Exclusive Interview: Amber Pacific Returns With All In

Pop-punk is officially back (as if it ever left) with Amber Pacific’s All In! Rising to fame with their debut, The Possibility & The Promise, in 2005, we’ve known them ever since as icons of the genre. Naturally, when we heard they were releasing their first album after an eleven-year break, we couldn’t wait. With the lead single, ‘Sink or Swim,’ and now with the Valentine’s release of All In, we can confirm that not only have they retained the beauty of classic pop-punk, but they also have something new to offer to their music and to us, their fans. They are back and better than ever, and we were lucky enough to chat with them about it!

Comeback

11 years is quite the gap between records! What makes now the perfect time for a comeback? How has your approach to All In differed compared to The Possibility & The Promise?
11 years is a really long time in band life, and it was time for us. We realized we’d hit the 20th anniversary of the band, and we were due for a new album. We had played a handful of shows each year since 2019, and we were excited about the possibility of new music. Will is our main writer and is always pumping out songs. I think we had close to 30 going into this album for the first time ever. This album is also a bunch of 40-year-olds and not kids. So, the life experiences and the memories of all the tours and shows made this record really special to make.

What was the most unexpected challenge you faced while reuniting to create ‘All In,’ 11 years since your last record?
The biggest challenge of the record was probably logistics. I am the drummer and have been in Nashville for the past 13 years. The rest of the band is in Seattle, where we came from as a band. Will is a pilot and travels all over the world for work, while the other guys have careers in Seattle. I am a full-time professional musician, so I have been traveling and touring the entire 20 years with a bunch of different artists whenever AP wasn’t active. We decided to do this album in Nashville with Sean Rogers, who is a great producer I work with a lot. So, I was always here, but the other guys had to fly down a handful of times last summer to get this record completed.

How has your approach to getting your music out to the general public changed due to the rising popularity of apps like TikTok and a more digital consumption approach to music over the last few years? 
New bands are coming up in a different era. If I was in a band starting today, I’d record new music all the time. I’d have tons of music streaming. I would focus on social media and making tons of content. None of this is stuff we do as a band because we’re 40, but I know it works for new bands. I would build a super tight live show and try to write a song that could break through the noise of the internet. 

‘Sink or Swim’

What exactly do the words “sink or swim” mean to you in your musical career? In your personal lives? 
Sink or Swim is such a personal thing for each guy in the band, I believe. The idea in this career, or any for that matter, is that you have to keep fighting no matter what, or you’re going down into non-existence. It’s so hard to stay relevant in this career. For me personally, I got my Bachelor’s in Music before joining the band, and I moved back to Nashville when we slowed down. Since AP stopped touring full-time, I had to make a decision to relocate to keep playing music professionally. Since then, I have had the chance to work with tons of bands and artists like Scott Stapp from Creed for the last decade, Sonicflood, Red, Fireflight, Superchick, and most recently, Hawthorne Heights. 

I also teach drum lessons weekly and have a studio where I can record drums for people anywhere in the world. All of this is me choosing to swim when it would have been easy to sink and never play music again. I’m so excited that we have stuck it out long enough to put out a new album with AP and hopefully some big shows this year. I’m so proud of this album and the work that went into it, and I really want people to hear it. I think Will wrote these songs reminiscing on the past as well as being hopeful for the future. I think Matt and I really added to the direction of them in the studio to sound and feel like our band, but 20 years later. I think any of our old fans will connect with this message of hope and how thankful we are to make another record. 

Immediately, the opening of ‘Sink or Swim’ pulls us back into the glory days of pop-punk. What was it like getting back into that creative mindset?
This whole album was very nostalgic and had such fun energy. For me personally, I’ve been making country and rock albums for the past 5 years, and very little fast stuff. It was so exciting to come up with new parts and ideas that took us back to 2005.

All In

A new album usually means a new tour. Can we expect to see you guys on the road any time soon? Are there any newer artists in the scene you’d love to tour with? 
We probably won’t do any headlining touring this year with everyone’s different careers. It’s so hard to travel and break even as a band. But we will be strategic and try to get on other shows or tours. Definitely shoot for bigger festivals like Warped Tour and When We Were Young. If we could land an opening spot for Blink or Green Day, I’m sure we’d all drop everything! Our album release show is up in Washington on March 8th. As for newer pop-punk bands, I’m honestly not current and have no idea.

You named blink-182’s Enema of the State, Fall Out Boy’s Take This to Your Grave, and MxPx’s The Ultimate Collection: MxPx as influences at the beginning of Amber Pacific. Are there recent albums that have inspired All In? 
We still love the same albums and the same bands. We reference older bands and maybe some of their newer work for this record. Like, “this sound sounds kind of like Rise Against, or this one like Sum 41,” but then we have our own spin on that as well. So plenty of familiar influences are on this record that won’t really surprise people. We still love Mxpx, Fall Out Boy, New Found Glory, Green Day, Jimmy Eat World, Blink, Bad Religion, you name it. And we even have a Goldfinger-esque ska song on this album.

One More Thing…

We’d kick ourselves if we didn’t mention your legendary cover of ‘Video Killed The Radio Star,’ which went diamond in our hive btw. What’s a song you have on repeat that you’d love to cover right now?
“Video Killed the Radio Star” was kind of a fluke because we didn’t have much time to work on it and busted it out really quickly. I wish we could redo it now with a slamming mix because none of us are super proud of that one. I don’t know what we would cover now. I would love to do Boston, More than a Feeling. I love U2 and would love to do any of their hits. But hard to say for all 5 of us with such different influences. 

Seattle has a very underrated music scene that you don’t see people talk as much about as some other large cities, what has it been like existing within that space? What would you say makes it special? 
We love playing there and always will. We love those fans still with us after 2 decades. We never felt like a true Seattle band because we never had our biggest following there really. It wasn’t until after a couple years of Warped Tour success that we really saw the Seattle fans come out regularly. We just never felt a big pop punk scene there. Seattle was huge for grunge of course, but that was a decade before us. Our best Seattle memories might be actually making those first couple of albums there which were really special. 

You mentioned you spent some time in Nashville. What are the differences between the Nashville music scene and the Seattle music scene? In which city do you feel most inspired?
Nashville is my home and I love it. I love the scene here. There’s rock, and country, and pop, and CCM, and all kinds of stuff. It’s so inspiring to be around musicians every single day. When I’m not on tour, I gig 4-5 days a week and teach 3 days a week. I’m constantly doing music and you can’t do that anywhere else in the world. It’s my favorite city in the country and I wouldn’t live anywhere else. The other guys all grew up in Seattle and probably feel that way about it. 

You have a true-blue fan base. What would you say to fans who have been around since The Possibility and the Promise days?  
To our original fans who’ve been here since year 1, we are so thankful for you. Thanks for coming to shows, buying albums, downloading our songs, wearing our shirts, voting for us- all of it. We feel so humbled and grateful to make a brand-new record, and we hope you all love it!

We think we speak for all of our readers when we say we do love it! If you haven’t had the pleasure of listening to All In yet, do yourself a favor and check it out. Then let us know your favorite track over at @thehoneypop on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

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