Interviews

Don`t Look Down

Interview with Ryan on Jan 7, 2004 by Archive Bot

Don’t Look Down is a band that’s good at what they do; producing catchy pop-punk songs with even catchier lyrics. Armed with a strenuous DIY work ethic, this band has been rocking the southern New Jersey scene since 1998 and developing a strong fan base. Singer Ryan Ogren explains his musical roots and how even though he may listen to the same stuff as you and I, he’s going to push the envelopes when it comes to their next album.
 
PB: switching paces a bit, with regards to music of course, do you think you chose it or did it choose you?
 
RYAN: I don’t know, I think I was pushed into it at a young age and I just have been in love with it ever since. I started playing piano when I was 4 and my Mom made me play the piano and I hated it. Dude I was a little kid I didn’t want to do it and I played piano for five or six years and was like I don’t want to do this anymore. My Mom was like that’s cool you don’t have to play piano but you have to play something else so then I picked up a guitar and I was like I kind of like this and now I love piano. I loved that my Mom pushed me into that when I was young and I just ended up playing instruments all the time from being in bands since I was in grade school. It just felt like a natural progression where I was headed.
 
PB: would you ever consider putting pianos on your songs?
 
RYAN: yeah.
 
PB: do you notice a new kind of trend where a lot of people are putting pianos in their songs?
 
RYAN: I think it’s awesome. I think it’s an awesome instrument. That’s kind of a bummer about how if we were going to do a piano song on our CD we’d probably never play it live just because we don’t have a piano player in the band but I could play the piano. But it’s such a pain in the ass. Like I like piano… keyboards are kind of cheesy but I really like piano a lot so it would be kind of hard to get a piano out on stage with us. There’s always bands that just have some songs like that on their CD that you love. You know they’re not going to play it live when you hear it ‘cause it’s so different for them.
 
PB: do you think people abuse it or do you think everyone that’s been doing it so far has been doing it well?
 
RYAN: oh yeah sometimes it’s overdone but I don’t think those bands realize it, that they’re overdoing it. But I don’t think it’s really overdone too much.
 
PB: so it’s like the middle of December now, any predictions for 2004?
 
RYAN: finish recording our CD, go on tour, tour the rest of the year probably.
 
PB: when’s the last time you felt guilty about something?
 
RYAN: I don’t know… like anything?
 
PB: you know! There’s a smirk.
 
RYAN: *laughs* I felt a little bad when I was this person the other night who I probably shouldn’t have been with.
 
PB: ok…
 
RYAN: but there’s a happy but I just felt a little guilty being around this person.
 
PB: why??
 
RYAN: I don’t know, just ‘cause it was a person from my past that I hadn’t seen in awhile and it was just kind of a weird thing about it.
 
PB: What’s the highlight of a typical day for you on tour? Because I know a lot of people in bands don’t have a lot to look forward to but maybe there’s a highlight?
 
RYAN: highlight is playing everyday. We wake up in a hotel room or at someone’s house, we get in our van, we’re in our van from anywhere between three and ten hours a day.  In the van I look forward to listening to music when it’s my turn to drive for like three or four hours I have complete control of the radio.  I can put on whatever I want, that’s when I really like listening to stuff I’ve been waiting to listen to. I could really concentrate on it. If somebody’s driving, we have a Playstation in the back so we’re playing video games and listening to music then we get to the show, load in, depending on where we’re at on the bill, we sound check or we don’t sound check but the best part of the day is the half hour where we get to play. That’s why we do what we do, it’s all based around that.
 
PB: what do you listen to?
 
RYAN: what kind of stuff?
 
PB: yeah.
 
RYAN: I don’t know, a bunch of stuff.
 
PB: tell me something different. Like tell me something people wouldn’t expect you to listen to.
 
RYAN: I listen to a lot of shit and people would expect me to though that’s the thing.
 
PB: like…
 
RYAN: I don’t know, like what I’ve been diggin on a lot these days… I don’t know, I just listened to this band I don’t know if you’ve heard Funeral for a Friend, I don’t know if you’ve heard of them. But seriously I like a lot of, I like Thrice a lot. I like Recover a lot, I don’t know I’m pretty into a lot of the same stuff everyone else is. I’m not one of those cool band kids that’s like I really like Morrissey or whatever. Honestly, I don’t listen to Morrissey. I grew up on new school punk.
 
PB: so you wouldn’t find Bjork in your albums?
 
RYAN: nope. No Bjork in there.
 
PB: don’t know what you’re missing out on.
 
RYAN: but I agree, I agree that I’m somewhat jaded to different musical tastes. I think that there’s probably a lot of cool stuff out there. I’m just really wrapped around our genre and maybe that’s what’s holding me into and maybe I should expand.
 
PB: then do you draw all your influences from that genre because wouldn’t everything seem generic almost?
 
RYAN: yeah that’s exactly where our band feels right now pretty much.
 
PB: ok, what are you going to do about it?
 
RYAN: I don’t know. When we’re writing songs we’re putting a lot of pressure on how these songs are put together so we’re hoping it doesn’t sound like everything else but with out last release it was different. We were like yeah this is cool, nothing sort of pushing the envelope which is what we want to try and do more of with the next record.