Exclusive Stream: The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus Premiere Hard-Rocking ‘Dreams’
Click to listen to The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus’ new song ‘Dreams,’ from I Am The Enemy
Before making their new album, Am I The Enemy (out August 30th), Florida rockers the Red Jumpsuit Apparatus were in uncharted territory: They’d just split with the label, Virgin Records, that released their first two albums. “We were not dropped,” frontman Ronnie Winter tells Rolling Stone. “There are always gonna be rumors when you walk away from the label, but the simple fact is they offered us a new deal with 360 right. So when they say, ‘Now we want you to sign this new deal and we get a percentage of your merch and ticket sales,’ I’m not cool with that and the band wasn’t cool with that. We walked away.”
Best known for the alternative hit, “Face Down,” the band has now teamed with their management company, The Collective, to form their own label. They’ve also embraced a harder sound. “Almost everybody that’s in this band was in a metal band before this band,” Winter says. “I just feel like the fact that we’re independent, we co-own our label with our management company, we don’t really have any restrictions at all anymore sonically, and it wound up being a little more aggressive.”
That is evident on “Dreams,” a song that will fit in very well when RJA hit the road next month, opening for Godsmack. The track, co-written with producer John Feldmann, was inspired by the band’s path to freedom. “Me and John Feldmann were just in his kitchen with two acoustic guitars and he’s just kind of asking me about my life, where my head’s at the moment, what I’m thinking about,” Winter says. “That’s how we came up with the message of send a message of hope to other people out there in similar scenarios, making a big decision in your life and making a change and not giving up on yourself.”