Q: Introduce yourself and your position in the band.
Mike: I’m Mike, I play keyboards.
Will: I’m Will I play bass and sing.
Nick: Nick, Drums
Ted: I’m Ted, I shred guitars and vocalize.

Q: If you could categorize your music into a genre, what would it be?
Ted: People say reggae-rock mostly.
Will: We get thrown into the reggae rock thing, but I would say maybe –
Nick: Prog reggae.
Will: Proggae?
Nick: It’s not a real thing.
Ted: I think It’s just rock music. I think we play rock ‘n roll music.

Q: Explain the meaning behind your band name.
Ted: PASSAFIRE was based on the phrase “Catch a Fire” which is a Bob Marley and the Wailers album, and a song. And it was a book that I was reading at the time we formed the band and I suggested “Catch a Fire” and everybody else said you can’t name the band after a Bob Marley song that’s too cliché. and touché they were right.
Nick: Switched it up a bit.
Ted: I countered that, with how about PASSAFIRE? And everybody was like “Ew PASSAFIRE? Like the sucky thing?” and then after a minute everyone was like “Okay, alright. Kinda cool.” And it just stuck after that.
Will: We wanted to call it Ninja Nuns.
Ted: Actually, Fetus Fajitas?

Q: What bands/musicians influence your sound?
Will: I think we all have our own little bands that we put on while we’re driving.
Mike: Me personally, I’m more into the jam band scene, just because I’m a keyboardist, so it’s kind of natural to be into that.
Ted: I think, collectively we all like The Police, The Clash, 311, Sublime, John Brown’s Body is a big major reason why we play reggae music, also the Beastie Boys, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Sound Garden, Jessie and the Rippers.
Will: That’s plenty, that’s plenty.
Ted: The Offspring, Green Day. All of the above.

Q: What made you decide to play reggae-rock music, and not something else?
Ted: John Brown’s Body.
Nick: When we started jamming, that’s really what we were into.
Ted: We were into reggae, and then we saw John Brown’s Body and we were like way into reggae. So, we basically saw this one band, John Brown’s Body, and it changed our lives forever.
Nick: And it’s super easy, you just go chink-cah, chink-cah. And that’s not why, but.
Mike: It’s the easy way out.

Q: Explain the meaning behind your music to somebody who’s never heard of you before, and also the reason you dedicate so much time to the band.
Will: The meaning behind the message.
Ted: There are so many meanings, each song has its own meaning, I wouldn’t say that our music means anything specific.
Nick: When you play them backwards, there are subliminal messages. But I can’t say those.
Ted: I think maybe an overall theme of our music is just positivity and variety. We try to keep a lot of different elements to each of the songs, and we never get too negative. There are some songs about nightmares and negative things, but you have to have the yin and the yang; that balance. So, we have songs that are happy and songs that are sad, but we try to keep them all somewhat positive and again use a lot of variety.
Will: Personal experiences.
Nick: We just want people to come to our shows and have a good time, and I think that’s why we do it.

Q: Do you have any other passions besides playing music? And if you weren’t touring/playing music what would you be doing?
Will: Well I’d still be doing music but maybe my own music and baking bread, all day.
Mike: I would be doing the job I was doing before I quit to join PASSAFIRE, which is sit in a cube and type.
Will: We picked Mike out of his job world.
Mike: I did that for four years, but now I’m here.
Will: You could always go back to it!
Ted: I would probably be waiting tables, and trying to make a band. If I weren’t in this band, I would try to make another band.
Mike: I’d say, go back to school and get my PHD.
Will: I have no idea; thank God this is working out.
Ted: Actually, we would all just go back to school.

Q: Describe in detail what a fan can expect at a live show.
Ted: Pyrotechnics.
Nick: Lots of energy.
Will: Lasers, sweating.
Nick: Loud noises.
Will: A lot of songs when we play them live, they turn out to be a lot different than our studio recordings so it’s interesting to see night to night how the song changes and progresses, you can only catch that at a live show.
Nick: True.
Ted: We use a lot of effects, so sometimes they come out sounding really different than the night before, and sometimes that can be really cool and unique and sometimes we’re all like “Woah, what was that?” But, like he said, every night the shows are different because we use so many different effects, and sometimes sounds come out of nowhere and you’re like “Okay, that’s only gonna happen right now.”
Nick: Kind of like, spur of the moment.

Q: What was the recording process like for Start From Scratch? And what can your fans expect to hear on this new album?
Nick: It was a new experience because it was the first time we worked with a producer, Paul Leary.
Ted: It was awesome.
Nick: It was a lot of fun.
Ted: Paul Leary produced Sublime’s self-titled album, he produced a Pepper album, Slightly Stoopid album, The Expendables last album as well as Sublime’s newest album that just came out, also Meat Puppets back in the day. He’s also a guitarist and he’s just got a huge long list of great things that he brought to the table and he totally changed the experience for us. Before, all the albums we had done we had produced ourselves so it was all just us putting our effort towards the music and having no outside input. Whereas this time around there was somebody saying, “That sucked, do it again.” or “That was great, you don’t even need to try it again.” We’re like, “No, but I got a better one!” and he’s like “No, that was it!”
Will: A lot of time constraint on this one. It was at the Sonich Ranch studio, we did our last album there too, but this was in a bigger room at that studio.
Nick: More hi-tech.
Will: The main difference was that we had to write this album in three months and record it in three weeks. It’s also out first album with Mike here on the keyboard, so a ton of new stuff.
Mike: Yeah there were actually a few parts written with me living in Chicago. Like the band is based in Savannah, but I actually live in Chicago when I’m off the road. So, once I officially joined the band, basically the album was still being written and I just sent files back and forth, we kind of just went back and forth with ideas, and they tweaked a few things.
Ted: It’s kind of crazy, without the Internet, this album would not have happened. This album happened thanks to the Internet.
Nick: We should’ve thanked the Internet on our album Thank You’s.

