As A Day To Remember’s Self Help festival enters its third year, the band is excited about the possibilities that the show may bring. Featuring the likes of August Burns Red, Yelawolf, Crown the Empire and Underoath playing one of their first gigs of their anticipated reunion tour, singer Jeremy McKinnon can’t help but glow about this year’s lineup

 “It’s looking like it might be the best year yet,” McKinnon says of the anticipated crowd and lineup.

 Taking place in San Bernardino, CA this Saturday (March 19), A Day To Remember will kick off its 2016 slate of shows in style. We caught up with McKinnon over the phone from his Florida home to hear about this year’s festival and what the year has in-store for the band.

How did you guys manage to snag Underoath?

We’d toured with Underoath a bunch and heard they were getting back together with their original lineup, and it was being talked about in the booking agent world. We called and texted them and said we were interested in being one of the first things they played and having them play those two albums—the really big ones that they had—and yeah, they were interested and were pretty cool.

This festival has grown very quickly in three years. Based on those early few years when it started, could you have predicted that it would grow so fast?

Absolutely not. I thought it would be a little bit more than our normal headline turnouts that first year. Then it was double that and it’s been consistent. Even when we took it to Philadelphia to do one on the east coast, there was still an amazing turnout there and it’s pretty obvious that there’s a fan base that wants this genre of music and are willing to pay for it. 

How do you see the festival coming into its own and establishing itself as its own stand-alone things without logistical issues that probably popped up in its first few years?

We’ve been slowly getting better at operating as a festival. There are some things you learn as you go, and we’ve been trying to smooth as much of that stuff out. We’re in a really good place right now with that. Everyone is excited to talk about Underoath—that right there is why we’re so excited about the new thing we’re trying to do with the festival, which is to get an older act to play one of [its] staple albums. Underoath and Further Seems Forever were our attempt at doing that. That’s something we’re going to make part of the festival.

As the curator of this event, do you feel a responsibility to give fans a lineup that will introduce them to rising acts as well as reflects your tastes as well? 

It’s just cool from being a music fan. I never in a million years would have guessed that I would have put together a festival year-to-year and plug in the albums that meant the most to me growing up and have these people play it. That’s insane. It’s cool that we’ve had this opportunity in the first place.

What was the origin and thought behind doing the festival in the first place?

We’ve always been talking about doing a fest with us and our management team. We came up with the name that we thought fit and were happy with. One of the main driving forces was that we wanted the festival to be known in America as the rock festival that takes care of the bands. It’s based around our genre of music and there isn’t a festival that isn’t solely based around that—other than Warped Tour, but that changes with the times.

Are there plans to expand it beyond San Bernardino in the foreseeable future?

We’re talking about moving it to other areas. Nothing is set in stone though, so we really can’t say. It’s looking like we’re going to take it out of California again. The timing in Philadelphia is weird weather-wise—sometimes its nice, sometimes its very fucking cold. I think we might have to move it to another area that’s close by. We’re in the process of expanding it in a few different places, so we’ll see how it goes.

Moving along, what’s 2016 looking like for A Day To Remember? 

I’m not sure. We’re doing the festival then we’re doing this tour with Parkway Drive and State Champs right after, but other than that, nothing is in the books yet. I’ve been building a studio with our engineer, and this place is going to be called the Audio Compound. We’ve gotten together and played some stuff, but nothing’s finished. It’s been mostly relaxing. We haven’t done that in a long time.

Just jamming? How often does that happen?

Never! But part of the studio is going to be a practice space that we’re going to have set up all time so that’s a game changer for us as a band and we’re really excited about it.