Atreyu - Feature - 2008

This isn’t a ‘taste’ of chaos, this is booking a table, ordering drinks and eating five courses from an all-you-can-eat buffet… of chaos. It’s 3am at the unofficial and impromptu Taste Of Chaos aftershow at a seedy rock bar in London. Two blokes are dancing with their trousers down, the sober of Atreyu’s managers is looking worriedly for the one who isn’t and Horse The Band’s bassist is so drunk that while he cannot stand up, he is still able to throw beer cans at some tattooed gorilla’s girlfriends and narrowly avoid a pummelling. Chilling obliviously in the carnage are three members of Atreyu chatting calmly to friends, fans and girls. Is this what we can expect as we try to get to know Atreyu on this UK leg of the 2008 Taste Of Chaos tour?

It goes without saying that a 20-minute trans-Atlantic phone conversation for a short interview is no basis on which to judge a character. If you wanted to know what lions are like, you wouldn’t just stick one in your kitchen and watch it for ten minutes. You need to go out there and spend time with them in their natural environment. In Atreyu’s case that’s On Tour. This tour. Batten down the hatches.

It’s easy to glance from a distance and take a misrepresentative snapshot: Alex Varkatzas the arrogant and aloof frontman; Dan Jacobs the extrovert guitarist; Brandon Sallor the frontman relegated to the drums and – in the background – Travis Miguel and Mark McKnight overshadowed by the dominant personalities. Wrong. So wrong. Our three days on the road with the OC rockers between London and Norwich with As I Lay Dying, Story Of The Year, MUCC and Horse The Band gave us the binoculars necessary to observe the real Atreyu. 

“Dan and me were in the bar after the London show,” explains Travis the following day. “And this kid comes up to us - drunk – and says ‘I’m sitting here talking to you and you’re like a normal guy’. I was like: ‘What else would I be?’ People are really obsessed with celebrities, people who are famous for nothing! Paris Hilton, what the fuck has she ever done? Except make a fucking sex tape. It feels weird that people expect that from us…”

“It’s strange,” adds Alex as if remembering a specific time weird, because I don’t think we or the band have ever portrayed ourselves as being anything other than what we are.”

“You can try and play a role,” says Brandon. “The bad guy, the good guy… or you can just be real.”

“In real life, nobody’s happy every day,” says Alex, gathering momentum. “When you’re under the microscope people only focus on the negative – that’s what makes news. People don’t talk about the nice things that may exist. The media want to see people fuck up and fail.”

Having rocked the foot-garments off 2,000 Londoners and the ensuing late night, the band are in high spirits. They may have had to wake up in Alan Partridge country, but it is their day off. Alex has already had to deal with classic British jobsworths and unbendable rules at the Norwich sports centre who won’t let him train unless he’s a member

“No day membership? No set fee? So I can’t go train. It’s fucking bullshit.”

The guys may all have different ideas about how to spend a day off, but all are in agreement that food is the first priority.

Say ‘tapas bar’ in an American accent. Now say ‘topless bar’ in an American accent. Imagine Dan’s dismay when we finally arrived at the former. The mood is buoyed somewhat by the restaurant having the band’s brew of choice, Newcastle Brown Ale – which we learn is nicknamed ‘dog’ – and also the prospect of playing “Norr-wich”, which they’ve never played before. It’s interesting to see the band dynamic outside of the formal interview setting and out of ‘work hours’. With pre-gig tension not an issue and a great show in the can already the guys are in relaxed and in high spirits – particularly the moustachioed Alabaman, Mark McKnight, who is keen to indulge his photographic bent and esoteric interest in Norwich’s famous Elm Hill, where some of the buildings date back to 1504 (and has featured in Monty Python sketch and the Claire Danes movie, Stardust). “Dude, our fucking country isn’t even that old.”

With starters eaten, Dogs drunk and the stomach growling subsided, we have to remind ourselves that this jocular rabble – like the Stand By Me… only older - are a million miles from rock jocks and bandwagon-emos that so many people see them as. 

You’ve sold over 1.5 milllion albums and played in front of up to 35,000 people, so how come the fame and praise hasn’t gone to your heads?

“Every band lives an abnormal and strange life,” explains Brandon. “But at the end of the day you’re just a regular-ass person. We’re no different from anyone else, we just happen to play music for a living as opposed to working an office job. We got lucky doing this, but we’re still regular people.”

So, have you ever caught yourself doing something and thought, ‘Ooh, that’s a bit diva-ish’.

“No,” Alex says with a stern face. “I just do what I fucking want, don’t you?”

And as if to quality Alex’s bald statement Brandon adds: “It’s the difference between a normal person acting a certain way and someone with someone with some sort of status or in a band, suddenly you’re a diva. But we all do it.

Not good, not bad, just human.

“Life is not that black and white,” says Alex, leaning in. “If it was that would be great, and we would all know what role to play all the time, but it’s confusing when you don’t know what to play or how it feels sometimes – that’s fucking life.”

