PAUL: “Hey Ryan, please can you introduce yourself and the band.”
RYAN: “Hi Paul, my name is Ryan McIntosh and I play bass guitar in Slow Coming Day, an up and coming rock band based out of Huntington Beach, California. We are a 4 piece band with 2-guitar players, 1-bass player,and 1 drummer. Some shows that we have played consist of playing with: MXPX, Further Seems Forever, Brandtson, Dogwood, and many more.. Although we havent been a band for years, we have started a local following. Many record labels have been approaching us to sign with them, but we are holding out for just a little longer to see what is a head in the road for us.”
PAUL: “To me Slow Coming Day sound like a more fragile Jimmy Eat World. How would you describe the band’s sound?”
RYAN: “Wow that is a hard one. We love the band Jimmy Eat World, and hopefully if they read this they can take us on tour with them *laughs* We are influenced by Jimmy Eat World, Mineral, Death Cab for Cutie, Smashing Pumkins, Sunny Day Real Estate, Radiohead and so many more. The problem that we have is our sound. Most people say we have an original sound and really don’t sound like anyone. Some people have stated that we rock enough to be played on the radio but still keep the indie alive in our music. So I guess if you like it, buy it and listen to it.”
PAUL: “You say you come from Huntington Beach in California. What is the local scene like and what bands would you recommend that originate from there?”
RYAN: “Well the band scene all together in California is crazy. The local scene is huge. I seriously think that everyone out here is in a band! If you look at www.MP3.com you will find just in Huntington beach alone there are 1000+ bands. So you really need to stand out as new and orginal in order to even have people consider your music here. That is both good and bad. Sometimes though bands that are so fantastically good don’t get the exposure that they need due to the saturation of bands. So to make a long story short, if you can make it out of just the local band scene, your doing
great! Bands, Bands, Bands, well here is just a couple of bands that we listen to: Die radio Die, Noise Ratchet, Stairwell, Pop Narcotic, The Color Turning, The Beautiful Mistake, Metaphor is Audio, The Killingtons, Sensefield, Rufio and so so many more.”
PAUL: “You recently played the Cornerstone Festival in the US. How did that go?”
RYAN: “Man, that was the greatest experience that we have every done! Seeing that our lead singer and guitarist Orion Walsh, is from Nebraska (Go Corn Huskers!) we decided to rent a 15-passenger van and drive 27 hours straight to his home town. Since we have never done this before, We worked in 6-8 hour shifts switching drivers. A couple of times Brad Smith (Guitar) and Jason Sheets (Drums) sorta dozed off just for a quick moment driving through the rocky mountains. That was funny! The whole trip, if you have ever seen the movie Dumb and Dumber, we were repeating a funny little line. “Jeez, I thought the rocky mountians would be a little more rockier, that John Denver is full of S**T.” Wasn’t too funny when we almost went the wrong way and back tracked. We stopped shortly in Nebraska, then headed to Cornerstone! Wow I have never seen so many people. They counted 27,000+ that have actually paid and camped and roamed around. First day we played was Tooth and Nail Day. Brandon Ebel (Owner of Tooth and Nail Records) let us
play on a great time slot and also introduced us before we played. That was an honour for us. We played for about 1200 people in a huge tent. We rocked out, sold discs, t-shirts, stickers, buttons, anything we could to make a statement out there and get more people interested! Then we had about 2 days off to sell merch, watch bands and bake in 115 degree weather.. man it was hot! Finally Friday July 5th came and Slow Coming Day rocked the New Band Showcase! So I would say that Cornerstone was a very pleasent trip, even though it was hot! Also driving home straight 40 hours and almost hitting dear and stopping in Vegas to win back our money.”
PAUL: “Do you prefer playing at festivals or smaller, more intimate club shows?”
