Honey Revenge buzzing into Warped Tour Orlando

Here with Devin Papadol, lead singer of Honey Revenge, and coming back to Warped Tour Orlando. But what made you sign on for another year? I mean, I always say every time I'm talking about Warped Tour that it changed the trajectory of my life a lot. And it was the highlight of every year since I first went in 2013. Kevin knows this. We've talked at great length about it. It was just such a highlight for me. and i love giving back in the sense that obviously i'm giving back to myself because it's such a full circle fulfilling of my childhood dreams but also you know if people are going to come out to warp tour and they want to see us the least we can do is show up and it'll be a really nice way to kind of finish off our year you know we're going to have two legs of our tour and that's the end of the first leg is finishing in orlando for warp and then we're going to fly home before we start the second leg up so and not not the first time you've performed in orlando uh hopefully the last uh at the Beechum last year uh i couldn't uh you've been to orlando a couple times i believe right almost every tour we've ever done has had a florida date i think except for maybe like one or one or two since we started touring what is your favorite thing to do in florida while you're here besides obviously perform for your fans we don't usually get a lot of time to do anything to be honest uh i can't say we've done much the only thing we've ever gotten to do was we got to go to universal orlando which was really really fun um last year when we went to warped we had a day off it was we were on our Spirit Box tour and we had two days off on Spirit Box and we spent them both in Orlando we flew from Albuquerque right into the festival overnight played and then had the next day at Universal and i am born and raised LA and i'm just like not the biggest fan of Universal LA because it's a lot more motion rides and i'd prefer like a true real roller coaster i get a little like nauseous on the screen rides but i found that warped or sorry that Universal Orlando was way more ride based and it was also i think it's when it's something new and out of your norm it's cool you know I might be a little desensitized to LA and all that comes with it so it's cool to get to do things that feel almost like home but in a new place so that's the only time we've ever gotten to do anything on an off day in Florida normally Florida is a big drive day because it's so far from everything else that it's always like a 10 to 20 hour drive in and out of Florida and you also talked about that tour with Spirit Box what was it like kind of traveling around with a band that sonically is a lot different to at least Retrovision you know that's like a tour of our dreams and i wish every tour got to be like the Spirit Box tour that's something we've always aspired to do is tour with bands of all different kinds of sounds i think Spirit Box are a great example of a band that's known for something but kind of lives in multiple spaces in the music industry you know they have that collab with Megan Thee Stallion and they get to be on Late Night and i think that's something that growing up i didn't see a lot of heavier bands get to do and they're kind of a great foundation for allowing our band to accomplish things because we are a band that people i think expect a certain thing from and getting to that tour kind of broke through those expectations it was really really awesome to make fans out of metal fans but i also find that Spiritbox fans are some of the most open-minded metal fans in the genre because of all that that band has accomplished and you know we're a band that i constantly get comments from people saying you know i'm usually a heavy metal guy but i really like you guys and i really enjoy your music so this was a really great chance for us to really win over some more metal fans because we were setting that foundation for what was going to be on Loving and Losing that's out now you know our new album has a lot of those heavier elements that we'd wanted to play with and Spiritbox taking us out set a great foundation for winning over some of those fans so that when this new album came out you know we'd have a couple more people into heavy music that would be receptive to this newer sound and you talked about Loving and Losing uh came out just a couple weeks now what has the reception been like for all it's been so awesome you know it's really easy to get stuck in your own head we've had these songs so many of them for a really long time we've been working on and off on this album for two and a half years it seems and we were just really ready to get it out we couldn't sit with these songs any longer we really just needed to get them out and everyone's been so supportive and stoked on songs that we necessarily wouldn't have expected to be you know favorites of some of our like hardcore fans being open-minded and loving us regardless of what we put out we're very lucky to have fans that kind of just grow with us and i think getting to play these songs is now gonna just really open a lot of doors in that realm so i'm really really excited that it's finally out and that everyone's loving the songs as much as we are and one thing i will say about Honey Revenge i was fortunate enough to to see all the beach and we talked a little bit earlier but i mean this this starry shirt is one of the elite pieces of merch that i've ever seen in my life and one thing i'll say about you is you have such an incredible stage presence i mean i think you leapt into the pit at one point you're crowd surfing a little bit uh while still like belting the whole time for for people who haven't yet had the chance to experience Honey Revenge what what is the vibe like at one of your shows thank you i just want to say thanks that's so nice and that means so much to me um you know we pride ourselves on sounding better on stage than we do on the record at least that's something my guitarist is very very passionate about Donnie is very much a we're both such live music fans as much as we're musicians and we love writing and creating I go to probably four to five shows a week when I'm home and off tour which you would think I wouldn't want to do since my whole job is live music but I love learning what other people are doing and seeing what would work for us we just try and say that it's a party it's really supposed to be escapism i think that's what live music has always at its core been for me and creating an environment where people can escape their problems and find their people and find their place that lets them relinquish all the like problems in their life and kind of be free for a few hours you know we all do sorts of fun stuff we have conga lines we have walls of death you know we really are trying to live that true pop rock lifestyle of merging kind of