Straight Up Random

Man Overboard is a band with a lot of buzz on the Pop Punk’s Not Dead Tour. Even though they play second on the line-up, the crowd’s energy skyrocketed when they took the stage at the House of Blues in Orlando, FL and crowd surfing significantly increased. Straight Up Random had the chance to talk to the band before their show to discuss the tour, their newest self-titled album, and more. 

SUR: Can you introduce yourself?

I’m Nik, I play bass and sing in Man Overboard.

I’m Justin, I play guitar.

SUR: Alright and how has the tour been so far?

Nik: The tour has been amazing!

Justin: It’s been cool. We’re on I think the 7th or 8th show in Orlando at the House of Blues at Disney World. Cool days.

SUR: What can fans expect from your live performance?

Nik: Awesomeness. I don’t know, it’s fun. We don’t play that long on the tour, we play second, but we get like a half hour I think. So we play like 2 new songs off our record, and a couple old songs.

Justin: I think we’re playing like 9 or 10 songs now.

Nik: It’s fun.

Justin: We try and not talk a lot.

Nik: It’s a very upbeat set.

Justin: Yeah, for sure.

SUR: So the name of the tour is the Pop Punk’s Not Dead Tour – what does the pop punk scene mean to you?

Nik: Well I mean, I feel like when we were growing up listening to pop punk music, it kind of life, after a while it died down. I think Chad put it best – he wrote this whole article, and was like after it kind of like died out, a bunch of bands that were already in the scene tried to like transform into like whatever was cool I guess, do you know what I mean? And then like, this is just proving it never really died or went away. This is what we love to do; if it wasn’t the coolest music to play, we’d still be playing it. It’s just relevant, you know?

Justin: I feel.

Nik: He feels, he feels.

SUR: So your new self-titled album came out last month. How was the writing process for the album?

Nik: We demoed everything out in my studio in Williamstown. So we already went in pretty prepared, and Steve and Justin kind of gave an alternate look at the songs. It wasn’t painful. It was pretty smooth.

Justin: I feel.

Nik: He feels too.

SUR: [laughs] How does the writing process take place for your band?

Nik: Zac or me usually write a song, and then we all kind of like get together in the studio and like make sure it sounds like we know what we’re doing.

Justin: Put that plug in there

Nik: Small Hill Studios, get at me!

SUR: Nice. So as you mentioned before, Steve Klein was your producer. How was it working with him in the studio compared to touring with him?

Nik: Ah, well, we’re finding that out! This is only the 7th day..

Justin: Yeah, it’s our first week, but I guess it’s less intense having him as a tour member than a producer.

Nik: Yeah, it’s less intense. He’s not breathing down our necks anymore, so that’s a plus. He’s not like “write this part!”

Justin: He’s not like “dude! I need like three snapples, but I don’t want the same kind. Oh, and I need a cup of milk, ok?” There’s none of that.

Nik: Yeah, it’s a little more laid-back.

SUR: So what do you think you brought to the table with this album that you maybe lacked with your last album?

Justin: Fast parts.

Nik: Yeah, it’s a little faster, it’s definitely a little faster. I think we focused more on the bridges of the song instead of just writing like a verse-chorus-verse-chorus and ending. We kind of thought about it a little bit more, but nothing’s really that different. I would say.

Justin: I think that there’s new elements to the songs, but I don’t think that there’s anything wildly different. Still sounds like Man Overboard. Some of the reviews said “well this record sounds a lot like Real Talk,” but I don’t think it does, but I don’t think it sounds crazy different so..

Nik: I feel. I feel as well.

SUR: What’s your favorite song off the new album?

Nik: “Teleport.”

SUR: Why?

Nik: I don’t know. First time I heard that song I just got some attachment to it. Never let it go.

Justin: I like “Punishment” and “Atlas” the best. It’s a tie for number one. “Atlas” is a little bit different; “Punishment” is super sad, I like sad songs.

SUR: [laughs] What’s your favorite sad song?

Justin: I don’t know, I like some emotion, you know?

Nik: He’s an emotional guy.

Justin: I like romantic comedies, whatsup?

SUR: So why’d you decide to make this a self-titled album?

Justin: Because we were going to call it Jixer, but we decided that it’s probably not a good idea.

Nik: A couple of us were outvoted, but I think we came down to calling it self-titled because we kind of wanted to like make a little bit of our own mark, you know what I mean? We didn’t just want to just give it a name. Like this is our self-titled record – it’s like a next step for us so we figured we’d give it a clean slate.

SUR: So obviously you’re on this tour now, but what do you have planned afterwards?

Justin: We’re going to do some shows in December in America, and then January/February we’re going to Europe to headline in the UK and then some more shows in America, and then back to Europe for the Rocksound Tour with Your Demise, Trapped Under Ice, Basement, and then back to America to tour again. So all over the place.

SUR: Can you give me one straight up random fact about each member of the band?

Justin: Nik once saw a unicorn.

Nik: It’s very true.

Justin: I love cats.

Nik: Zac looks like McLovin’.

Justin: Mike, our drummer, is Pikadude87 on YouTube…And Wayne Wildrik…

Nik: Is just the most handsome man in the world.

Justin: Yeah.

Nik: Literally.

SUR: Anything more random than that?

Justin: He can slice a mean hoagie.

SUR: Alright, that was my last question. Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Justin: Uh…

SUR: This is where you plug-in “get our new record…”

Justin: Yeah, you can get our new record, you can go to our website – defendpoppunk.com – you can get all kinds of free shit. If you go there, that’s all you’ll need from us. I feel.

Nik: I feel as well.