April 4th, 2014 
Brian Leak 
For the past month, we’ve been stalking Billy Duprey‘s every move. Okay, maybe not every move, but every move he makes musically. We’ve covered his debut solo LP extensively and are pleased to continue aiding in its promotion. As A World Entire is a stellar indie rock release from one fourth of The Republic Of Wolves, and following hot on the heels of our review, exclusive track-by-track, and various streams, Duprey took the time to speak with us about his introductory solo effort with more insight to how it developed and matured from its 2008 inception to its release on March 23.
Follow us after the jump to get the scoop from Billy himself on everything from As A World Entire to The Republic Of Wolves to some other surprising (and exciting) endeavors in the works that many fans likely didn’t even know existed.
You actually started working on this project before TROW began, right? The band obviously took priority over this for several years before you actually got time to focus on releasing this album. Do you feel that that actually helped this debut become something more than it would have been otherwise?
I technically started this project in 2008 (about a year or so before we formed The Republic Of Wolves), but it mainly served as an outlet to release quick demos that I recorded here and there. While we were working on our debut EP (His Old Branches) and our debut LP (Varuna) and we were starting to play shows, I didn’t really put much focus on The Year Fifteen. After our drummer Chris left the band in 2011, The Republic Of Wolves kind of slowed down for a while. Mason and Christian recorded an album for their project, Tigers On Trains, and Gregg released the debut album for his project, American Gospel. While this was happening, I figured it was the perfect time for me to really start taking The Year Fifteen seriously. So, I started working on As A World Entire, but before it could be completed TROW started picking up momentum again and the record was pushed to the back burner. I think this was all for the best because I learned a lot in that time (especially in terms of production and songwriting) and I think the record truly benefited from it.
Can you tell us a little about your history with music? Were you raised around it a lot or was it something that you picked up later on?
I don’t think I was necessarily raised on music in the traditional sense. My dad has been working in radio my whole life, so I definitely grew up surrounded by music and records and all that, but I didn’t really learn to play any instruments as a child. I attempted to learn violin in school for a short while, but nothing really came of that and I quickly forgot what little I learned about reading sheet music. When I was a pre-teen, I acquired some recording software and a small computer microphone and I began experimenting with recording goofy sounds and songs that one would expect a pre-teen to make. This eventually led to me learning how to play the keyboard and guitar by ear and I’ve been playing by ear ever since. I still have no idea how to read any kind of musical notation.
How did the name The Year Fifteen come about? Is there any story behind that or was it something that just came to you on a whim when deciding on a name?
To be honest, I don’t exactly recall how the name came about. From my recollection, I believe the name just popped into my head for whatever reason and it sounded decent enough. Now, the name makes me think of two things; one is nostalgia. I feel like being fifteen years old was, for me at least, a somewhat significant time. I think it’s when most people start to figure out what kind of music they really like and they have an inkling of who they want to be. The other thing that the name brings to mind is the literal fifteenth year of the existence of everything. It’s kind of a strange concept, but just thinking about some seemingly insignificant year and what happened and if any point in time will actually be significant in the grand scheme of things is kind of interesting to me.
Now that your long-gestating album has been released, do you feel that it’s something you’re relieved to have completed and can move on from or has it created more of a desire to continue on with this solo work?
I am most definitely relieved to finally get it out there for people to listen to and not have it hanging over my head anymore! Thus far, I’ve only received positive reviews and it feels really good to have something that you created from nothing actually affect people in a positive way. Since this album has been in the works for so long and I’ve been absorbing tons and tons of new influences — I do feel like I can write infinitely better and bolder songs and I can’t wait to start recording some new material. I think my next release will be quite different and I’m hoping it’ll be able to reach even more people.
This record was essentially written over the course of five or six years, and in a major transitional phase into adulthood as well — during this time, where were you mainly drawing inspiration from and how do you feel the album matured with you over this time?
For this record, I was mainly drawing inspiration from my personal experiences and thoughts. The album is about growing up and my failures and trying to be better and just my overall confusion and amazement with life. Over time, as I’ve grown up, I feel like these songs have grown up with me. I keep finding new meanings in the songs and the lyrics are constantly applying to new situations that arise. It’s really interesting how a song can be written with a certain idea or situation in mind and it can eventually seem like it was written specifically about something that didn’t even happen yet when the song was written.
I know that for myself, when looking back on work I’ve done in the past, I tend to either be surprised by it in a positive way or be somewhat embarrassed by it. Did you find yourself questioning some of your older work when revisiting it and was there material that you decided to cut altogether for this reason?
I’ve definitely questioned a lot of choices I’ve made in the past [laughs]. I’ll listen to some of my old demos and hear something that sounds really strange to me now, but I’ll try to get into the mindset I had when the song was made and I’m usually able to understand it a little better. Everything is a process, though. You have to take risks and do stupid and weird things so you can look back on them later and see if they were actually bad decisions or not. Sometimes I’ll hear something that I made a long time ago and think it’s awesome and wonder how I thought of something like that and it’ll inspire me to do more interesting things now.
Besides obviously just finding the time to focus on it, what were the biggest obstacles in writing and recording this album over that course of time?
