By Jillian Locke

“It’s just so weird, when I think about last year it seems so far away in my brain, but it still seems like everything happened so fast,” Dan O’Connor, vocalist and guitarist for Worcester’s own Four Year Strong, reflects. In 2010, FYS joined the Vans Warped Tour, played the Soundwave Festival in Australia, the Slam Dunk Festival in Hatfield and Leeds, and the Bamboozle Festival, and headlined the Tonight We Feel Alive! Tour with Comeback Kid, The Wonder Years, American Fang, and Mountain Man. After nearly a decade of relentless touring and sticking with the vision they shared as junior high and high schoolers, O’Connor, vocalist/guitarist Alan Day, bassist Joe Weiss, and new drummer, Jake Massucco are joining the ranks of Bane, Silent Drive, The Acacia Strain, Killswitch Engage, Shadows Fall, and All That Remains as another local Worcester band who’s made it big and is proudly putting…no, make that keeping!…our city on the map.

This past year FYS kept with the set pace, and ~ along with joining Rise Against and Bad Religion at the House of Blues ~ found themselves right back at the Lansdowne venue last month, where they headlined the Alternative Press Tour with Gallows, Title Fight, The Swellers, and Sharks. On the eighth of this month, they’ll see the release of their fourth studio album, In Some Way, Shape, or Form, out on Universal Republic records. “We’re doing a proper tour for our CD release ~ some of the bigger venues we’ve ever had, and more press than we’ve ever had out.”

OK ~ let’s rewind. Let’s take a step back from the new album and the monster festivals and tours to see exactly at what point the boys realized that something ~ something bigger and monumentally better ~ was happening. “The first time we really felt like things were taking off was 2009 or 2010. We toured with New Found Glory, then we did Reinventing the Wheel with Avalanche. There were actually people there and they actually know the songs and we’re not a few blocks from our house. People actually have our t-shirts on and are singing the words and crawling all over each other. That was the time we had actually realized something bigger was happening,” O’Connor recalls.

This year marks the band’s 10 year anniversary. Way back in 2001, FYS was pounding the chords and the skins, creating a certain unique chemistry that would keep them rolling forward, together. “We were in high school and everybody has their stupid high school band; people change bands a million times and then they finally have their one band that takes off, but we stayed the same band,” says O’Connor. “People say our sound really changed, but it’s like Jake was 13 and in seventh grade when we started. There’s a weird feeling we get about this band because we’ve been together for so long and been working at it for so long ~ we feel like we did it ourselves; it just feels like there’s a lot of pride in it for us and the fact that we can do what we do is amazing.”

They’ve been forging forward together and building their musical family, and the result is an ever-expanding production of off-the-wall friends and the predictable antics and tomfoolery that not only makes for a great time, but for great videos as well. The video for “Tonight We Feel Alive! (On a Saturday)” was a direct result of all of that pride and camaraderie that O’Connor and the boys infuse into everything they do. “We kind of really like to get ridiculous with things like that ~ we always seem to come up with something that makes us laugh a lot and should remain an inside joke, but we kind of just roll with it. We’re all from Massachusetts and we have a lot of New England pride, and just the thought of doing a Revolutionary War video and having that New England/Boston video just always felt cool to us. When we finally found the director [Tom Colella], we talked to him and told him our idea, he just got really stoked on it and we gave him free reign. It was us verses the red coats, and we shot it in three days. We were on our way out to Warped Tour, so we worked it out so that everyone on our bus was in the video too. We’re going to work with Tom again to do a video for our new record.”

Speaking of which, In Some Way, Shape, or Form is a landmark effort and deviation in a few ways. “This record has kind of been a big deal for our band in the sense that this is the first we’re doing as a four piece,” as they parted ways with keyboard player Josh Lyford in April. “It’s the fourth record on our fourth label, and it’s our first as a four piece. We went into studio in January, then took a two month break for the Rise Against/Bad Religion tour, then went back into the studio and slaved over this record more than we ever have. It’s going to sound like FYS but with different twists ~ we really set out to challenge ourselves and evolve ourselves with this one.”

