Saturday Sept 25th. It was around 1:15pm as I walked to my car and conception damn, it's too late in September to be this hot. I got in my car, set the Gps, and headed over to the Webster Theater in Hartford, Ct, where I would be meeting As I Lay Dying's drummer Jordan Mancino for an interview. Upon arriving, and after a brief call to his super friendly tour employer Adam, I was met surface the tour bus by Jordan, who after finishing his cigarette, invited me in to sit down and do the interview. I made my way back through the bus, roughly tripping a combine of times over discrete backpacks and books, before ultimately sitting down to get things started.
The Jordan Mancino Interview
All Songs By Justin Bieber
Tis: Can you talk a minute about what a typical day on the road consists of for you?
Jm: Well, this is the start right here usually. I'll wake up and make my coffee, then do the interviews for the day. Then I'll go into the venue for a sound check and make sure all my gear is working. From there we have about an hour or so to go get food and then we'll do a signing. After that, we have about someone else hour to relax a little. Then it's time to start warming up and get ready to play the show. Headliner tours are a lot busier than retain tours or festival tours. We have a longer set and just a lot more going on in general.
Tis: What is one of your all time best memories from being on tour?
Jm: There's a lot of them.
Tis: I can only imagine.
Jm: Yeah, some of the best memories are certainly the cause of some of the worst situations. I guess for anybody who wants to look into it further, our Dvd has a bunch of that stuff on it. I think one of them would have to be getting stuck in the desert on our tour bus. It's on our Dvd. I was able to document the whole thing because I had my camera. It was one of our few days off while on Ozzfest, and we got stuck in the desert with our bus and trailer. Actually, we got stuck twice. Our bus driver seemed to think it was a short cut, but we were certainly on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. These habitancy drove by who clearly knew the road, and stopped to talk to us. We asked them where we were and they told us about 30 miles from any sort of paved road, and basically that we were screwed. He pointed out this big patch of mud where a Jeep 44 had gotten stuck and reiterated we were screwed. So long story short, we were out there all day and ended up having to push the bus and trailer out of the mud. It was quite an experience. It's one of the best memories I have because finding back, it's just certainly funny. Though at the time I was pretty miserable.
Tis: Well my next question, which I'm roughly scared to ask now is, what is one of the worst memories you have from being on tour?
Jm: I certainly hate flying, but it's part of the nature of the job, you know? So we did a show last year in Sri Lanka and it ended up being a thirty hour travel day when all was said and done. It was certainly brutal. We drove to La, which took a combine of hours. Then flew from La to Dubai which was about 16 hours on a plane, followed by a 7 hour layover in Dubai, and then someone else 5 & hours from Dubai to Sri Lanka. Then, we got stuck in customs for hours and hours, so by the time we got to the hotel is was like 30 hours later. Even at that point though, there were still some positives. But yeah, I hate flying.
Tis: I'm no fan of flying either, so I can wholly relate. My next ask is going back a bit to 2005 when you guys played Ozzfest with Black Sabbath & Iron Maiden headlining. How was that feel and did you get to hang out with them at all?
Jm: Well the feel was awesome though we didn't certainly get to spend much time with either of those bands. We got to watch them every night, but not certainly hang out. On Ozzfest, there's a lot of disjunction in the middle of the Main stage and the Second stage, and the all access laminates don't get you on the main stage. Prior to Iron Maiden though, when bands like In Flames were playing, we could get up there and watch and hang out, but when Maiden or Sabbath started, the stage area was cleared, and I can wholly understand that. At Ozzfest you have a combine hundred habitancy working the festival who'd love to stand on the side of the stage, but obviously they have stuff to do, plus you can't have too many habitancy getting in the way.
Tis: When I listen to you guys, I hear a elements from bands like At The Gates, Slayer or even Early Earth Crisis. Would you say they've been influences on your writing style? Who else has influenced the band as a whole?
Jm: Sure, those bands have influenced our style and have been an inspiration. It varies with every record. We continue to bring on more influences. But I think that those bands are an idea of where we base some of the stuff we write. Also European Metal and American Hardcore music, but on the hardcore end of it, it's more of the mentality and not necessarily the style, more of the power that hardcore bands have. We all have so many influences and we try to recite them in our music.
Tis: Jacob Bannon of Converge does your album artwork and I'm involving as to how you hooked up with him?
Jm: Well, it was right around when we were putting out Frail Words Collapse. We certainly liked the artwork he'd done, especially being huge Converge fans, and we conception it'd be rad if he did our albums artwork. He's very selective about the habitancy he works with and luckily he was cool with working with us. We ended up using him with every record since then. It's funny, because with this last record we tried to go with man else. I won't name names, but we'd decided to try a dissimilar finding album cover. After we got all of the roughs back, we decided that we liked Jakes work great and decided to go with something around the style of our former records. Luckily he still continues to work with us.