True, and the extremes that are so easy to latch onto – Dave Grohl the nice guy, Avenged Sevenfold the pricks – are redundant here. The longer we spend with Atreyu as they now mess around, rib Dan and regale Hammer with tales of dead racoon cover shoots walking to the cobbled Elm Hill for the photo shoot, the more the caricatures fade away and the real characters glow through. 

Dan is exuberant on stage, larger than life, but off stage is relatively quiet, until the conversation turns to music, when he duly lights up like main beam at midnight with anecdotes and insight. Mark may not be some domineering extrovert, but get him talking about history or art and watch him go; a man with a heart as big as his moustache (big). With his slow and measured tone, Travis may seem shy and uninterested, but his dry and cutting wit is enviable and crammed with quiet confidence. At times Alex is like an omnipotent rock god with the power to raise fists, raze stages and awaken the loins of the most sexless spinster; and at others like your younger brother: feisty and defensive but curious and compassionate, naïve but intuitive and all the time puffing out his chest with the transparent nonchalance of a boy who’s been burned.

Alex has located a martial arts gym and is keen to use the last few hours of their day off to train. With tomorrow’s instore signing there won’t be time in the day. So we offer him a lift on the proviso we get to play Whitesnake’s Lovehunter in the car. In interviews Alex often comes across as a disenfranchised jock – scathing and spiky, but with his guard down the balance of his humanity shows. While negotiating rush hour traffic, the conversation meanders through the nature of celebrity, the relative youth of the American nation, school, martial arts and the interview process: the personal questions and their personal answers, and how old and practised interviewees seem able to talk loud but say nothing. One recurring sentiment he uses is that he ‘tries to be a good person’. Into this we won’t read too much about inferred struggle and conflict. 

He’s interested and interesting. He’s your little brother.

Despite being covered in tattoos and having the body of a Street Fighter II end-boss, he’s probably more like you than you think. Aside from the more visible aspects of Alex’s character it is safe to describe the 26 year old singer as complex, soulful, philosophical and serious though not without a sense of humour.

“You should fucking ride up to bar on a fucking horse and cowboy hat and order that shit!” he laughs at one point during the meal, as they rib Mark about his Southern roots. “You know what?” he adds. “I’d hate it if you did have a chip about being from Alabama, then I couldn’t rip into you.” He smiles amiably at Mark and the table erupts again as Dan takes up the humorous gauntlet. 

He’s your little brother.

“This is our first fucking time in Nor-wich, and you guys are fucking amazing! To see so many of you fucking guys here is fucking awesome.” Screams the frontman, now, truly in his element he’s less your little bro and more the triumphant conquerer of stage and creator of circle-pits.

The crowd respond to the singer, now stripped to the waist, with the fervour and sated longing of a heartfelt reunion.

“Fuck,” he quickly adds. “That’s a whole of saying fuck. I’ve got few left though.”

To beat Story Of The Year in the onstage antics Olympics is hard work. But even without their impressive gymnastic display, Atreyu still steal the night.

It’s a given that even if you know a band very well (married or more), then it is bad manners not to give them at least ten minutes after a show to chill: go for a piss, have a fag, crack a beer, sit down, whatever. Atreyu don’t care. Most of them are outside the bus within a few seconds hanging out, signing things, and posing for fan snaps. 

“I just love playing live,” says Travis emphatically. “Meeting and playing for people that have a life that’s so far removed from me. It sounds so cliché, but music bridges that gap. That’s kind of a trip, because I was that kid.”

“I personally love travelling overseas,” adds Mark, who despite debilitating sickness puts in an explosive performance.

“It’s hard to pick one thing that excites me most,” ponders Alex. “I lead a balanced life. I love playing shows, rocking with the dudes.” He says as he smiles at his bandmates. “And then I love being at home with my family.”

“I party,” says Dan, making brevity his bitch.

“I like playing shows and I like being home with my family - my wife and my dogs,” offers Brandon.

We know why Brandon doesn’t cheat: we’ve met his wife.

“It’s definitely hard,” admits Brandon when we suggest he may miss his wife when he’s on tour. “But it’s my job. It comes with the territory. You have to find someone who understands that that’s what you do and that’s how it’s going to be. If you get married and have kids then you make it work as best you can for that, because if you’re born to be in a band, you can’t not be in a band.”

Thank fuck for that.

“I enjoy it when we have time off,” he says tugging on a cigarette and throwing a reassuring arm round his unfeasibly beautiful wife. “But after a couple of weeks I want to play a show… I get the itch.”

Rock meter

• Good things Atreyu can think of that they haven’t tried to fry: 1 (water).

• Girls sat round the table with Dan at the aftershow at any given time: 4

• Cars that interrupt the mid-street photo shoot: 27

• How annoying this is: Very.

• Difference in temperature between the start of the shoot and the end: -12

• Number of times Hammer is asked if we were in Atreyu: 2

• Number of times we have to insist that we weren’t: 6

• Number of times Brandon insisted we were in Atreyu: 4

• Number of articles Hammer were nonetheless asked to sign: 3

• Number of times Brandon asked how big a fan of a band someone is if they don’t know who is actually in the band: 1

• Number of times Alex says ‘fuck’ onstage: fucking loads.