Today sees the release of The Ghost Inside’s bloody excellent new album, ‘Dear Youth’. To celebrate, we had a chat with frontman Jonathan Vigil while they were over in the UK touring with Asking Alexandria. We discussed the new album, the meaning behind ‘Dear Youth’ and the positives in playing to a completely new fanbase.
SO HOW’S THE TOUR BEEN GOING?
Yeah, it’s been good. Different crowd for us. It’s cool to be on tour with a band like Asking Alexandria, because they have such a dedicated fanbase. Their fans are so diehard and it’s cool to be able to play in front of a bunch of new people. Our fans are peppered throughout the crowd singing and moshing at the back. The first few rows are Asking Alexandria fans and it takes a while for them to warm up and see what we’re doing. These shows aren’t typical shows for us, they’re not like how they normally would be, but we’re thankful to play in front of these new kids. It’s fun to spend this much time in the UK. We come on a normal tour and only play five shows. Like now we’re playing so many shows in the UK, so it’s real fun to be able to see the country and spend actual time here. You want to go on tour and get new fans so it’s definitely a good thing for us.
TELL US ABOUT YOUR NEW ALBUM, ‘DEAR YOUTH’. HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE IT?
Yeah, this album is a different album for us. We were in a different place for this one than we were for the previous ones, so we kind of pushed ourselves in the sense of not wanting to write the same thing over and over again. We had Jeremy McKinnon from A Day To Remember produce it again along with Andrew Wade, and it’s good. We’re all really proud of it. We spent a long time on it so we just want kids to finally be able to hear it. It’s always exciting in the weeks before an album comes out.
HOW DO YOU THINK IT’S GONNA GO DOWN WITH THE FANS?
Hopefully good. You always wanna have kids gravitate to your new stuff and be into it. The response we’ve got from the first two songs we’ve released from it has been great so I can’t complain on that.
WHERE DID THE TITLE ‘DEAR YOUTH’ COME FROM?
When it came time to write, like I was telling you earlier I was in a very different place than I was for previous ones, and I spent my entire twenties being in a band. As much as the band progressed, my personal life didn’t progress at all, so I was 30 years old but I was the same person I was at 18, 19, 20, and that kind of freaked me out because when you’re younger you have so many opportunities and there’s so many open doors and so many different paths you can take, but over the years I felt those doors closing on me and the last year or so I felt really used up and scared that this was all I was ever gonna be good for and I wasn’t really gonna have anything else in my life after this. It really freaked me out, so when it came time to write, instead of writing lyrics, I wrote a letter to my former self, ‘Dear Youth’, and I wrote it and asked myself what it felt like to have that youthful optimism. There’s such a wonder about the world when you’re young and as you get older it kind of dulls down a bit and I wanted to remember what that feeling was and get motivated again and get back into it. I think after writing that letter to myself it helped me put things into perspective, and so it kind of helped me – I don’t wanna say move on – but it helped me understand where I was in life. I’d felt a bit lost for a little while, but it brought me back here.
SO IT GAVE YOU A NEW LEASE OF LIFE.
Definitely, definitely. I think it’s a feeling that everyone gets in life as they get older, no matter what they’re doing. I’m lucky enough to be able to do what I’ve always wanted to do in life and I think that when you reach a certain age, like turning 30 is a scary thing, at least for me it was, and you feel like – I don’t want to say ‘mid life crisis’, because I wasn’t having a mid life crisis – but I was scared and I didn’t wanna feel scared and I needed something to shake me out of it. I think people reach a point where they become kind of, not stagnant, but they do the same routine – wake up, go to work – and it’s hard to break that routine and feel like an actual human being. It was something I was struggling with for a while but I’m all better now.
I WAS WATCHING THE VIDEO EARLIER AND I FEEL LIKE THAT CAME ACROSS IN IT.
Yeah, that was the whole point of the video. When it came time to do a treatment and think about stuff, they were throwing around the idea of a lyric video, and I was like, “That’s so basic”. I thought it would be a cool idea -because it’s called ‘Dear Youth’ – to get kids involved in writing lyrics and being a part of the video. It was kind of a spin off of a lyric video and I think it came out cool.
SO HOW WAS IT RECORDING WITH JEREMY MCKINNON? OBVIOUSLY THIS IS THE SECOND TIME YOU’VE RECORDED WITH HIM.
It was good. We had him help us on ‘Get What You Give’ – produce and write – and it was a good vibe having him work with us, along with Andrew Wade, the guy who recorded us, and we just decided to keep that same team. We did a good job on ‘Get What You Give’, it was a good chemistry, so we decided to do it again with them. It was a good process, working with people that talented. You take your ideas to them and they’re able to kind of tweak it here and there and make it sound so much bigger and better than you had in mind and it’s cool to have that outside opinion. Jeremy’s obviously so successful and talented in A Day To Remember that having someone like that behind our album is really cool.
SO AFTER THIS YOU’RE GOING BACK TO THE STATES?
We’re doing a co-headline tour with Every Time I Die and Architects are on it and Backtrack and Hundredth. Should be good. Good line up. I wish we could bring it to the UK.
WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS AFTER THAT?
We’re working on doing a full world tour for ‘Dear Youth’. Right now nothing is official but I know we’re taking January off. Because any time we’ve had off we’ve been in the studio so it’ll be good to have some proper time off. And then we’re playing shows from February.
LAIS MW