During a recent Zoom chat with vocalist/guitarist Eric Egan, I found out that, for a number of years, a lot of people thought Heart Attack Man were from Philadelphia… While the punk trio did record 2017 debut LP, The Manson Family, at Headroom Studios, and they have played more than half a dozen different rooms in the 215, Heart Attack Man are, and have always been, a Cleveland band… Last week the Clevelanders kicked off a 40-date North American tour – accompanied by The Dirty Nil, carpool, and Dear Seattle on all dates – behind their fourth full-length, Joyride The Pale Horse, which dropped April 25th. The Joyride The U.S. & Toronto & Also Vancouver tour will have Heart Attack Man returning to The Foundry at The Fillmore this Saturday, June 14th. During our recent chat, Eric told me about this summer-spanning tour, the band’s first trip to Australia, and their long, complicated, and great relationship with the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection.
*Interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Izzy Cihak: You just dropped your fourth full-length, Joyride The Pale Horse, a little more than a month ago. Have you had any favorite fan reactions to the new material so far?
Eric Egan: We just did Australia and England, so I guess my favorite reaction has been going to Australia for the first time and there being people that already knew the new stuff and were excited about it. With Australia, everything was kind of a standout moment, because it was our first time there. It was really interesting seeing how touring goes down over there, because it is quite different from the US. Something that a lot of US bands take for granted is that there’re so many cities to play. You can do a full US tour and have all different types of places to play and quickly book up your calendar. With Australia, considering that there’s significantly less people in the country, it’s a bit more condensed to fewer cities that you’re really able to play. If you’re an international band touring there, it’s kept to maybe six cities and it’s a lot of flying. It’d be similar to doing a US tour and just keeping it to like six big cities. There are artists that do that, but for up-and-coming and mid-size bands, that isn’t economically viable.
There’re plenty of Australian bands that I already liked, but it really elevated the respect level. There’s plenty there, in terms of a scene, but in order to break out of Australia, it’s quite a challenge. It was a bit of a reality check for me. It was an amazing experience, but there were a lot of details on the logistical side of being a band that it put into perspective. As hard as it can get, we’re very fortunate to not have to travel to Australia… We were so grateful to do it, we feel like it’s necessary for us to go everywhere in order to break to a worldwide audience. But I feel like the reverse, if you’re an Australian band, you kind of have to go to the US so many times before you can get any momentum, and that’s not only hard, but very expensive.
Izzy: You’ve been doing this for more than a decade now. How do you think Joyride The Pale Horse compares to previous releases?
Eric: Every project we’ve done, whether an album or EP, has had a different approach. Even if it’s small, there’s some distinct quality that distinguishes every project from the rest. Going all the way back to our first album, The Manson Family, we hadn’t even really gotten started yet, and we were like, “Let’s do an album!” We were maybe getting ahead of ourselves a bit. At the same time, there really isn’t anything I would change about it, it’s just all learning lessons along the way. We were self-funding it, and had to make the most of it, so we did it in six days. Being a lot younger and cutting corners with recording, you don’t really think about that, but I don’t know if we could make an album in six days now the way that we want to.
Fake Blood, our second album, was the first time we had a real budget to make an album and have more time in the studio. Every single release we’ve done, we finish early. We’ve always finished at least two or three days ahead of schedule, because we get very excited and work very quickly, but Fake Blood is the first album where we had more time. With the follow-up EP, Thoughtz & Prayerz, we did that one over COVID, so it was a bit fragmented in ways. But writing it didn’t really differ from how I wrote Fake Blood.
Freak of Nature, the last album, was a more significant departure from what we had done before, because that was the first time I had entertained the idea of collaboratively writing. Every song on the album had someone else in the mix — all friends – bringing a different creative energy. It was, in a lot of ways, an experiment, kind of taking the leap and taking those creative risks to keep it exciting and see what we could learn from it.
That brings us to Joyride, which was kind of the amalgamation of all the processes. It was like, “Okay, we can do some co-writing and have some of that energy in the mix,” but there were plenty of songs where it was just me sitting in my room, writing a song, and hammering it out that way. It’s taken the best of everything we’ve done and applied it in sort of a new way. One of the major differences with us in the studio this time is that our chemistry with each other and how we play was a lot more locked in than before. We’ve been growing a lot, not only as musicians, but as people and as friends. Like you said, we’ve been doing this for over a decade, and I feel like now it just felt really fluid and more comfortable than ever.
