Streets Of Your Town

"It's weird, it brings back a lot of memories – the mindset that we were in 11 years ago, when we were actually writing the songs and recording them; I was 21 or 22 years old at that point, it was just a whole different world. But it's cool thinking back to writing those songs and the memories that [they] bring up; so much crazy stuff goes through your head.”

Dan Marsala is discussing the personal emotions that have been dug up since Story Of The Year hit the road roughly 12 months ago to celebrate the ten-year anniversary of their 2003 debut Page Avenue, a record that ironically provided the quintet with a ticket out of their hometown of St Louis, Missouri – “a shitty urban city [that] attracts great, sad music” – by reflecting on life in the sprawl. “It was about friendships and growing up in St Louis, and the stuff that goes through your head when you're a 21-year-old kid trying to make something out of yourself,” explains Marsala. “Every song had an underlying meaning of that somehow.”

Self-proclaimed “weird kids” that wouldn't take no for an answer, Story Of the Year weren't daunted by cutting their first album. They went for broke from the get-go, enlisting Goldfinger's John Feldmann to stir their bubbling post-hardcore pot into something digestible, and the end result, Page Avenue, stands as a product of determination and youthful ambition, one that went against the existing local music scene of the time.

“There was maybe one or two bands that had ever been signed from St Louis,” Marsala recalls. “At the time we had Nelly, the rapper; he had just blown up and he's from the same area, but that was it. Rappers were everywhere at that point, but for rock bands it was pretty slim. But us getting bigger and getting signed back in the day and becoming the successful band we are, we have definitely created more of a scene that has come up behind us, because bands from St Louis realised you can be successful from here, that's possible. It's the Midwest, there's not a lot going on, but we were just lucky.”

However, as much as Page Avenue is undeniably St Louis – from the album title and cover art to the lyrical content within – it's also a record that offers a clear message of hope, something that stands unaffected by boundaries and borders. Marsala agrees, admitting that these Page Avenue shows – where the band run through the entire album as well as adding a best-of selection from their catalogue – have really driven home the level of passion people hold for the record, and the band as a whole. There's a different vibe in the air, and it's something that he can tangibly feel from the crowds.

“The album has stood the test of time, and people still love it the way they did ten years ago,” the vocalist enthuses. “It was a time when the scene we were in, and kinda currently still are in, it was a time when it broke, and it was a big time for this heavy/screamo/emo/hard music – whatever it's classified as now. And it was special to a lot of people. Ten years listening to any album, you're going to have a lot of memories attached – people are going to grow fond to it.”

And that's why anniversary shows are continually successful – the emotions surrounding them run a little deeper. Because you can come into contact with a song anytime during your day-to-day – at the shops, in a cab, watching TV – but when you listen to a full-length repeatedly, you stop hearing the music and begin living with it, getting intimate with the sonic intricacies, cover art and liner notes. Albums are bodies of work that soundtrack some of life's great moments, but can also take care of you when things go pear-shaped, and they do this while also giving you an intimate insight into the heart and mind of another. It's pretty much the ultimate form of art.

With this considered, Marsala asks that fans be vocal when Story Of The Year arrive. Seek the band out and share your memories with them; he guarantees they'll listen. “I love hearing people's interpretations of our music or just something that happened at one of our shows,” Marsala says. “It's super cool to hear how much crazy stuff [happened] and how much we've impacted other people's lives over ten years. [There's] a lot of great stuff we've been seeing: a lot of tattoos, lyric tattoos especially. [That's] kinda weird though,” he laughs, “because it's like, 'Yeah, I wrote that in my bedroom and now it's permanently written on your arm.'”