Greeley Estates screams into spot on Warped Tour
By KELLY WILSON
Get Out

The buzz on Greeley Estates is electric.

The Valley screamo band has had 1,027 plays and 120 downloads on the music Web site Pure Volume today. They sold out their DVD release party at the Marquee Theatre last month. And the band scored a slot on the Smart Punk stage for the duration of the summer's Warped Tour.

“For an unsigned band, that's ridiculous,’’ lead vocalist Ryan Zimmerman says. “We were hoping for like a week if that. Last year, we were going to follow the Warped Tour around and just beg to get on dates. Kevin (Lyman, Warped Tour founder) said, ‘If you do that, you're going to be in trouble.’ Bands have done that in the past, and he didn't want any more of that. To find out that we were on the whole thing, we were just blown away. We couldn't believe it. We grew up going to all the Warped Tour shows and dreaming of this.’’

“We get to actually go on tour with these bands that we listen to and we love,’’ adds drummer Brian Champ, who was formerly in the punk-rock act Point 9 Percent. “We still can't believe this is happening.’’

Greeley Estates — which also includes bassist Josh Applebach and guitarists Brandon Hackenson and Dallas Smith — formed two-and-a-half years ago as a hobby, according to Zimmerman.

“Dallas was writing songs, and I thought it would be fun to write lyrics,’’ he says. “Brandon was a buddy that I grew up with. He was just learning guitar from Dallas.’’ When the guys were hired to play a show at Scottsdale's Horizon High School, the pumped-up crowd convinced them to pursue music further.

“We couldn't believe how much the (crowd) got into it,’’ he says.
The band later hooked up with manager Stewart Teggart, who has worked with Pennywise, Blink-182 and Bad Religion. Zimmerman credits him for a lot of their success.

“Our manager is amazing,’’ he says of Teggart, who heard about the band after they played a show with Bleed the Dream and Poison the Well. “He's the reason we're on Warped Tour . . . He's really taught us how to be a band.’’

The group — who counts Green Day, Jimmy Eat World, Glassjaw and Refused among its influences — released a debut album, “Outside of This,” last year.

Two of their songs, “Through Waiting” and “Outside of This,” have received airplay on KEDJ (103.9 FM). And although the band is getting some mainstream attention with the Warped Tour and Pure Volume, Champ says they're happy doing things on their own for now.

“We're not jumping on a record label to be on a record label for that recognition,’’ he says. “At that time, we're going to do it so we can record an album. We don't even have time to record an album right now with all the touring.’’