Rain City Drive: the most underrated Warped Tour band?

Giving you a live look right now, Camping World Stadium, where the Vans Warped Tour, just a couple of days away. We were talking about that with Noah just a few minutes ago. And we have one last stop for you on the road to Warped, as we have spoken to a number of musical artists who you will see on the stage this weekend. One of those bands, Rain City Drive, and Fox 35's Johnny Jackson had the chance to speak with lead vocalist Matt McAndrew, just about the band, about their preparations. This is a band that's from Palm Coast, Florida. So a lot of Florida ties with the Rain City Drive. They're one of the bands you'll get the chance to see this weekend. Here's Johnny's conversation with Matt. Matt, first things first, how's tour going? Tour's been great. We've been saying this is maybe one of the best tours we've ever done for sure. Sure. I know it's been a bucket list for us for a while, too. Sleeping Sirens, just kind of a legendary band in the scene and one that I'm a personal fan of. So, yeah, it's been great. And you guys also put out a brand new single, Slither, earlier this month. You also talked a little bit about spending September in the studio on a new album. How was that experience? It was great. We did the majority of the new record with Andrew Bayliss in Nashville, who crushed it. I mean, we did a lot of writing for this record, and we booked a couple sessions with him just to write. vibe. And we got a couple of songs with him that were just really great. And so based off that, we kind of knew we wanted to do the album with him kind of behind the helm. So yeah, it's cool. We're just kind of putting the final touches on everything in the mixing phase now for a lot of the songs. So pretty exciting. But yeah, Slither, as you said, came out and it's been doing really well. It's been fun to see the fan reaction over these couple of weeks. When you drop a song, on tour and people don't know it at first versus like a couple weeks in you like i just see more and more people every show are kind of singing sing along with us so it's cool yeah i was watching a uh a video of one of your performances i think in in wisconsin last week or so nice they were singing it back to you i mean how yeah bro how awesome is that You know, song dropped less than a month ago and your fans already know it. Yeah, it's cool, man. And, you know, we'll see. Time will tell where it winds up. But for right now, I feel like it's exceeded our expectations and it's just doing really good. So it's a good way to kick off a new album for sure, you know. And it's definitely one of those songs that starts a little lower, a little more subdued. And then the drums kick in, the guitars kick in, kind of really kicking off this new era for Rain City Drive. For sure, bro. Yeah, we're stoked. And we have a lot of singles we're going to drop on this album too, just to kind of keep people interested as we roll out the whole record. So it's going to be cool. We're going to have a lot of stuff coming out. And when it comes to Warped Tour, what is your personal history with Warped Tour? Man, I was never somebody that got to go growing up. What's that? I had one of my first bands. We did a Battle of the Bands competition. And if we won, we would have gotten to play Warped Tour. And we came in second place. So that was interesting. And then obviously it was gone for a while. And now it's back. I just remember the first one we got to do when it came back was just like surprising how good it felt. For us, there is some sort of sense of kind of kumbaya and like camaraderie and everybody's just, I don't know whether it was just the nostalgia and people were happy it was back or if there is just something different about that festival, but it's definitely like a A really nice vibe, and it's probably what I'm most looking forward to on this run. So yeah, it'll definitely be a fun way to end it for sure. And I think Warped Tour Orlando in particular is always a really special one, so it's good. And Rain City Drive from Florida, your bandmates met in Manchester. Tell me a little bit about that. Yeah, so the band was originally a band called Slaves, fronted by Johnny Craig. And, um... Johnny had just got ousted from the band and they needed somebody to fill in like super, super last minute. I mean, we're talking like they were about to board the flight and they didn't know whether to cancel the tour or not. A good buddy of mine, Kevin Thrasher was playing for a band called Escape the Fate at the time, who was also on the tour. So he recommended me to the guys and vice versa. And I listened to like 30 seconds of one of their songs and I said I would do it. And then a couple of days later I flew out. And so we did that tour and then Came together and started writing and then. Eventually formed what is Rain City Drive now. But yeah, definitely a weird whirlwind way to get together. But it was cool, man. I mean, I think the guys really had their thing dialed in. And so it was pretty easy for me to just step in and we just kind of hit the ground running. So cool. How difficult is it looking ahead to kind of trimming down that set list for something like Warped Tour where you don't necessarily have as much time in the set as a head before? I think it's a, I think sometimes it's those in between length sets that are actually the trickiest because if it's real short, like I think it's sometimes the shortest sets we'll do maybe on a festival or whatever it is, is like me, like 25 minutes. And that's actually kind of great. Cause it's just like, if you can only play five songs or something, you're like, you sort of know what those five have to be. And it's just. You know, it's just kind of like all a blast and it's just fun and quick. The really long set, you're like, well, I know I'm going to do basically have time to do everything that I want to do, which is which is which is great. And then sometimes it's like that 45 minute where you're like, do we have time to bring it down and do a ballad? Do we have time to do this? And so but the short ones are always easy and fun. And as a vocalist, always very welcome, a little less demanding.