REEL BIG FISH TO NEW WARPED BANDS

Reel Big Fish is one of Warped Tour’s elderstatesman, and they’re out to prove ska is not completely dead.

Reel Big Fish were part of the Ska and neo-swing scene back around the turn of the decade. The band had hits like “Sell Out” in 1997, and now over ten years later they’re one of the elder statesmen on this year’s Warped Tour.

Dan Regan and Ryland Steen talked about being a living remnant of a bygone era.

“(laughs) [Steen]”Last of the Mohicans.” [Regan] “We’re all pretty scared of going in and getting real jobs. We’ll do just about anything to keep the scene alive, and we seriously just love it. We love playing for kids everyday. As long as they keep coming out and paying our light bills we’ll do shows.” [Steen] “I don’t know if this has anything to do with it, but obviously we love ska music. We embrace it. We don’t not call ourselves a ska band, but at the same time we didn’t necessarily think of ourselves as a ska band that came out of the mid-nineties or whatever. We were just a band that just loved to play music and just did what we did and maybe somewhere along the line that helped to keep the band going as well.”

The band also talked about how the younger bands on Warped, who might have seen Reel Big Fish as kids, interact with them.

“I’d say at first I thought that they all thought that… I got this feeling that they were really aloof, and I was like… This come from being a horn player and just a ska band, just used to being on. The mainstream press picks on us all the time, like, ‘Ska is dead.’ Frankly Spin Magazine it’s not up to you. We’ll let you know when it’s dead. So I don’t know it’s like low self-esteem or something. And after a while I realized that all these guys are just shy and they were scared of us, so it’s been fun to break through all of that as the tour has gone on. We did a set last night for the barbecue. After hours for the Warped Tour we throw a barbecue and everybody gets crazy, and there’s DJs and stuff, so last night we were asked to be the band, and we got pretty inebriated and gave them quite a show. So, everyone had a pretty good time.”

Reel Big Fish not only have a big band, they also are not afraid to poke fun with other Warped artists. In Englishtown, New Jersey the band playfully mocked Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl” within earshot of her fans, knowing that at the stage across the way she was scheduled to end the night, overlapping part of their set.