Devour the Day’s Joey Chicago (left) and Blake Allison (right)

The Short Cut with Joey Chicago
A few weeks after the Three Days Grace and Devour the Day concert at the House of Blues in Cleveland, I had the opportunity to speak with Joey “Chicago” Walser, one of the founders of Devour the Day, a talented, up-and-coming hard rock band.

Joey, in the midst of watching the trilogy of the Back to the Future movies, spent some time to share his thoughts on the music business, touring, and life on the road.

Talking with Joey was wildly entertaining because he is very smart as well as both amusing and simultaneously serious. The thought-provoking ideas that I collected from this rock ’n’ roll dude were:
• Expect that you will fail sometimes, and then get up and keep going.
• Put yourself out there; you never know who can relate to what you’re saying, writing, or singing.
• The show truly must go on.
• Do what you love and stay true to yourself.

To learn more and to hear Joey’s own personal playlist, keep scrolling to check out The Journey with Joey Chicago!

The Journey with Joey Chicago
During Joey’s formative years, his “obsession with music” grew on what seemed like the best and worst day of the week: Sunday, which were cleaning days with his father, but also a day combining hard work with lots of classic rock. I think we all can agree that “cleaning basically sucks,” but it was also the opportunity for Joey to fully appreciate and succumb to the powerful tunes of The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and Creedence Clearwater Revival to name a few. His love of and fascination with music led Joey to be in a high school band, play in the band Egypt Central for 10 years, and then co-found (with Blake Allison) Devour the Day, a “very young band” formed in early 2013.

Did you always know that being in a band was what you wanted to do?
In some sense, yes. Blake and I have talked about this before. We never really had a plan. It has always felt like chaos. The music business feels like you’re constantly juggling. Sometimes you are doing really well, and sometimes, you’re dropping stuff. It’s really that simple.

We have a drive to succeed, but all the things that happen personally in life and within the economics and functionality of your business, there are so many variables that the whole thing just kind of feels like luck. The most important aspect is having the willpower to fall on your face and get back up and keep going. And that’s really the most important aspect of life to us and what we write about. Literally, you are going to fall. You are going to fail, but if you get back up and keep going – that’s the difference in people and in life. We just kind of stick to that.

Very inspirational. So what inspires you when writing music?
Desperation. I think that’s the easiest way to put it. That could be my own selfish desires. Or real desperation, like, I need this record to work so I can take care of my family. Or, I need this song to be out on paper so I can stop hurting over her. A number of reasons, but at the core, what inspires me is the desperation to artistically release the feelings that are inside. And knowing that this comes back ten-fold on the other side when other people relate to it because you were honest. And that’s pretty inspiring, I think.

And you write the lyrics and the music both, correct?
I would say no. It’s definitely a co-write between Blake and me. For the most part, I would say that 90% of the lyrics are written down by me, but the conversations that build to those lyrics are always with Blake, and/or a set of things that Blake says could end up being the lyric. I’m just good at arranging it and then sometimes making it rhyme.

I could never say any one song has been written by one person. Blake and I have always bounced everything off of each other … ping-ponged all the way to the last moments, sometimes frustratingly, because we both feel strongly about a certain way. But we ultimately learn to make a compromise and meet in the middle. Those kinds of decisions are made on every song. As much as I love writing lyrics, and they’re a huge part of what I do for the band, I don’t want to take credit.

How are you enjoying your journey? Do you feel stressed, or are you able to take time out, reflect, and enjoy?
The past year has been very difficult, with deaths in the family and some other very dramatic issues. So for us, Blake and I, we’re just so proud of our team and of our guys that we feel we’ve completed the best record we’ve made to date. We’re in the middle of mixes right now, and I had a mix come back last week that brought me to tears, and I’ve never had one of our songs bring me to tears. And that’s not to say, by any means, that I believe I have some kind of greatness or anything like that. It wasn’t even about anybody else. It’s just that we’ve been through a lot and I’m very, very proud of what we’re saying and doing.

