It has been quite a year for Hoffman Estates, Illinois band The Academy Is. Now firmly one of the brightest stars from Fueled By Ramen, the former 2005 You Gotta Knows are set for even bigger things and join Fall Out Boy, Plain White T's, and OK Go as among the biggest bands to come out of Chicago. Currently on tour with fellow labelmates Cobra Starship along with The Rocket Summer and Armor For Sleep, TAI's Adam sat down with Kim on our hot seat.

Kim: First just introduce yourself and the role you play in the band.
Adam: I’m Adam, I play bass in The Academy Is…

K: Could you give us a brief history on the band?
A: We started in March 2003 we were all in high school.  William and I had been starting a band for about six months without finding anyone we really wanted to play with or who shared the passion with us but we eventually found Mike Carden, our guitar player forma  few towns over.  He was playing in another band at the time but ya, the rest is history.  We kept getting together and playing and the more shows we did the more people began to come and we’ve been touring for about four years now.

K: Could you describe your sound for people who have never heard it before?
A: It’s hard to do that.  I guess our sound in kind of all around the board.  I guess you could say we are a rock band and you should check it out and if you don’t like then….sorry. *laughs*

K: Where did you get the name ‘The Academy Is…’?
A: Well we had been a band for about 3 or 4 weeks and we kinda had to start thinking up a name Mike had come up with a  couple ideas and they were all pretty terrible, but it was hard.  It was hard to come up with a  name, but then William came up with The Academy and we liked the sound of that and we were like, “Alright, we like that” and we had that for about a year.  Then we found out there were other bands named The Academy and a sporting goods company and a lot of schools called The Academy.  So we decided to change our name to prevent being sued for using their name.  So we figured by adding the ‘Is’ at the end didn’t alienate the original fans from just ‘The Academy’ and we were still the same band just with the ‘Is’ at the end.

K: You’ve toured with a lot of bands which kind of goes along with being part of the Warped Tour and the Honda Civic Tour, what do you think was your favorite tour?  Not limiting you to the Warped Tour or the Honda Civic Tour.
A: I think my favorite tour would’ve had to been the Fueled By Ramen Friends Tour.  It was spring of 2005.  It was Gym Class Heroes, us, Midtown which is Gabe from Cobra Starship’s old band, and Fall Out Boy.  Another great tour was a tour we did with Something Corporate which we did a couple years ago.  Ya we’ve had fun with Cobra Starship, Panic! At the Disco, and Gym Class Heroes while touring.

K: You’re all on Fueled By Ramen, right?
A: Ya, which is a coincidence kinda because we are all really good friends

K: This past summer you toured in Australia and Singapore, how did that turn out for you?
A: It was great.  We started out in Australia and did about 8 shows which was really fun for us.  I had been there on vacation but never palyed.  And one of our band members, Mike, is Australian and it was good to tour his country.  We went onto Singapore where we met up with Gym Class Heroes and played some shows there which was fun then Japan, Belgium, Germany, France, England…

K: How long were you there for?
A: The entire month of August.  We left August 1st and we got back to Chicago September 1st.

K: Do you have any goals for this tour specifically?
A: This tour specifically was just to play the best show as possible, we are playing the longest set we’ve every played like an hour and fifteen minutes, mainly all of both records.  We want to put on the best show as possible and have a great time and make the fans leave happy.

K: Who are a few of your musical influences?
A: As a band I think we are influenced by all music, we’re not from one genre.  My musical influences I would have to say would be The Clash, Johnny Cash, anything rock and roll, Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana a lot of their 90’s stuff, FooFighters.  We’re kinda all around the board.

K: If you could collaborate with anybody who would you like to collaborate with?
A: For the band, I would like to work with Ryan Adams.

K: What’s your opinion on the music industry today?
A: It’s an interesting place and it’s different now then it was five, ten years ago.  I’m happy to be a part of it and no matter what the state of the industry may be in it doesn’t effect the quality of music being made.  I’m just happy to be a part of it.  I’m sure the industry will always be crap.  It sucks now, probably more then ever but there are a lot of good people in it and our band has been fortunate enough to only be surrounded by good people.  You always hear horror stories about bands in the industry getting screwed over but we’ve only been with good people.  We run the label ourselves and we’re all friends.

K: Do you have any big plans coming up after this tour?
A: After this tour we are going to take a month to finish writing the record and start recording and hopefully have it out by summertime.

K: What are your goals both short term and long term? Obviously putting out that next record…
A: Ya, I mean we just want to put out the best record possible and put it out as soon as possible, we don’t want to keep our fans waiting too long. Long term goals would to be the best band we can be and continue to tour and play for as many fans that want to come.