Taking Back Sunday (Eddie)
Interviews | Jul 14th, 2006
Taking Back Sunday’s Eddie Reyes was nice enough to take time out of his busy tour schedule for a phoner from Tampa, FL. Their new record, “Louder Now” debuted at number 2 on the Billboard Top 200 and is currently being promoted with a stadium tour featuring Angels and Airwaves, Head Automatica and The Subways. Although he got pretty secretive towards the end of the interview, he managed to share some information about what lies ahead for TBS.
You’ve been married for a year now, since you’ve been so busy with your new album and touring, how has that affected your marriage?
It’s hard, it’s not easy, but when we moved to LA to record the record, I brought my wife out with me so she was with me the whole time because she was pregnant.
Did she go on tour with you at all?
My wife comes out on tour with me once in a while, but we haven’t brought my daughter out because she’s still too young. Maybe we’ll bring her out when she’s a little older, she’s only five months old.
And now you’re living in Ohio?
My wife has the baby, and I’d leave her alone in New York while I was touring, so we bought a house close to her parents. It’s just like Long Island, a big suburb just like Long Island right outside of Cleveland. I’m planning on renting a place in New York so we can go back and forth, New York is still my home no matter what.
Since you began playing with your current line up with Matt and Fred, you have omitted certain songs from your live set, namely The Blue Channel. Is there a specific reason why you don’t play this song live anymore?
Man, we haven’t played that in like four years. A lot of those old songs, they were great for the time but when you play stuff over and over again for so many years, you kind of want to progress. You don’t want to walk around wearing the same clothes every day, you kind of want to change it up. We kind of felt like a couple of songs deserved a proper retirement for now. We like to pick songs every year and put them away for a little later on, so maybe next year we’ll start playing it again. It just kind of needs a break. When you have new songs, you want the world to hear your new songs, they already know your old ones.
Do you still have a relationship with John and Shaun at all?
Yeah. I just saw them in St. Louis and hung out with them for a little while and said hi.
Since you’re the original member, from when you started the band, how long did it take for you to get some label interest for Taking Back Sunday?
Probably about two years it took. I mean, when we started as a new band, I was in a lot of other pretty popular bands in New York. When I started Taking Back Sunday, everyone was like ‘Oh, new band let’s check it out’. I guess everyone caught on right away even with the old band members. But, the band really took off when Adam became our singer. He was our third bassist and I noticed that one day he could sing really good, so I was like ‘You’re gonna sing’. I think after that, our demos just started taking off like all over the place and labels just started calling us. It was all word of mouth. We would drive and be like ‘Hey guys, on Saturday we have a show in Connecticut’ and we’d drive up and be shocked to see that the show was packed. It kind of like blew up that way. Then the labels started coming and Victory was the label that some of our other friend’s bands were on.
What happened towards the end as you left Victory for Warner Brothers?
It was just that we did our time, it was a natural progression. We looked for a new thing, a new family to work with and Warner was the best out of everyone we met. They were really passionate and respectful and just let us do what we wanted to do, so we decided to go with Warner Brothers. They’re doing it the way that we want them to do it, so it’s more exciting.
During your last tour, you were showcasing a bunch of new songs. You played this song ‘Follow The Format’ a bit, and then it disappeared, whatever happened with that song?
I don’t know what happened with that one. I think that just kind of faded out a little bit. Wow, I don’t even know, I know we played it a couple of times and then we just put it away. It probably didn’t work out the way we expected.
How is this current tour with Angels and Airwaves?
It’s going great. The shows have been amazing, the kids have been awesome, the energy and all the other bands are great, The Subways, Angels and Airwaves, Head Automatica, we’re all good friends so its like a big bro tour.
Your show at Nassau Coliseum on this tour was insane, how does it feel to play such a big venue to a home town crowd who has seen you at places like The Downtown?
The funny thing is that we’d still play the Downtown. It’s like two different worlds. When we play smaller venues we have a different mind frame. The first couple of songs, I had no idea what to do with myself and I was running around the stage like a chicken without a head. It was crazy, and because it was home town it was just packed. All the shows have been awesome, they all have their own different entities, their own character. I can’t really say every show has been the same. That Nassau one was pretty crazy.
Everyone who had seats just stormed the floor right before you guys went on.
That’s been happening a lot actually.
You’re recording live footage of this tour? Is there a DVD planned?
I think we’re going to be making a DVD like a day in the life of Taking Back Sunday, but I don’t know what’s going to be released.
What’s going on after this tour?
We’re going to finish this tour up, we just found out we’ll be doing the Tonight Show with Jay Leno the day after San Diego, so that’s a big huge exciting thing. Then the next day we do Carson Daly and then after that we’re going to shoot a couple of videos for some new songs. Then we head out to Japan for two shows there, then head back home and most likely head out to Europe and do some stuff there. Then we start the Taste of Chaos World Tour.
MakeDamnSure did insanely well, what’s the next single?
You’ll have to find out.
Can you tell what other videos you’ll be making?
Nope. We’re a secretive band, you guys should know that by now.
Speaking of ‘secretive band’, any more Booze and Adventure shows coming up?
I don’t know about that, what are you talking about? The number one rule about Taking Back Sunday is that you don’t talk about Taking Back Sunday.
Twenty-Twenty Surgery, is this an ode to Lasik? Or is that taking it way too literally?
It’s a metaphor, but I guess so. Fred had Lasik surgery, and i guess that’s where we got the idea from. It’s about being overly sensitive to the world around you. Actually, I’ll let you know, we just shot a video for that one but that’s not for America that’s for the UK single, I’ll let you know about that.
