This interview speaks for itself. It was conducted with Jay Reason, lead singer of THE DISTANCE, in January 2008.

Pastepunk: It’s a new year, and THE DISTANCE have writing been new material and now find themselves without a label. Is the clean break a mountain for the band to climb, or merely a mild uphill slope?

Jay Reason: We look at it as a huge mountain for us to climb. We are without a label by choice. We were offered to stay with Century Media but after all the stuff that happened with Abacus we felt that it was best to sort of go our own way. Robert who owned Abacus and Century Media is a great guy and is very smart and had we been able to just directly work with him we would have stayed, but it’s impossible to stay at a label where you don’t get along with certain people there. I mean you’d think that running a business some people would work it as a business but there are some people who are just, for lack of a better term, “haters” and go out of their way to badmouth you, your band, whatever. We would always get reports from people about certain staff there saying negative things about the band, and I don’t expect every worker to like our band BUT this was like some high school type stuff. When you hear stuff like that you sort of know that they aren’t going to work your album properly. I didn’t always agree with every signing that Jamey did at Stillborn but I would never handle things the way certain people did and treated and worked all the bands equally. Abacus was off to such a great start, so many good bands, some great workers, it was just growing way too fast, and not everyone there had their focus on the Abacus, a lot of the staff had other priorities which in turn hurt all the bands on the label. This is just my opinion and I am sure others see it differently, and the experience wasn’t all negative. They did provide us with the means to do an amazing album and work with some of the best producers, directors, etc. Who knows where we will end up. We just teamed up with this cool company to release a new EP as a digital only thing. It’s going to include the new song “Lend Me Your Ears” which is on the MySpace page right now, another brand new songs and a cover of a SHAKESPEARS SISTER song called “Stay.” We recorded the first two songs with our friend Enoch at his studio East Lake. He is a really awesome guy to work with and I think he found a way to bring our, I guess, more “rock” sound out without it sounding too over produced like the last record. “Stay” was supposed to be on the Euro version of our Abacus release but because they couldn’t get the license we had to leave it off. It’s cool to be able to do things like this and not have to ask permission from a label. The negative side of that is you always need money to market, bring awareness and move things like this. I wouldn’t say I would always do things on our own but for now I think it works best. We talked to some labels who the first thing they asked us, before they even heard the new stuff was “How many MySpace plays do you get a day?” I can’t believe that that has replaced listening to the actual music or even if we had been touring recently. Anyone can get ten thousand plays a day that doesn’t mean they could draw a crowd. There is a band from our area that gets like eight thousand a day and they don’t even play CT. It’s going to be interesting to see what the music industry ends up like.

Pastepunk: Late in 2007 you started a new company named Shop Shogun – an online clothing company that prints their own exclusive shirts for hardcore bands sells a slew of other designs. How is this working out so far? Did you have prior experience in this area, or did you partner with people who did?

Jay: I am so glad that I finally get to talk about this. Shop Shogun is the brain child of myself and Peter Morcey ( former singer of 100 demons, Forced Reality). Pete opened a screen printing shop in 2006 and he was doing a lot of printing for bands. Coming from my label background and running a webstore, I saw an opportunity here for us to be able to provide some of the bands that we are friends with a way to get their merch out there. It’s really hard for a lot of the “smaller” bands to get merch deals. We knew that kids wanted to get their hands on their merch. It took us a little while to get it all started but it’s doing so well right now. We have exclusive designs from Integrity, Underdog, Terror, XO Skeletons just to name a few. We are even expanding now into clothing companies, we just worked out something with Darren Brass of Miami Ink. We are bringing his clothing line “Holdfast” in February and will be the only online retailer of it. We have also added Chris Beatie of Hatebreed’s line “Bridgeport Republic” to the store. We add new items every week. The list of bands is too long to list here but trust me it’s a very good roster of bands and the quality is top notch. Shop Shogun for me is just another way to give something back, stay in touch and help out the bands and scene that I grew up in. I am not one to go around and say “oh hey I did this and did that” but the info is out there. Please check those out at shopshogun.com & shogunscreenprinting.net – we work with all our bands, and can help you get merch even if you don’t have the money up front and are going on tour. Also if any bands would like to get in on the online store get in touch.

