy involved and a great scene that was really starting to happen. And who doesn’t want to be part of a fun time? So that’s how the band got the sound that they have. The band has always been real loud and proud about being a ska band.
The band has had this mission statement to be very hands on, very DIY to bring the music to the people, which is why we’re on the road so much. It’s all about putting out great music and being part of that ska scene and doing our part to help keep it alive.
For all of the students here not accustomed to ska music, how would you tell them to get ready for your set?
What you can expect at a Reel Big Fish show is a good time. We’re the sort of band where we like to have a good time, we like to party, we like high energy, and our fans like that as well. It’s not shoe-gazer music at all. You better come prepared. You better be caffeinated and wear your dancing shoes. It can be a bit of a circus on stage sometimes and we like to get the audience involved as much as we can.
You’ll be playing outside in the sun on Saturday to a lot of people who aren’t familiar with ska music. How will you get people to skank?
We definitely try to get the crowd going with the skanking. We try and do the Reel Big Fish classics that get the crowd going. It’s funny though, because people don’t necessarily know how to skank, I feel like it’s one of those things where you look around the audience and see what other people are doing. We’re just happy with any form of positive moment. Sometimes we do a brief skanking lesson for all of the audience members who don’t know, so maybe we’ll have to do that this weekend so we re-educate some of those people.
Once Mayfest announced you were coming, I’ve had multiple encounters with ska fans here at Northwestern in the past few days that I would have never guessed were ska fans. But I also have friends who have overtly loved your music for over a decade. Why do you think the ska community so disjointed like that?
It is an interesting sort of thing. We mention Reel Big Fish to people and you get one extreme or the other for a response. People say, “We love Reel Big Fish” or they say, “I have no idea who that is.” The good news is – and this is one of the main reasons the band has lasted as long as it has – is that someone who has never even heard of the band before can come to our live show and have a good time. I think the music has a universal quality that is able to engage anyone who comes to the show.
At one of your shows, at least five years ago when I was an impressionable young teen who played trumpet in my own ska band, there was a trumpet player who chugged an entire bottle of Jack Daniel's on stage and then played the rest of that show. Who was that, and was that real?
[Laughs] Yeah, that was Tyler Jones, he’s actually not in the group anymore. He definitely liked to party and I think it’s probably safe to say he actually did down a whole bottle of whiskey. I’m not advocating heavy drinking by any means but that guy could definitely suck back a lot of alcohol. I don’t think I was at that particular show but I wouldn’t doubt that he drank a whole bottle of whiskey.
Dillo Day at Northwestern is known for, at least among the students, everyone getting drunk and enjoying it from 8 in the morning to 10 at night. It’s the day we say we act like a state school. So don’t be too surprised if you see a few people stumbling around in the back of the crowd.
We’ve played a shows like that before and it’s pretty crazy because it becomes almost a weird zombie type thing that just takes over when someone is drinking all day. Their brain is not quite there and the body is just moving itself around and it’s pretty funny. Just try and stay hydrated, I guess that’s all I would say.
So you have a new album coming out. When will it be released?
We’re hoping to get it out by summer time, within the next six weeks to two months. The recording is dangerously close to being finished. I actually have to go into the studio tomorrow to do some last little percussion bits. It’s exciting; we haven’t put out a new album of original material in a while. The music has this sort of reckless abandon that the band hasn’t had in a while. We’re harkening back to the Turn the Radio Off days, where the music is really spastic and crazy. I’d guess you’d call that getting back to your roots. It’s been really exciting recording this album.
A lot of your songs have a story or hit you over the head with what you’re trying to say. Is there anything like that on the new album?
Only Aaron [Barrett, guitarist and lead vocalist] knows what the songs are really about. Lyrically, the songs still have that typical Reel Big Fish sarcastic and sort of hateful lyrics but in a sort of just kidding sort of way. Aaron said it best once: "When you think of Sour Patch Kids. At first you start to eat it and you get a bit of a sting. But after a while you start to smile and it’s sort of endearing and somehow it just all works."
Will you be playing any new songs for us on Dillo Day?
It’s always a weird thing playing new songs before an album comes out. But I know we’ll sneak two or three new songs in. And as people start to get to know the new music more, we’ll bring in more and more of our new songs. But it’s just so hard because we have so many records at this point and there are so many songs people want to hear and we can only play so many songs. But we’ll definitely be throwing in a few new songs. We’re still always going to be doing the hits that everyone wants to hear though.