Mobile Devices Are 'More Powerful' Than Record Companies

American melodic post-hardcore band Story Of The Year have been kicking around since the year 2000, although they took several years hiatus during their career. That break from recording and touring involved much soul searching and re-thinking of their direction, in a managerial and business sense, and now that they have returned to the fold they have significantly changed their approach to running the band.

Co-founding member and lead guitarist Ryan Phillips, speaking from his home in St Louis, Missouri, explains, "We took a seven-year hiatus and we came back and we'd decided we didn't want to do the regular record label thing where we signed to a label and toured 280 days out of the year. We don't want to do that anymore. We want to operate like a start-up, like a small business. We're just re-thinking how we do everything."

So, in a practical sense, what does that mean? "We're just being really strategic about it," he states. "A week in Australia, come home, hang out for a couple of weeks. A one-off here and there, go to LA, come home, go to Japan for a week and come home. We're just doing short runs, one-offs and festivals and stuff like that."

Though Phillips says he feels rejuvenated and reenergised, when asked whether the break and this new approach will add to his band's overall longevity, he's unsure. "I don't know," he admits. "All I do know at this point is that I still love doing this more than anything else in the world, I love making music, I love being in the studio, I love playing shows, I love my bandmates. It's my favourite thing in the world and I have just as much passion for it now as I did when I was 17, and probably more.

"If I can do it for one more year, awesome. If I can do it ten more years, awesome."

Something else that has kept Story Of The Year going for so long is the fact that the band members are all life-long friends with a shared history. "The band goes back to 2000, but even before that we were all in bands together in high school," he remembers. "The cool thing about our band is that the singer Dan [Marsala], the drummer Josh [Wills], Adam [Russell] the bass player - we were friends, like skateboard friends, before we were a band. The band came second.

"I've been hanging round with these dudes for 25 years, so it's a pretty special thing. It's what keeps us going."

The band members are far from rich, but Phillips does not care one single iota about that, feeling that creativity and artistry are their own rewards. "I don't give a fuck about mansions and Ferraris. I don't give a fuck about being a millionaire or any of that dumb shit, I just want to make music. I just want to be passionate and live creatively. The fact that I get to keep doing this after so many years - it's just unbelievable."

It obviously gives him a great sense of pride to be able to say that and to have been able to forge a pretty damn respectable career playing a style of music that is quite divorced from what is considered 'commercial' these days, in a musical climate that has done nothing but deteriorate significantly over the span of their career.

"When we got our first record deal in 2003, it was a different world," he recalls. "It was kind of at the very end of that old system, big record labels and deals. We caught the very end of that and I didn't even have to play one show. And no matter what, all my bills were paid just from our advance. We made money [in] so many different ways. And now, all that is gone.

"But the upside of all that is, you know that device you have in your pocket? That device is more powerful than the most powerful record companies were 20 years ago."