The Greater The Risk may be sporting a new lineup and heading in a different musical direction since its inception. But, the Richmond, VA-based band that was founded by guitarist Ashley Drewes in early 2010, has no plans to slow up. On October 25, the band will release their latest EP, Say What You Never Said, and has plans to tour throughout the remainder of October and into November.

We scored an interview with the band recently and talked about their forthcoming EP, being an up-and-coming band in the DMV area, and their recent changes. Check it out below.

I’m assuming that your band’s name stems from the saying “The Greater the Risk, the Greater the Reward?” Is there another story behind it? What would be the ultimate reward for the band?

Nope, you nailed it! From what we’ve seen, we’re a pretty unique band in that most of us finished college before taking our shot at the music business. Many bands start up right out of high school or sometimes earlier, so we felt we were a little behind in that regard.

The real risk to which we’re referring is the fact that several of us turned down career-type jobs to do this band. Especially in the shaky job market, we realize we are taking a tremendous risk in putting those career goals aside to play music.

The ultimate reward for us is to be able to do this professionally. Though every group dreams of multi-platinum status, we know that realistically we just want to be able to play and let that pay our bills. Millions of albums sold and millions of dollars would be pretty awesome though!

Like most bands in the beginning stages, you’ve had some personnel changes. How has the line-up changes effected you as a group.

We’re fortunate that none of our personnel changes have created negative feelings among former and current members. We remain close friends with everyone who has ever play with this band. With each lineup change, the only issues have been from the work involved.

With our tremendous aspirations, we put in tons of work on top of our day jobs that we work to pay our bills and for former members it’s just been too much. Each personnel change, though we miss each former member personally, has made us more energized to move forward and grow.

What is like trying to establish yourself as a band in Richmond or the DMV area as a whole? Has it been difficult?

It has its ups and downs. Though many people think of Richmond as a “metal town” due to the success of bands like Strike Anywhere and Avail, there was already an enthusiastic pop rock/pop punk scene in the city before we were even a band. We were also very fortunate to know several of the bands in the scene beforehand, so it wasn’t nearly as difficult because we already had bands to play shows with and friends that had already been doing what we aimed to do from the beginning.

How does your EP, Say What You Said, differ from your work on your debut EP?

Our new EP “Say What You Never Said” is a giant leap forward in several aspects. With this disc, four of the five tracks were written communally after we had already been playing shows whereas our first EP was almost completely written before we had even solidified a full band lineup. Furthermore, this new disc is a vast improvement in terms of production and songwriting. Working with producer Bryan Russell, we spent nearly quadruple the amount of time and energy on this record vs. the first EP and we think it really shows.

And how did you link up with producer Bryan Russell?

As we touched on a bit before, we already knew several of the Richmond bands in our scene before we put this project together. Ashley and Nate were already pretty tight with the guys from Safety Word Orange, who have now recorded two discs with Bryan.

Ashley spent some time hanging out with them at his studio in Maryland while they were recording their second EP “On Your Mark, Get Set…” and that’s when she was first introduced. After we had released our first EP and were writing and preparing for a follow-up, Bryan was among the producers that we contacted. Having already met Ashley, he was very enthusiastic about working with us.

Are you hoping to sign to a label or do you want to remain independent?

That’s something that we really have to play by ear. Lots of bands that don’t have a lot of experience or knowledge about the music industry these days think that a record deal is the ticket to fame, but that’s not always the case. We have and will continue to achieve a lot with a DIY mode of operation, but there are certainly things that record labels could do for us that we couldn’t do ourselves. We’ll really have to wait and see.

Will you be releasing any more projects in the near future? Maybe a full-length?

Obviously we’re absolutely stoked to finally be releasing our second EP this month. We’re focusing on that for now, but we’ve got a lot in the works as well. We’ve already begun writing more songs for our next project, but it’s a little too early at this point to know if it’ll be a full-length or not.

Some of it hinges on the reception to this disc, because it would certainly be helpful to have some financial assistance should we choose to do a full-length. Recording requires a lot of financial investment, so we’ll see how it goes. We’ve moved at a quick pace since day one and we don’t intend to slow down. Whether it’s an acoustic EP, full-band EP, or full-length album, we’ve definitely got more projects and music on the horizon.