Q: With this album, do you feel that your sound has changed or grown in any way?
Will: Definitely, I think having Mike on keyboards brings a different element to our sound, with the way he plays. And just another songwriter in the band, I think you can really hear that difference this time around.

Q: You were invited to play the entire Warped Tour this summer, along with what seemed like a lot of reggae, and new-reggae bands, compared to the usual Warped Tour lineup, what was that like?
Nick: It was great, because we’re friends with most of the “reggae” bands on Warped Tour so it was good to have people to hang out with.
Ted: The advantage to that, and it being our first year playing the entire Warped Tour it kind of was a cushion because we were nervous knowing that Warped Tour is a lot of hardcore bands and then there’s us and we’re not that at all.
Nick: Crabcore.
Ted: A lot of Crabcoring. But we came into it and we saw that all these other bands were getting signed onto Warped Tour and we’re like “Oh okay, this is going to be a piece of cake.” And it actually ended up being just a giant reunion of all these bands that we’ve toured with before and it was kind of nice. It was a special summer because we got to sort of hang out the whole time. The thing about Warped Tour is you get to hang out a lot, because your set is half an hour, and then the rest of the day you just kind of sit around, so we got to hang out with our friends The Expendables, Pepper, The Aggrolites.
Mike: A lot of new bands.
Nick: Yeah we met a lot of cool new bands.
Ted: The Word Alive, those guys are really cool. We’re nothing like them, but we’ll always be down with that band.
Nick: Yelawolf
Mike: Bad Rabbits for sure.
Ted: Larry And His Flask, excellent band.

Q: Pick your favorite lyric from a PASSAFIRE song and explain why you chose it.
Nick: I don’t know any lyrics from a PASSAFIRE song.
Ted: I wrote a lot of them so it’s kind of like –
Will: Well my best piece of work would probably be –
Ted: I don’t know Feel It, people get tattoos of the lyrics of Feel It and that seems to blow my mind every single time, because it’s something that I wrote very early in our career on the first album. We weren’t even sure that we were gonna be a touring band, and now to go around the country and see people have lyrics that I wrote 7, 8 years ago on their body.
Nick: I like that one too because every now and again someone will be like “That song got me through some tough times,” Stuff like that.
Ted: It’s pretty self explanatory, the lyrics to that song, its just like, it’s kind of an inspirational speech, don’t give up. Whatever you’re doing, don’t give up.
Nick: Stay in school.

Q: Give us your favorite pick-up line.
Will: I had the best one the other night.
Mike: Are those keys yours?
Ted: How much does a polar bear weigh? Enough to break the ice.
Nick: Pick-up lines never work.
Ted: I don’t think I’ve ever used like an actual pick-up line, for real. Mine are usually really lame. Like “What’s your name?” It’s good to know somebody’s name.
Will: I don’t know, I can’t think of any good ones.
Nick: Are we friends on Facebook?
Mike: You look so familiar, I’ve seen you before!
Nick: I totally stalked you on the internet.
Will: I stalked you before I came over here, that’s probably what I’d say.

Q: Never have I ever …
Ted: Failed a class.
Nick: Lame!
Ted: Hey, this is for a high school interview. You can be in a band and still get good grades in high school. In college, it’s a little harder.

Q: Do you have any funny high school stories or experiences?
Mike: I went to class. I stayed in school and I graduated.
Ted: In high school I was a DJ, and one time I was DJing at one of our school events and my entire rig just stopped working. I mean it’s very similar to things that happen now in my life, but I was completely humiliated. Like everybody came up and they’re like “Yo, this is a school dance, we wanna dance, what’s going on?” and I’m like “It’s cool I just, uhm, there’s uh, I got it.” And I didn’t recover I just had to tell everybody I was sorry and the dance ended. I ruined an entire high school dance because I was a DJ.
Will: Way to go Ted. Way to blow it.

Q: Who were your favorite bands or musicians as a high school student?
Ted: Rage Against The Machine.
Nick: When I was in high school, all I thought about was how I could go see Phish, like that’s all I wanted to do.
Mike: I think Sublime 40 Oz. to Freedom was the soundtrack to my high school career.
Will: A lot of Incubus.
Ted: 311 and Sublime.
Mike: We’re pretty standard actually.

Q: What advice could you give to a high school student who wants to pursue music professionally in the future?
Nick: I was in band from junior high all the way through high school and marching band, and all that. I would say, do as much music in school as you can.
Ted: It’s not dorky to be in band, because you learn what it takes to actually be a musician with other people.
Nick: Jazz band, pep band, and pit band for musicals. Just do as much music as you possibly can.
Ted: Even if you have a play and they have a band in the play, do that. Get all the experience you can because as soon as you get to college, this is exactly what happened with us, Nick and I got to college, he was a year ahead of me but I met Nick and we immediately said, “Hey, let’s jam together.” And we had already done a lot of musical stuff in high school so we just kind of went straight to playing music together and that helped out a lot in forming our sound together and forming what is now PASSAFIRE. You just have to say, “If this is what I want to do, just like anything else. I’m gonna put 100% into it.” And if that means sleeping on people’s couches for a month, if that means basically living like a homeless person, it’s what you’re going to be doing as a touring musician in the beginning. And at a certain point it’ll click. You’ll be like, “Okay this is exactly what I want,” but it’s hard and you’ll be discouraged a lot, so you just have to push through it.

Q: Any last words to the students of Annandale High School?
Mike: Start From Scratch.
Ted: Our album dropped yesterday, go buy it!