As It Is

AS IT IS: Back From Hell

and Taking It On The Road

Interview by Ken Morton Photos by Jack Lue

As It Is has returned with an impassioned new album entitled I Went To Hell And Back, conceived during the downtime due to a worldwide pandemic. A followup to their stunning The Great Depression magnum opus, As It Is — Patty Walters, Ronald Ish, and Alistair Testo — are ready to share their brand new sonic journey of I Went To Hell And Back to the world. Just prior to the As It Is US tour, Highwire Daze interviewed vocalist Patty Walters to discuss their exciting new album, a return to touring, how the pandemic affected the band, and a whole lot more! All this, and the band also did a shoot with legendary photographer Jack Lue, some of the pictures which are included in this article.

We’re here with Patty of As It Is. Let’s talk about the new album. I Went to Hell and Back. Where did that title come from?

So it comes from a song on the record. The last song on the record. And I think one of my favorite aspects about that quote, and that line, and that lyric is that it’s... it’s interrupted in the context of the song, so it won’t be until the record’s out that everybody really understands the full scope of the lyric. I couldn’t think of a better phrase to summarize my experience, our experience during the pandemic during the past two years of not being able to do the thing we love most. The thing we’re best at. The thing that gives us a sense of like, community and purpose. The past three and a half years, since we’ve released a record, it’s been extremely hard, but we went to hell and we came back from it. And I think that the last

two words of that title are the most important, because it implies that there’s nothing that you can’t overcome. And I feel like we have, and being out here in L.A. is living proof of that.

Select two songs from I Went To Hell And Back that you feel in the most important and the inspirations behind them.

Well, I think I Don’t Give A Fuck (IDGAF) - we released that song first for a reason. I think it represents the album really well. It represents every song on the record perfectly in my opinion. And it was one of the earliest ones we wrote too, and the fact that we couldn’t quite forget it, the fact that we never got sick of it. It says so much about how proud I am of that song. But I just love the lyric that sings out the chorus. “Something’s got to give before I give the fuck up.” I mean, it’s just pure desperation. It’s exhaustion. It’s exasperation. And that’s everything I and we were feeling when we wrote that song.

One of my favorites from the record is I Miss 2003. That’s one of my favorite. “I’ve been feeling old and out of context” is what opens that song. And if I’m really being honest, I miss everything I had at 16. With all the time that we had during the pandemic, there was ample time for reflection, and I spent so much time looking backward because we’ve been moving forward at such a rapid pace for probably close to six years in this band. We’ve been touring fairly relentlessly since the middle of 2014. So to come to a screeching halt, like we did in 2020, you sort of start to look around and you don’t even recognize your surroundings all that much, because you become who you are, is who you are on tour. That’s certainly how I felt. I wasn’t used to being home, that wasn’t comfortable for me and then I started looking backward and reassessing and re-evaluating. Am I proud of who I am every day? Am I proud of this person who’s not on tour right now, who’s not living their dream and feeling at home on stages every night? That lyric actually means so much to me. And I think it sort of gets lost because there’s all these exciting references to bands and songs that we love of course, but that really does say so much about how I was feeling over the past two years.

It’s such a magical liberating word and you have “I” starting almost every single lyric on the album. Tell me about why you decided to start every song with “I”.

Yeah, it is one of these happy coincidences. So many of these songs serendipitously were just starting with the letter “I”. We were departing from the deeply conceptual The Great Depression, where every song started with with “The” and this was because we knew that we were purposely intentionally not writing another concept album, but this was a way of sort of nodding to that period, nodding to that era and still being attached to it in some way.

What are you looking forward to most about this upcoming tour?

Everything. Everything. I’m looking forward to the fast food. I’m looking forward to the gas station bathrooms. I’m looking forward to the long drives and the sleep deprivation. I’ve missed everything about tour. So the good and the bad. I’m looking forward to it in equal measure. Just being back on the road, being surrounded by my friends in and outside of this band. It’s going to feel surreal and so exciting.

The final Warped Tour you were doing, you were playing in support of The Great Depression. What was it like touring in the heat with all that makeup on and everything? That must have been pretty excruciating.

Yeah, it wasn’t comfortable. What I was wearing was sleeveless, but it was still a suit jacket on top of a T-shirt and black skinny jeans every day, the same pair. The same clothes. Certainly not comfortable, but we all have to suffer for our art in some capacity. And I feel if the

true rock stars like Beyoncé and Miley Cyrus can be doing their shows and they’re wearing stilettos and all sorts of outfits. I can do Warped Tour in some skinny jeans. What’s that? That’s easy. I can take that.

You’ve lost two members recently. What has that been like? Do you still keep in touch with them?

We do. I went and saw Ben at one of his solo project shows in December and he was fantastic. I saw our old drummer at our bassist’s wedding. We’re all still brothers and best friends. And we love each other and we’re rooting for each other all the time. We miss them terribly. But we wish them all the best at the same time. You know, you feel that loss. You feel that the room is a little quieter without those voices. But the fire is still there where we’re still brothers and best friends, the three of us that are in this band and we still have a lot to say and a lot to accomplish. being there. If you are still there, thank you. And please come and see us on a show if you are interested and you feel safe doing so. And if not us, just go and see any show. Live music is slowly coming back and the industry is hurting and the bands and the artists. They’re hurting. The crew is hurting. And... Yeah, if you don’t feel safe, coming to a show then buy some merch, like keep your favorite bands inspired and fed and breathing, because we miss you terribly, whether we say it explicitly on social media or out loud. We miss it. We want real life to come back. So, in the meantime, yeah, just don’t forget about your favorite bands.

I Went To Hell And Back by As It Is will be available February 4th via Fearless Records. And if you are in Los Angeles, As It Is will be at The Belasco Theater, performing with Set It Off, Stand Atlantic, and No Love For The Middle Child.

Do you have any messages for fans as you want to say something that, that I haven’t covered?

Well, what I would love to say is thank you for still

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