New Music

Fil Thorpe-Evans - "Neck Deep in a whole lotta success!"

Feb 13, 2017

7 min read

With the looming All Time Low tour heading our way with Neck Deep and The Maine in support, we sat down with ND bassist Fil Thorpe-Evans for a chat about their current success and what we can expect on the forthcoming pop-punk bill...

You’re coming back to Australia for All Time Low’s tour with The Maine also supporting! How do you feel to be apart of this massive pop-punk line up?

It's going to be great! We’ve toured with All Time Low a bunch of times now and they’re quite good friends of ours. We always have a great time with them. We also have a really good time when we go to Australia, so it’s the best of both worlds.

You’re currently on tour with A Day To Remember and Moose Blood. How has the tour been so far and will the shows for Australia differ at all i.e with your setlist?

Yeah, it's been great! We’re probably about half way through now. The UK shows were all HUGE and really, really amazing. The Europe shows have been really big too and a lot of fun.

In terms of setlist, i’m not too sure… we haven't really figured out what we’re going to do for Australia yet; but I think it's probably going to be relatively similar other than we’ll have a bit of a longer slot in Australia so we’ll have a little bit more leeway.

You did just say that Neck Deep and the All Time Low boys are almost like brothers, what are the chances of some band mingling on stage?

Ooh! Well it has happened before and i’m sure it’ll happen again [laughs]

Definitely at the last show, that’s kind of an end of tour tradition as most people know. The last show of the tour always ends up being a bit crazy, with all kinds of stage invasions.

You could probably expect to see that kind of stuff.

When you were here for Unify 2016, a young couple got engaged on stage. As a band, how do you feel when such an event occurs?

It's crazy! It’s so cool! It's like the nicest thing in the world, like that whole thing has happened a few times now and it’s just really flattering, you know, that someone feels that our music is that important to them as a couple that they feel like it's appropriate, cool way to propose is to do it during our set- then that's really cool.

It's happened a few times, and it’s a good laugh. If they’re happy, we’re happy.

Anytime someone asks to do it, we’re down anytime. Although, one dude did ask us once- I think it was on Warped Tour 2015. He gets up and we give him the mic and he like, didn’t do it. He bottled it. It was really awkward [laughs]

You tweeted a few days ago about how you want to record your new album already, any inside info you could give us on new music?

Yeah, we finish this tour and then we fly straight to the states to record. So in about 2 weeks from now, we will be in the studio recording it! We’re going to be on it for about 2 months, but by the time we get to Australia it will be completely finished. No One would have heard any of it but it will be done!

In terms of what it’s going to sound like, right now there is a lot of different stuff in the air and we’re kinda pulling it in and picking what we like, and what we don’t. Id say that, I know it's very cliche, but I think we’ve found a really good balance. Being true to what we’ve always sounded like but also taking the next step and not just doing the same record. There is a couple of tracks that are SUPER pop-punk-y. Where you’d turn it on and just be like “yep! That's Neck Deep!” Then there are a few tracks that are a bit different.

Late last year you re-recorded one of your best known tracks December with 2 different versions with guest vocals from Mark Hoppus from Blink 182 and Chris Carrabba from Dashboard Confessional. What was that experience like as a band, to have those two huge names drop in on one of your songs?

It was insane! We knew we were going to do a December single, with the full band version and the version on the record. I remember our manager suggesting this idea of ‘“what if we released them both at the same time and wouldn't it be cool if we had a guest on each one?” We got really excited and we’re like “oh! What if we got someone really acoustic based to do the acoustic version and someone else to do the full band who will really compliment the track!” I mean, to be honest we got super lucky because we sat down and thought about who our dream people would be, who do we want to do it. Our number one choice for the acoustic was Chris Carrabba and our number one choice for the full band was Mark Hoppus, and luckily for us we hit them up and they were both down to do it!

We’ve had a bit of a relationship with Mark for a while now, he’s done some remixes of our stuff and we’ve played shows together, but to get sent a vocal stem of his raw, unedited version of vocals we were putting on one of our songs was kinda like.... Damn! This is weird, because Blink 182 was pretty much all of our favourite band since we were kids. It was really surreal. It all just happened really quickly, and really smoothly.

You yourself are also an artist and you’ve done works like some portraits of Donnie Darko and Eleven from Stranger things. Where did you first get your love for art?

To be honest, it came quite late for me. A lot of people got into it from school or something like that, but I didn't do any of that. It was only in the past few years I really found it. Honestly, one of the main things that got me on it was Instagram. I stumbled onto a few artists that I liked on there and followed them, from them found other artists I liked and before I knew it, I had this huge list of artists. Before long, I just wanted to have a go at this so I did a little bit of googling and stuff and just cracked on with it with doodling and making stuff that I liked the look of.
Song you wished you’d written?

All Too Well- Taylor Swift. I can’t listen to that song without freaking out, it’s like there is not a more… I don't even know. It’s like the most descriptive song ever and and it just paints this picture, and I love it.

Interview by Justice Lee

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