Story of the Year guitarist Ryan Phillips on 20 years of 'Page Avenue,' new album 'Tear Me to Pieces'

Story of the Year guitarist Ryan Phillips is a huge fan of bands playing full albums out on tour, having seen quite a few over the years.

”One of my favorite bands in the entire world, the Deftones, I’ve seen shows where they do ‘White Pony’ or ‘Adrenaline,’ ‘Around the Fur.’ Oh my God, dude, yeah, I’m 16, 17 years old, driving around St. Louis, delivering pizzas in my car, just listening to Deftones and I have all that attached to it,” Phillips said in a December interview from St. Louis. “It’s not just the songs; it’s just like this window of a time in my life that was very formative. You see that stuff live and it’s just … I guess that’s kind of like the inherent power of music in general. It can transport you to a different time and place and it can just make all these emotions resurface. Sometimes you’re not even expecting it, you know?”

Story of the Year, the veteran pop-punk/emo band from St. Louis, will be revisiting its touchstone album, “Page Avenue,” celebrating its 20th anniversary on the next leg of a tour which includes a stop on Jan. 8 at the Roxian Theatre in McKees Rocks. They’ll be joined by We the Kings and Youth Fountain.

“Page Avenue,” which came out in 2003 and went platinum in 2021, features their biggest hit, “Until the Day I Die,” which hit just as emo/screamo arrived in the mainstream with bands like My Chemical Romance and Hawthorne Heights. The response to the first leg of the tour impressed Phillips, who said the band has been having just as much fun as the audience.

“It’s not just the songs; it’s people have these memories growing up with these songs and with this album, so it’s like you got a whole different dynamic than just a regular tour,” he said. “… A concert’s not just for the people that are in the crowd. We get a lot out of it, too. Even for us, just playing that whole album on stage, it takes us back to a pretty magical time in our lives, and it’s kind of neat to relive that in a roundabout way.”

With their latest album, 2023’s “Tear Me to Pieces,” Story of the Year — Phillips, singer Dan Marsala (the band’s original drummer), bassist Adam Russell and drummer Josh Wills — tried to channel the spirit of their earlier days.

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“It sounds crazy, but that record was written exactly like ‘Page Avenue,’” Phillips said. “And just kind of simplifying everything … It’s like if a song sounds good on an acoustic and the drummer is just tapping on his legs and the lyrics are great, that’s all that matters. It doesn’t need a fancy guitar solo. It doesn’t need all the bells and whistles. A good song is a good song.”

In the years after “Page Avenue,” the band grew and experimented with different creative visions — “To this day, I think it was something that we needed to do,” Phillips said — but “Tear Me to Pieces” is a homecoming of sorts.

“It’s all songs about struggles, overcoming those struggles, heartbreak, love, all that stuff that was on ‘Page Avenue,’ that’s what this whole new record is. It’s kind of a return to that, just more personal, more introspective, just like emo kind of lyrics, you know?” Phillips said with a laugh. “Just simple songs that are just (expletive) good. It’s like they’re not complicated. It’s just like, does this feel good? Does this feel like the truth? Does this feel authentic? All right, yes, let’s do it. If it doesn’t, no, next song.”

The early response to their new songs live has impressed Phillips.

“We’ve had records in the past, you know, it’s like you’re pushing a new single, you’re pushing a new song and then like, I’m just being completely honest here, people are like, ‘OK, cool, play ‘Until the Day I Die.’ This is the first record where we’re playing new songs and people are singing along to every word. They’re super pumped to hear them, which is kind of like the biggest win in my personal opinion. It’s the best thing about that record for me. I look so forward to playing those new songs live.”

“Because you know, all of us, like, OK, what’s a band I love? Smashing Pumpkins. ‘Siamese Dream’ is probably my all-time favorite record. When I see Smashing Pumpkins and — I’m just being completely honest — like I want to hear those songs. I don’t want to hear the new, new, new stuff because it’s like, they’ve kind of lost me a little bit. We’ve experienced that in the past, and the fact that these new songs connect live is just the raddest thing ever.”

For a band whose ultimate goal was to play the Warped Tour — which they’ve done seven times — getting to live their dream hasn’t gotten old.

“The only time it starts to feel like a job, it’s like if I’m away from my wife and kids for more than a couple weeks, I’m just a massive, massive (softie) when it comes to my kids,” Phillips said. “And that’s the only time it gets a little hard, but let’s not kid ourselves. Working coal mines is a job, like sweeping floors and cleaning toilets, that’s a job. What I do is not a job, you know? It’s a lot of hours, I never turn it off. I’m thinking about music every single day of my life. But, dude, it’s not a job. I’m like one of the luckiest people in the entire world. And I feel that on a daily basis, that I love what I do. I would make music whether I got paid or not. The guy that’s working on cars all day, digging ditches, like those are (expletive) jobs. What I have is not a job.”

And Phillips said he is quite comfortable with the band’s position in the music landscape.

“Dude, we’re not gonna play any stadiums, right? Like, we’re not gonna be top 10 on Spotify,” he said. “That’s just not what’s in the cards for Story of the Year. And once you kind of accept that and just go, oh my god like there are tens of thousands of people in the world that would say Story of the Year is my favorite band, dude, that’s enough.”