This past weekend at the Bottlerock Music Festival, Iration performed on the Midway Stage in the sweltering heat in front of thousands of fans. But before they hopped up playing a few of their hit tracks, band members Micah Pueschel and Adam Tyler took part in a press conference to answer a few questions and received a quick crash course on how to pronounce “Suisun City.”
At what moment did you feel like you made it? At what point were you like, “I did this. I’m here”?
Micah Pueschel: It’s funny because it’s a story we’ve told before as a joke. Not making it, but when we knew that it was gonna be kind of a career path was when we put out Sample This. The EP with “Falling” and three other singles on it. It was the first time headlining the Roxy on Sunset strip. We got there and the show was sold out. We were like, “What the hell? This never happened before.”
Then I think it did number three on iTunes for reggae. That was kind of like, “Woah. This might actually be something. We’re not just playing in someone’s backyard.”
Adam Tyler: And boy, were we wrong. We have many years to come after that to get anywhere near success.
Have you had a lot of time to spend in Napa and how do you feel about the beauty of Napa compared so Santa Barbara? And what was just your favorite part about Napa in general?
Tyler: Well, we’ve been in Napa for… A day. It’s beautiful. We’re actually staying in Suisun City.
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*Banter with the crowd on pronunciation*
Tyler: Okay, first of all. They need to put a freaking pronunciation guide underneath “Suisun City” ‘cause I’ve been calling it Swee-sun City this whole time. We’re gonna get on stage and be like, “What’s up Napa? Na-pay.”
Nah, it’s beautiful here. We love it. We’ve been up here a few times and we’re all wine lovers, so to speak. They say, we’re no stranger to the grape. We like the wine. We like to be up here. The weather was a lot warmer than we thought it was going to be but we’re not complaining.
What’s your goal for tonight? What’s the mentality when you get going?
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Pueschel: I think the goal is to just perform to the best of our abilities. We’ve rehearsed enough so hopefully the practice pays off but we’ll see.
Tyler: We rehearsed Thursday for like, an hour and a half. We haven’t played in a month. We’ve been off the road for about a month so this is kind of our first show after not playing awhile so it’s always a little nervy when you haven’t touched your instruments for three or four weeks. Tonight should be fun.
Who designs your clothes and where can I get more of them?
Pueschel: You can get all the clothes on Irationmusic.com and actually, we do a lot of the designs ourselves. We’ll at least come up with ideas and then put it to the graphic designers.
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Tyler: The guy who does our merch, Wes Miyake, he kind of will send us a bunch of different things. We can mess with them or yay or nay them. Or, pass them along to the women in our lives. Generally when it comes to the female clothing line, I think we do really well because we always check in with the ladies and go, “Is this cool or not?” “Is this working?”
Pueschel: If we didn’t do that, we’d be picking out cuts of shirts that everyone will be like, “Nobody wears that.”
Tyler: “Really, that’s what you’re going with? Summer 2014?”
Pueschel: We just leave that to the girls.
Head to Irationmusic.com to purchase their latest album Hotting Up or to grab some of their merch they mentioned in the interview!
[Note: Questions are from members who attended the press conference]
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