I suppose one of the biggest obstacles in writing and recording this album was my lack of musical knowledge. I tend to know what I want a song or part of a song to sound like, but sometimes it’ll take a while to get it to that place. There was a lot of trial and error involved, but I never gave up on anything. Somehow, I always figured out how to make the song as I envisioned it and I’m proud of myself for that. In terms of everything sounding as crisp and tight as I imagined, that was the work of Mason Maggio (who mixed and mastered the record). Mason put in a lot of work on this album and I think he got the album to sound as professional and concise as possible with the tracks that I recorded. He was also my production consultant throughout the process and used his experiences from mixing the last TROW record (No Matter How Narrow) and his own songwriting expertise to really make the album shine.
Having worked with all your fellow members of The Republic Of Wolves on this album, there are obviously a select few tracks in particular that could easily be mistaken for TROW tracks had the listener not known any better. What do you feel separates this project and your songs from those of a TROW release?
I think the main difference between The Year Fifteen songs and The Republic Of Wolves songs is my level of input and the overall style of the songwriting. For one thing, I’m obviously singing a majority of the lead vocals, which is not the case for TROW, and I write all of the lyrics. The songs on As A World Entire are much lighter and poppier, for the most part, and the lyrics tend to lean more towards a personal narrative. I feel there’s a sense of mythology and an overarching concept when it comes to TROW (from the lyrics to the album art to the music videos, etc.) and there’s a fair amount of continuity involved. The Year Fifteen is much looser in that respect. In some ways, The Republic Of Wolves is much larger and more universal while The Year Fifteen is more close-to-home. This is the way I see it, anyway.
Have you considered taking the project on the road at all, possibly opening for TROW and Tigers On Trains perhaps? One big project bill would be awesome.
I have yet to seriously plan taking The Year Fifteen out on the road, or playing any live shows at all. Right now, The Republic Of Wolves gigs are the extent of my live show focus. I would love to play some of The Year Fifteen songs live at some point because I think it would be a lot of fun and I think some songs would translate well in a live setting. We have actually discussed doing shows where the bill is exclusively TROW and all of our side projects and we would just switch instruments in between sets. I think it would be very tiring, but a lot of fun. We have no actual plans for that kind of show yet, but it would be great if it happened one day!
I know that for now this is a digital only release but I also know that pretty much all TROW and related material has been released on vinyl, so do you think there may be a physical release like that for As A World Entire somewhere down the line?
As of right now, I simply don’t have the funds or the backing for any kind of physical release, but if this album does well enough in digital sales or if I somehow happen upon some insane amount of money, I’d love to put out CDs and or vinyl. I already have the physical album artwork designed, but as of right now it’s only wishful thinking.
In our recent UTG track-by-track, you mentioned that “Honesty” is probably your favorite song on the record. Can you elaborate on that a bit? What is it about that song that makes it your favorite?
I mentioned that song as probably my favorite mainly because I enjoy listening to it the most. I feel like that kind of thing is hard to explain, but it’s true. Also, I feel like that song just came together really naturally for me. There was no demo of it. I just started recording it late one night and I pretty much wrote and recorded the whole song within a few hours. It just kind of poured out and I knew exactly how I wanted each part of the song to sound and I knew I wanted it to be the last track on the record. It was a very cathartic experience recording the song and I still feel that sense of catharsis when listening to it. I’m a sucker for album closers, as well.
What are you and the guys in TROW working on now that No Matter How Narrow has been out for nearly four months? Did your work on completing this album put any of that on hold at all?
The completion of my album definitely didn’t interfere with anything involving No Matter How Narrow. NMHN was definitely my first priority and I didn’t think about going back into As A World Entire until a couple months after that album was released. As of right now, our main focus is playing shows and trying to travel out more to new areas. We just recently played a show in Candor, NY and that was the furthest we’ve gone for a show yet. We’re really hoping to play out of state as soon as possible and we’re hoping to tour this summer. We’ve also been planning on filming some more music videos to help promote NMHN.
You released As A World Entire on your 23rd birthday to great reviews which I can only imagine made for one hell of a great feeling. How did you celebrate your big day this year?
It felt great to have the album so well received on my birthday. Coinciding the album release with my birthday really made the day feel more important than I could’ve imagined. Even though I feel SUPER old, it’s nice to know that I can still put out something that feels fresh and youthful, I guess. This year, the celebration aspect of my birthday was much more subdued than usual. I had some excellent chinese food with my parents while watching Mad Men, and then I ate some ice cream cake with some friends and we played Scattergories late into the night. Besides the very heated debating during the game, it was a relatively quiet birthday, but enjoyable nonetheless.
Could you have described a better night? Mad Men, Scattergories and ice cream cake? I’m there! Overall, what can we expect from you for the remainder of the year between your two projects? Are you working on anything outside of what we already know, too?
About a year ago, I recorded a song with the great Ace Enders (The Early November, I Can Make A Mess), which should hopefully be seeing the light of day real soon. Also, I’m hoping to get back in the studio sometime before the end of the year to record some new material for The Year Fifteen. As for TROW, we’ll continue to play shows and hopefully tour as soon as possible. Outside of what most people know, I’m hoping to record some new material for our pop-rock side project The Hamptons, possibly get back into rapping, and make some new short films. Most people might not know this, but we (the Wolves and myself) direct, and act in, short comedy films on occasion. Most of our work can be seen on Vimeo.
Interview written and conducted by Brian Lion — (Follow him on Twitter)
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