Pastepunk: Another one of your dealings is [was] managing Martyr / Stillborn Records. What’s the latest status with each of those labels? How involved is Jamey Jasta with Stillborn these days?

Jay: This is something I have remained rather quiet on. When The Distance started gearing up to be a full time thing, I stepped down from working at Stillborn. Jamey and I remain great friends, and still talk every day. I just didn’t think it was fair to run the label and not be able to give it my 100%. While seem people, may hate The Distance, hate Stillborn, hate Jamey, hate me, no one can say that we don’t put 100% into something. If we can’t we just don’t do it. It was a hard decision to leave that part of me behind. I had been working and putting out records with Jamey for close to 8 years. On top of doing the Stillborn thing I was also helping a lot of smaller bands out. It was a lot of fun and I still have the option if I ever want to, to put out a band. Same thing goes with Martyr, When I took it over I also ended up taking over all the debt that was left with it. Jamey has since taken it over for me and rolled both labels into one. Jamey is still involved with the signings but since I left he had to expand and get a few people to cover all the things I was doing. He has a great band called THY WILL BE DONE that I think people should check out. I learned a lot from him and I am very happy that I got to have that experience. It helped when it was time to do our album and it also hurt us in a way because I knew how certain things could be done and then weren’t executed properly. I am happy too because a lot of the bands I was working with went on to do great things, I mean look at BLACKLISTED. It’s a perfect match for them and Deathwish. Jake and Tre are two people I have always admired and Blacklisted was a band I wanted no matter what when they first came out. They talk about it on their blog. WITH HONOR got to be on Victory which was awesome for them and FULL BLOWN CHAOS went on to Ferret.

Pastepunk: You’ve been in touring bands for a decade or so – what’s the biggest difference in hitting the road with THE DISTANCE than your time fronting VOICE OF REASON?

Jay: Things are so much easier now. Now, all a band has to do is post a song on MySpace, post on some message board that they are looking for dates, have GPS in their vans and cell phones. Everything is easier now, touring, getting signed, recording EVERYTHING! I remember playing shows and we couldn’t rent a van or anything so we bought Hatebreed’s old van, made a fake temp license plate at a Kinko’s and went with a road atlas. We use to use things like BYOFL [Book Your Own Fucking Life] and send out packages and pretty much hope when you got to that town that your show was still on, we broke down on the side of the highway once and no one had a cell phone then, we were all kids and at that time cell phones didn’t have any flat rates of “x amount of minutes” and free nights. We had to walk the highway to an exit, and use a pay phone. Same goes for when we got into whatever town the show was in. We would get as close as we could with the atlas and call the promoter from a pay phone, roughly try to explain where the hell we were and hope that the kid knew what we were talking about we even hoped we would pick up. Many times we got to a place only to find out there was no show at all. It seemed like back then kids were more excited about touring bands. The whole message board / MySpace thing lets kids get a sense of what the show was like, but nothing can replace that feeling of going to see a band you’d never heard of rip it up and then going to buy a 7” and a shirt from them. Now kids just sort of go, “I will catch ‘em next time” and read about the show and look at pictures on a message board. It was such a different time. I miss that part of touring sometimes, we were just young and stupid and didn’t think about anything except playing. It’s funny because recently more people have become interested in my past band. If anyone wants to hear it you can download it here: MegaUpload or via my website fakebig.com.

Pastepunk: The haters came out of the woodwork in reaction to some of the material on The Rise The Fall And Everything In Between (myself included). Few bands have made such a drastic change in their sound while keeping the same name – did you ever feel regret that you didn’t just start over with a new name before the release? Did the ‘punches’ make you stronger or did it play with your insecurity?