The departure of Lyford meant the departure of synths from the band’s trademark pop-punk/keyboard sound. From 2007’s Rise or Die Trying to their 2009 nostalgic cover album Explains it All and last year’s Enemy of the World, In Some Way, Shape, or Form is set to deliver a new band, a revamped sound, and a new platform from which to deliver it. “We were on Universal Motown, but they sold it not too long ago, and are no longer a label, so now we’re technically on Universal Republic.” As for the path that led them to Universal: “I Surrender was our first label with Rob Hitt, our manager. When we signed to Universal, we explained we still wanted to be partly on I Surrender. Rob has always been another member of the band, and we wanted to technically still have a little piece of us on I Surrender Records. We’ve been a really lucky band because we’ve been able to find a lot of people who have become kind of family to us throughout our career, and we never want to leave anybody behind that’s put a lot of work into the band. We’ve been lucky to work with people and labels who have allowed us to grow our team and take them along with us.”

There’s also another large population that they’d like to see grow with them: their fans. Their recent decision to remove the synth from the band came naturally and organically. “We made the decision while writing the new songs. There just wasn’t any room for the synth. We had been thinking about it for a while, but it just made sense then.” Their approach to the fan’s reactions also came just as easily as the change. “We weren’t nervous about the fans’ reaction, really. I mean, we basically knew how they would react, but at the end of the day, we made the decision we needed to make,” O’Connor asserts.

This mind-frame is consistent with the entire energy through which FYS exists and creates; they do what they want, they play what they want, they put out the records they want, and at the end of the day, they just hope their fans will enjoy the whimsical, high-volume, off-the-wall pop-punk rollercoaster ride they’ve been constructing ~ and join them for the ride. “At the end of the day, we don’t have any regrets in this band, because there’s no point. Of course I know that we owe everything we have to the fans, and I am unbelievably grateful. But this band is still our lives ~ we don’t take days off. Even if we aren’t on tour, it’s all we do. This band has ALWAYS been about having fun and writing the music we want to write. If we did it any different, we’d be lying to our fans.”

So ~ how have the fans reacted? According to O’Connor, “The reaction so far has actually been pretty good. I mean, there are obviously people who aren’t stoked on it, but we knew that was going to happen…but that was the point ~ we wanted to challenge our fans. There have been bands that I’ve loved and lost interest in as they continued to put out records because they never changed or progressed. They became stale. Some of my favorite bands in the world put out records that challenged their fans ~ New Found Glory’s Coming Home, Saves the Day’s Stay What You Are, The Starting Line’s Direction. All of those bands put out a record that showcased their ability to write different types of songs, and most of the time those became my favorite records. The thing that I don’t think some of our fans realize is that just because this record is different than our old stuff doesn’t mean that we are no longer going to play our old stuff, and it boggles my mind. I think with this record and the songs on it, fans will find that we have a more well-rounded live show. Our other two prominent records are full-on up-tempo the entire time. We’ve never written a mid-tempo song before this record, so now when we make a live set, we can make the set actually have rises and dips in different types of energy. Some fans need to realize that this is a RECORD, not a brand new band. We’ve always said, from the moment we did our first interview about Rise or Die, that we would NEVER put out the same record twice. Anyone expecting to hear another Rise or Die, or Enemy of the World, or even In Some Way, Shape, or Form, will be disappointed.”

Self-assured and secure in who they are and want they want, FYS also wants what everyone ~ musician or otherwise ~ wants: to be able to make it on their own, on their own terms. “Our dream is to get to a point where we’re self sufficient ~ working with Republic has been one of the coolest things our band has been able to do, and has opened up a whole new world for us. It actually runs low key, and we never feel left behind. Things are working out really great right now, and we’re really, really excited. We all have really good feelings about things but have no idea what’s come in the next year…we are going to play our annual holiday show in Worcester obviously ~it’s gonna rule! And we’re starting to plan a few overseas things ~ Southeast Asia and Japan in January and February, then probably do what this band does best, and tour tour tour until the wheels fall off!”

But what’s really next for the fearless foursome? “Most likely, we will write a west coast gangster rap record, and will no longer play shows live; we will only play shows via satellite. Also we are all switching instruments. Jake is going to be the next singer of Four Year Strong. Oh, and our name will change to a symbol, most likely it’ll just look like a penis though.”

You heard it here first!

www.fouryearstrongmusic.com

Outdoor photos by Justin Hammond of Flash House Studios | Concert photos by Justin Perry – Four Year Strong perform at the House of Blues, Boston on 10.16.2011