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Interview by Rachel Didsbury and Sarah O’Brien
New Year Premiere is Pomperaug’s very own small town band. A few years back, before they became New Year Premiere, members of the band were parts of two rival bands in the Region 15 school district. Over time they fused together and became Without Reason, then Turn Off the Silence, and finally New Year Premiere. Nick Tornatore is vocals and guitar. Mike Varrone is lead guitar. Steve Ibanez is vocals and bass and Ari Burger is on the drums. Nick and Mike tell all in this interview with the Phoenix, which you can also watch online at youtube.com/phsphoenix.
The Phoenix: So, what inspired you guys to start a band?
Nick Tornatore: Well, we all came from different bands. I was with Rich Ellis and him (Mike Varrone) and Steve [Ibanez] were in a different band. I don’t know, we kind of just decided that we needed to work together. We left all of our separate bands to make one band. We were Without Reason for a while. But we didn’t like that name so we changed it to Turn Off the Silence. Then we changed it again to New Year Premiere. Now we’re New Year Premiere and we love playing together.
Phoenix: So, we’re all juniors. How do you handle school, having a job (if you have one), and being a part of a band?
Mike Varrone: I have a job. I work down the road at Jordan’s Restaurant. We make a lot of money.
Nick: I just got a job at Yankee Candle. Schoolwork, band, and academics don’t really mix well. I mean it definitely does take a shot to your grades but it’s not that bad.
Phoenix: Who are your musical Influences?
Mike: All Time Low
Nick: Ok, it’s not all All Time Low. It’s All Time Low, The Dangerous Summer, Panic At The Disco.
Phoenix: So, you write all of your own music right? What’s the process of writing a song like?
Nick: It’s a really collective process. One of us will come up with some kind of idea and then we’ll kind of build off of it. One person will say “Oh no, let’s do this,” but we don’t really fight. For lyrics, if someone comes up with something they’ll bring it in. It’s become a very collective process. It used to be one or two people, now the four of us…
Mike: Nick writes most of the lyrics.
Nick: Not so much anymore because we all work together.
Phoenix: So you guys have gotten quite a bit or recognition for a small town band. How did you manage to get yourselves out there?
Nick: A lot of promoting.
Mike: Facebook.
Nick: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr. I mean we’ve really taken a big hit from the Internet.
Mike: That time we went to Anarbor.
Nick: That’s kind of where we really started. For some reason, when you’re playing with a really big band even though you’re not a big band, people automatically think you’re famous. It was our first gig back after not playing for an entire summer and there were a lot of people there. That show was really the marking point of when we started kicking off.
Phoenix: So, you guys played at Bamboozle, which is a music festival in New Jersey. What was that experience like for you?
Mike: Awesome!
Nick: Amazing! I love Bamboozle no matter what. We went last year it was unbelievable, it feels really great to be there. Then playing there and looking out and seeing so many people walking by and actually looking up to you. When we went last year, we were looking up like wow.
Mike: I was just a little disappointed because I thought the passes we got would let us meet Lil Wayne and go backstage, but no they don’t let us do that. We actually tried.
Phoenix: There were also Warped Tour auditions. Did you guys make it?
Nick: We did not make it to Warped Tour this year. We made it into the finals again, second year in a row, but we got beat out by a band called Take Zero. They got a really good sound. Also, another band beat us. They opened up for Bon Jovi. They both know clearly what they’re doing. There was one judge for that and we just didn’t make it.
Phoenix: As a band, is there anything you want to accomplish in music?
Mike: A headlining show.
Nick: We want to get signed really, really bad.
Mike: We only have a year left because then it’s senior year and we’ll all go off to college, well most of us. If we don’t get signed then it’s all over.
Nick: If we get signed then that’s your job. That’s what I want my occupation to be and Mike too. No college if we make it, if we don’t make it…
Mike: My mom would be pretty upset with that.
Phoenix: Any new albums or EPs coming out?
Nick: Not for a while. We’re still trying to stabilize the band again.
Mike: Because Rich left.
Nick: Because Rich left very respectably. No hard feelings with Rich. It’s all cleared up. Now we are writing. Mike has a new member of the band, we’re not sure if he’s joining for good yet, Ari Burger. He is the one that makes drums for Rock Steady Drum Company. They make crazy drum sets. He’s going to drum with us in the future. Actually he’s been actively writing with us. We had a couple new songs.
Mike: They had a mature sound. They’re not all about partying. We’re still the same, though.
Nick: We don’t want to just attract younger kids; we want to draw in more kids our own age.
Phoenix: So, when you guys play at shows, you play with other smaller bands. What do you think of them in comparison to you? Are you like best buds or is there some competition?
Nick: Well, we’re good friends with Voted Most Random. We’ve played with them over ten times already. We just made friends with Forget Paris. They work with the same guys as us, Jonas Friedman. We’re pretty close but we are making friends with a lot of bands. There are a bunch of bands where we just like met. We said hi to them and all was good.
Mike: We’re also talking to this one band that we met at Bamboozle and we’re talking about doing a small summer tour through the Tri-State area.
Nick: Yeah, they’re really cool people. We have the mindsets. Them and Young Hollywood, we’re planning on doing a mini tour with them this summer because they are cool guys and we play well together.
Phoenix: Do those other bands influence your music at all?
Nick: Definitely their show presence.
Mike: Voted Most Random has banners and all this stuff. They are really good about that stuff, we see it and we are like wow we have to do that.
Nick: We step it up because of them. They make us want to work harder in a respectable way. It’s not really competitive but it was very competitive. At one point it was very “oh they’re better than us,” it was that kind of thing. We became friends with them but still have that little bit of competition. We want to do what they do. They are older than us. We are usually the youngest band at shows. They are all like over twenty and we’re like seventeen and sixteen.
Be sure to watch the full video of this interview online at youtube.com/phsphoenix!
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