The Wonder Years Interview - Warped Tour Pomona 2013

Nick Steinborn from The Wonder Years was cool enough to give me some time to talk about his experiences in the band! Although he may not have been there since the very beginning, he's definitely been a crucial part of their growth.

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What has it been like from the beginning, breaking out of the scene in PA?

it was a lot of hard work. I joined towards the end of that whole thing, but I was in bands before that. And really, it's just a lot of really crappy shows, kids who just don't care. But eventually it starts to pick up. It literally took the past 5 years to get anything happening. Just a lot of hard work.

Is there anything specifically you've overcome that has made you a band and stronger person?

There were a couple tours where we were having not really major issues, but we learned how to work together to not piss each other off constantly. I think compared to some other bands, we tend to like each other a lot more. And we can hang out and have a lot of fun. But that alone helps us as a band, because we're not arguing and wanting to kill each other all the time.

Well, that's important!

And how do you feel like you guys are different from the scene you came from?

I don't think we're really that different from the scene. We come from a bunch of bands who work our asses off, try to play as many shows as we can and do as good of job as we can to be relatable and to be good people. I just think we really try to be good people, play good music, and do what we believe in. There's no sugar coating it. We try to be honest. We don't have backing tracks or anything like that. We try to be us on stage.

And I think that's so good, staying true to yourself. And not selling your soul just for a big paycheck.

Sometimes people just grow up and they want to change, and it happens. But there are definitely bans who see another path to take with greener pastures. You cant really fault people for doing that.

Speaking of growing up, how do you feel the newer music is different from your older music?

Well, I joined right after The Upsides came out, so the first record I wrote with the band was Suburbia. I feel like just the inclusion of me was an extra person screwing everything up. I feel like we take a lot more time to piece things together now. Because they wrote The Upsides in like a month and a half. Suburbia we did it in 2 months, but we mapped it all out. This new record we took it to the next level, in like 4 months. Really kind of mapped out everything, including guitar riffs. Just a lot more planning.

What are your goals from here on out?

We really just want to keep doing what we're doing, hope that people keep liking it and supporting us. Play bigger shows, or smaller shows, whatever we have to do. As long as it stays fun, we're going to keep doing it.

Do you have any exciting news on the radar?

Not that I'm allowed to talk about. We'd get in a lot of trouble if we said anything. But we're playing the UK in the fall, with Warped Tour UK.

What has been a favorite city or show along the way?

I really like Seattle, Portland, and Chicago. Seattle and Portland for the cities themselves. Chicago is also a really cool city, we have a lot of awesome friends there. but when it comes to playing shows, Philly is our hometown. it's a lot of fun.

Dream collaboration?

If I could somehow resurrect Blue Album/Pinkerton-era Weezer. I don't know what Rivers Cuomo has been doing since then, but when he was doing that, and Matt Sharp was in the band that would have been awesome to collaborate with the two of them.

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