A lot of credit is due to Brett Romnes, who engineered and produced the album. We had recorded with him before, but we stepped away for the last album, just by circumstance of how much we were touring. We really wanted to do an album in Cleveland, at home, and sleep in our own beds [laughs]. This time, we had more time off the road and we wanted to return to Brett, because we work really well with him.
I think being reunited, and both having been on our creative journeys in the process, it came together for a perfect storm. We had a heightened appreciation for his creative input and the studio, and we’ve been playing together a ton, so we’ve been more comfortable than ever. Those are two things that separate Joyride from the rest: that fluidity in the studio and the process of a greatest hits of how we’ve approached writing music.
Izzy: You’re gearing up to return to The Foundry in Philly. You’ve played Philadelphia so much over the years, including a lot of dates at The Foundry, specifically, so I’m curious to hear what you think about Philadelphia.
Eric: I might’ve told this story in Philly before, but one thing that’s funny with our relationship with Philadelphia is that when we first started “professionally” touring — grinding it out, doing support tours and stuff, in like 2017-2019 — there were quite a few people that actually thought we were from Philadelphia. We recorded our first album at Headroom Studios. We were tight with a bunch of Philly bands, like Modern Baseball and The Superweaks. We played there a lot. So, a lot of people kind of assumed we were from Philadelphia.
We played a show on Long Island with Crime in Stereo in I think 2018. They offered us a show, and we said yeah, because we love Crime in Stereo. But it was a one-off show, driving from Cleveland to Long Island, which is quite a drive, like 10 hours… but we were down! Their guitarist, Alex, was talking to us, and he was like, “How was your drive?” and we were like, “It was a long one, but it was good,” and he was like, “How long was it?” and we were like, “10 hours,” and he was like, “10 hours from Philly?” And we were like, “No! From Cleveland!” And he was like, “Wait, I thought you guys were from Philly! Oh my god, I feel so bad! One of the main reasons we asked is because we thought you were from Philly and it was close.” We’re like, “Dude, we’re still down to play anyways.” It didn’t matter to us!
I think that’s a unique and funny anecdote about our connection to the city. And it’s always been such a great place for us to play. Philly was the first East Coast city that really accepted us in a big way, and we felt like, “We have something going on here!” We’ve played so many different places. This is like our fourth time playing The Foundry, and that feels crazy, because for the first handful it was always somewhere different. It is nice to come back and have there be some familiarity and a lot of fans of ours that we’ve gotten to know over the years.
Izzy: On that note, what can be expected of the live show this time around?
Eric: The day the album dropped we played the whole album front-to-back in Cleveland. It was like an invite-only, exclusive thing, but we were like, “That felt really good! It would be nice to just play the new album!” We’ll see if it actually ends up panning out. Truth be told, we’re leaving in two days and we’re having a rehearsal tomorrow, so we’ll figure it out tomorrow [laughs].
We’re planning on at least most of the new album, even if we don’t do it in order. It’s just really fun to play and I wanna play a lot of it. Fans can expect a lot of new stuff, but we hope not to keep anyone hanging with fan favorites from the back catalogue. We’re gonna try to do our best to play everything that everyone wants to hear. But at a certain point, I can only sing so much until I blow my voice out daily [laughs].
Izzy: Yeah, once you have a big enough catalogue, it can get to be an issue…
Eric: That is one thing we were noticing. I mean, it started getting really hard to write setlists three albums in! Now we have an entire new album of 12 songs, and we really like all of the songs, and we want to play a lot of them. So, it’s only getting harder as time goes on. But we’re gonna do as much as we can physically do, while also keeping in mind that this tour we’re about to do is 40 shows.
We took the summer and fall of last year off from touring to focus on the record and reset and recoup and devote all of our energy to that. We wanted to give ourselves a little more time, not have that external pressure of going right from a tour into the studio, or vice versa. That was the MO: We’re gonna wait a bit, take some time off the road, but when we come back, we want it to be a big tour and make up for the lost time. With that, we’re like, “Let’s get off the beaten path and get out there and headline some places we never have before.” The result is we’ve got a tour that’s 40 shows.
Izzy: You’re gonna be on the road with some amazing acts: The Dirty Nil, carpool, and Dear Seattle. So, I’m curious to hear your thoughts on all your tourmates.
