We did say Danny Way. 

You know, the Mega Ramp, DC, Plan B, skateboard's living legend. It's how he makes his living, but at the same time, you can tell that if money wasn't involved, it wouldn't change a thing for him. He's sort of unbreakable. After rounds and rounds of surgeries, he's always ready to roll down the Mega Ramp. And in between the craze of a hectic life, he can still sit down to chat it up.

 

 

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What’s been going on lately?

I’ve been skateboarding a lot, as much as possible. Running Plan B has become a lot of daily responsibility stuff, and on top of that, I’ve got three kids, so trying to get everything done in one day has been a big battle lately. I’ve been trying real hard to skate but it’s hard to disconnect from the family life to the business life, and do the stuff I want to do. Time management and stress management. Key, you know.

 

How was the Mega Ramp?

Mega Ramp is doing good. I’ve had three surgeries in the last 8 months, but I’m healing pretty good. I’m back to 100 percent I feel like. I’ve been skating with Burnquist every day, and the level of progression on that thing- that’s going through the roof right now.

 

Speaking of mega, I think I saw that Ryan [Sheckler] got his first jump off the

Mega Ramp.

Yep Sheck, he’s jumped the gap in five tries, and kickflip indied on it in like an hour and a half. He won’t get in the quarter pipe, he’d jump off at the flat bottom, but I don’t expect him to charge that thing yet. It could cost him a year of his life, you know?

 

There was word going around that you might run the Olympic torch.

I was supposed to skate the day that I had to do that, and I was supposed to do a shoot for EA video games, so my manager gave the final call on it that the video game was more important, and I felt the same way actually. As much as it’s a world wide event and it gets a lot of respect, I particularly don’t care for too much of the events that go on in it, but I was very honored to be picked, and flattered that they’d want me to do it, but at the end of the day I’m a skateboarder, and my skateboard life comes first, you know?

 

So, like you said, you are a skateboarder. I’ve heard a lot of people call themselves that. How deep does that run for you?

It’s everything. My life is based around skateboarding. I eat, sleep, live, breathe skate. It’s been in my life since I was a kid and it’s gotten me through the hardest times in my life, and I have a marriage to the skateboard and it will always be in my life.

 

Everyone knows you as a skater, but tell me about the musician side.

I mean my family has this musical background. My real father was killed when I was 8 months old but was a renound guitar player. His dad and his grandfather were too. It’s in the blood. My brother’s very talented with what he does with music, and for me, I feel like it’s just something inside of me that drives me. It’s just been there, and as I’ve gotten older, I’ve wanted to have that connection with my dad because he was taken away when I was so young. I feel like music is how we spend time together, so for me, it’s not like “Oh check me out, I have a band.” I have a love and passion for it, and it’s more than what people thought about.

 

So, your dad was a musician. What musical interests have been instilled through your lineage?

I know it’s in my family, like part of my heritage, but I feel like if my dad was around I wouldn’t have been a skateboarder, and that I would have been a full time musician. But my step dad came into my life when I was a kid and showed me how to skateboard. I went down that path and I’ve always liked the attraction to the guitar and musical instruments. When I was a teenager I started playing guitar every day and haven’t stopped. It’s not about trying to be successful or about getting big and famous. At the end of the day, it’s my only disconnect from the world where I can tune everything else out, and just let emotion go through my system. It’s like meditation or a trance. It was a lot more heavy rock, metal shit when I was a kid, and as I got older, with the band I have now, Escalera, it’s more laid back stuff, a lot more emotion and feeling and it’s a lot more mellow. I feel like it’s the perfect balance out for my life. You slow it all down and relax and the music is like therapy.

 

Those stressful days, you have to have something to chill on.

If you listen to the album, you’ll see what I’m talking about. There are some driving, heavier songs that are not metal, but a bit on the rock side. And then there’s a lot of this mellow, vibe jazz, kind of soul jazz. And like I said, we never contrived out the band. We don’t have one right style or the other. All the songs that we’ve written, and we’ve got so many logged, but we saved everything, and on the album, it’s just the release of this passion, and it doesn’t have to be hardcore metal. These days, it’s just not enough. Everyday, all day long, I feel like I’m living speed metal, and you have to get rid of that anxiety and anger, but at the same time, not anger, but on the edge—tension—and come home from skating. You have to unwind and slow down.

 

So the album just dropped.

And “Escalera” means…?

It means ‘ladder’, like an elevator, to elevate. To rise.

 

The album dropped and then you’ve got that shoe that’s dropping with DC.

I’ve been with DC from day one. I was one of the founders for the company. It was a couple of my buddies, my brother and my two friends, Colin McKay and Ken Block. I think I’m going on my fourteenth or fifteenth shoe or something, or maybe thirteenth, I lost track.

