Nikolas Wood knew the odds were slim when his pop rock band, Sick of the Day , entered the Vans St.

Nikolas Wood knew the odds were slim when his pop rock band, Sick of the Day , entered the Vans St. Louis Warped Tour 2013 competition. First, out of 130 bands, they had to make the top 100 list based on buzz rating — a combination of plays, cheap airline tickets to orlando comments and emails on the website. After they made the first cut, they still had to beat out 96 other bands for a chance at performing at Warped Tour.
When Wood opened the email saying they’d cheap airline tickets to orlando been one of the four bands chosen, he was speechless. It meant that the judges, including Wood s favorite producer, John Feldmann (who’s recorded albums cheap airline tickets to orlando for Boys Like Girls , The Plain White T’s , The Used ), and the creator of warped tour, Kevin Lyman , picked Sick of the Day after evaluating them against all the other bands.
Sick of the Day began as a solo project by the current lead singer and rhythm cheap airline tickets to orlando guitarist, Michael Stewart. After forming a full band with two members who are no longer playing in the group, Stewart was joined cheap airline tickets to orlando by Wood, who does backup vocals and plays guitar, and bass player Kyle Lamb. Stewart lives in Springfield while Wood resides in Columbia, so the two have to write songs together virtually via texts, calls and music clips. Even so, they ve achieved a professional, crisp sound with lyrics that evoke feelings of young love.
Check out their latest single, Shallow Hearts, before reading our exclusive Q A with Wood about what it was like to perform at Warped Tour and the meaning behind one of the band s most personal songs.
It actually started several years ago as the singer (Stewart) just singing solo over the years. My friends Chance and Wesley joined him, and then both of them had to quit. One is studying to be a doctor, and Chance just graduated high school and is going to college. I knew Wesley’s sister through a mutual friend, and a band that I was in two years ago broke up. She told me that Sick of the Day was looking for a guitar player.
I talked to them, and they sent me stuff. I thought cheap airline tickets to orlando they were really far away, but I liked the music, so I thought I’d give it a try. I started playing for them two years ago, and there are three official members right now.
When was 13, I decided I really wanted a guitar for some reason, out of the blue. My parents bought me one, and I took lessons for a while. After I learned the basics, I stopped taking lessons and just taught myself. I’m 20 now, so I’ve been playing for about seven years.
Well, I got to go to MACC ( Moberly Area Community College ) for two years tuition cheap airline tickets to orlando free, and so I went there and got my Associate of Arts general degree. I just finished cheap airline tickets to orlando that a couple weeks ago, and now I’m going to go to classes at Mizzou to study business. But that could change; it’s kind of wishy-washy. I mean, I definitely want to pursue music as my career, but I also have been given the opportunity to have a plan B by going to college.
Yeah, they definitely are. They were the ones who would take me to my first shows when I was 14 or 15-years-old. I’ve just had ambitions ever since then that they’ve seen, and they’ve done everything they could to make that happen. They would be ticked off if I just dropped out of college and quote-unquote “threw my life away” trying to do this, or whatever people say. They want me to have a plan B, but they are proud that that I took all the classes at MACC and that I m now going to Mizzou. As long as I stay on that track, they’ll support me.
Before I joined the band, Michael had written cheap airline tickets to orlando some songs and played acoustic. So then when I joined, I had to decide, “I’m going to play this here, and this here.” cheap airline tickets to orlando From then on, we started writing together. He and I just work really well together. As you can imagine, cheap airline tickets to orlando it would be a pain in the butt to write music from 3 1/2 hours apart. But he’ll send me three texts full of lyrics and say, “This is what I just wrote; I’m thinking cheap airline tickets to orlando this kind of sound will be cool,” and then I’ll just pick up my guitar and write something, and I’ll send him a voice clip of it.  He’ll say, “I like this, I hate this, change this.” I’ve had to learn how to work with somebody when were not in the same place sitting down trying to figure a problem out.
