Interview: Grade 2
The band was always, we’ve got to be having a good time with it. It should never be seen as a chore.
Talk About It is the latest album from Grade 2 and it is packed full of punk rock energy, catchy hooks and a hard hitting but feelgood vibe that makes you want yo listen again and again. To celebrate the release of Talk About It, Gavin Brown caught up with Grade 2 bassist/vocalist Sid Ryan to hear all about the album and all manner of Grade 2 related topics from Hellcat Records to the Isle Of Wight.
E&D: Your new album Talk About It has just come out. How excited are you to be back with this record?
Sid: It’s pretty crazy the amount of time that’s passed since the last one. You get into this natural rhythm of touring and promoting a record, and you’re in your own like little bubble while you’re doing that and you forget how much time has actually passed. We realised by the time it was released, it’s over three 3 years since we released the previous one. So to say that we were eager to get this one out and to get on the road is a bit of an understatement!
E&D: You released the track ‘Better Today’ ahead a release of the album. Do you feel it was important to deal with the topic of depression with this song and have a hopeful nature about it, and the album too?
Sid: Yeah, I think there was a lot that went on in between the last release and coming up to this one and I think a lot of the subjects are quite on the nose on this record. This time around, I think it’s a bit more, I’d say honest rather than open, more first person perspective, and I feel like all of the singles that have come out prior to the release, we’ve tried to portray what’s coming and be quite honest with what has been going on with ourselves and that’s how we found the whole topic of the record, to be honest.
E&D: Was that quite a cathartic thing to do?
Sid: Well, to be honest, it wasn’t something that came up straight away. We did go into the studio around a year and a half ago with the idea that we could probably write a couple of songs on the fly and maybe there’ll be something in there that we can use. We came out of the studio with nine demos and every song was shit. So we were like, let’s take this back to the drawing board, and we didn’t really write for about six months. We were going through transitional phases in our own lives, and then I think the realisation of what we were all feeling is what we should write about, not for the sense of, this is going to be the record. It was more just, let’s just write freely, get some ideas down, and then we’ll go from there. Once we started to do that, the fun side of writing reappeared, and then the ideas were flowing, and the natural side of the lyrics came through as well and that just forms the album itself.
E&D: Did you want to make an uplifting and hopeful record as much as you could in these challenging times?
Sid: I set out to do that. The band was always, we’ve got to be having a good time with it. It should never be seen as a chore. We’re in a really fortunate situations to be able to play music together, and that’s the way that we want to keep it. We don’t ever want to be the band where you have to be there and you don’t want to be there. Our pure motives are just for the love of it, and when it gets to writing, it comes through the same thing. It has to be something that’s enjoyable and I think that’s like what we want to translate to people as well.
E&D: Do you think that challenging times can be when the best art is made?
Sid: I mean, personal experience with this record, I would say, yeah. It is difficult and there’s a lot of difficult conversations that have to happen when things are going on, but at the end of the day, it all comes out in one way or another and I think there’s always going to be some silver lining at the end of the day.
E&D: What albums lift your spirits when things are getting tough?
Sid: Ooh, that’s a good question. I always go back to Rancid’s Indestructible. I feel like that’s probably a record that is a similar theme base. A lot of the 2 Tone stuff as well. That’s always got that uplifting beat, same as a lot of the old Trojan reggae tracks, that’s always got a happy feeling to it, and I feel like that kind of thing is, again, something we’ve tried to to bring in one way or another, bringing these outside influences.
E&D: Do you think you’ve captured the energy off your live show with this record?
Sid: Yeah, definitely. When you’re in the studio, you always try to put a couple of bells and whistles on the record, to really take it to the next level, but at the end of the day, we’re only a three piece, we can’t go too crazy with that because you need to be able to translate the song in a live setting. So when it comes to us writing albums and writing tracks, we’ll always live demo the track first, so that we can sit back and hear how it’s going to be in a live setting. We’re a touring band and we play a lot of shows and I don’t want people to end up turning up and be like, that doesn’t sound like the record. You want it to translate.
