BoysNightOut

GARY: Okay we’re here with Boys Night Out, this is CONNOR

CONNOR: Hey

GARY: So, the name Boys Night Out, where’s that from?

CONNOR: We’re movie retards, and I think it’s from Billy Madison or something like that, they say it in the movie. Jeff named it like 5 years ago.

GARY: so you’re Canadian…

CONNOR: Yup, from Burlington.

GARY: As a Canadian band do you think it’s harder to get your music out there as compared to maybe an American band?

CONNOR: I did, I did think that. But actually it’s strange, we ended up playing down there more than we play here, and they love Canadians, Americans love Canadians, we say we’re from Canada and they’re like “Ooh yeah Canada it’s a good place”. It’s weird, I guess it’s hit or miss, I guess, ya know, they’re so similar.

GARY: so the CD’s called Make Yourself Sick, I read it was your bands creed?

CONNOR: yeah, we drink an awful lot, we have problems. We’re those guys.

GARY: So when you write your songs, how do they develop? Like do you get the lyrics first, the music…who does what?

CONNOR: A lot of the time, generally it’s Jeff that will write the songs. Jeff will have something he wants to have, he’ll set up the song, we’ll go through it as a band, everyone will contribute their own stuff and usually I’ll go with that and write lyrics or whatever, sometimes I’ll have something I may have written like 10 years ago that I’ll pull out and say this will work well for this, and stuff like that so it varies.

GARY: so you write all the lyrics?

CONNOR: Actually Jeff, I’ve used a lot of Jeff’s stuff too but I mean on this record it’s mostly me.

GARY: Cause there’s a lot of stuff about like death and murder…

CONNOR: I’m fascinated by that kind of stuff, just, I always have been.

GARY: so where do you get your song titles from? Like random places…

CONNOR: I wish I knew, some, honestly, there’s one on there that’s a quote from a real shitty movie, called Darkness Falls or something like that, one is from The Wedding Singer, some come from movies, others just I, I dunno where the hell they come from, like ‘this makes sense, I will do this’ It’s weird.

GARY: there’s the one song, Just Once Let’s Do Something Different, I found it interesting, there’s a lot of alliteration…

CONNOR: Yeah I’ve always done that, it’s just, I think, ya know, I listen to a lot of The Smiths when I was younger and everything I love the Smiths and I think Morrisey is fucking awesome, and he does it a lot, and even in school when I would have to write, when you would do like, a poetry…

GARY: in English class…

CONNOR: yeah, always, I dunno I just like singing it.

GARY: the one part, “sister, I’ve seen things this summer” (some say should stay safely stashed away)

CONNOR: Yeah, it makes it, I dunno, for me it’s more interesting to sing stuff like that, it’s fun

GARY: it’s fun to sing along to

CONNOR: thanks man

GARY: So how much of a tour band are you guys, do you tour a lot?

CONNOR: yeah, we, since May we’ve come home for maybe one or two weeks at a time and like so since May we’ve probably been home, maybe been off tour maybe for a month, off and on.

GARY: so do you like touring?

CONNOR: I love it, I fucking love it. Ya dude, it’s awesome

GARY: Your favorite place to play? DO you like playing home?

CONNOR: Love playing Toronto, Toronto always like rules, I love playing home. Um, Jersey is fucking awesome, we just played for the first time in Florida and that was amazing. Southern California’s really cool and New York’s rad too. Detroit rules, yeah.

GARY: So uh, your on this tour with Catch22, it’s kind of weird…

CONNOR: Weird right

GARY: it’s a weird combination, how’d that happen?

CONNOR: It happened that they were looking for an opening band, they uh, they know, like we have a lot of interconnected friends and we were looking for something to do, and ya know, we met them, they’re fucking awesome dudes, Ya know night and day are the music styles right? But like, we get along awesome man. It’s weird but, ya know, it works. And it’s definitely fun.

GARY: I first heard you guys on the internet, my friend told me about you guys, he sent me the album and I liked it and bought it. How do you guys feel about downloading and everything, because I know a lot of bands…

CONNOR: All for it, I am all for downloading man, I think it’s awesome. I would rather play a show somewhere and have kids singing along than, ya know, like, than even if they downloaded it, as opposed to, ya know, just not downloading it and not knowing it, I just want the kids to be able to get into it and enjoy it.

GARY: That’s what a lot of the bands say too, they’d rather have more fans then sell more records.

CONNOR: Ya, when it comes down to it you’re playing, you want the audience or whoever your playing for to enjoy themselves if they’re downloading it, fucking great.

GARY: Okay, the symbol, with the girl in the heart, how’d that become what it is?

CONNOR: Our buddy Corey, from this band The Rise, he actually did that layout [for the album], and he ,uh, I dunno, I told him, because I used to do all of our design stuff personally, so I was having a mental block and I wanted something that I could use as opposed to always writing ‘BOYSNIGHTOUT’, because some people, they spell it wrong, or they separate it strange, so I was like, well ya know, let’s come up with a logo or something, so I told Corey I was looking for something, and he came up with that in like a couple minutes, I fucking love it.

GARY: I like it.

CONNOR: Yeah

GARY: Yeah, the whole design here, looks like drowning in some kind of ice or something…

CONNOR: It’s…what we were going for didn’t really get communicated, sort of the idea of sobering up, like Make Yourself Sick, sort of like we go hard. So a lot of the time we are just trying to get sober, you know what I mean?. Just dump yourself in some ice water and you’re good to go.

