Interview:
Four Year Strong Muscles Through Headline Tour
 

By GARY GRAFF of the Oakland Press

» See more SOUND CHECK

Four Year Strong's new album, "Enemy of the World," isn't due out until March, but the pop-punk group is already enjoying the opportunity to mount it's first-ever national headlining tour.

"What's cool about headlining is, first of all, you get a longer set," says singer Dan O'Connor, who co-founded the quintet in 2001 with high school friends in Worcester, Mass. "You get to play more songs that people want to hear that you don't get to play on tours where you normally play a half-hour and only eight or nine songs.

"And it's just cool to be able to know that we can travel around the country and kids are coming out to really support our band. You get a sense of how many people enjoy your band's music, which is really cool to see."

"Enemy of the World" follows a '90s covers set called "Four Year Strong Explains It All," on which the group covered favorites by Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, Third Eye Blind and others. O'Connor says that doing that album had a definite impact on his band when it returned to writing its own song.

"We got to concentrate a lot on how different songs were written," he explains. "It gives you a lot of things to think about as far as songwriting goes. So on 'Enemy of the World' we wanted to concentrate on making (each of) the songs one cohesive unit rather than going from cool part to cool part to cool part, making them one solid thing instead of being...all over the place.

"It still sounds like Four Year Strong, but I think people will be able to hear the difference in how we approached the songs this time."



Four Year Strong, Strike Anywhere, This Time Next Year and Title Fight perform Monday (Feb. 8) at the Magic Stick, 4120 Woodward Ave., Detroit. Doors open at 7 p.m. Tickets are $12 in advance, $14 days of show. Call (313) 833-9700 or visit www.majesticdetroit.com.