Once we got there, though, my entire mood changed. The energy was electric—not at first, not while we took a quick tour, but this was huge. We even saw several artists from bands we’d worshipped over the years as they did their line checks.
Before I could even register it, we were on stage, playing for a rowdy crowd. We didn’t have as many people as we might have had if we’d been on the main stage or if it had been later in the day, but I imagined a lot of the people in our crowd were new to us—and that was perfect.
Unlike we’d first envisioned, we weren’t able to play all the songs we’d wanted. The headliners at night had an hour and a half to play, but we barely had a little over half an hour—meaning we couldn’t even play our entire first album. So Zack picked the songs and the order, and we played six songs from our first album and two new ones.
The crowd loved them all.
God, I’d forgotten just how intoxicating it was to play for a live crowd, one that loved your material and gave you all the energy you needed to perform better than ever. And it wasn’t just me—I could see it in the way the guys moved on stage and on their faces when they turned so I could see them. Zack, in particular, looked and sounded better than he had for a good chunk of the tour earlier that year.
It was then that I knew we had a chance to be big. Sure, I’d had all the heady dreams before, but this was a sensation that we were on the right track.
Maybe this was what Zack had felt all along.
After we broke down and left the stage, we were ushered by Mick to the media tent. I was immediately grateful, because even though I wouldn’t consider the temperature outside the tenthot, it was humid—and the tent had plywood “floors” and fans all over the place to make it more comfortable than the stage.
We knew about the interview scheduled with Roxy, but there were three other people we’d be talking to. Again, I was awestruck. There were some radio stations there, but I recognized the signs at the tables as we passed—Kerrang!, Loudwire, Billboard, Alt Press, Rolling Stone, Rock Sound, Ferocity, and so many others.
This was real. It was so weird, because we’d been on tour with some big names, like Fully Automatic and Bleak Viper, but this just really hit home with me that we were…we were with our people.
I even had to fight back tears.
Our first interview was with a local rock radio station and his questions were generic. I got the feeling he didn’t know who we were, but then he talked about “You’ll Never Get the Best of Me,” our third single, and said it still got a lot of airplay.
Then we had an interview with a music blogger, someone I’d never heard of. His name was Thomas and, although he started out by shaking our hands and smiling, he wasn’t a friend. “So I’ve been told your next album is going to be quite a bit different than your first one.”
Zack said, “Sure, it’s gonna be different. There’s no getting around it. We’re not the same people we were when we wrote the first album. And we wanted to go in a different direction by incorporating blues into our sound, and it works.”
“It might seem that way, but a lot of bands fail spectacularly with their second album.”
“Yeah, a lot of bands do, but we just tested two of those songs with our audience—and they ate it up.”
He was right, of course—I’d seen it with my own eyes—but I wondered if it was because those were all new fans who didn’t know the difference between our first album and the new songs because they were being exposed to it all at once. And would that matter? If they liked the music, they liked it.
“But not all your fans are here, Zack. If they listen to one single and don’t like it because they feel like you’ve lost your way, your album will fail.”
“You know what? If they don’t like what we’re doing, they can suck it.”
Thomas raised his almost bushy gray eyebrows. “I think your fans will be disappointed to hearthat,” he said, jotting some notes on the paper.
Jesus—should the rest of us intervene? I exchanged glances with Braden, but Cy was looking across the tent at a thin woman with wispy blue hair, maybe trying to make a love connection.
Zack spoke before we could even stop him. “That’s not necessarily directed at our fans. Look…we as a band are gonna do what we want and I can promise you it’ll be damn good. Ourrealfans will love it. Wannabe fans, the ones who only listen to us because they think we sound like Avenged Sevenfold or Slipknot or some shit like that, they’re probably going to be disappointed because we sound likeourband. We sound like Once Upon a Riot and nobody else. That means our records are going to sound a little bit different every single time and people just need to get used to that.”
Thomas unpursed his lips. “I think you’re still insulting some of your fans.”
“I don’t give a shit what you think.”
I couldn’t help myself. Cy was in another world and Braden was playing the good bassist, letting our frontman do all the talking. “I think what Zack is saying is that our hardcore fans will eat this album up because they’ll hear us in it. People who are on the fence might need to listen to it a time or two before they fall in love with it.” Zack started to speak but I cut him off. “And theywillfall in love with it if they just give it a chance. Like Zack said, we sound like us, so fans will only hate it if they dismiss it right off the bat without really listening.”
Again, Zack acted like he was going to argue, but then his face softened. “Yeah, what Dani said.” It wasn’t until that moment when he was looking directly at me that I caught a whiff of alcohol.
My shoulders dropped—but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. And Iwouldn’tdo anything about it right here and now. Maybe the truth was that I needed to get used to Zack like this and pray that someday he decided to dry out on his own.
The remainder of the interview continued feeling contentious. Why had this guy even wanted to talk to us? He didn’t seem to like us at all—and Zack didn’t help. We were going to look like a bunch of pretentious assholes and I seemed to be the only one who cared.
We had a couple of other quick interviews and then we arrived at Ferocity’s table. Mick kept appearing whenever we had to shift from one table to another, but this was our last stop, and then we could enjoy the festival as fans rather than musicians. “Hey, guys!” she said as we approached. Standing, she grabbed a mic and said, “Let’s go outside. If it’s okay, I wanna do a video interview.”
We all agreed. She nodded at a guy across the way, wavinghim over. It wasn’t until he met us outside the tent that I saw his video camera. Roxy spent a couple of minutes positioning us so that, even though she’d be in the shot, the camera would get all four of us band members. Roxy looked almost like a model with her slim features and hair that flowed like she was in a shampoo commercial—except that it was a vibrant, beautiful purple, a notable feature that would become her trademark. Her tattoo sleeves also made her stand out, and I wondered if I should do that too. I liked the tattoo I’d gotten on my shoulder, but I couldn’t really enjoy it because I couldn’t see it.
