Interview ~ David Koonce of Within Reason

In an industry where the fixation seems to be on labels wanting an immediate return and so many “flavors of the week” dominating the charts and airwaves, it’s great to see great work ethics and perseverance pay off for some hard working bands out there. Within Reason is a band that stood out to us for many reasons, with the first being writing some kick-ass songs that immediately hooked us in. Then, we started to dig a bit deeper and learn more about this talented band and we found out quite a bit of info that really impressed us. These guys have been laying the ground work of writing damn good songs since their first album EP Cycle  A Smile was released in 2006. They’ve toured with some of the biggest names in music today including Godsmack, Seether and Pop Evil, all while earning their respect and friendship. The band was selected out of 2500 bands to receive the “Gig of a Lifetime” in 2013 sponsored by CBS Interactive, Microsoft and the Grammys. Earlier this year, they releasedtheir new single “Here Comes the Light” from their album After the Crawl and it cracked the Top 40 on the Active Rock chart. The guys are going to be celebrating the holidays at home and then heading back out on the road in January with Hinder and Shaman’s Harvest. We recently spoke with bassist David Koonce who was taking care of some band duties before the holiday season got too hectic. We talked about the upcoming Hinder tour, working on a new album and good ol’ Santa Claus!

Let’s start off with a question for the music nerd in me; is there a story behind your band name?

David Koonce/ Within Reason: When we first started about ten years ago, we practiced at our drummer’s house. He lived on the south side of Birmingham and we would crank up everything. It was ridiculously loud to be honest with you and as it got later, the neighbors would call the cops on us. The funny thing is, the same cop would always show up; I’m not sure if his beat was at 9:00 each night or what. He was always super cool with us and he would tell us when he knocked on the door that he’s begetting off in about an hour. He would tell us to take a break for about an hour and then we could crank it back up, but try to keep it within reason. We started thinking about band names and I’m not sure who in the band mentioned that, we all thought it would be perfect and there’s a good story behind it.

You know that every super hero or villain has an origin, minus radioactive bugs and trips into space. So, tell us what the origin of this band is.

Chris (Dow) and I both went to the University of Alabama and it’s kind of a funny story how we met. We lived in a neighborhood that had identical houses in a circle around a swimming pool. At the time, I was a sophomore living with three freshmen guys and they were so into school and not really into the whole college scene yet. I was playing music and doing the college thing. I walked over to this guy’s house where people were out on the patio playing guitar and stuff. I got to know them and it ended up being Chris’ house that I was at. It ended up that they had a roommate who did nothing but stay in his room working on homework and stuff. When Christmas break came, we did like a mid-season trade and I moved out of my house and swapped houses with their guy. Chris and the guys who lived there went to Miami because I think Alabama was playing in the Sugar Bowl and I was left there by myself. I ended up throwing this huge party and when they came home, they thought that it was coolestthing that I had just moved in and then blew the house out with this huge party. Chris and I ended up playing acoustic shows in bars around town and that’s when our musical journey started. We met our drummer at an Alabama football game in Birmingham several years later and we all started playing together. We had a show in Tennessee with five bands on the bill and when we heard the guitar player in the first band sing, I knew that was exactly who we needed in our band. It took me almost nine months to get him to join our band, but I finally got him. I think his first tour that he did with us was with Godsmack, so he came on-board right at the perfect time.

Speaking of tours, I wanted to talk to you about the tour that you’re about to kick-off with Hinder. That tour was postponed and rescheduled because Hinder was involved in a pretty serious bus accident. Did you guys get to play any shows on that tour or was everything postponed?

It was completely rescheduled; we had been off the road for about three weeks and we had scheduled a couple of warm-up dates. One we did in Orlando, Florida at a festival with Hollywood Undead, Rise Against and Atreyu, then we did another show in Destin, Florida with Hollywood Undead. We were then going to start the Hinder tour and we got as far as Knoxville, Tennessee on our way to Charlotte, North Carolina when we got the news that they had their wreck and that everyone was ok. At first, they said they were going to cancel two shows, but I remember telling my tour manager that they were going to cancel the whole thing. A couple of the guys had broken ribs and I’ve had bruised ribs before, so I get it. I couldn’t even take towels out of the dryer; much less sling a bass guitar around. So, within two weeks, the agents actually got everything rescheduled and it actually routed better this song time around.

Since you had already allotted for being on the road during that time, what have you guys been doing with this unexpected time on your hands?

It actually got kind of frantic for a minute because pre-production for a tour like that takes a lot of time and a lot of people. You plan all of this stuff and you budget all of this stuff; we’ve got 500 pounds of merchandise that we have to get rid of. Our initial plan was to do the Hinder tour which would end on December 21 and then begin pre-production for a new record, start recording in January and hopefully have a single out in February. We’ve kind of flip-flopped everything for now; it’s great to be home for the holidays, but if we’re not playing, then nobody is getting paid. I felt bad because we had to send our entire crew home without paying them, but our crew is so awesome and they get it. We’ve played with so many bands and are friends with so many of them and the day that the tour got canceled, Pop Evil reached out to us and threw us a couple of shows.

It’s always good to make friends along the way on your journey instead of enemies.

Exactly, they get it and thanks to them coming to our rescue a little bit, we’re going to be able to cover our expenses for the month. Even though we’re a band, this is still a company with expenses.