GARY: And I thought it was a girl at first but…

CONNOR: A lot of people think it’s my friend Meghan, which is really strange.

GARY: So who is that? [on the cover of the album]

CONNOR: I wish I could tell you, it’s somebody that Corey knows, when he took care of the layout and photography, yea, they all worked.

GARY: So you guys are signed to Ferret [Music].

CONNOR: Yeah

GARY: Why did you choose Ferret over anyone else?

CONNOR: Ya know what, Ferret, well we were with One Day Savior for our last record, and we were signed to Ferret during that time, we got contacted by Chris from One Day Savior saying he liked what he heard and wanted to put out a record and he had also said he was going to talk to his friend Carl, who ran Ferret, and Carl liked what he heard, but we wanted to do the record with Chris, Chris was fucking awesome to us from the beginning, so we did that. And we just went to Ferret from that and I love Carl, he’s the fucking best.

GARY: It’s a great label, Funeral For A Friend just got signed to it…

CONNOR: Dude yeah, Zao just signed, our buddies Misery Signals, uh we haven’t played with Every Time I Die yet, I’d like to do that.

GARY: Yeah they had this deal, when you bought the Funeral For A Friend EP they’d send you an Every Time I Die DVD.

CONNOR: Yeah, it’s pretty sick, it’s awesome.

GARY: So you have this CD, you have the old EP, is that all you guys released?

CONNOR: We put out a demo initially called You Are My Canvas, that had an early recording of Sketch Artist Composite, Anatomy of The Journey, Only Honest Love Song, and Victor Versus the Victim was on that. We just, uh, Yeah we recorded that really early, like once we started out, okay we’ve got these four songs, let’s put it out and see what the response is.

GARY: Pretty cool. So when you guys write your setlist, how do you decide how many songs you’re gonna play off the album, or off the EP…

CONNOR: Lately we’ve been trying to play a lot more off the new record, I mean we touring we try to make sure kids have heard it and stuff, um certain places like when we play Detroit, Detroit was one of the first places we really started touring in, and they prefer the older stuff and we went there all the time, so we play a lot of older songs in Detroit, we’ll probably play quite a few old ones tonight too. But yeah we like to balance it, ya know what I mean, like there’s only 6 songs off the last record anyway, so we can mix it up and still have a fair set length.

GARY: So do you decide that as a band, the songs you’re playing?

CONNOR: Yeah, we are, we play variations on the same set every night, like if we’re in a certain place we’re like ‘I know that people in this area like this song even if we don’t play it anywhere else. Like the last song on the last record, we stopped playing that completely, and now we play it all the time. Cause we thought everyone hated that song, nobody likes this song, like ‘fuck this song’ and then kids started asking for it at shows so we’re like ‘alright, it’s in the set now’.

GARY: So on your website now you have a new contest…

CONNOR: Do we?

GARY: Yeah, basically you sign up for the mailing list, and you put in your phone number…

CONNOR: Oh I heard about that…

GARY: And you get a call and you see the show that night with VIP passes…

CONNOR: You know what’s funny? I didn’t know that til Jeff told me yesterday. I don’t even know how long it’s been up…but I’m THAT guy in the band. I don’t know where we’re playing or…

GARY: So was all that decided as a band…

CONNOR: For all I know it could’ve been the band and the label harmoniously, but I’m that guy, I used to know so much more… I like the idea of people getting into the show for free to see a show, I think that’s awesome. I want to do something, like out of nowhere I’ve seen a bunch of tattoo’s with the logo, a bunch of people have that tattooed on them, and I don’t even know what to say to that, like it’s overwhelming, that’s crazy, but I fucking love it though, and I Anna do a thing where you send us a picture of your tattoo and we’ll get you into every show for like for free…like thank you so fucking much.

GARY: Yeah I wasn’t even going to come to this show, since I go to tons of shows a month with hardly any money, and I’m seeing you guys in December with Brand New so I wasn’t too worried about it, but I had a chance to do this interview so I came.

CONNOR: That’s awesome bro, that’s fucking cool, I’m glad it worked out that way.

GARY: Are you guys big fans of Brand New?

CONNOR: I love that record. I had always seen their shirts around and I had always heard people talking about how good this band Brand New was, I hadn’t even heard them until maybe a month ago, but now we listen to that CD all the time, I think it’s great.

GARY: Their one of my favorite bands.

CONNOR: I’m telling ya man I love that cd, it’s great.

GARY: Next day after that you’re playing in Barrie, my hometown.

CONNOR: Right on man, cool. We haven’t played their yet…That would be cool too, we all have friends in Barrie. I can’t wait, to start playing around our home area again. Cause the record came out and we were on tour in the states. We haven’t played, this is the first time we’ve played Canada since that record’s been out, it’s been out over a month now, it’s almost two months since the records been out.

GARY: So where do you want the band to go? Some bands don’t even want that mainstream success or anything…

CONNOR: I just fucking love getting out and touring. And if that’s what we do that’s what we do. I love it, like I don’t have anywhere to live right now, I don’t have a house, I’ve got nothing. SO if I’m on the road and can sleep in a van or a hotel or on somebody’s floor, awesome. SO yeah I just wanna keep touring, that’s all I care about.

GARY: So that’s all my questions, thanks a lot

CONNOR: Thank you man, wicked.