Vana on metal, music and secret at Warped Tour Orlando

Vonna, Matt, how's tour been going so far? It's been super fun. I just, I think it's a really cool opportunity to be able to tour. And it's been, it's just so fun spending time with my, you know, best friends on the road. I literally, I have no complaints on that front. I love, I love being a musician. I love touring. Yeah. And of course, like all tours bring their challenges, but like our team is so tightly, we're just, we're just like all best friends. and so it makes even like when we have rough days on tour it makes it really fun just being around them what does a a rough day on tour look like oh man there's so many things i mean there's so much um touring is a really interesting lifestyle where you could have like something crazy happen and you wouldn't know because you've got to have a performance in 20 minutes or you know like sometimes you just wake up really sick you get a cold but you still have to try your best to perform sometimes you get food poisoning and don't that don't matter you gotta go on stage it can even be stuff like going on back home like if you're missing like a family member's birthday like or you know somebody's going through something at home and like you're on the road you're doing your job it's uh that can also make it a little rough on tour you get a little homesick stuff like that yeah um and sometimes it's um you know you could have a bad show um the other day i accidentally unplugged my bassist's uh pedal didn't mean it was a bad show but things like that happen all the time it's live music just lucky that um our crew is the kind of one to laugh about those things rather than you know get upset and when it comes to Warped Tour Orlando specifically i know you've performed in orlando before last year at the beach um um you also posted about uh one of your your class projects as a kid was kind of a a New Zealander version of Warped Tour uh talk about kind of the full circle moment of it yeah um so i've always growing up in New Zealand it's a very um isolated place and not a lot of these festivals happen over there it's very there's not about like one rock festival that happens annually um so growing up you know being part of the scene sort of electronically like through social media and seeing all these all my favorite bands play these Warped Tours it's always been like a dream to like even go to one um and i guess yeah one time in english class we were asked to um you know make brochures it was just like a project and so i made one for Warped Tour New Zealand because i was just obsessed with being part of the scene uh for you know um just in any way possible um and so like my first Warped Tour being one that i get to play at let alone like just even going to one is just insane insane to me and i know that if i told myself that i actually you know 15 year old me wouldn't have believed it it's really cool i'm very grateful and um what was it about Warped Tour specifically and and the scene what is it like seeing that from from across the world what's the time difference in New Zealand time different oh it varies um but it's a day ahead so it's we're always in the future um so we already know what's already what's happening i'm gonna say from Orlando it's like 14 hours ahead yeah i think i think it's like that yeah um but yeah it's just it's just cool to be able to actually go and see what it's what it's about and see i was i was really into pop punk um for a couple years there when i was a teenager and so um it just feels super iconic yeah like watching growing up like playing metal drums you always just because i I never went to Warped Tour until we played it as well, but all of my favorite drummer's videos always happened at Warped Tour, so the fact that I'm getting to make those same type of videos hopefully for a future generation of drummers that are going back and looking at Warped Tour now that it's back again, it's just a really surreal experience. It's really cool. One of the things I love about live music and the festival atmosphere so much is seeing a song from one of your favorite artists that you thought was this good, and you listen to it live and it's this good what is the the sleeper hit that's going to come out of Warped Tour that people are going to be talking about we do have a surprise planned for Orlando Warped Tour that i can't really divulge too much information on as of right now but there is a collaboration uh underway which i literally i can't give any hints because i will just spoil it But there will be something that I think will excite the new generation of Warped goers and also the older generation who have been there. You know, the OGs, the day ones. I think this will be something that unites both crews. And then Matt, which song of Vana's do you think shows off your capability in the drums the best? What are you excited to really show the fans? Probably Prey. prey is probably the fastest drum part she has uh that's like released thus far um as far as and as far as difficulty goes and that's usually the first song in the set so i feel like that one that's some really fast double kicks but um that's it what's it like to put together a set list for something like warp tour um versus the tour that you're on right now sometimes it's it's all about you know how much time we're actually allowed to play um i think the set that we have now is pretty similar to what Warped Tour is because of the set time but I also take into consideration like what songs are the most crowd engaging you know some songs I have bits that I like to do during it that you know gets the crowd entertained and some songs are a little too slow or too unknown to like put in a set list like this where we're trying to showcase our capability and you know we have 30 minutes to