Interview with The Graduate vocalist Corey Warning
By Simay
After walking around among the tents for what seemed like forever and the first glimpses of a farmer’s tan on my arms and chest, I ran into someone in a gorilla suit, holding a sign that said, “Help me get out of this. Buy a CD.” Once I turned out, I realized that what I’d been looking for was right there: The Graduate’s tent. On their last day of Warped Tour, singer Corey Warning took some time to talk to us. Big thanks to The Anarchist for giving me this opportunity, and to JuJu for helping me go through with it.
Simay: I heard that some unfortunate events happened during Warped Tour, leaving your drummer at a gas station and all that…
Corey Warning: Lots of fun stuff… Yeah, we left Tim at a truck stop one night. And we’ve gone through, I think, three or four tents now just with the wind and the rain and horrible weather. We lost two yesterday in Cleveland, and then one in Miami, I think… Yeah, just lots of stuff like that. Warped Tour is really good, but the sleep deprivation and everything like that… It’s been a trip though. Today’s out last day, and we’re excited to have a little bit of time off, but we’re gonna miss it.
Simay: What are some of the memories that stick out since it’s your last day today?
Corey Warning: I don’t know. A lot of stuff, I guess. I went to a piñata party one night, and it was just for lead singers, and it was us trying to dive over every other lead singer of the tour, trying to eat candy. That was a lot of fun. We got to hang out on tour busses, you know, we never really got to experience that yet. Some of our friends are on busses this year, so we got to hang out on those. Dream of maybe [having one of our own] next year, three years, or maybe never, never…
Simay: I heard there are some contests going on during Warped Tour this year. Did you take part in that?
Corey Warning: I think that’s the piñata party. I know the first day we got here they had one for just tour managers, and then we played just for the techs. What I did was just the lead singers. At the piñata party, there are little tickets that are taped to the candy, and you get a pass to cut the lunch line for a week. We got to pick our own set in Chicago. So it’s pretty cool.
Simay: People who’ve watched you for the first time at Warped Tour, without having heard your songs before, seem to come pick up your CD. How do you do that?
Corey Warning: Right now we’re selling them for five bucks. That kinda helps. We were shy to get them out there, you know, we’re a new band and we’re not with a big record label or popular labels like that, so we’re just doing what we can to get out there.
Simay: How was it working with your producer, Brian McTernan?
Corey Warning: It was great. He’s an awesome guy. Very very smart and talented. We learned a lot working with him. A lot of times, he was kinda like a coach to us, and he really helped us develop our band. And I hope we go back to him for the next chapter too.
Simay: What bands are you hanging out with after sets?
Corey Warning: I guess it just depends. We’re still kind of the new kids on the block, so we don’t have too many friends here. But My American Heart is on Warped Tour with us. We were close to those guys. We just did a six-week tour with them and The Audition.
Simay: I heard you have barbecue parties afterwards…
Corey Warning: Yeah. We haven’t got a chance to go to many of those either. We’re in a band, so we have to try and get out of here as much as we can just to try and sleep and stuff like that. So we don’t get to hang out as much as we’d like to, but we try to catch almost every band on the tour, especially the bands we really enjoy and just introduce ourselves. It’s kinda one of those things where there are a lot of bands that we don’t know, so we don’t really hang out. But we walk past each other going to the stage or going to catering, just like, “Hey, what’s up?”
Simay: Who writes the songs in the band?
Corey Warning: Everybody.
Simay: How does that process work out?
Corey Warning: it’s tough sometimes. We don’t have a main songwriter in this band. There isn’t one person who does the majority of everything. So when we go to write songs, it’s five different people with all different ideas and opinions. And a lot of times it’s just hard to make everybody happy with what we’re doing, but it’s good. We try not to run the band like a democracy. If one person is really really against something, we usually don’t to it. So, eventually, everybody is happy in the end. It’s tough, but it all works out in the end. With the new record, we wanted to kill each other while we were writing it, but we’re happy about it now.
Simay: In the ‘Sit and Sink” video, are the fans sleeping or are they dead?
Corey Warning: I don’t wanna answer that, actually. I don’t know. I think I wanna leave that to the viewers just to make up their own interpretations.
Simay: Okay. Well, I thought they were sleeping, so I’ll just go with that…
Corey Warning: Okay.
Simay: You wake them up with your music. Is that a statement towards the “record industry?”
Corey Warning: It could be taken that way, yeah. There’s a lot of different things in a music video. Even with parts of it, with lyrics and stuff like that… I think there’s a bit of a subtle statement to the video. It’s not something where we sat down and said, “Okay, we wanna say this.” But there’s definitely parts of it to be taken different ways.
Simay: You’ve said that playing the House of Blues in Chicago was a big dream. How do you feel now that you’ll be back there again?
Corey Warning: I’m excited. We’re an Illinois band, but we’re a central Illinois band. There’s a very very big difference between central Illinois and Chicago. It’s two different music scenes. For us, getting into Chicago before we were signed and nationally touring was really hard. Now that we’re playing the Warped Tour and the House of Blues and Lollapalooza and everything this year…. We’re really excited about it.
Simay: You’ll be headed to Lollapalooza after this, opening for June and The Higher…
Corey Warning: No. We’re the only band on Lollapalooza. It’s a big festival, kinda like Warped Tour, but it’s only three days and it’s only in Chicago. I think there’s more of an eclectic selection of bands there, but after Lollapalooza, we’re going on tour with June and The Higher for about two weeks.
Simay: So, is it better with a lot of bands and big places, or would you rather play somewhere where it’s small with less people?
Corey Warning: It has its ups and downs. It’s just like anything. There’s good parts about it and bad parts. Playing the festivals certainly is a little bit different because you have a much higher opportunity to play for people that might not have heard your band. We catch people that are just walking by our stage, going to see other music. And they’ll say “Oh, this is kinda cool stuff,” and hang out for a song. Then they’ve heard of us, as opposed to club tours where everyone is in a room and they kinda have to listen to us.
Simay: The meaning of your album title, ‘Anhedonia,” is just existing and a lack of emotion. Was that something you went through?
Corey Warning: When writing the album, we had a really hard time with some spots of writer’s block. There’s a lot of self-doubt and stuff going on with us. We’ve kinda gotten thrown into this big pool, and we really don’t think we were ready for it. We struggled a bit in the beginning, and some of the problems I was personally having was coming up with lyrics in such a short amount of time. We’d just put out Horror Show EP, and I was pretty much drained from just writing that just three months ago. And then they’re like, “Hey, write another full-length album.” I’ve always been able to just write on the side. I’ve always had a full-time job or I’d been going to college or something like that [where] I’d only be able to write on the side. And now it’s like “Here’s your job, you gotta have this done by this time.” It freaked us out a little bit. I was starting to feel like I wasn’t feeling anything. I just couldn’t think of anything to write about. I just felt really empty. We were discussing different titles for the record, and the word came up just kinda randomly, and we really thought it would fit the album appropriately.