Q&A with Ballyhoo's Howi Spangler

Reggae/Rock band Ballyhoo are gearing up for a tour with Law Records label mates Iration beginning tomorrow in Norfolk, Virginia.

After the tour the band will be heading into the studio to record a new album and then they plan to continue to tour over the Summer.

On Saturday, vocalist Howi Spangler called to talk about the band's future while he was at home feeding his son.

Q: How did this tour come about?

A: For this tour last year we were talking about bands who were going out for 2011 and who we knew we would package up well with and we knew would be a really good show. We just happened to get signed to Law Records and Iration is one of our label mates and we played a show together back in November or October and the show went really well. We got to talking and everything and said it would be dope to go on tour together and do a string of shows and everyone was pretty excited. So we just kind of made it happen.

Q: The tour starts next weekend?

A: Yeah it starts on Friday. It runs through the end of the month and then we will actually be heading to Orlando for three weeks in March to record our fourth album.

Q: Are you performing some of the new songs on this tour?

A: Yeah we have a couple of songs that we've been playing live and we have been getting really good responses. Like all new stuff in life it takes tweaks you know and we actually got a bunch of other half songs so the album is in its infancy right now. We're really excited about it because the ideas are just kind of flying.

Q: Do you work on the songs as a whole?

A: Yeah it used to be that I would kind of just bring the guys a bunch of songs that I had written and then we would just kind of tweak it and everyone would add their own flair. But the last two albums everybody's kind of been like we'll have practice and everybody will just start jamming and having a cool idea and we'll just kind of put them together and just grow a song out of it. So it's kind of cool everybody has input.

Q: You're sticking to the sound that you are already known for?

A: Yeah I mean we always want to grow but it just kind of happens naturally. We try to do some different things on this album with the chords and with the strings. There's going to be a lot more piano type stuff on this album. We're really stoked about adding more texture to the sound. No matter what we do people will still know it as Ballyhoo. I mean we have this uniqueness about us. I don't know what it is. We want to branch out but I think people will still feel right at home.

Q: How long is your set on this tour?

A: It's roughly an hour to an hour and a half. We are doing a co-headlining tour with Iration so we're switching off headlining spots so whoever is headlining will play a little bit longer.

Q: What new songs are you playing?

A: There's a song called "Last Night" and there's another song called "Say I'm Wrong".

Q: Is there a song during your set that you enjoy playing the most?

A: I love playing "Cervesa" one of our old singles from Do It For the Money!, our second album. It's a fun song and there's just a big I don't know like the whole song feels like a climax. It just kind of goes out with a bang. Most of our fans come to the shows to hear it. We pretty much have to play it every single show. People just go off. They know all of the words and they go crazy.

Q: There are no Detroit dates on this tour but you said you may be touring over the Summer again?

A: Yeah definitely once we get the album finished we're going to be talking the whole time about where we want to go this Summer. I mean there's been talks of Hawaii but definitely a cross-country tour again. I was just talking to our agent the other day about getting back up to the Detroit area.

Q: You were just recently signed to Law Records?

A: Yeah Pepper's drummer Yesod [Williams, drummer], me and him had always kind of had email conversations back and forth with more bullsh*tting than anything over the last few years. Then I'm not sure exactly where it happened but we dealt with a new management company Fly South out of Orlando and we kind of started talking about who we wanted to deal with and I think our manager he had dealt with Pepper before and just kind of mentioned it to those guys. They had been watching us for awhile and had seen our tour dates and they knew that we were grinding it out kind of doing it on our own and kind of established a grassroots fan base. They got excited about it and then I guess Bret [Bollinger], the bass player, started hitting me up back in 2009 and we'd been talking ever since in the process of saying let's do it to actually getting the ink dry.

Q: You've played with a lot of similar sounding bands like Pepper and 311 but is there someone outside of that that you would like to tour with in the future?

A: You know I think a lot of people probably know this but I think that if we could ever go on tour with Green Day that's when I could die!

Q: Why that band in particular?

A: Well they're my favorite band of all-time and I have all their stuff including bootlegs and live songs. They just make me feel good. They take me back to being a kid again. The songs are great. I've seen them like seven times live and their show is amazing.

Q: Would you say they are one of your influences?

A: Oh absolutely! There is no doubt. Over time it was Green Day, a kind of sounding pop punk band, and then we found a band called Goldfinger and Suicide Machines who were doing ska and reggae mixed with punk and I loved it so I just started playing it in our music and then I found Incubus and just kind of put together a mix of all of those bands. Our drummer was a huge Nirvana fan in the early nineties and Dave Grohl was a big influence on him so he just like slams the drums. All of that is in our music. Ballyhoo music is just fun, melodic reggae rock. It's energetic party-type music.