Panhandling Punks

Counting the number of shows Pennsylvania-based pop-punks The Wonder Years have played over the years – hell, the last six months – seems quite the task for Dan Campbell as he begins reeling them off:

I was basically asking, do you ever have to panhandle for gas money or go to the mall and try to sell things so you could get to the next town, or sleep on a floor of a weird punk house that no one lives in, or did you have to live off a dollar menu?

“The weekend before the record came out, we played four shows over 24 hours across the entire country. We played Philly, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, which would be the equivalent of playing Sydney, Melbourne, Alice Springs and Perth in one day. It was exhausting. And then from that we went through a week of in-stores and running our own shop; we did a pop-up shop in Philadelphia, we went to England the day we finished that, we had four days off and then did two weeks of Canada, eight weeks of Warped Tour, had a week off, did Japan, had a week off, then did four weeks in the States, did some holiday shows, had two months off, then did six weeks in America, then three-and-a-half weeks in Europe, and now we have the summer off. Oh, we also had another European tour – missed that one.”

Contemplating the effort put into all that travel as the frontman lists everywhere The Wonder Years have been is exhausting enough, but to Campbell and the boys the effort isn’t really an issue. They’re currently in the middle of a world tour for their fourth album The Greatest Generation, and their personal priority is ensuring their fans experience a top-shelf performance. If that means smaller sacrifices, so be it.

“It’s a simple thing, really. You have to make sure you rest appropriately. I don’t do any partying; it’s not my thing, so that’s not a problem for me, but the others need to go about doing that sensibly. Not talking too much is important, and getting to bed on time. Losing my voice is the biggest worry, and the worst feeling; there’s no worse feeling than realising that I’m gonna be letting people down today, that no matter what I do, my body has said, ‘Today, you will let people down.’ I have never cancelled a show for losing my voice, even though I should have a number of times, but knowing that I’m going to walk out onto that stage and not give the best performance I can give, and that I’m gonna be letting down some portion of the stands and the band and myself is very disconcerting for me. I wanna go out there and do my job, and I want to do it at the highest level I can do it at.”

Much of this caution comes from experience. The landscape for touring bands in the States, Campbell explains, was entirely different when the band was conceived close to a decade ago. With pop-punk on a staggering resurgence, newer bands are finding success a lot faster than the generation before them.

“I was talking to the guys from State Champs, who are like a newer band that’s doing really well, and I was asking them, ‘Do you guys ever, like, suffer while you’re on tour?’ and they were like, ‘What do you mean?’ I was basically asking, do you ever have to panhandle for gas money or go to the mall and try to sell things so you could get to the next town, or sleep on a floor of a weird punk house that no one lives in, or did you have to live off a dollar menu?

“We used to go to buffets and one or two guys would go in with bags of Tupperware, and we’d fill up all the Tupperware containers with pizza and bring it out to the rest of the guys. So I basically asked the guys, ‘Do you have to do any of that stuff?’ and they were like, ‘No, we just started a band and were doing cool tours right away.’ And I guess it just shows there’s definitely a path to follow now.

“Not that there’s not a ton of great pop-punk bands that came before us, but I kind of almost imagine it like they had carved a way through the rock to make a path for pop-punk to follow. Now bands can come down it a little more freely, which is actually really exciting, and we’re seeing some great music, bands like Modern Baseball are young and brilliant – their third US tour, they were selling out rooms with 2500 people. On our third US tour we were literally begging for gas money. It’s funny to look back and see how much things are changing, but it’s all for the good and it’ll be intriguing to see what happens next.”