grasp people's attention so I want to make sure that the ones I put forward are the ones I'm most confident in and I was able to see y'all uh last year in Orlando at the Beacham uh but your stage presence is incredible how do you how do you grip fans um like you do in such a short amount of time I don't know I just try my darndest I think I think I just love attention and so when I'm up there I'm like guys look at me also I hope you're having fun too um yeah i think i think i i just i love being a performer it's so fun um and when i get up there i feel like i kind of take on this different persona um and i feel like i don't feel scared and then i got off stage i'm like whoa that was scary um but i think i just i just focus on having fun and making sure that like i'm satisfied with my performance and i'm always giving my 100 percent and I feel like when an artist or performer gives they're all on a stage it's hard to not try and reciprocate that as an audience member because when you see your favorite musician having fun you also want to have fun and then you're also the the first New Zealander to play Warped Tour in in 20 years yeah what does that mean to you it's pretty I think it's I just feel so honored like um there's a metal scene in new zealand and i feel like there's quite a few up-and-coming bands that um definitely i think will do really well overseas um i think that it's really great to be able to represent my country overseas new zealand is a great place and um it's just it's just nice to be able to you know get that little island on the map for Warped Tour um i think it's really cool yeah and for people who who don't know uh this is both you What can people expect at Warped Tour when they come to catch Ivana's set? I think they can expect just us having a blast on stage we said in another interview we just, regardless of how much the crowd is interacting we're going to interact with each other as much as we can and that's usually when we play our best and then we're just having fun on stage. Whether there's 10 people who show up or 100 million jillion, we're going to give our best and um and i will probably get distracted by whatever costumes people dress up in at the show our shows are becoming like a convention just cosplay convention which is so cool because i love that it's so good dude yesterday or a couple days ago i saw Jesus and an Akatsuki member in in a pit and i was like that's probably the first time that's ever happened another show there was Luffy and Spider-Man are y'all big anime people yes yes okay what's what's peak for y'all right now Apothecary Diaries, One Piece, they're on a break this year but they're on a break right now but yeah one piece yeah what about you uh i'm i'm an Attack on Titan truther i think yeah i i thought about getting a tattoo i've got like a Zelda tattoo and a Kingdom Hearts one yeah yo nerd let's go um yeah bonnie you've also streamed on Twitch, been really big into the the Baldur's Gate in the DnD world, is there anything that kind of role playing and playing a character in that sense has brought to your stage performance? Absolutely bro i cannot play Dungeons and Dragons if i'm not a bard. The thing is is i'ma be a bard on stage, off stage, that's just who i am, i can't help it it's so fun um i think DnD has it's it's really it's a really good uh sort of activity to practice just like putting your all into into something you know like and leaving you know any kind of insecurity or uncertainties behind and just like getting getting lost in something and i feel like that's how i feel when i perform you know and i feel like that's why a lot of people like DnD as well because they can kind of ignore the worries and struggles for like an hour or two and just have fun and that's yeah that's definitely something i i take from that. Matt, are you a DnD guy at all? I am, i am indeed. We just uh finished up a two-year campaign and we just started uh another one back home. What class do you play uh the first one i did paladin and on this one i am oh what am i like DnD's version of the healer cleric yes yeah so very night and day difference with those, how does your role in your DnD campaign compare to your role in the band for me yeah oh i'd say a paladin like they're pretty honorable and i think um i think i got some honor in the band he's our guiding light we call him our guiding light yeah if i see anybody doing something bad i'm like hey hey stop that stop that don't do that yeah the moral the moral good in in our band yeah yeah yeah chaotic good yeah if they're not acting right i'm gonna holy smite them matt would you say that uh paladin is a drummer coded class or is there another instrument that speaks to it more i feel like barbarian nah yeah but i don't know maybe i'm going off a personality rather than like a skill set but like all my favorite drummers are incredibly like kind and honorable people so i yeah but barbarian also makes sense strong so um matt what are you most looking forward to of of just being in florida and then coming to orlando disney universal yeah parks europe um i love and i've visited orlando like i've done a youth camp down there and i've had friends down there i really like orlando they've got some really nice parks out there and the weather the weather is also awesome pretty much all year round and what about you vonna what do you what are you most looking forward to in florida i'm gonna go ahead and say disney as well um what's the one with the pandora that's animal kingdom i'm gonna meet blue jake i'm most excited to meet if people would uh follow you and catch up with you how can they find y'all on socials and on me or not um i'm vanna underscore nz on everywhere online and i'm matthew underscore davis matth spelled m-a-t-h-i-e-u-x underscore davis that is where you can find us