aaamusic | On 04, May 2015

Before taking to the stage for triumphant UK show a few months ago, AAA Music’s Sean Shore sat down with Dani Winter-Bates, lead vocalist of heavy metal titans Bury Tomorrow, to talk about touring the UK, past festivals and exploitation of fans.

Alright Dani, thanks for meeting me today. In the past five years you have come on in leaps and bounds both in achievement and musical ability, what would be your proudest moment both as a band and individually?

Personally I think it’s like this [2014] tour has been that, I thought it was going to be great but for it to be this big, it’s like blown me away. I also think Download main stage was a big deal for us and it’s also helped us on this tour – so as a whole it was amazing to be playing in front of 40,000 people; it was awesome.

With the release of Runes, what was it like leading the way in British metalcore at number 1 in the UK Rock Charts and even finishing up at number 34 in the Official UK chart?

It was a big deal for us. Like I said before, live-wise you don’t know how big a band is until you do a headline tour; musically you don’t know how good you are until you start seeing the numbers of your record sales. The fact that we’ve beaten mainstream artists to the top 40 is wild: something I don’t ever think i’d take for granted.

When you first started writing the record, what was your mindset? Did you know what you wanted to get out of it in the end?

Yeah I think it helped that we had Kristen join the band. Dawson’s a great writer and an awesome dude as well, which helped solidify the comfortable feeling of the band of knowing musically where we all wanted to go. Approach-wise, our whole outlook as a band changed to be what it is now: we wanted to be like Killswitch Engage and As I Lay Dying. We’ve always loved those band but maybe this past year we made the transition to being one of those bands that other people look at and go: look at Bury Tomorrow, look what they’re doing. It’s amazing, I never thought we’d get to that stage where we are a band that’s been playing metalcore for a while, and we just seem to be getting bigger and bigger – it’s blown my mind. I don’t seem to know how it’s happened but the whole writing process this time round has been very quick, very comfortable and easy and we just pushed ourselves as far a we could go. We hope to do that with every album.

In the past two years you’ve played a huge range of festivals, from Make A Scene in Middlesborough to Resurrection Fest in Spain. In broad terms, what would you say was the best experience for you?

I think they were all amazing, sometimes you get jaded when you’re driving to a German festival, like it takes you ten hours to get there and ten hours to get back. Sometimes we are like, was it worth it? But we have played some amazing festivals: we headlined Slam Dunk festival, which was a big deal for us – there were some great bands there, like letlive. and The Ghost Inside. Those bands are huge and to have a fan base that is growing bigger than those bands at this time is wild and I never expected it. Download was an amazing feeling, it was a great tie for us, but things like Resurrection fest was an experience because you get to play to people that have never heard of your band before so it was awesome.

What bands would you say have influenced you both as individuals and for the band as a whole?

I think that since we started we’ve had the overall influences from bands like As I Lay Dying and Killswitch Engage, but nowadays we haven’t used as many influences. Like, years ago we used to take from bands like Parkway Drive. Currently we’re trying to solidify our own sound: carve out our own niche of metalcore, but you take bits from everything; from the bands you tour with. We’ve toured with Architects, The Ghost Inside… of course you’re going to take influences from those bands that are good at what they do and we’re touring with bands that are great at what they do so. We had the privilege of touring with I Killed the Prom Queen in Australia and they’re one of the reasons why we are a band. Back in the day when Music For The Recently Deceased came out, that was one of the staple albums in our collection when we were writing Portraits, same with the The Ghost Inside album that came out just before we recorded Portraits. Now it’s more about taking influences from the little things rather than someone’s sound, as we are a sound now; this is what we are.

I asked a few people I know who are big fans if they had any questions for yourself. What inspired you to start a band?

I was personally in the band when it first started. It was just a garage band, a small project to play local shows. They were a great band… I say great now, it probably wasn’t, but they were doing well in the local scene. Our accountant used to be the lead singer, Davyd joined as a bassist when the original one left and he got me in and it really went from there but the overwhelming urge as a band  was to have fun and write music. We’ve always been a band that works hard to try and get as much as possible, we didn’t shy away from playing shows and we also didn’t shy away from selling our own tickets and I think that’s what local bands are lacking of these days – where they expect everything on a plate. When we first started in wasn’t given to you on a plate, you have to get out there and sell tickets to get people to come to your show. It’s the same as places like Birmingham, people look on the outside and go they’ve sold 1200 tickets, it must be because of this or that. No it’s not, we played Birmingham like every month at the start to 20 kids, and those 20 turned to 40, and those 40 turned to 200. That’s just how we did it, it wasn’t a gimmick, we’re just a band that like to have fun and not do gimmicks.

Thinking back to the start, what was it like recording your first EP Sleep Of The Innocents and how does it compare to now, both in terms of the people you work with and the topics on what you base your writing around?