Tis: What was one of the first great shows you went to and what was great about it?
Jm: Hmm, that's a good question. Man, I've been to a lot of good shows. I think it was certainly just any of the local hardcore shows in San Diego when I was younger, and obviously Jason Dunn was a very big part of that. Those shows were great and you'd all the time see the same habitancy and bands there every weekend. They'd be held at discrete churches or wherever. Actually, come to find out, the singer of Carnifex (one of the nights opening bands) promoted some of the shows I went to in the late 90's with bands like Overcome, and he even promoted some of my old bands shows too, and didn't know it.
Tis: No kidding?
Jm: Yeah, it's totally random. We were talking about how cool the scene was in the middle of the years of '97 and 2002. There was just something certainly cool about that Southern California hardcore scene. It was pretty rare, and it's no longer there, at least to the extent that it was back then. Everybody would just go out to shows. You'd go to school and flyer each other's shows and it was just a certainly cool community. We were just talking about how special that was last night.
Tis: So the members of As I Lay Dying are Christian, though you guys aren't necessarily a Christian band. A lot of your fans aren't Christian and certainly have a negative perception of Christianity. Where do you think the reconciliation of that is with them?
Jm: I think it's the music. I think all of our fans, either they would agree with us theologically or not, like our band because of the music and not just because of what we're preaching. I think it may add to the devotional or psychological connection that our fans have with us, but really, it just comes down to liking good music. There's a lot of Christians out there, and I don't think that all those habitancy necessarily listen to Christian music just because it's Christian, you know? And I think that's the same way for any other man who listens to music nowadays. I think it's very rare to find man so selective, with regard to the motives of a band, that they won't listen to a band because they're Christian. The times have changed, habitancy are more open-minded and accepting of things they may not believe in.
Tis: To follow up on that, there are still those dogmatic Christians who say that Christ is the only way, and those who don't believe are going to face eternal damnation. How do you feel about that?
Jm: Well every man has their advent to life, or what they frame the meaning of life is, and they want to share that with other people. Our idea of Christianity is more education based. either or not it comes down to eternal damnation, I think habitancy use that as a scare tactic to try and make habitancy believe something they certainly know nothing about. We're just about educating habitancy and feel like there are a lot of truths in Christianity which are subjective, and I think there's a lot of truth with God and Jesus that are very objective, and can be interpreted from man to person. Then there's some things that are fact and undeniable, and those are the things we try to educate our fans with. Not the subjective things where some guy says that his Pastor says you're eternally damned if I have tattoos or listen to metal. That stuff is just so silly to us. Maybe it has some legitimacy to him, but that's not the stuff that we're about.
Tis: So I know you guys aren't a "hardcore" band, but being in the genre that you are, you're subject to fall under that umbrella. Today's hardcore, with distinct exceptions, has little, to nothing to do with the style and ethics of the former bands like Black Flag, The Cro-Mags or Minor Threat. It seems to be a slickly packaged commodity available for buy at your local mall next to Justin Bieber & Katy Perry. Do you feel that for As I Lay Dying's success to continue, you need to compromise in distinct areas?
Jm: No, not at all. I mean just because something is accessible it doesn't necessarily mean it loses its meaning or motives. I think Black Flag is a excellent example, as are other bands, both past and present, who have larger than life characters and found their way into the mainstream. It doesn't mean they lost what they originally had though. I think habitancy perceive and respect it more which is pretty cool. I don't think that lifestyles and attitudes should be selective to their audiences. I think that if habitancy are going to associate with them, then they will. I guess the availability of our style of music being in record stores and magazines pushed next to all these other mainstream artists only helps to spread what this scene originated from. The independent thinkers, and the habitancy who supported their communities. The certainly distinct stuff that comes from hardcore and hardcore music, and now fuses itself with metal. But no, I don't think it's a bad thing at all.
Tis: So you guys don't feel pressure from anyone surface of the band to do things a distinct way?
Jm: Not at all.
Tis: That's great.
Jm: Yeah, I think we set ourselves up in a way that we have operate over all things and we do what we want to do. We have an awesome label and awesome management, along with Everybody else who works with us, and helps supports us to do that.
Tis: Before we wrap this up, is there anyone new on the horizon for you guys?
Jm: Well, we're advent up on the bands ten year anniversary and we're putting together something certainly special for the fans. It may be a special tour or something else, we're still throwing around ideas for right now. So for the fans, keep an eye out. We're trying to put something pretty sweet out for you.
Tis: Cool, thanks a lot for your time.
As I Lay Dying - Interview With Drummer Jordan Mancino
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