like a dance party with a rock show and i'm really looking forward to getting to expand upon that now that we have more of a discography you know we've been touring on the same 12 13 songs for three and a half years which i'm very grateful we were able to give Retrovision that lifespan but i'm even more looking forward to now getting to improve our live show with more songs and more styles and changes and kind of expand even more on those songs that people already know and love and kind of give them almost like a loving and losing twist you know and i think for me personally seeing y'all in person uh or seeing y'all live favorite song just shot up my my rankings of my favorite Honey Revenge songs uh for loving and losing when people come to see y'all on on this new tour at world tour wherever they see you um what do you think is is that one song that's really gonna pop and be like wow like i love this song but i love it so much more now that i've seen it live i think Technicolor was written for live you know we talk about this in a lot of interviews but we wrote Retrovision before we'd ever toured so we obviously had in mind things we wanted to do but there was no way for us to truly know what was going to click live and what we were going to prefer to do live whereas we've now exclusively been touring and this is our full-time job now and a lot has changed so with Loving and Losing we went into this going what's going to be our big heavy hitter opener song and Technicolor for me is something i'm really excited to do live we even teased it a little bit on our last tour Summer School and played it as our intro because it has if you buy the vinyl the like the physical record exclusive has like an intro track that flows into Technicolor and it's just like a riff right off the bat i think it's great for those people who love Airhead which is our biggest song right now still from that first album it's very much like party rock vibes and i'm really stoked to play it i also think Sorry Much is going to be a cool one because it's such a sing-along and i think everyone's hated someone enough to say you know sorry sorry but not that much sorry sorry but i hate your guts i think it's going to be a really therapeutic moment in the set that's still very fun and very true to who we are as a band so i think those two are gonna be really cool but i'm excited also to see which songs are unexpected Did live hits, I guess. That's kind of the fun part of putting out new music. And what is the process like of you and Donnie working together to create a set list for your headlining show versus something like Warped Tour where the set times are a little bit more condensed? Totally. It's funny because we were just talking about it. We have so many sets we have to build for this first leg because we have shows with Dead Poets Society, which are going to be co-headliner and we're switching off. And then we have side shows, on the way to Warped that are going to be a little longer and we can play a couple other songs from the new album and then we have Warped which is shorter so we're going to be bouncing around a lot and we were just building out that set I think we really want to lean into fan favorites but also you know pushing some of these new songs to people that may have not realized we even put out an album it's crazy how the internet works and there's it's so oversaturated and I get people all the time not even realizing there's new music despite us only exclusively talking about our new music so i think warped is a really great place to remind people of what we're doing and kind of reminding them what songs they already love about our band and that they've found from us and then giving them this new flavor so it's definitely a challenge now that we have more songs but i think we have more songs that will be fun for a festival experience and a lot of the loving and losing is you know about burnout there's some there's some lyrics about self-doubt uh but there's also so many lyrics about loving the craft and loving what you're doing what do you love the most about performing and and the most about touring and playing these festivals like what tour you know i love the outlet that it creates for me i think it's such a form of expression that i don't get to experience elsewhere i get to really process a lot of these things i've you know you can write about them for years and years and make music and it's very helpful to the emotional processing of everything but getting to perform it for people and see people connect with it and kind of sing it back to them in the audience is so validating and I kind of get to take on this extra level of expression that's really awesome and take on this like extra character like obviously i find that our music is very very personal but there is this level of like i get to be Devon and Honey Revenge again which is sometimes different from Devon when i'm home and i really enjoy just like the human connection of it all and getting to see how something that felt so personal to me connects with other people and i've got to imagine the the adrenaline rush from uh seeing people and hearing people chant your lyrics right back at you that you've been kind of cultivating for the last two years that's got to be unlike anything you can imagine in your life yeah you know i always kind of say that these songs are ours but once they come out they're yours and they're everyone's so it is really special but it's nice to kind of see them take a life on of their own and see them help other people because it it helps me to write them it helps me to deal with my own turmoil and my own problems through writing and through singing but then once we put it out that's for other people you know it's for me when I'm creating it but it's nice to kind of feel like I'm giving back and helping other people because all of my favorite music growing up helped me understand myself and understand my own feelings and it's nice to think that anything i could create does that for someone else because i think that's what music is about it's about bringing people together and creating this understanding that you might not be able to do in your everyday life so i truly think that once the songs are out they belong to everyone they don't even feel like mine anymore which might sound like a bad thing but i think it's really cool because it becomes our songs and i think that's really great and one of the things i thought was was so cool uh you know we asked your your label for like a like a b-roll package and one of the clips in there was you um i think signing a t-shirt and signing a vinyl for um a little girl who came out to one of your shows what is it like to know how the bands especially at Warp Tour growing up kind of influenced you and knowing that you could potentially be influencing the next generation of music it's terribly frightening but it's