Ska/punk band Survay Says! has built up a career full of good music and good times. Singer and guitarist Henry Menzel recently took the time to talk with us about being on the road, new music and what it is that motivates them to keep pushing forward.
You guys just started another national tour and you guys have been touring a ton for the last several years. Why is it so important for you guys to stay on the road?
It’s fun [laughs]. It’s hard for me to market us any other way. I feel like my favorite way to get ears is to play. We’ve been lucky to do some support tours for bigger bands, and I feel like the constant thing I run into is these bands won’t take you out if you’re not worth it in as many markets as them. The only way that we can be is to get out there and stay relevant whether or not the bigger names take notice. It’s important to me to stay in people’s ears.
Ska’s the kind of music you’ve got to see live.
Right. I try to set us apart. I think the best way to show people what we play is to play for them. I mean obviously there’s the internet and stuff like that…I don’t like it enough and it’s just so saturated. I’m a bigger believer in the real human experience of the show.
What has been the hardest part about being on the road so long?
I mean, money is the obvious answer because money is never not an issue. But outside of that, I feel like my band, we kind of try to be more active than anybody. At least right now on these tours, keeping us as a live act together throughout all the tours is [the hardest part]. Even now, if something comes up and somebody has to go home, we have to trust that we can find a replacement, or we just have to do it without them. I think that’s my biggest problem. Because even moneywise, as long as you’re playing, you have at least a chance of, not making money in terms of profit, but just making enough to survive. I guess right now my biggest issue is keeping everybody together because it’s so many shows and so much time and unexpected things happen. We just have to roll with it.
With playing so many live shows a year how do you keep energized to perform most nights?
I get tired, sure. I mean, I’m exhausted right now. It’s exhausting, you know, but in terms of being able to perform, I love performing. It’s my favorite thing to do. It’s a full blown addiction. It’s my favorite part of the day, and I never get tired of performing. I’m glad to perform. I think actually tomorrow will be my 900th show, and I’m still every bit as in love with playing as I was when I first started. Physically, I’m freaking tired, but mentally, as long as I have a show to play I’m set for the day.
You guys are also slated to play The Fest 14 this year. This isn’t your first time on the festival. What is the best part of playing this event? What keeps you coming back?
We get friends from all walks of the punk rock community to come and hang out. It’s almost like a sleep-away camp. We get to see bands and hang out and tell stories and just revel and enjoy the music and the culture. That’s one of my favorite aspects other than getting to play. It’s cool that people take the time to see us. Also, it’s just important in terms of the recognition at these kinds of events. I want us to be a staple at these kinds of festivals. It helps with our reputation. This is three years in a row, so we’re doing pretty well.
It’s been more than a year since you released your last album. Are there any plans to create/put out new music in the near future?
Yes! Yes, actually. I’m putting together an EP right now. There should be a new EP hopefully next year. This will be the last tour we do for a little while, but we’ll do some shows here and there. But in terms of big long tours, this will be the last one….So hopefully next year we’ll have a seven inch EP out. That’s the plan; finish up this run and then go record.
It seems like you guys have been garnering a lot more attention in the last couple of years. You’ve been a band for some time now, so how does it feel seeing how far you’ve come after all the hard work you’ve done?
It’s great. It’s awesome. I honestly wish I could remind myself of the great things more often otherwise I wouldn’t get so down on myself sometimes. Whenever I’m in the right frame of mind I can look back and think “holy shit!”. Every time we take another step in the right direction it’s really surreal. I don’t really think of any of it as success or failure. It just feels really good to keep growing and to see people coming out to shows and giving a shit that we’re playing. That’s my favorite thing.
What are you looking forward to once you wrap up this latest round of shows this winter?
I’m really excited to record again. We just build up a bunch of ideas over time and then it’s like “okay, okay I’m ready to try something new and to create.” I don’t get to record all the time, so I’m really excited to get to make a new record. That’s my chief excitement at this point. And to see, hopefully, that people like it. If everything goes the way I want it, it’s just another step in the right direction.
What would you say has been the most difficult part of your career for you all personally and collectively?
We all take time away from our families and that’s always hard. I feel like that’s kind of the obvious answer. I guess for me, my mom is ill and it’s hard for me to be away from home sometimes. That’s why even my brother, who is our trombone player in the band, has had to take a step back from touring. That’s hard for me to deal with. Not just because of the element he brings to the show, but because he’s my best friend, he’s my brother, we’ve literally done everything together our entire lives. That’s my hardest obstacle right now.
Also, I like routine in certain respects and this job is very open ended. There can be a lot of unexpected things that will always come your way. Some of them you don’t think will ever happen and then you have to learn to adapt. It’s always the constant challenge that we all face. Luckily we face most of them together. My strength is with my band. It’s a collective. I need them and I hope they need me.
How did you, or do you continue to, overcome these struggles?
I think musicians, for whatever reason, I don’t understand why, I feel like they’re on a time crunch in terms of either finding their success or deciding how long they want to stay in the game. It’s a weird thing that I constantly see. You see musician get up to certain age and are like “well, we can’t do this anymore.” In any other situation in life, they always tell you that you have to give things time. You have to allow yourself time to figure certain things out and digest things and process. I think that living the kind of life we live is no different. You can’t put a time limit on yourself and expect quick results. Sometime you got to sit in there and hang in there and wait for it to come to you. That’s kind of the way that I deal with these things. I think our band, in terms of finding success, aren’t interested in finding the get rich quick scheme. We’re in it for the long game.
It’s like once you’ve gotten through it, you can look back and see that what was bothering you wasn’t such a big deal.
Yeah. I think another reason why musicians harp on almost everything, is they want quick fixes. They’re afraid of what other people think too much. I mean, you should care what people think, especially when it comes to your work, but on a personal level they’re not you. You got to handle your own problems and not let the opinion of other people sway what you’re doing. I want to figure out what’s right for me and my band. That’s how we handle our problems to, not ignore it, but just not expect to fix certain things very quickly.
What is the ‘highlight’ of your career so far?
[Sighs] That’s hard. The first thing that pops in my head, it could be a show, it could be like a high attendance thing, it could be anything like that, but I think for me it’s any time fans will reach out to me and tell me that something we wrote affected their lives in a positive way and it helps them in a certain respect. Whatever my songs mean to me, whenever somebody tells me that a song got them through something in their life or affected them in a positive way, it made them think differently, it made them feel better about whatever it is they’re going through, that’s my absolute favorite thing. I have such a hard time connecting with people on a personal level and in everyday life, so whenever I do that I feel like I’m doing something right. Not just for myself, but for other people. To have people take what we created and apply it to their life to make it better is the most surreal and beautiful thing that can happen. These are songs that I wrote in my house and put together because I thought they sounded cool, and it helped me vent my own feelings. For that to be applied to other people is ridiculous. It’s super cool. I hope I can continue to do that.
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?
Just so I’m not thinking about it all day, I think I’ll go with when we got our first support tour. Big D and the Kids Table were always an important band for me, and they were the first band to take us out. It’s things like that that prove… sometimes you need complete analytical proof that you’re doing the right thing other than the subjective-ness of fans and everything. The resume’s important to me, so if I’m able to add that do the things we’ve done I’m like “okay, this is really working.” I need that reassurance sometimes.
Big D’s got to be a pretty awesome band to tour with. They seem like they’re a lot of fun.
Oh, it was great. It was fantastic.