Yeah, I would definitely say so. It seems like I’ve gotten a million times better as a musician just from writing with Michael. I’ve gotten to do a lot of things in this band that I have never done before. The Warped Tour thing has been a dream of mine since I was 14 or 15-years-old.
I opened the email and saw that we were playing, and I was speechless. It was a long process; I think it had been going on for three months or so. When we first started, I thought, I don’t know how we could ever win that, but if you guys want to try, then whatever. The judges picked bands they can see touring on Warped within the next few years; if they think you’ve got what it takes, then they pick you. It was a dream come true, definitely.
Basically for (Vans Warped Tour), it’s a competition cheap airline tickets to orlando where your band registers and you put your music, your bio and your pic on this website and tell all of your fans to go vote for you. The bands are measured by buzz rating, so anytime a fan listens to the music, votes, watches a video or leaves a comment, that all contributes to the rating. Every date of warped tour has one of these contests. On the St. Louis page, I know there were over 100 bands, maybe 130. They pick the top 100 bands who have the best buzz rating, and then they’ll go through each one, listen to their stuff, judge it, and then out of those top 100 bands, they choose four.
Knowing who the judges are was one of the coolest parts. One is producer John Feldmann. He actually has recorded pretty much every one of my favorite bands. Kevin Lyman, who created cheap airline tickets to orlando warped cheap airline tickets to orlando tour, and the guy who founded Alternative Press Magazine also judged. It was a huge to know that they had been on my profile page and listened to my music.
We got 25 minutes or something like that, and that included getting all our stuff onstage. We had absolutely no extra time, so we had to cut ourselves a little bit short. cheap airline tickets to orlando I think we played five songs. It was really fun, and we had an awesome crowd. I think we were the second band to play on that stage at 11:45 a.m. Doors opened at 11, and people were just starting to walk in. I was scared nobody was going to show up, but there were actually a ton of people.
Knowing that this has been such a big goal for so long and knowing I was able to achieve it. It was cool getting to meet some of my favorite bands and be able to say, Hey, I played warped today, too.” I got to meet Go Radio for the first time, their vocalist ( Jason Lancaster ) left Mayday Parade and started Go Radio, and he has hugely influenced us on our writing. We also got to meet Forever the Sickest Kids and The Early November .
As the band we are now, we’ve released one EP that was self-titled that had six songs on it. And then after that, we released a single called Paramount Dreams, and we actually cheap airline tickets to orlando just recently cheap airline tickets to orlando released an acoustic version of that. And just the day before Warped cheap airline tickets to orlando Tour, we released one more single.
Whenever someone asks me, I say pop rock. I hate being limited to that, and I would say as far as expanding our sound, I don’t want to limit ourselves to being pop rock because notoriously pop rock is considered simplistic. It’s catchy enough that you’d sing along to it but something you’ll forget about in the next year. I like to think about making something that’s going to last longer. When Michael cheap airline tickets to orlando and I write together, more and more we get to that point. Lately, I feel like we’ve been writing stuff that is a little more intelligent.
There are more so parts of songs that really get me. Michael is the lead vocalist, and in the end, he has the most say in what the song is going to convey. That’s totally his call in the band as far as our roles go. Having said that, when Michael writes the lyrics, I’m on the side saying, “What if we did this or said this instead?
Our old drummer, Chance, was dating a girl and her parents wouldn’t let them see each other. Apparently, Chance told this girl, “At 9:33 at night look up at the moon, and I’ll do the same thing, cheap airline tickets to orlando and we’ll be looking at the same moon.” Michael cheap airline tickets to orlando came up with all these beautiful lyrics and turned it into a song.
I’m hoping for the best. The music scene is the kind of place where all you need is one lucky thing to happen, being at the right place at the right time. It’s never like you can set a path and walk down it. Hopefully we can keep going, and something will happen. We’ve grown a lot in the last two years, and I think we’re all just dying for it to take off.
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