really cool you know we had a moment we were on tour at the top of this year and it feels so long ago at this point but we started this year off in the UK and Europe on a co-headliner with Rain City Drive in Belmont and I remember in Manchester I was like so sick and I felt like I was not giving my best and I was so bummed because Manchester is one of my favorite places to play and there were just two little girls right in the front singing all the words like they knew every word and I normally don't get emotional about that stuff but I think I was just like not feeling my best and it's always so reassuring when I'm worried about not giving my best to see someone not even notice and feeling like they're having the time of their lives and they're so young I didn't get to go to concerts when I was that young so to think that like this is a core memory for them potentially I remember just reflecting on it when i was making like a day in the life video and editing and just crying in the bus like that's so crazy because i was so very much that little girl that just wanted to be in a band and be on stage like that's all i've ever wanted i cannot think of a single memory when i was younger where i didn't want to make music my whole lifestyle and that's before i even knew that girls could be in rock bands and before I even knew Warped Tour existed so it's very very special and I hope that I can set a good example you know I'm still figuring myself out so it's a little intimidating to think that I could be influencing anyone because I'm still so highly influenced myself by others but you know I figured a lot out in the last few years so I do feel a little bit more self-assured that I could mentor you know I do a little bit of that here or there so I just hope I'm setting a good example and who's one act or if you can't say one who's a couple acts at this Warped Tour cycle that you are looking forward to meeting for the first time I've been friends with Saint Blonde for a long time through the internet and I love their music so I would really like to meet them I would love to get to know Boston Manor because I think Welcome to the Neighborhood is one of my favorite albums of all time i think that's a perfect concept record i would love to play shows with them i would love to meet them um i know you said one or two you could say as many as you want i know there's so many i'm very fortunate to have met a lot of these bands you know we've gotten the chance to befriend a lot of people that we look up to Death by Romy is a really cool artist and our bass player used to play in her band and we've never gotten to officially be introduced i don't know if we play the same day but i think all the stuff she does is really really cool and unique what opportunities do these festivals give to artists um behind the scenes just like collaborating or just talking with each other you just never know what relationships are going to lead to something really beautiful i've watched so many friends just randomly get introduced to a band they look up to at a festival and then get to tour with them later that year i'm so deeply rooted in my relationships and so much of what has been possible for this band has stemmed from being cool with someone from 10 years ago and me being a fan and that snowballing into work relationships i don't think we ever get to know the purpose of what meeting one person can do but the butterfly effect and the chain reaction of it is kind of the journey so i think i can only hope it will lead to cool collaborations and cool tours in the future especially with a new album being out you never know butterfly effect butterfly effect um also being a banger track i'm loving and losing thank you i love that one you don't have to completely plug your music i will also do it for you but for for fans who want to hear more from you or want to hear more from Honey Revenge ahead of Warped Tour kind of get familiar with the music how can they do it we're very very tapped in on our socials anything you see us post i posted it i'm running every single social media account because i'm a control freak so just follow us it's Honey Revenge CA on every platform we have tiktok we have twitter we have i guess it's called x but i don't want to call it that we have instagram we have facebook uh we even have a discord which i think is really fun and cool and it's run by the fans i'm obviously on there but the mods are all fans and there's little tabs for each date so if you're like trying to come see us and you're nervous because you don't have anyone to go with it's a really great place to foster new friendships with people in your city and it's a safe way to create community within our little swarm we call it of Honey Revenge fans uh we have a Patreon where we do a lot of like really intimate one-on-one things where we do Q&As and podcasts if you want to get us to get to know us on like a very personal level like that's an extra layer but highly recommend the Discord highly recommend just come in to check us out because our fans are the best and very welcoming and lovely yeah but you run your you run your band social media uh you're in a band you're on tour all the time how do you find the time to breathe um it's funny because i call myself fun employed when i'm not on tour and like nothing's going on i just read a lot i really lock into just reading as much as possible um i work out every day i think like finding structure i kind of like don't go into detail on it in the record but like finding self-care has been very pivotal in helping me and you know separate the work life balance but now that we're going on tour again i just have to re-figure out that balance it's beautiful what does self-care on tour look like um it's just taking time every day to like work out and step away from the crew and focus on myself and remind myself that i am my own entity outside of the band i do a lot of journaling i don't go on my socials for the first hour i'm awake i'm not allowed i lock myself out of my social media after 10 p.m there's an app that just keeps me out of it and it's because when your job is being on your phone it's really easy to let yourself get sucked in so it's a lot of that it's a lot of discipline and feeding yourself which sounds so silly and simple but it's really really easy on the road to be like oh I haven't eaten all day and I have to go on right now so I can't eat now but taking care of yourself and doing things that help your brain like reading and listening to some good music and going on a little run just a little bit of a release when it's a high pressure day every day awesome well you've been so gracious for the time thank you so much for for taking the time i really do appreciate you oh my god yeah of course come see us on tour with Dead Poet Society Broadside and honey if you're uh not getting your fill after work we'll still be around