E&D: The album track ‘Standing In The Downpour’ is a definite standout. Can you tell us about that track and is falling rain one of your favourite sounds?
Sid: That song is a bit more metaphorical, kind of like standing amongst the chaos. We wrote that song with Tim and Jesse from Operation Ivy, and I think when we got into that, we were just talking about growing up and basically running around, causing chaos, and then talking about it from a reminiscence perspective. You always have that one mate that turns up, oh, do you remember this? Do you remember that?, and that was where that one comes from. I will say when we’re on tour, rain sounds are prominent when we’re all trying to sleep. So I think I’m going to go with that.
E&D: How are things going with Hellcat records and how did you come to sign with the label a few years ago?
Sid: Signing with the label actually came through a German band called Stomper 98, Frederiksen from Rancid had actually joined that band on guitar. We were the support band for them for a two week tour and over that period, we got to know each other a bit more. The idea arose that he was going to produce an album following that tour. Fast forward a year from that, he ended up calling us and was like, oh, look, I don’t think that’s going to work. I was like, oh, shit, we had our hopes up, but then he said, Tim’s going to produce the record and it’s going to come out on Hellicat Records. From our perspective, it was like, holy shit! I couldn’t believe it. It’s been a bit of a wild ride considering we had to go through the pandemic and find our feet again after the release of our first album with Hellcat. We weren’t really able to do anything with it. It came out just before the pandemic hit, so by the time we hit the road, we played one show and then we were sent straight back home. So the last record was really the one where we got to hit the ground running and it’s been great and we’re excited to see what comes with this record and what we’re able to get out there and do with it.
E&D: How did the creation and the recording of this album go?
Sid: It was actually different. For the last two records we recorded out in LA with Tim, but I’m sure you can imagine , Tim is a busy man with a lot of projects on the go, and every time we were going out there, we were taking up nearly a month of his time where we had to fly in and do it in one session. We were trying to figure out a timeframe with stuff that he had going on, other projects that we were going to be booking a studio out and it wasn’t going to work in one session. So the idea came up to record in Kent, actually, a recommendation through Lars’s studio, that he’s worked at before. We worked with a guy called Dan Lucas at The Joplin House. We live on the Isle of Wight, so we’re pretty out in the sticks, but that studio is in the middle of nowhere. We were doing 12 hour sessions, and after 3 days back to back I was like, okay, let’s get stocked up, and going into a local Tesco, it was like the only people we’d seen in 3 days were the Tesco employees! It was intense, but it was a great session and it was cool to be back in familiar surroundings and doing those bulk sessions, it really came together.
E&D: What you some of your favourite ever Hellcat releases?
Sid: I remember a kid. I’m talking, probably about 5 years old. My dad’s coming home with the Give Em’ The Boot comps, and also the Punkorama comps that Epitaph did. I remember the Pennywise ‘Same Old Story’ track, and Rancid’s ‘Salvation’ on one and I remember being mesmerised. I think that’s basically where my love of the label stemmed from, so I’m always going to go back to those compilations. Ive had one on rotation recently and it had the Horrorpops on, and I forgot how much I loved that band and they have been on pretty constant rotation the last month.
E&D: It must have been pretty surreal having those memories and then being about to record and be associated with the label?
Sid: Oh, mate, honestly, I remember the first time going over there, I was like, just be cool!
E&D: How did your recent live dates in Belfast and Dublin go?
Sid: It was a great start. It’s been a couple of years since we’ve been over there. We’ve been fortunate enough to be going over there for past 10 years, so we’ve got some solid friendships over there. It’s always good to catch up with a lot of people, and it was cool to see the excitement about the new record. A lot of people already knew the singles,
E&D: Will you playing a lot of material from the new album?
Sid: We brought all the singles and then we’ll scatter maybe a couple of other songs and swap some out, put some more new ones in and see which ones people are digging.