 

Out of all the shoes do you have a

favorite?

I would say the first shoe that I had was my favorite. It represented a turning point, not just in my life, but in skateboarding as far as the shoe progression and design went, and it brought technology to the skate shoe, just the whole direction going on in the industry, not just in the skate industry, but in the shoe industry as a whole. You had Nike and all the companies chasing us, but at that time, it was also a major turning point in my life. In the beginning of DC, my friend Mike got killed, he was a founder with Plan B, my good buddy Josh is in jail for life because of a violent crime, and I hurt myself to a point where I was almost paralyzed. All that happened in like a two year period. Those were crazy times. But any time I look at that shoe, it brings back all those memories. I get taken back to that time. I was just a kid then. I was 18 or 19 years old or something.

 

So how do you stay on top of your game physically and mentally?

I always try to do whatever I can, whatever I’m able. I’d say 90 percent of it is my diet, my health, training and everything. I work out a lot. I try to exercise every day or every couple of days or I start to go crazy. I’ve got to do something every couple of days. I don’t know, there is a lot that goes into defining the finished product, but from all the different surgeries and everything, I’m just finding new environments to skate in. I’m always trying to find what’s next on every frontier.

 

I know you don’t really have a favorite between pool, street or vert, but when you stick a trick which one feels like more of an accomplishment?

I’ll tell you right now, there’s a couple of things I’ve been landing lately on the mega ramps, and it’s by far the greatest things I’ve ever done on a skateboard, which is pretty inspiring, since I’ve been doing this my whole life, and I’m still able to find these things that fill you with so much joy. It’s like I just prove to myself. It’s sometimes like, “What am I going to do next? Have I hit a brick wall yet? Or am I going to or what?” Sometimes, when I get hurt especially, I think about these things. But between the mega ramp and street tricks, there are things happening up there. I’m not going to say much more than that, but what I did the other day was by far the best thing I’ve ever done on my skateboard.

 

I know you’ve been through a good round of surgeries, do you think you might be a prototype for the next bionic man?

Absolutely not. I would do anything to avoid any more surgeries. It’s an area that I don’t really want to talk about and to promote too much. It’s just the past, I’m ready to go forward. I’m just like anybody else. I just have some parts from a cadaver in my knee. Now my knees back to good. So I have someone elses body parts in me but I have a good surgeon. I don’t think I’m bionic, but somehow I’ve been able to come back.

 

I know you like to push skateboarding and yourself to the limit. Do you think you’ll ever find a boundary in them?

I don’t know, man. I don’t think there is a boundary to skateboarding to tell you the truth. I see stuff every day that I’m blown away by. And I’m not naïve to the fact that in ten years from now we’ll be like “We used to think that was gnarly.” In ten years from now I’ll be 44, and if I’m physically able to keep up with the level of progression and continue to handle this, I think that my physical ability will run out before skateboarding’s ability to do this stops.

 

And you just mentioned turning 44 but it was like a week ago that you turned 34. How was your birthday? And Happy Birthday.

The birthday is always an interesting day, especially after 30, because you don’t want to make a public announcement when your life is built around your physical performance. You don’t want to get too caught up in the psychological game of age, and so I’d rather not think about it. I feel like the 34 year old can take as much abuse as a 14 or 24 year old. I haven’t let it kick in that I’m old yet. It is not old, but I think the majority of people think that. People are in their mid-twenties, and I’m in my mid-thirties now, so it’s not just a clock ticking or a number of days left on earth, you shouldn’t think that way. I don’t believe that.

 

I hope that age never influences you because you’ve had such an impact on the industry.

Maybe the age thing will be another challenge to conquer and another level of inspiration for people.

 

Keeping the good guys in while they’re still able to do it.

Raise the bar of longevity to the point where people have to really question, “We’re bitching about our age now?” We have to raise the bar because we’re doing things that are still relevant. I was hanging out with Rodney [Mullen] the other day, and he’s in his mid 40s and it’s just like, we had this conversation about how these things are irrelevant. He’s been pro longer than everybody and he’s still ahead of the game as far as progressing goes, and he’s an inspiration to me on that level. But for the other guys that are still skating, there are people out there whose relevance to the world of skateboarding just doesn’t compare to Rodney.

 

Definitely dude, his last Globe part was ridiculous. I was so stoked to still get blown away by him.

 

Yeah.

 

Well, I know you’re super busy today and I guess I won’t get to hear what the next big thing is for you, so just give me some

sweet last words.

 

Enjoy skateboarding and live it. Really live it.

Don’t ever pretend like you live it.

 

 

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