I wanted to ask you about your new single “Here Comes the Light,’ which is off of your EP After the Crawl. You don’t hear of too many bands successfully releasing a single off of an EP that’s roughly three years old.

Yeah, we did that record in 2012 and I can tell you how all of that happened. We didn’t have a radio single on the album prior to that one and we had two off of this one. Our touring really ramped up in 2013 and we really started touring the whole country at about that time. In our minds, even though that record is three years old to us, there are still people out there who haven’t heard it. We wanted to do a new record, but I didn’t want to waste the songs on that record because they are really good. We should go to radio with them and see what happens. It’s very rare with radio for a band to come out of the gate with their first two singles and have success at radio because you have to build a foundation with them. We were really lucky with ‘Here Comes the Light” because it actually broke into the Top 40 on the Active Rock Chart. I guess we officially had a hit song and I’m going to call it that because it’s really cool to say that.

I know you guys get asked about the Grammy Gig of a Lifetime event, but I wanted to ask if there were any fanboy moments when you saw someone famous.

We did an interview with John Norris which was pretty cool because when I was about fifteen, he was your source of music news because he was all over MTV we really didn’t have the internet then. I can tell you a fun story about the event; our agent got us into the CAA pre-Grammy party the night before the show. He wanted us to meet some people who would be there and he told us that there was going to be a lot of really famous people there as well. He said that he trusted us not to fanboy out on anybody or take pictures with them. We walked in and it was like an episode of Entourage; Sting was at the bar, Duff McKagan was standing over here, Pete Wentz was on the dance floor and people were everywhere. I told my drummer that this was so fucking cool and I had to figure out a way to meet some of these people without breaking the rules. So, the first person that I tried was Steve Perry from Journey and I would walk by and stop and say, ‘hey Steve, I’m on my way over there, but I justwanted to stop and say hi to you’ and then move on. He had to pretend that he knew who I was because I was obviously in the party, I must have been somebody, he couldn’t remember who I was and didn’t want to seem like a dick (laughs). I did that to about twelve people and I got caught on the very last person that I tried it on, who was Ludacris, but he played it off and it ended the night perfectly. I tried to order a drink off of John Mayer because the waiters had tuxedos on with white jackets and black pants on and he came in wearing that same outfit. He walked by me and I said ‘hey man, when you come back around, can you bring a couple of Red Bull and Vodkas for me and my friends?’  and he actually thought it was funny.

That entire trip had to be the most surreal thing that you guys have experienced so far. The clips that I’ve watched of everything have been so freaking cool.

It really was and we actually talked ourselves into a lot of that stuff because we were initially supposed to fly out there the week of the Grammys, do an interview, shoot a commercial, play a show and fly home the Friday before the show aired. We ended up talking our way into staying out there for twelve days and even went to the dress rehearsal the day before and saw how it all worked.  The red carpet moment gave us a feel of what the highest echelon of the industry can be and now that we know what that feels like, it will add fuel to our careers forever.

You guys stay on the road a lot, so what are the best and worst foods when touring?

The last tour that we were on was with Seether and I made a point not to eat fast food on the whole tour, but I ended up doing it twice. The first time was either eat this or go hungry for about twelve hours. The second time was in Dallas and there was an In & Out Burger across the street and I grabbed a burger. Fast food is bad news while on tour; we toured with Buckcherry this past summer and I gained twelve pounds from fast food. Touring is so hard on your body and what you eat plays a big part of it. You don’t want to feel like crap all of the time, so eating good and getting enough sleep are two very important things. Even though we may be on show twenty two of the tour, there are people coming to that show that may have waited three months for that show and paid about $30 to see it. It’s not fair to them for me to go out there feeling like shit and wanting to get off the stage as soon as I can. It’s our responsibility to take care of ourselves because of our obligation to thefans that paid to see us.

For our December interviews, we’ve been asking artists to share a favorite Christmas. It can be best gift, worst gift or whatever pops into your head.

I don’t know why this stuck out in my head and I haven’t thought about it in at least fifteen years. I think I was nine or ten years old and I was suspicious about the whole Santa thing. My buddies at school were talking shit about him not being real, so I started snooping around the house. I had specific things on my list that I wanted from him and I wanted the Ghostbusters Ecto-1 car from the cartoon. I remember finding it at my parent’s house and I thought maybe they just bought it and it’s not supposed to be from Santa. We watched this Christmas movie where Santa’s fingerprints were snowflakes and little Christmas trees and stuff like that. My brother and I had had this idea to put an inkpad with Santa’s cookie and milk and tell him to leave some fingerprints for us. The next day, we got up and the fingerprints on the piece of paper were stars and snowflakes and we thought that this Santa thing was the real deal. Then, I opened my first gift from Santa and it was the Ecto-1 carthat I found in my parent’s closet. In 30 seconds, I went from I can’t believe it’s real to now I know 100% it’s not (laughs).

Well, that’s about it on my end, but I do want to thank you for taking the time to talk to us. Is there anything you’d like to close with?

We’re excited about having a new record out in 2016. We don’t set out to write a rock record; we put these songs these songs together and whatever they sound like is what the record sounds like. We do take pride in having each record sound a little different than the last record. We want you to hear one of these songs ten years from now and know which record that it came off of.

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