E&D: Are you looking forward to hitting the road?
Sid: We’ve got that eagerness to get back to it and see everyone and hope that they enjoy what we’ve been cooking up!
E&D: You’re playing a couple of dates in Germany with Stomper 98, you must be excited about getting back with those guys?
Sid: It’s actually been 10 years since we played our first gig together with them. We’ve been looking up to them from the get go, and they’ve looked after us and introduced us to a lot. We’ve got a lot of respect for them and it’s always a bit of a party when we play with them as well.
E&D: Which Grade 2 gigs stick out the most for you over the years?
Sid: One of the craziest ones was playing with Guns N’ Roses in London. I won’t say it was the most chaotic crowd, but I think from the point of getting that email to being on the poster for that gig was just insane. We thought it was a spam email. It was like, there’s no way we’re getting an email to play with Guns N’ Roses in London! But it was legit, and we really did that, and that was pretty crazy. Same with Rancid at Wembley. I don’t even know if I could say that was a bucket list moment because I never thought it would happen, but being there was just mad! We had a coach full of people come up from the Isle of Wight that we’ve grown up with. So it was a pretty wholesome moment. But at the end of the day, those small sweaty club shows are always going to take the cake! You just can’t beat the energy in those little rooms.
E&D: How was it growing up and getting into punk on the Isle Of Wight and was there a scene there?
Sid: There wasn’t when we grew up and went through high school, a lot of the venues that were on the island were pretty much all shut down and it kind of went back to pub gigs. So we were’t able to go to those until we were at least like 16 or 17 and then a lot of the music scene, I won’t say died out, but it was just like there wasn’t a drive for it when we we’re coming through. It’s different now because we have a venue, but for our first 5 or 6 years as a band, there was just nowhere to play. So we were playing Southampton and Portsmouth quite a lot. We were still in high school at the time. So we were rocking up to these venues and people were like, wait, are you old enough to be in here?! We went through that for years, so our motivation was really to get off the island to be able to play. We were doing that for any means. We took National Express everywhere, trains everywhere, lugging snare cymbals, guitars, a cricket bag with T shirts in it. I’m talking commuter trains! We were a nuisance to absolutely everyone, but we didn’t really know another way to do things. There wasn’t like another band, that was giving us advice. We just had to find our own feet, but now there is a venue, and it’s actually reaching a great point for music on the Isle Of Wight right now.
E&D: It has been 10 years since your debut album Mainstream View. What have been some of the other highlights for you over that decade, and does it feel like 10 years since you released your first album?
Sid: It definitely does feel that the time has absolutely flown by, and when we started the band, I would never have imagined that! From when we started the band in high school, it was purely a pastime. The school system on the Isle Of Wight was just in a complete state. They moved it from a 3 tier system to a 2 tier system. The school was failing in every point, but we just had this music as a release and the teacher was cool enough to be like, you can come in and play at lunches, your breaks, whatever. That was it. That was like the only reason the band ever started. It goes back to the name when we have to tell people, oh, why is the band called Grade 2? That was just how short my hair was at the time. There was a mate of mine, I was like, oh, what do you want to call the band? How short’s your hair? And that was it. It’s been a wild ride over the 10 years. I’ve think to play with bands we consider heroes, it’s just mind blowing! To be able to travel to the amount of places we’ve been able to travel to blows our minds as well. There hasn’t been a point where that feeling of oh, my god, we’re here, wears off, especially coming from the Isle Of Wight, from such a small place to step foot on stage in Berlin, for example, we’re so far from home and there’s people there to watch the band, it’s just crazy how it’s transcended over the 10 years.
E&D: What do you still want to do with the band that you haven’t yet?
Sid: I would say the goal of the band overall, no matter how long it lasts, is to be able to play any city, any day of the week, and to get a thousand people in the room. If there was a point of where we could get to, that’s what I’d pin it at.