RYAN: “They are all different. Festivals are cool because so many people come and rock out. Everyone is miserable and that makes it fun because you can relate to the crowd. The sound at festivals are amazing and they have working moniters too! But then again smaller clubs have their nice warm feeling. It is nice to go to the club you have been playing at and be on personal friend level with the owner and the cool people that work there. We have 2 local clubs that are amazing. Chain Reaction (All Ages) venue in Anahiem is one of the coolest clubs around. They have several big acts that come and play and the sound is great there too. The Glass House is an amazing club. When we played there for the first time, they bought food, water, snacks, towels, the whole bit to comfort their bands that are playing. The staff there even helped us in with our equipment. So I guess both types of shows are nice to play, they all have great perks!”
PAUL: “What would you say has been the most memorable show of your lives so far?”
RYAN: “Toss up is all I have to say. The Roxy is probably one of my most merorable shows. Not only did we rock out the most, but the fact that many big rockstars has played the Roxy blows my mind away. And the sound system, oh my God it made us sound so good. I felt what Bill Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins would of thought.. zzzzZZZZ(Today is a Good Day!)ZZZZzzzz”
PAUL: “You’ve recently replaced your old drummer, Matt, with a new one in Jason. Why the need to get a new drummer in and how has he settled in?”
RYAN: “It is not as bad as you think. Matt is an incredible drummer but when marriage is calling your name, it is really hard to be married and play in a band that isn’t establish yet. Now if we were a big big band then playing in a band is your main source of income. Money issues arent as much as a worry anymore. Jason Sheets coming into the band has really added a lot to our music. He has been teaching drum lessons for quite some time and that shows
in the music that is played today. So we thank Matt for getting us to where we are now, and congratulate Jason on coming into the band and taking us into the future.”
PAUL: “You recently released an EP on the Militia Group label. How happy are you with the finished product and the reaction that it has got from both fans and the press?”
RYAN: “Our disc has turned a lot of heads in the music scene. We have sold over 900 discs in the course of 7 months that the disc has been made. Infact the disc at first was solely used to get shows. Since people kept on bugging us about where they can buy our music, we decided to go back and record 2 more songs and put it into a retail package for sale. After that we asked our good friends over at The Militia Group to see if we could sell our discs on their website for mini distro. They liked the disc so much that they put it on the website and started selling a good amount of them. We then approached Virgin Records of Costa Mesa. They listened to the disc and decided to send it up to Corporate offices. They liked the disc and approved to put our disc on a listening station and so far we have sold a great amount of discs. So things I guess are looking good.”
PAUL: “Are there any plans to release a full length album at any point? If so is there any label interest for it?”
RYAN: “Well we want to release a full length here very soon. But we are kinda waiting for a label to pick us up. We don’t have the resources right now to make an amazing album, so if you know any great record labels that want to make money off of us, have them contact me *laughs*”
PAUL: “You have songs on two compilations released this summer, one on Tooth and Nail and the other on the Militia Group label. What tracks are going to be used, and how did you get asked to be on them?”
RYAN: “Suprise, we have another song that is being released on Deep Elm and Velvet Blue Music as well. I don’t know really how these people find us. But I’m happy to say that we are getting signed one song at a time! *laughs* ”
PAUL: “What do you have planned for the rest of the year?”
RYAN: “So far we have plans to keep on playing great shows and put some more together. Having a new drummer keeps things really exciting and the future we think is going to hold some great things for us. We are continually revamping our music and adding things to our live show to make us as good and as exciting as we can get without the big label support. Right now we are looking to get onto a label and use them as a stepping stone to something bigger. We love music and we mesh so well together, we are coming to a point that we know exactly what each other is thinking. Our musical direction is right on with everyone in the band and to make things better, we are all best friends if the music thing wasn’t around. So if you get a chance to make it out here, check out our new upcoming webpage and show list: www.slowcomingday.com”
PAUL: “Thanks for your time, anything you want to add at all Ryan?”
RYAN: “We thank all the people that have supported us, friends, family, fans! Thank you so much for this opportunity and we hope to hear from all of the UK soon! GO BIG BEN!”