It was an awful experience, in the same aspect of what I was saying earlier about local bands, we were a band that was inexperienced when we did that – we were kids, I was 17. I didn’t do all the vocals on that, I did some but I mostly did the keyboard sounds and samples, it was a completely different world, it doesn’t seem like the same band at all. It was Jase’s first. Jason didn’t play any guitar on that record, he didn’t know any of the guitar on that record, he got in like a week before and did vocals for it. It was a very amateur approach, but even Portraits was. Portraits was a great record but it was a difficult approach, it tested us. We went with Dan and Justin from SikTh who at the time were the biggest producers out there. We spent a lot of money going to them, but if we weren’t good at something we didn’t play something. In this day and age bands are like we can’t play our stuff but our producer will put it together for us anyway and it sounds great. Back in those days it didn’t work like that, if you couldn’t play and you were found out, you were pulled over the coals until you could play that stuff – it’s just a completely different world.

I personally know that after every show you come out and meet your fans, whats it like for you to spend so much of your time to do so?

I don’t think its a big deal really. Everyone seems to think it’s this huge deal. The only reason why I make it a statement online is because at the end of the day I don’t want the people who follow me to think it’s a good idea to hide away from your fans or to create this air of mystery about yourselves. I want to be the first person to play a stadium and then hang out at my mercy, I don’t think that anyone has a right to think like that, we’ve been in a band that has nearly broken up and the only reason we didn’t is because people came to watch us. My job isn’t just to stand on a stage and scream, my job is to show them respect, to show them some gratitude that I can have a career that 90% of the population would kill for.

Staying on the topic of fans, most notably vocal about this is Dani  and Rou Reynolds from Enter Shikari, what are your thoughts on musicians that sell VIP tickets just for a meet and greet? I know you’ve spoken about it on Twitter, but sometimes 240 characters just isn’t enough.

I think it’s bullshit, at the end of the day I don’t think anyone has the right to exploit kids like that. I understand if it has some different meaning to it, say if you’re doing an acoustic performance because then you’re offering a service, but it’s exploiting kids. I don’t blame the fans for buying them, I don’t blame them for wanting to be their idols, with the people that inspire them and the people that they love, truly love, but some musicians have the audacity to know that the kids will do anything for it. I could sit in this room right now, put a sign outside merch saying ‘Pay £20 to come and meet Dani’ – what difference would that make? Yeah I have a little bit more money but I know the kids would pay for it and that’s what is ridiculous about even the thought of it – that they go away with what? Nothing. They go away with a photo. As I said before my job is to meet people, my job is to show them gratitude for the fact that I already have the dream job. ‘Course it has its downs when I’m thinking can’t I do this anymore and then it’s got those great times when you’re playing in front of 40,000 people at Download. Well, I didn’t get us there, our band didn’t get us there, the kids got us there and that’s plainly why I think it’s wrong and why I think there’s no point in doing it.

Again thinking back to the start of your career in Bury Tomorrow, do you ever miss the tours; travelling around in a tiny van and playing at venues to about 20 people?

There’s always room for going back there. We did an Australian tour recently so we went back to playing to 150 kids again and travelling around in a van. So there’s always that room for where you’re going to go back and there’s always places where our band won’t be as big as others. I experienced this recently so I can say for sure that yeah it’s cool – it’s got a very different feel about the shows, so i’d be a lot more loose. We can’t do a show over there like we can here, in front of 700 people where we play 14 songs. In Australia we couldn’t take ourselves to seriously, especially if we were playing in front of 25 kids, it would just look weird but they have both their positives and negatives.

What do you see for the future of BT and yourselves? What do you aspire BT to be in a few years time?

The sky is the limit really. I’d hate to put a roof on the top of our band to break through because at the end of the day I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want our band to be playing stadiums or one day headline Download. It is a long way away, years and albums away but I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t think we could be the biggest band in the world. It’s got nothing to do with our music really, it’s to do with the fact that I have drive and I have passion and it’s gotten us this far – it’s gotten us to the point where we are playing 1000 cap. venues and I didn’t think we’d get here. We’re just going to keep playing for people that know us and play to as many people as possible.

And last one from me, are you able to tell us and your American fans whether there are any plans for a US tour anytime soon?

We are trying, pretty much daily now that people ask us to come to the US. Everything messed up though – we left the label we were on and it was quite bitter at the time, but it’s all smoothed over now. It’s not an easy place to tour though, it’s easy when you get there but it’s not an easy place to get to. It costs an insane amount of money – it costs more to get there then it does to get to Australia and back, that’s how ridiculous it is to get there. I don’t think people that live in the US understand it costs like £1,700 each to get a visa and there are seven of us – that isn’t the kind of money that we have lying around, but we are always trying to do it. We have a booking agent over there that is trying to source tours that would make it financially viable for us to do it and fingers crossed we are trying to get on Warped tour, so it will happen I’m sure. If it doesn’t happen in 2015 it might never happen but we will try and do it.

Sean Shore