First the Album, Then the Audience

By Jeannette Madden
Staff Writer

Christian metal band Red played Fargo’s Urban Plains Center May 15, 2010, as part of Skillet’s “Awake and Alive” Tour. Rocking white t-shirts and a ton of eyeliner, this band could easily have headlined the tour themselves with their super loud, super powerful anthems that have been known to start some serious mosh pit action. On tour in support of their second release, February, 2009’s “Innocence & Instinct,” Red has a lot going on right now, which guitarist Anthony Armstrong was happy to talk about.

High Plains Reader: Can you tell me about the name of the band?

Anthony Armstrong: We named our band after the color because if you think about love, if you think about hate, if you think about passion, the color that always seems to pop into your brain seems to be the color red. Just those emotions alone we pour into our music and kind of what we are as a band, an emotional roller coaster. If you listen to a record from start to finish that’s what it feels like. Red was very bold, straight forward.

HPR: What about the band itself, and the guys in it?

AA: Three of us actually grew up together. My twin brother the bass player [Randy Armstrong], the lead singer [Michael Barnes], we’ve all known each other since third grade. We moved to Nashville almost ten years ago after we all graduated from college and stuff and started writing and working odd jobs. We met the other two guys in the band and we all moved in together and started writing and working toward that same goal, possibly doing it as a career. One of the guys in the band was working as a studio engineer doing some wiring and stuff like that that he had gone to school for. A guy he knew, who happens to now be our producer, Rob Graves, he took a demo that we had been working to him [Graves] and he fell in love with it and took us under his wing. For the next two years we recorded our album while we were working full-time jobs. We were recording a record and not touring so we did everything in reverse. We had never been onstage before we released a record so it was a very steep uphill climb from the start.

HPR: How did things progress from there?

AA: After we released the record [“End of Silence”] we just started touring and we didn’t stop. I think nowadays it isn’t about those billion dollar record deals from record companies. Bands have to get out there and make it happen themselves. That’s what we were, basically entrepreneurs of our own business. We got out there and toured as much as we could…I think we played at least three hundred shows the first year of touring. We started garnishing some pretty serious attention, started getting on some really big tours, basically just held on to those coattails…getting in front of thousands of people a day. That constant touring schedule was the way we got ourselves out there for the most part and I think people started catching on really quick. Having to do it all in reverse and never having had a fan before the record was released, people were like “Where did these guys come from?” We’ve been doing it nonstop for the last four years, both records have done extremely well, we have a lot of fans that are really in love with what we are doing and we’re just happy. The music that we make is an embodiment of who we are as guys and we’re just putting ourselves out there.

HPR: I’ve read about some other projects your band members are into…

AA: Yeah, we’ve worked with other bands, other bands have worked with us. On this last record we have a song called “Shadows” that was co-written with Ben Burnley from Breaking Benjamin. And then we turned around and our guitar player did a lot of work with him on his new record. They became great friends and they wrote together. The relationship was forged in that I think we spent three months with those guys touring nonstop. We got to be good friends with them and everything just kind of clicked. We shared song ideas and it turned into some cool stuff.

HPR: And you’re really into fan connection?

AA: Yeah, definitely, definitely, we’re nonstop on the internet. We don’t let our label control our websites, we do all of it on our own and update them and answer emails. We try to put out video blogs. We’re kind of silly on the road so we do funny stuff and we show that we’re normal people, not crazy scary looking rock dudes. Usually it’s just the four guys on stage so it’s cool to show that side of things and helps them to connect with us even better. The fact that we can be so accessible to fans nowadays, the internet’s changed everything, technology’s changed everything, whereas when we were kids there was no way we were ever going to be able to talk to our favorite bands and now the kids have the opportunity to give us feedback or tell us what’s going on in their life or how our music is helping them and it’s a tool for us to be able to reach out to them.

HPR: I read an interview done between “End of Silence” and “Innocence & Instinct” and you really sound on fire for everything, your spirituality, your music, touring. Do you still feel that way?

AA: Oh, absolutely. I think our mindset is always right there. The only thing that gets difficult for us is that fact that we tour so much. I mean it wears on you physically but mentally that’s what we’re here for and that’s what we’re called to do and it’s something that we’re always, always passionate about. We have our ups and downs like any other band but at the end of the day it’s all about who we are. We’ve been friends basically our whole lives and we have a great chemistry and that’s what people see onstage. We’re interactive not only with the fans but with each other and people can see that we genuinely have something special going on and can get behind that. I think people are more apt to be supportive of something like that rather than just a bunch of dudes up there that just don’t care. It’s something that we’ve proven from the very beginning, that we care about our fans, first and foremost we care about the kind of music that we’re putting out there and people see that righteousness. It’s really cool.

HPR: What’s the future of Red?

AA: We have some cool stuff going on. We’ll be releasing a video for [Duran Duran’s] “Ordinary World,” that’s going to be our newest single and that’s actually coming out really soon. It’s a different direction for us because we’re a pretty heavy rock band, and to do a cover of that song and to do it the way we wanted to do it…every one of our videos has been a reflection of who we are as a band, but this one is different. It’s not our song, we’re not trying to brand ourselves with the actual music. We’re just trying to show people our spin on the song. There’s that, and then we’re definitely focused on record three, record four, five…we’re writing as much as we can. We’ve got a big headlining tour that we’re going out on pretty soon and we’re taking a couple of bands that we’ve done some stuff with, Almost, and another band called Brian Head Welch, formerly of Korn. We want to be around for a long time so we’re going to keep working hard.

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If You Go

What: Red                                                                                                                                                                       Where: Summerfest, Milwaukee                                                                                                                                                 When: Sat, June 26, 8pm                                                                                                                                                           Info: 414.273.2680