Stay Seventeen was recently featured as a Highlighted Artist of ours, but we thought it would be fun for you to know more about this up and coming pop rock band! Find out why they got their name from a popular All Time Low song, all about their love for Taylor Swift, and how their past tour went. They are also currently working on some new covers but won’t tell us! Do you have any guesses? Check out the full interview below and make sure to check out Stay Seventeen.
1. Your name, Stay Seventeen, is from one of All Time Low’s first songs, “The Party Scene”. Why did you pick that lyric?
The lyric to us is about keeping that inner youth inside us alive! Our live show is packed full of high energy and we’re fun to watch. Basically to sum it all up, its kind of like all of us never really left the 6thgrade!
2. You just finished the Freaks and Geeks Tour with Hollywood Ending, This Is All Now, 7 Minutes in Heaven, and Late Nite Reading. From that tour, what is your favorite tour memory?
We broke down a lot, and have a pretty sweet collection of parking tickets. Then at the last show in New Jersey, we all ran up in our underwear during the H.E. set! It was just all around a rad tour, everyone on it are all good people and that always makes the whole experience super fun.
3. Have you noticed any differences between your hometown scene in Boston compared to the places you’ve toured recently?
The scene is pretty alive but different anywhere you go! We went to Canada and everyone up there is super supportive and really open to finding new bands! So it was very motivating to get such a crazy response from places we had never gone to before. I think anywhere you go, its always going to be different, but as long as listeners keep an open mind in discovering new bands it can always make it a good experience for the bands like it can with fans.
4. You used KickStarter to help fund your tour costs and had great success with it. Is that a tool you think you’ll continue to use and would you recommend it to other up and coming bands?
Kick starter is an amazing tool to help bands get to where they dream to be. We could have never imagined doing anything we have done in the past few months without the crazy support we have! I recommend any up and coming bands to do it. Being in a band and writing music is harder than most people think. To balance touring and still having a constant income to support your dream is harder than I could have ever imagined. We have all been fired from so many jobs, and sacrificed so much to chase this, and it means so much that our fans gave back to us the way they did to help us get that much closer.
5. You released your EP Promises last July; how would you say the response has been since then?
Pretty remarkable. We wrote those songs as best friends, and hold them very close to our hearts. They are some of the most personal experiences we have ever had. I never would have thought that it would carry us to where we are today, and have so many amazing people relate to things that have happened to us. Its amazing really, and definitely helps us keep going every day knowing that the things we feel aren’t so different from what everyone else is feeling.
6. You’ve done a few covers including Katy Perry’s “Roar” and Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”; how do you decide which covers to do?
Well, Taylor Swift and I are going to get married one day, so that’s how we decided on that one! And we are also just all huge Katy Perry fans and just started playing Roar and decided to cover it.
7. Do you have any covers currently in the works?
YES! But it’s a secret! 😉
8. Last month you released your new single “Cloud 9”. When can we look forward to an eventual album that this single will accompany?
We will be headed back down south to record a new EP in the next couple months with Zack Odom and Kenneth Mount which should be out in the late summer!
9. You released a music video for “On My Mind” back in November. What was that experience like? Do you have a voice in the making of the video for what it’s about?
Yes we did! That song is pretty much an experience we all had went through when starting our band last year. It’s about letting go of a relationship but holding on all at the same time. When two people reach a point in there lives when they no longer get along due to different paths there lives take them, and everything in between! So it was something we all could relate to and wanted to make a video that listeners could relate to as well. It was an amazing experience, music videos are for sure one of my favorite parts about being in a band!
10. What would you say has been the most difficult part of your career for you all personally and collectively?
The hardest part has been the drastic change we have all had to face since we started this band. We have all been in bands in the past, but none have been taken as far as Stay Seventeen has in such a short amount of time. I never ever thought that touring when you have barely enough money for food and gas would weigh down on you the way it does, Showering, eating a home cooked meal, these are all things we all take for granted till you go without. We all love what we do more than anything but letting go of the past is things we have all had to overcome as well. Chasing a dream really opens you up to realizing who truly supports you and who truly loves you.
11. How did you, or do you continue to, overcome these struggles?
Respecting each other and loving one another. Jayk and Mike are my brothers and I would do anything for those guys. I know and we know that its just the three of us out there when we tour and make records and we have to always look out for each other no matter what. We have been through so much in such a short time span and that’s hard to grasp at times, but whenever one of us is feeling down we know we have each other to turn to. Also the greatest fans in the entire world as well as the greatest families in the entire world. We wouldn’t be able to do anything without either, so we live to love them all and make them the most proud they can be!
12. What is the ‘highlight’ of your career so far?
I think its safe to say that aside from being capable to tour and just play shows in general that the highlight for us as a band would be any time we are up on stage performing and we pause and look out and take a moment to just look around us, and see where we are and you see hundreds of kids singing words back to you. Words that you pulled from your mind from something that means the world to you, or a time where you were in a bad place in your head, its just the most breathtaking thing you could ever experience. And that is the best feeling I could ever imagine!
13. What is the one dream the moment at which point either personally or collectively you would be able to say yes I’ve achieved this, I’m living my dreams?
When i was in highschool and got caught up in bands and writing, I looked at all the bands I listened to and said to myself “well if I can ever get to the point where I can tour and play music every night like them, then I will be making something of myself and would be the happiest kid alive.” When I was just in a small crappy local pop punk band that could barely play there instruments I would open up for bands that would tour and would watch them load out every time and drive off to the next state and would just die inside because I wanted to do this so bad. Success is not defined by how much money you have in your pocket but how happy you feel when you’re doing what you love. If someone is going to define there destination of success by how much money they have in there bank account in the end, then I feel sorry for them. We are on the right path to success because we do what makes us happy and that is the best feeling I could ever ask for.
