With I Prevail's highly-awaited sophomore record Trauma now officially out and two Australian performances at Download last month, we caught up with vocalist/guitarist Dylan Bowman to chat about the new record, being starstruck and the struggles of the touring life. Scroll on for the interview!
 

Hey Dylan, how was it being back here for Download last month?

Oh my god, it was so amazing. The weather was such a nice getaway from like, negative thirty which is super cold out here and there's snow all over the ground, so it was nice to get some sun. And the people obviously, I mean, you guys just have a whole other way of life down there for concerts and the atmosphere is amazing.

You got to co-host Rage as well - that's a pretty big honour! What was that like?

Oh man, that was so much fun - getting to pick a bunch of music videos and sit on a couch like that hosting a music video show...that's the kind of stuff that I thought about as a kid when I would watch stuff in American like Much Music or MTV way back in the day and I remember being like "man that's what I wanna do, I wanna host a music video show. That's how I'll know I made it" (laughs).

Speaking of having made it, you're at a level now where you're playing some of the biggest festivals in the world. Have there been any moments where you've just been fully starstruck?

Yeah man there's definitely been plenty of times. The one time that sticks out the most to me - well, I guess two - one would be from Northern Invasion when one of the guitarists from Breaking Benjamin, who were one of my favourite bands growing up, was watching us side of stage. He pulled out his cell phone and took a little video of us playing and that kind of messed with me for a little bit for the first half of the set but I got through it!

And then at Rock on the Range while Brian was down with his vocal injury and so I ended up covering lead vocals for that run...and to be able to do that in front of like 40,000 people on the same stage that Tool was playing on was unbelievable.

So were you a big fan of Tool growing up?

Oh absolutely I mean, I had every record from them and always tried learning the guitar parts growing up...and that was the first time I also got to see them live, so it was pretty amazing.

Let's talk about your new music video for "Hurricane", because it's a really honest look at how crazy the ups and downs have been for I Prevail over the last few years. Is it surreal for you to see all of that condensed down into four minutes?

Yeah I mean it's weird to think about because especially from my perspective - and most people don't know this - but I joined the band pretty much right as the [Taylor Swift] cover was blowing up, so I've heard the story 100,000 times from these guys but like, what they went through at the very beginning and then when they met me...it really went into overdrive. Because I mean, I remember playing in a storage unit when our label Fearless Records asked us to do a showcase and that night we all went out for drinks and signed the record deal. It was crazy. So to see both of those things condensed down into a short video brings back so many other memories too.

Trauma is a record that brings up a lot of the negatives of being in a band like being away from home while you're touring. But you're about to head out on the road after spending ten months in the studio and a new record under your belt - how are you feeling?

You know...it's weird, I'm so excited to get out and play the new songs and be on the road with some of my best friends again, but this will actually be the first tour where I'm leaving stuff back home. I got a new dog just last year actually and it's about a year old, and I've got a girlfriend that I'm gonna be leaving home too so it's gonna be a challenge for me. It's stuff that you don't think about right away - the big dream of playing music on tour to a thousand, two thousand kids every night...but then you're missing stuff back home like family members growing up...I have nieces and nephews that couldn't even walk the last time I left home and now they can walk and talk. It's so weird.

What effect will the diverse nature of your new record have on the gear setup for your live shows?

Um, as far as gear goes Steve and I are doing the most guitar changes we've ever done between songs just because of how many different tunings there are. I mean, we've got tunings as low as drop G and then all the way up to drop D so there's a lot of different stuff that's going on. I know Gabe has some electric drum triggers that he's gonna add to his kit that he's never used before live, so we're really excited to push the envelope of what we've done before. I'm really excited because this new stuff that we've been working on, for the first time it's just music you know. We're just getting into the ebb and flow of what I Prevail music does to you from a music standpoint and not necessarily performing.

One thing about I Prevail is that you always seem to operate the band on your own terms and don't really give a shit what people say. But with success comes hate from some people - is it something you are used to now?

Yeah I mean I definitely feel like I have some of the tougher skin in the band being the youngest of four kids, but we've all read stuff online that gets you down in the dumps for a day. For every one comment you read there's also ten people out there who are like "hey man, your music saved my life" or "I love working out to your album" and to me that just erases those negative comments to the point where if I see troll comments I just laugh. It's just whatever.

What were the main differences in recording process between Trauma and your debut album Lifelines?

So with Lifelines, we would go out to LA, do some co-writes and bring them back to our producer there to just hash out those ideas to the point where we did the entire record there. With Trauma, we still did some co-writes down in LA but we decided we wanted to go with a different producer so we went with Tyler Smith, who used to play in a band called Danger Kids and we flew him out to Michigan, got an Airbnb in another small town way up north, and kind of just detoxed from social media and cell phones, and just sat down and get as much done in one session as we could. And we found that those two or three weeks were way more helpful rather than just flying to LA and then coming back to an old producer.  

There are some whispers in the wind that you guys will be coming back here for a full tour later this year. Any chance you can give us the goss?

I can tell you this - we don't have anything set in stone yet, but we are trying our hardest to make another Australian run in 2019 happen. My first trip to Australia for that first sold out tour in 2017 I will never forget that. Just everything that happened between the shows, watching Eric do his first shoey which was in itself its own hilarious story, but then to experience the culture you know...like, things are so similar down there but they're so different that every time we go now I'll be walking down the road with Brian or Eric or someone and I'll just be like 'dude, we're on the other side of the world. This is crazy!'. I just love the atmosphere down there.

We'll keep our fingers crossed! Thanks for the chat Dylan.

Thank you so much for having me!

Listen to I Prevail now.