Ricky Sans Our Fans Are The Best
How Melee Guitarist Looks To Fans For Inspiration When On The Road
In part four of our special interview series with Melee guitarist Ricky Sans, he tells us why the fans will never be short-changed and how the UK is next on their agenda.
- Genre: indie / pop / rock
- Chris Cron (vocals / keyboards / guitar), Ricky Sans (guitar / vocals), Ryan Nalloy (bass / vocals), Mike Nader (drums)
- Sounds like: Keane, Ben Folds Five, Coldplay
- Home: Orange County, California
- Melee
Sunshine In Dark Places
Coming from the sunshine state of Orange County, California and with music giant Warner Bros currently promoting their new album Devil's & Angels (which will be reviewed on Suite101 soon), it's easy to understand why the music of Melee is so upbeat and undeniably happy. Yet this isn't just another run-of-the-mill Californian band singing about sun, sea and all other connotations; songs about mental problems and suicidal thoughts stand Melee out from many of their contemporaries.
Currently on a massive North American tour that runs until the end of May before hopefully hitting the UK in June, Melee recently played in Toronto where Suite101 caught up with guitarist and co-songwriter Ricky Sans to discuss the darker side of pop rock. Here, in the fourth part of my talk with him, Ricky explains why Melee are to possibly be avoided on tour if you have antlers, and how they want to have just as much fun as their fans.
Ricky Sans Interview Part 4: Tours, Stray Deers And Fun With The Fans
Suite: You mentioned it seems to be British bands that are trying to break the mould, and you recently returned from a short UK tour. How did that go for you?
Ricky: Oh, it was amazing! It felt very much like we were amongst kindred spirits, like a home away from home. People just seem a lot more into the music over there, the depth of it, it was just a wonderful experience and we're hoping to get back there soon. We're hoping to get something arranged for June, so fingers crossed!
Suite: So would this be part of a bigger tour on your own?
Ricky: Yeah, well, our album I think is out in the UK in the Fall, so we're definitely looking at being there for that. Hopefully there are going to be some festivals along the way, which would be really cool.
Suite: You're definitely a band that likes to tour. What's some of the weirdest stuff that's happened to you on the road?
Ricky: Actually, there's not been anything too bad for us. We hit a deer with our van once that totalled our van and killed the deer (Ricky looks decidedly sheepish at this point) so that wasn't great. Sometimes we might roll up to a small gas station in the middle of nowhere late at night, and you're thinking Texas Chainsaw Massacre or something, so you're glad to get away safely (laughs)! But overall, we're pretty good, we don't do anything too crazy – we're pretty mild-mannered. We're pretty boring, actually (laughs)!
Suite: Your video for the first single Built To Last looked fun (along the theme of the album title, it shows a devil and an angel trying to outwit each other, with some very funny results).
Ricky: We're all really into movies, and the process of making movies and such. With the advent of You Tube and MySpace, we just thought it'd be fun to make our own little movies, things with fans and such. A band like OK GO has really shown the way forward when it comes to making your own videos. I mean, we're still set to making a professionally made video, but we just thought it'd be fun to do something for our fans and ourselves in the meantime. I think it's important to keep things moving too, to show that we're not just forgetting about everyone now we're on a major label, which I feel some bands are guilty of at times. It was fun, it was silly, and it's going to be cool, as we'll have the next video when it comes out, and we'll start to have a video collection that we can hopefully share with our fans.
