What’s the Orlando scene like?
We’ve got so much respect for it because we grew up, born and raised Orlando kids. I’ve been around the whole country numerous times already, and I just haven’t found a city I’ve loved even close to Orlando. So that love we have, no city is going to match up to it, so we love hometown shows. We’ve been in a band since I was thirteen-me, Chris & Jay in 2003. We’ve been playing and just trying to prove to our loyal fans that we’re all about progress and taking one step at a time, instead of just throwing ourselves up to the top because once you’re at the top you can’t get any higher so you’re going to come down, so we’re just building up and we’ve always done that. It’s paying off because every Orlando show we’ve had for the past year has sold out. It’s really cool to us because we won this Woodie Award and all this cool stuff, and it all means something but in the end it’s not going to get us anywhere more than where we’re at.
How did you end up on Hopeless Records?
They hit us up, Eric Turban, hit us up on MySpace. We basically ran our band on MySpace because we did everything DIY for years, and then we kept in contact because we were looking for a label, and I think they saw that we were working hard. Of course there was a lot of doubt because we’re real young--we were younger back then, and not as established--I mean we’re not established right now but we’re working on it. We were talking to labels for seven and eight months and Hopeless never left our side. Louis, the owner--everybody else we were talking to we were talking to A&R’s. They were promising all this stuff but the owner of Hopeless was promising all this stuff. We saw through the passion that he had that he was such a heart felt guy and I felt for him and he felt for us. He was so passionate about our band, and that’s all we looked for--an underdog, because we’re an underdog too, and Hopeless is perfect, I mean they have All Time Low and they’ve been doing great on that. Instead of going to a major--we ruled out majors way before going to Hopeless. They’ve just been the perfect fit, I feel like we’re really just going to build something together."
I know you’re all very young. Did you all finish high school?
We all finished high school. I got accepted to an arts college. We were balancing the band in high school with our studies and that was really tough. I felt all this pressure in high school in my senior year because no one really understood how serious we took the band until some of my teachers came out to shows. School’s always there, it can wait. This can’t. I’m 19. We’re young, we’re only going to get older and lose energy so we have to take advantage right now of what we gotta do for the dreams we have.
Are your parents supportive?
110%. We wouldn’t be where we are right now without our parents. They financially backed us, morally backed us. They’ve supported us always from the beginning. I think they’re our number one fans.
Are things different now when you go home than 3 or 4 years ago?
The only reason it’s different is because we’ve grown and just gotten older, just like anybody else that would be off at college coming home. We’re at a different state than we were a couple years ago, everything’s going to be different. It’s not like we go home and everyone is bowing down at our feet, or anything, not even close, we don’t ask for that ever. We don’t want people doing that. We’re just normal ass dudes just doing we have dreams about. Going home we feel the love, Orlando backs us because we’ve played there since we were 13, and they see our loyalty to the city, so they have loyalty toward the band."
If you could go on a dream tour with bands alive or dead who would you go out with?
Other read artists, there’s a lot of BS coming out of music nowadays. I think some of the more legendary stuff is who we aspire to share the stage with. We’d be on top of the world if we got to open for The Foo Fighters or Jimmy Eat World. Bands that have been true to music, but have really gone up to this crazy scale of popularity. It’s cool because it shows that you can take real music to a big scale. It’s not like you have to sell out to be big. Selling out is just giving up who you really are."
What are you doing after this tour?
We’re gonna go home and finish up our record. All the tracking is about 85% done. We’re planning on doing some stuff before Warped Tour because Warped Tour we’re going to be on for the whole summer so it’s going to be a nice long trip. We did only 4 days consecutively last year, and we saw all the work that is put into it. This year we’re going to be allot more fortunate, we’re going to be in a bus for the first time in our lives.
Who are you recording with?
James Wisner again, he’s done our two EP that have been previously. He’s great for a band like us. All of us are very hands on with what we do musically. Image and touring just backs the music, and he understands that, and he’s like 35 minutes down the road so we’ve developed a cool relationship with him. He’s not this big egotistical guy even though he has a gold record on his wall, production a part of his soul, just like music is a part of ours."
Where do you see yourself in five years?
"It’s hard, because sometimes I see all these people out there who’ve really done it and are living the life as far as being stars. We’re out here to reach a certain level--I don’t want to say we’re going to sell out who we are, but it’s hard to tell, because I love stability. I can’t wait to one day have my own family and to have a wife and to really just rely on that. But at the same time, my music is so important to me, so it’ll be a matter of balances that within the next couple of years. You never know what the future holds."
If you looked under your bed what would you find?
Not sure, I know for sure I have some stuff I’ve put under my bed from past experiences. Things I’ve been given from certain somebodies. To get it out of my site I put it under my bed for now so I can deal and not be bothered. I’m not scared to share my weaknesses.
Where’d the name There For Tomorrow come from?
Jay actually came up with it, back when I was 14. We were looking for something to define ourselves. A lot of bands have band names and everybody asks them what it means and they’re like ‘it sounded cool.’ Even though we were so young minded at the time we wanted something that meant something to us. There For Tomorrow means that we want to define ourselves and put our mark on music so that we will be there for tomorrow. We’ll stick around. That’s our main mission, I guess. [CO]