Despite a rough van adventure to get to Kansas City, I had the pleasure of finally catching Eye Alaska at the Pac Sun Tour. Though we struggled to find a quiet spot in a venue packed with fans rocking out to the many other talented bands on the tour, Eye Alaska lead singer Brandon Wronski and I talked over the crowd to discuss the tour, acoustic songs, backpacks and even Jay-Z. Check out the full interview below.
Bethany, PopWreckoning: You almost didn’t make it here to Kansas City. What happened in Denver that you had to cancel the show?
Brandon Wronski, Eye Alaska: Yeah, um, our van wouldn’t start, actually. We had to wait for AAA to get there. Then they got there and said we had to get a new battery, so we had to wait to get a new battery. From there, they were like, “Oh the battery doesn’t work and you need a new starter.” So we were like, “Ok, sweet.” And we had to wait like eight hours for it to be like 7 in the morning. So, we got stuck. Then, a storm came along and we got stuck in the snow. It was a whole mess of several things going and the storm ended up following us through the Rockies. We were driving along between 5-15 mph, so we had to miss the show last night and missed our in-store today. We barely made it to our set today, so that’s good we did.
PW: I’m glad you made it.
EA: Me too.
PW: You guys seem to have been working harder than any other band on this tour. Why’d you agree to do so many in-stores?
EA: The in-stores are really cool. You get a personal interaction with the fans. We’ve had almost every day of the tour doing an in-store. It is basically like playing two shows a day. It is hard to get there on time doing two shows a day and it is hard on the voice, but it is good. It is good to give the fans that personal interaction at the in-stores and let them see you live in our element at the shows.
PW: Did you have to hard-core adapt for the in-stores? Is it hard to make your songs acoustic?
EA: Yeah, we switch the songs a lot acoustically. I love playing acoustic. It is cool because you get to experiment with the songs and people get to hear them in a way they don’t usually get to hear them. A lot of times when acoustic, people can pay attention to the words more. You can pay more attention in general. You get a whole different experience.
PW: You guys have been doing more than any band on the Pac Sun tour. When do you take a break? What do you do for your free time?
EA: We don’t have any free time really. We are constantly moving. If we have a day off, it is usually to just drive some ungodly amount of hours, so we really don’t have much free time. In the van, we’re usually sleeping and if I’m not sleeping, I’m writing music and working on new songs and all that kind of stuff. 
PW: I’ve seen you wear a backpack several times during your live shows. What’s in the backpack? What’s its story?
EA: When we do home shows and headlining shows in California, a lot of times we’ll sell special, custom, limited-edition backpacks and all the money we make from those goes to sponsoring kids in Africa. Sometimes we’ll have CDs in it.
PW: That’s cool. You doing that tonight?
EA: Not tonight. We usually only do it at special home shows, so only at a few.
PW: You guys do a lot with social media. You’re even doing a Twitter contest right now. Talk to me about that. How do you use social media and is Twitter your favorite of the tools?
EA: My favorite is Tumblr. I have a Tumblr that I use a lot. I like Twitter, too. It is definitely the big hot thing right now. I kind of hope social media on the internet goes away because it is kind of annoying sometimes. I love talking to the fans and I love that aspect of it, but there’s so much spam and people trying to get what they want out of it that it isn’t that fun after awhile. The fans are great, but other than that, it loses its fun.
PW: How has the Twitter contest been working out for you guys?
EA: It’s been good. We’ve been getting a lot of kids uploading pictures and all that. It’s been good.
PW: Awesome. Ok, it is super loud, so to wrap up, what’s your favorite memory of the naught years as we hit the end of the decade? Do you have a favorite musical memory?
EA: Yeah. Favorite memory from this decade?
PW: Yeah.
EA: Oh, man. That’s a hard question. I don’t know. I think Jay-Z Blueprint 3 has been mine.
PW: Really?
EA: Yeah, he just calls everybody out and all the stupid things like bright color-wearing because they got a slurpee dumped on them. Then the auto-tune thing. He’s just the man to call out everything like that and somebody needs to do it and he’s just the person that can really do that and not look like a total douche-bag. Jay-Z is awesome and he just does so much besides music like his Water for Life campaign in Africa where he built wells.
PW: Nice. So how far does this love of his franchise extend beyond Jay-Z? How about Beyonce?
EA: Haha, she’s rad, too. Jay-Z is just awesome.
PW: Alright, cool. I think your fans will be surprised to hear that.
EA: I don’t know. I think it just cool that he uses music for more than music. That’s my end goal to use music as a platform to do bigger things.
PW: What’s next for you guys after the Pac Sun tour?
EA: I’m not quite sure yet. We still got a bunch of things up in the air that we’re trying to figure out. We’ll be touring and I’ll be writing and all that good stuff.
PW: Alright. Sounds good. Let’s end it there.
EA: Thanks for having me.
PW: Totally. You guys are really fun. Thanks.
Eye Alaska: myspace | @ pac sun, the beaumont