Eric: It all started with The Dirty Nil. We were just thinking top-down, let’s think of direct support first, then go from there. The last time we toured we were supporting Microwave, and we played in Toronto and The Dirty Nil came out, because they’re friends with Microwave. I had heard of The Dirty Nil, and I know at some point I casually listened to a song or two, and I was like, “They’re solid.” They came out to the show and they’re really nice, and they were like, “We should play shows together.” And I was like, “Yeah, for sure,” why not…
But they came to Cleveland a month or two after that. Our drummer, Adam, plays in another band called Hunden that was playing the show. I was mainly wanting to see Hunden. I was like, “I’ll stick around for at least four or five Dirty Nil songs.” But then they started playing and, right away, I was like, “Oh my god, this is crazy!” Since then, I’ve gone back and listened to damn near everything and I love it, but seeing it live really drove it home for me. It went from, “I’d be down to play some shows,” to, “We have to play some shows together!”
It floored me right away, one of the best live bands I’ve ever seen. The energy was incomparable. One thing that we pride ourselves on, as a band, is that same sentiment of, “You gotta see Heart Attack Man live to really drive it home.” There’s something special about artists where it’s good recorded, however, the live show is a whole other half, if not 60%, of the equation that you need to experience to fully appreciate it. That really spoke to me. Like, we really need to tour with this band.
We asked if they would be down to come play in Cleveland for our end-of-year headlining show. They agreed, and we were like, “Let’s talk about touring next year,” and they were like, “Oh yeah! Absolutely!” Our headline show with them was a chance to play together, tease it to the fans that we’re gonna be touring next year, but also getting some more hang time with them and kind of feeling it out, and they were great! They kicked ass at our show, and it was really affirming to me that we’d be a good pair on tour together.
I’ve been aware of carpool since their first demo or EP. I remember hearing about them early on and enjoying it. I like that they have a bit of the modern emo thing, but there’s something about it that’s a little bit Third Eye Blind, but also a little bit PUP, and that’s a home run for me! I’d met them around the same time I’d seen The Dirty Nil. carpool played in Cleveland over the summer and I met them and they were super nice. They all had come up and given me props, like, “We love Heart Attack Man!” I watched their set, and they were great. The most recent album they dropped is pretty fantastic.
And I feel like there’s a bit of a kinship with us. I’m really drawn to bands that have more than one thing going on and maybe caught between a few different scenes. I empathize with that because that’s been kind of the story of our career. We’re not a prototypical emo band, but we’re not a cookie-cutter pop punk band, and we’re not punk enough to be a full-fledged punk band. We’re in the middle somewhere and I am drawn to the bands that are in a similar position. I think the most interesting stuff musically comes at those intersections.
It was a goal of our booking agent to get us over to Australia, and Dear Seattle had come up, and we listened and we thought this is a good fit, musically, and if they’re down to do this entire tour and have us over there and work out an appropriate trade, let’s do it. Laying it out like that sounds very business-like, but I did come to really like them, and before we even toured Australia with them, their song “Evergreen” became my most listened to song of the entire year. When we got to Australia, it was immediately affirming when we met the guys. They were not only very cool as people, but a very good live band. It’s definitely nice to have it be affirmed that we made a good choice there. And we got to work out an Australian tour in the mix, too!
Izzy: Finally, what are you most excited about while being on the road for these 40 dates, in addition to just playing the shows themselves?
Eric: One thing I’m excited about is that we’re playing quite a few places that we’ve either never played or never headlined. There are so many places that we’ve passed through dozens of times and never played. Pretty much every tour we pass through El Paso, but we’ve never played there, so we’re playing El Paso for the first time. Same thing with Boise. We always stay in Boise on our way from Seattle to Salt Lake City. Every time we’re there, we’ll go to Olive Garden and be like, “Why haven’t we played Boise yet?” We’ve played Long Island bunches, but we’ve never properly headlined. Lexington, Kentucky, we’ve never played there. We haven’t played Oklahoma City since like 2019. We’re playing South Dakota for the first time. We’re playing Lawrence, Kansas. Vancouver for the first time is really exciting, because every time we’ve played Seattle there would always be people coming from Vancouver like, “Please come play Vancouver!”
I feel like you could throw a dart on a map, and we might be playing there [laughs]. I’m really looking forward to unlocking new places on the map. Nothing against the usual places, because I feel really grateful for places like Philadelphia, Boston, Richmond, Chicago, and Pittsburgh. It’s really come to feel familiar, like, “Okay, this isn’t too far from home.” But it’s nice to still have that adventure where we’re hitting a lot of familiar territory, but also getting off the beaten path and keeping it fresh and adventurous.
*Get your tickets here.
