Travel Profile: Tiaday Ball of The World Over

By Mehnaz Ladha | Published on November 30, 2017

Led by frontwoman Tiaday Ball, granddaughter of Ernie Ball (world renowned creator of Music Man guitars and Slinky Strings), The World Over is also comprised of guitarist Ryan Knecht and bassist Juan Arguello. Forming in 2014, the band released Rampart District, produced by Omar Espinosa (Escape The Fate), which garnered significant praise from fans and led them to record and release their second “Mountains” EP with Siegfried Meir (Kitty, DMX), in 2016.

The band hit the road in support of their EP and joined Otep’s “Resistance” tour in March 2017, which garnered the attention of Alternative Press, naming Tiaday as one of the Top 100 Women in Music in 2017. Stemming off the success of Mountains, comes “Ventifact“, an EP that symbolized another dramatic shift in the bands’ sound and represents another dimension of the bands ability to pump out sonically interesting and genre bending songs.

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Mehnaz Ladha: Kicking it off with San Francisco, what really stands out and makes it special to you? Where would you send a first-time visitor to get a real sense of the surrounding area?

Tiaday Xavier Ball: Since I just moved to San Francisco, definitely the Haight area is a nice. It’s really touristy and has a lot of thrift shops. You see all sorts of different colors of people. There’s just a really cool vibe and you really notice how no one really cares. You’ll see a guy walking around in a diaper and it’s just normal.

ML: What makes Los Angeles different from San Francisco?

TB: I definitely think that all sorts of people come to LA but I’ve noticed a lot more trans people in San Francisco. That’s just the norm. There are more job opportunities for the LGBTQ community that are normal, whereas in LA, a lot of people’s jobs are usually entertainment based. Everyone you pretty much run into says that they are an artist, writer, producer, director, actor and all of the same things. It’s a whole other game there.

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ML: What was your first real exposure to music? How did you get inspired to create your own and eventually pursue it as a career?

TB: I’ve been surrounded by it my whole life, because it’s just been in the family for generations. My dad’s always had guitars around the house and he would be playing guitar all the time or singing. He was on tour for a good portion of his life, then he had me and just would do his own solo stuff or voiceovers. I’d get to be in the studio with him while he worked. Even at Christmas, everyone plays guitar, sings or plays some sort of instrument.

I actually wanted to stray from the family business. My mom always said that you can’t just make money as a musician. Or, that you don’t want to just go down that path, and make sure you have a college degree first before you do music. I was like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I was kind of applying for nursing colleges in senior year, and I had always been in bands throughout high school.

After I submitted and got accepted to some of these colleges, I was like what am I doing. Then my dad was like there’s this music college here in LA and I know a couple of the teachers that work there. They have rolling admission and if you want to apply just to see if it’s something that you want to do. I [applied and] got accepted.

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ML:You were named to the Top 100 Women in Music in 2017 list by Alternative Press earlier this year. How does it feel to be a successful female music in such a male-dominated industry?

TB: I don’t really feel all that special or anything. I feel like it should become more normal. The pool of women in music to choose from is much smaller than there are men. It’s a pretty male-dominated scene, and I thought it was pretty cool.

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ML: To create music, and traveling to promote it, must be such a feeling. What’s the most impactful and meaningful part you cherish about it? Does the travel help inspirationally?

TB: When I’m on the road, it feels like this is what I’m supposed to be doing. It really puts things into perspective about the comparison of the music in Los Angeles compared to everywhere else. I’ve noticed there is always a lot more appreciation for music in even just local shows, other towns or different parts of the world. It definitely helps the band and I appreciate what we’re doing and make it seem worthwhile.

As for inspiration, I don’t really know. There’s never any time. At least the last time on the road, there wasn’t any time to sleep. Writing was definitely was not an option but I know our guitar player had some inspiration so as soon as he got home, he started recording some things.

ML: You are just about to release your EP “Ventifact” November 17th. What was your overall vision or goal for the EP? Describe your excitement for the release and to play it live for your fans?

TB: We’re definitely excited to release it, because this is a reimagined and rebirth of our last album “Mountains.” We really just wanted to just give something to our fans and hold them over for the rest of the year until we start writing our next full-length album, which we hope to maybe start recording in April so we have time to get all our content together and have really good stuff.

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This album was really fun for our guitar player because he got to play around with different chord inversions and try to kind of give this a more of a new sound or a new way to hear it so that it’s not just this is an acoustic version of the same songs we’ve heard before. We want to make it interesting and give it a jazz or Latin feel.

ML: That sounds like a great holiday gift to your fans.

TB: Yeah, and it’s great for families to listen to too, because there’s no screaming or cussing either this time around.