Jay: I am glad that I can finally address this. I would make the record the exact same way again if given the chance. It’s funny because some other bands who have made even more drastic changes kept their names and been praised. At the same time you have other bands who are so bad, that can do no wrong cause they are friends with everyone and no one wants to say anything about “good dudes.” I think we were and still are an easy target because we don’t care what people think and didn’t go out and try to defend the album it made it even easier to attack us. The thing is everyone talked about how much they liked us when we were fast and blah blah, it’s like “ya?” Then get off your ass and come to a show, buy a shirt. We did the record we wanted to do. I don’t expect some kid who is 15 years old and just bought a Minor Threat album to be able to relate to me. I am gonna be 29 years old and have lived and gone through a lot. For every person who hated it, I had someone tell me how much it helped them out and many people who said it was their favorite album. We also did get some of the best reviews of our career for that album, but who wants to hear about that? It’s always easier to join in and bash stuff than it is to give it an honest listen and decide for yourself if you like something or not. I am not just talking about our band here. That album came together at a really weird time for me. I was going through so many things and not just breaking up with a girl that I was going to buy a home with and get married to, but other things that I am not ready to discuss openly. People didn’t know that some of those songs were a few years old by the time we went to record them. We had essentially written a complete album with producer Matt Hyde (who for the record, did No Warning’s Suffer Survive – I’ll let the readers make their own jokes at our expense here) and we pulled some of those songs for that album. Lyrically the album was written in different stages of that relationship and I am happy with the way the album brings it across. Did the album cover suck? Yeah, but there were some people at Abacus who wanted that. Trust me when you’re dealing with the amount of money we got to do that record, you have to go along with certain things. I am not trying to make it seem like we didn’t have any say, but, we had to play nice to get our record a chance. We also recorded with guys who made hit records so of course their influence is gonna be on it. I think that the record really made me work hard. Harder than I ever had to as a singer and a song writer. The other half of it too was that the fast songs on the album are the best fast hardcore songs we have ever written. Who knows, if the album was released under a different band name or a label that knew how to expand in that market maybe it would have been different. I feel like The Distance will always be evolving, if we want to write fast hardcore, we will. If we wanna write “Inspired By You” & “Let it Rain” part two, three, four and five we will. It’s just like when you’re with a girl that you’ve been with for a long time, no matter how great she looks and how great the sex is you still want a taste of the hot blonde standing at the bar. We wanted to try something different. I am also a huge THE USED fan and Bert is a friend of the band. We got to work with him which was an amazing experience. With the new stuff some people are gonna like it and some are gonna hate it but it’s something we are doing for ourselves. It’s always hard to read negative comments about things you’ve poured your heart into. I will be really honest here, I wanted nothing more than for that record to crossover and make it, the whole record was written as a sort of revenge / fuck you to a certain person and I wanted them to have to hear about us and hear that song everywhere they went. Again, I don’t expect everyone to agree with that but it’s how I chose to handle it. We are all part of this “scene” that isn’t even about the music anymore, message boards and a handful of kids who care more about post counts than music, and kids who will be out of hardcore / punk in a year who start up some shit website dictate what kids like. It’s almost like they wait to see what their favorite internet poster says and they go along with that. If that comment just got you mad or said “that’s not true,” you probably fit into that category.

Pastepunk: Something lighthearted… many people in the hardcore scene have a thing for DJ’ing as they get older. Including yourself, who would be on your “All-Hardcore DJ Team?”

Jay: I fell into DJ’ing on a total accident. My friend Chauncey who runs Stuck Up got me into it. I wanted to do a classic rock / 80 rock night and that is the music I grew up on and have expanded into doing parties at different area bars and stuff. It’s a little bit of extra cash and it’s fun. I don’t venture out of classic and 80’s rock. So you’re not really gonna here any current hip-hop or Youth Of Today when you come to one of my parties. I am always trying to get into new things. I recently expanded into acting and worked on the new Sam Mendes movie ( a very very small part ) but it was enough to get me a waiver for SAG. I have so many things left I want to do and I am really lucky to have these opportunities. As far as my all hardcore DJ team? Easy, first Sean from Hatebreed who a lot of people may not know is an awesome DJ and makes beats for so many artists. Chauncey aka Big E (you’ve seen him on the Hellfest DVD and every where else) and Danny Diablo. link: myspace.com/thedistance