The stress is very real for any rock band. Any rock band that tells you they aren’t stressed right now, in this declining music world, is full of shit, even if they’re huge. Everyone is trying to figure out how to create a new way of making a career out of being a musician. And not like a gaudy rich person, because that really doesn’t exist anymore. Today, people are growing up on free music; they don’t realize that everyone’s not a rock star. It has affected everybody, and that stress is there all the time. So, wanting to make sure that you’re making a record that’s actually about the artwork and not about surviving in 2015’s music economy is hard. A lot of bands fall to the idea of: let’s make something that’s really purchasable. I love any band that does well. I know they work hard for it. But, for us, I just feel really happy that we made a record that wasn’t based on anything but making the best artwork that we could. I feel like we accomplished that. So, that’s where I’m at on my journey, in a very small Cliffs Notes version. I could ramble on that [subject] forever.

When on tour, you’re on a tour bus?
No, we’re on an RV!

Awesome. What’s that like?
It’s very homey. It has a kitchen and everything in there. We’ve had “The Leprechaun,” as it’s titled, for a couple years now in this band. We’ve been blessed to have it. We put bunks in the back and everything. We’ve turned down changing into any other vehicle until it makes sense for us to spend money on a bus. For us and our crew, we feel like it’s more important to remain humble and keep rolling through until it obviously makes sense. None of us are trying to be rock stars. We’re just trying to support our families.

As you’re driving around, what’s it like seeing the country, while still getting from Point A to Point B and meeting deadlines?
For our crew, it’s still about taking pictures of beautiful sunsets and watching the mountains change as you go across the desert. I don’t think that we’ve lost any awe of what it is to be a traveler. At this point, we all know we’re destined to do it.

But the coin has two sides. You’re gone so much, and as you get older, you start to realize that it’s not just about the fun you had in the first few years when you were touring and all your friends were still bartending. But, it’s the eight years later, when everyone has moved on around you, and everyone has a whole other life, and you’re still living like a lost boy.

[Still,] it’s an incredible experience, and we don’t really lose any gratitude for how awesome it is that, because fans buy our music, we have the opportunity to see the world. We really enjoy that. And, we camp and fish every day off that we can. We have quite a few fisherman and hunters in the group, so we’re constantly getting out of the cities and getting into the wilderness of America. And the RV makes that really easily possible.

When you’re not touring and not working, what do you like to do for adventure, relaxation, or to feel alive?
Unfortunately, I’m a total workaholic, so I kinda like to work all the time. I’m one of those people who actually likes mowing the yard because it’s relaxing! But at the end of the day, if it comes time to just de-tune, I’m a movies and Netflix kind of guy. I love good writing and TV shows. I love good movies, good acting, and we love to debate over movies on the RV. My mom was a theater major growing up. We would always watch shows and movies and then critique and discuss the plotlines. So, I get into film quite a bit.

Maybe you have a future career here, per chance? 🙂
I don’t know. That’s an even worse business than music. I don’t know if I want to deal with that. (Laughing). It would be fun to do cameos.

It would be fun to write a script.
Yes, to write? That would be awesome. I would love to be the guy who came up with The Walking Dead.

******************************

Joey’s Personal Playlist
What is Joey listening to now? Check out the following 15 rockin’ tunes that Joey shared with AdventureMusicLife and you!

1. L$D by A$AP Rocky
2. Working Class Hero by John Lennon
3. Come as You Are by Nirvana
4. Polarize by Twenty One Pilots
5. Moaning Lisa Smile by Wolf Alice
6. Driven Under by Seether
7. Saint Joe on the School Bus by Marcy Playground
8. Hands on the Bible by Local H
9. People of the Sun by Rage Against the Machine
10. Misdirected Hostility by 311
11. Pretty Noose by Soundgarden
12. Around the Fur by Deftones
13. No Quarter by Led Zeppelin
14. High Hopes by Pink Floyd
15. Baba O’Riley by The Who