ML: What’s one stark difference between traveling as a band versus personal traveling?

TB: I used to travel with my parents all the time. They were always moving around and traveling so the last thing I ever wanted to do once I was out on my own was travel. I was so sick of traveling because it was my whole life. But being on the road is a totally different thing because it’s just me and my buddies going out together, working our [butts] off and doing what we love. It doesn’t really feel like the same. It’s like this is our job and this is what we’re supposed to be doing in comparison to when we just travel for fun and there is more time to think. It’s a whole other element.

ML: What’s one of your favorite memories traveling with your parents?

TB: I remember going with my mom to Japan when I was 16. We went for about a week or two, but it definitely wasn’t just long enough because you need a whole day to recover. It was really interesting getting to explore and I actually had a couple of friends who were exchange students from my high school who were there for the summer so I had a little tour around Tokyo with my friends. It was really lucky to have someone who could speak fluently. My mom and I would just eat really cheaply and just have packed lunched sushi for 75 cents and go explore.

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ML: When searching for a personal getaway, are you looking for a serene beach or after a more active, adventurous getaway? Why?

TB: I have been meaning to go back to Utah or go up and get some snow with my girlfriend. I have wanted to take her snowboarding for a little while. Or go back home and visit Hawaii because that’s where I spent half of my life and I have a lot of my friends there. I’ve been meaning to go back for a long time so that would be my ideal getaway. Going back to Hawaii, hanging at the beach with some friends and eating some freshly caught fish. That was the bomb.

ML: You’re definitely well versed in traveling around the world. How does that affect your music style?

TB: I think that everyone should travel. They should get out there and experience different cultures or ways of life because that opens your mind up to a lot of things. I have met a couple people who have stayed in their hometowns their whole lives and never wanted to explore. It could be biased toward the few people I have met, but it seems like they tend to have fewer views on things because they haven’t experienced it for themselves. It’s more humbling and it helps be more open-minded in the writing process as well in terms of being able to open my mind up to different views and ways of thinking. A lot of the times I’m writing, not every single time I have written a song is from my perspective. In “Rampart District,” a couple times in that album, I tried to put myself in other people’s shoes.

ML: One of our core objectives at SCP is to bring people together while traveling, not only to influence people to see and appreciate our beautiful world but to also minimize cross-cultural divides. What effect does traveling, specifically surrounding music, have on humans in this regard? How has it broadened your perspective of the world?

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TB: It’s really great that you guys do that because it really does help shine a light on some things that in our everyday lives that we don’t go explore for ourselves. It can help broaden our perspectives a little bit more and know that there is a life outside of our bubble.

ML: Everyone has a list of places that they still have to hit. What are three destinations, either work or pleasure, that you need to see? Why?

TB: As a band, we have definitely wanted to go to Europe because our guitar player who actually founded this band is from France. He eventually had to move back home because of visa purposes and he couldn’t just stay for the sole purpose of music anymore. It’s hard to get an artist visa here in America. He then decided that it would be best to move back to France but we decided that if we ever go to Europe and play there, he has to play on stage with us again. So that’s on our bucket list of getting him to play on stage with us in Europe.

We actually got an offer to play in Prague so that’s kind of in the works and if that could be a thing, that would be awesome. We’d love to play anywhere outside of the United States even in Canada, because we liked recording there. It was really pretty.

ML: When you’re relaxing on a beach or just have some downtime are you listening to music? Or do you like to switch up the tunes? If so, to what?

TB: I actually listen to all sorts of music. On Spotify, I’ll listen to just the Top Hits of today to discover new artists and see what’s making hits so I know how to adapt my writing style so I can see what makes a song sell these days. Not that I’m trying to sell out but just to add my own twist and seeing what does really well on the charts. I do love PVRIS a lot but my main influence right now is Now, Now, which is one of my absolute favorite bands. They started off as Indie Rock and they’re now sort of like 80s pop.

ML: Lastly, what do the next couple of months have in store for you and the band?

TB: We’re going to do a very short, small run alongside the far West Coast. Originally, we were going to do the East Coast, or at least go alongside the south, but with all these natural disasters that are happening right now, it doesn’t seem like it’s in our favor to do that. Even if we wanted to go to the East Coast, we’ve put ourselves on a winter run before and we almost died. Our drummer was stupid enough to put the van on cruise control and we didn’t have snow tires. We hit a patch of black ice and completely flipped into a ditch. It was pretty gnarly. We definitely want to go, but next time we want to be safer and go to the East Coast in the summer. So, we’re going up to Seattle and back, keep it short for the second week of December and then come home for the holidays before starting back up for the New Year.

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For more on The World Over, visit their website.