American post-hardcore/indie rock band Polar Bear Club having been making waves in the UK rock scene for a few years now and show no signs of stopping. On their recent European tour vocalist Jimmy Stadt took time out to speak to Push To Fire.
Lee: So how's the tour been?
It's been good. The tour started in England and then went to Europe. Five shows left. We flew into London and did a BBC session, went to Ireland and then Manchester, Norwich and on from there.
First time over in Ireland?
That was our first time in Ireland. We've been to England four times now. And we've been to Germany I think twice. We did Austria and Belgium, Holland..we'd been there once before. And the German shows were kind of the 'surprise' shows - they went really well and we didn't know quite what to expect. And England is always awesome!
I was going to say, are you starting to get expectations of what you'll get over here?
There are certain expectations but one thing I've learned also being in a band is you can't rely too much on them. I mean there's even places in America that we kill it at you know and then we'll go through once and it'll be really bad. So I always set my standards low! (laughing) That's the best way to go! But England is, surprisingly good to us. I think there's a lot of bands that have a hard time breaking this kind of scene here, American bands at least. But we were kind of lucky.
You seem to get bigger and bigger each time you come over.
I think this tour too particularly is a really good tour. Title Fight... and Shook Ones as well, a really solid punk band. We just wanted to put something together, really good you know, make America jealous of all these awesome American bands we're touring with. In Europe and England I think we definitely did that. I think that makes you guys maybe feel a little bit special? I dunno.
No that's good so the other thing now is you've been touring this album for so long. I'm guessing that's still going really well or have you got sick of playing it yet?!
No...those songs...it's weird, the album's been out since September and the songs have been written for almost a year now. We started writing last winter. And I still think of them as new songs.
So there's still that enjoyment?
Yeah, there's a couple of them which have sort of become part of Polar Bear Club and a part of the set and have been accepted generally. But then there's a couple of songs here and there that did well here, other ones did well here..
So do you find that if you're playing the States or you're playing mainland Europe and here certain songs will get a different reception?
Yeah. Well, we also just did our first Australian tour. That tour was really weird to us because those crowds were really 'new song' crowds. Like they almost didn't know the old songs, and I'm not used to that at all. I'm used to the kind of slow build of going to certain cities on every album and having a repertoire of songs you can play. But we were playing so many new songs in Australia because that was just what they knew and responded to. And the same with most of Germany too. That was really 'new song' driven. England and America though - definitely more about the older songs. I mean we try and walk the middleground - honour the old stuff. But we're here on this new album so we sort of have an obligation to that as well.
So how long have you been on Bridge Nine Records now?
About a year and a half. I think we signed with them the August before last? It's been a while. It's weird. I don't consider Polar Bear Club in league with the other bands that have been on the label. Those were the bands I loved - Champion, Carrion and American Nightmare. And I think Have Heart in the modern take on that and then some. I think Polar Bear Club is sort of 'wild child' and I think signing us I think Bridge Nine was hoping to branch out... I think. And we help them and they help us... they help us a lot more!
So you were in Europe before this and obviously you were here before that and you seem to be touring non-stop. Once you finish here, you're in Canada with Every Time I Die?
We get home from this and then we have three days off and then we have a month in Canada with Every Time I Die and Four Year Strong.
Are you just in that zone of touring non-stop at the moment?
Especially with bands at our level and even bigger, this is the only way we can make money - by touring. We're not making money off record sales. Touring is the only way we can sustain ourselves. And it's also that there's a double edged sword to it - everyone will tell you this - when you're touring you get about 2-3 weeks into a tour and you are saying to yourself "Jesus Christ, get me home, I need a day off, I need to get home". And then you go home and it's good for about two or three days and then it's "get me on the road, get me on the road". You're just constantly being pulled in the direction you're not going. But we're young and we want to do it as hard as we can - give it its due, you know, due time and do as much touring as we can. This tour with Every Time I Die is actually pretty cool because it's a lot of cities in the US that we've never played before, if you can believe that. But even after that we have a good three weeks off and then we start the festivals in May. That's gonna be awesome cos we're not doing any shows in the week, we're just doing weekend festivals. It's gonna be cool and those things pay well too! So it's like we don't even have to do the shows during the week.
It's kind of the best of both...
Yeah! That is gonna be the best of both worlds. And then Warped Tour's gonna be hard.
Are you doing the whole lot or just half?
Yeah we're doing half - the first half, the first month.
The Every Time I Die tour will be interesting as they're a bit of a contrast to you. Have you done some shows like that previously?
We sort of pride ourselves in the ability to do those diverse tours like that. This tour we're on now is the most uniform tour we've ever done in terms of the way each band sounds. But we've done tours with Gaslight Anthem and Frank Turner, and we've done tours with Cancer Bats and Have Heart. And we can do that and we're lucky that we can slip around from genre to genre. But I like it and I think kids like it too - more than people would expect because it's just difference. I don't wanna see a show that is - every band sounds the same. But yeah we're definitely the odd ball on the Every Time I Die tour for sure... cos opening is Trapped Under Ice, then us, then Four Year Strong and Every Time I Die. We've done a tour with Four Year Strong before and we were worried about it but it proved to be one of the best tours we've ever done so I'm hoping this'll be the same.
Any other plans after Warped Tour?
We were just talking about that actually. We're loosely trying to come back over here, towards the end of the summer, maybe do some festivals... hopefully Leeds Festival. That seems to make the most sense. You kind of go next where you weren't just. So I guess that sort of makes the most sense in that point in time.
Any plans to try and head out anywhere else like Japan or anywhere like that?
That is on our list I mean, for sure, Australia was on the list and we've just checked that off and we tried to attach Japan just right to it, but it didn't work out. Yeah I wanna go do Japan... we were supposed to do Russia a couple of months ago but it fell through, but yeah Japan definitely, we'll get there soon for sure.
Well that's pretty much it. Thank you for you time.
Of course. Thank you.
