The new one today for you is the great pop rock quintet coming from Dallas Texas, Sleeperstar. I sat down with this talented group while they were on the road as main support for Green River Ordinance in Cambridge at Harper's Ferry this February. I sat down with the group as a whole and they made for a very memorable interview be it their anecdotes, influences or their personalities themselves! During our interview, we talked about everything from their major influences to both the made up story and the real story behind their name. We also talked about their debut album that will be coming out on June 8th, ‘Just A Ghost’ along with how they went about writing and recording that album! Sleeperstar started just a few short years ago, and since then have already started to make a positive name for themselves with their latest EP release ‘To Speak, To Love, To Listen’. Their melodic pop rock is sure to get you moving, and they’ll be bringing their show across the country playing shows every where you look, in particular for Boston fans on May 7th at Tommy Doyle’s. Read on for my exclusive interview regarding all the plans the boys have lined up for their fall and influential things like their first shows! For once with this band, their first shows were acts like Switchfoot, Smashing Pumpkins and Damien Rice which was something incredibly different from a lot of the past answers like Nsync and Christina Aguilera. This group is definitely a band I’ll be watching for and you should be too!
Check the interview out on MusicRemedy.com and look for more coming your way! I am also now the editor in chief for Shred News so check that out as well!
The Emptiness tour just came to an end last night in Florida, and by following Justin, the new drummer of the Word Alive on twitter, I found this gem. I was lucky enough to interview the four opening bands on this tour with Skylit Drive, Of Mice & Men, The Word Alive and We Came As Romans with those last two interviews coming your way soon! This tour was a great group of guys and bands that I will definitely be catching again in the future! It is a bit of a segue into my now weekly updates on Saturday mornings here at Mix and Mark. I'm now writing for three different publications along with maintaining this blog so look for some action at MusicRemedy and Shred as well. Emptiness news wise, everyone is tweeting away as they work on their long journeys home (some have 36 hour rides still left!), besides The Word Alive who have just made it back to Ocala, Florida where they recorded their last EP Empire to record their debut full length! I don't know about you but I'm hoping for a visit to Judy's House! Besides that, these next two days are full of interviews and today the plans are to put up our new interview with Hit The Lights so watch for that one! I'll also be back out on the scene on 4/12&4/13 reviewing two sets and interviewing some of your favorite bands so watch for updates on that as well as the dates come closer along with lots more we are planning!
Recently, I had the chance to sit down with Pat Brown, the lead vocalist for the talented quintet Sing It Loud when we talked at length about their sophomore album coming out May 11th of this year. Lucky for us, the first single "Sugar Sweet" has been released exclusively on Alternative Press but sneaky deeky me, I've embedded it here as well. Sing It Loud - Sugar Sweet by altpress Initially, it definitely seems a bit poppier then the tracks from the first album for the most part, but that's something Pat disclosed to me. Still, the track is definitely a sweet taste of what is to come for the band!
Check it out and let me know what you think! You can also catch the boys out on their upcoming tour as support for Motion City Soundtrack along with personal favorites Fun. and A Rocket To The Moon!
In spirit of a new project I am starting with the record label known for boy bands (ahem NSYNC and Backstreet Boys) with Jive, I bring you the next band Days Difference! You never know what you're going to find here and this is just another example. One day I'll be interviewing a screamo rock band and only hours later I'll be with a pop artist but that's something that I love about what I do. I try not to stick myself in one box of music coverage and hopefully it has been something that has been enjoyed so far.
They may not be too common of a name yet but Days Difference is quickly moving as a band on the cusp of dropping their sophomore album and having shared the stage with Paramore and Jacks Mannequin along with recently performing at Popcon with the likes of Justin Bie ber and Selena Gomez. The band is composed of two sets of brothers that came from Texas and Virginia to meet in Virginia when Jeremy and Johnathon stepped in for a band performance that Micah and Jeremiah were doing at their school's talent show. The boys only officially met on stage and since then in 2004 have come amazingly far!
Recently I got the chance to sit down with Jeremy who provides the lead vocals for the band and we talked about everything from the craziest place they've ever played to the back story behind how two boys from Texas got to Virginia and became who they are today.
What's the craziest place you have ever played or recorded in? We've played so many like hole in the wall places. There was this one place we played. It's called the Sandbar, it's kind of close to where we live now. It was this smoky, gross bad. The crazy thing about it was the fact that like six months earlier, a car had like ran into the side of the building and like caved the well in. Instead of putting up a new wall, they just kind of like put up some hardwood so like that's where the stage was. Right behind us was just the hardwood between the outside and where we were. The place was like the most crazy and seedy place I've played in my life. It was pretty nuts!
I know you're playing PopCon on February 20th and the headliners are Justin Beiber and Selena Gomez, two pretty big names. What are you most excited for? I'm excited to finally get back on the road and play to a show, to be able to kind of meet people and meet our fans. We had so many people that are coming out to the show who just want to hang out with us and meet us. So we're excited about that and we want to get out there play in front of people getting to hang out afterwards. Also, I'm so excited to see Selena Gomez play and Justin Bieber as well. I just want to be able to see them live because they're really cool, even Push Play and Sean Kingston too. I'm excited for that! Sean Kingston is playing? Yeah! I'm second guessing myself now. I mean maybe not. I thought that he was. I'm excited to sing along to that song (starts singing) 'Shorty fire burning on the dance floor, woahhh' For sure.
I know you've opened for a lot of big bands like Paramore and Jack's Mannequin when they came to Virginia. If you could could on the road with any three acts, who would they be and why? Oh man, okay bands we would like to tour with. We would like to tour with artists like Justin Bieber or DemiLovato or Selena Gomez or Miley Cyrus, The Jonas Brothers, bands like that that just have those huge audiences. I think that would be incredible. And then more like guilty pleasures like Coldplay or U2 or Muse. Those would just be incredible because those guys are our musical heroes.
I always wonder, your brother is in the band and its another set of brothers. How did two brothers from Texas and Virginia come together. Did you meet each other when you were young? Yeah, my brother and I were born in Texas and lived in Ecuador for six years after we were in Texas. Our parents were missionaries there so we lived there and then we moved from Ecuador to Virginia. I'd say five years after we were living here, we moved to a school where Jeremiah was in a band and the piano player and drummer didn't show up so John and I covered for them. We actually met on stage!
Oh wow, you didn't know each other before you started playing? No, we had never met each other. We were like 'hey my names Jeremy, nice to meet you'. We had like five minutes to prepare before the show. It was crazy.
I read somewhere that you're kind of the chief songwriter of the band so how do you guys go about the songwriting process? Is it sometimes collective or is it normally just one person? In the past, I usually wrote everything like the lyrics and all the elements, the important stuff then the band and I got down and figured out how it should sound and everything. Mostly though, I was doing everything by myself. Now I like collaborating with people with really great writers, it's so much fun! I'd sit down and have an idea and then we would just do the song from there so I loved it. And you worked with the former bassist of One Republic for a few of the songs. Yeah he was incredible. He and I wrote about half the album together. We really connected together and it was incredible.
Awesome! I know when your first album 'Numbers' came out, you did some pretty extensive touring for it and through the experience there were broken collarbones, a promoter even got hit by a car. What's the craziest thing that has happened to you while you were on the road? The craziest thing that has happened has to be our trailer tire falling off a trailer and the axle breaking. We were driving on the road and the right tired just flew off like side to side. We were like 'oh man have to pull over soon' because the tire is about to fall off and when we finally pulled over, the whole tire just slammed to the ground. There was like this tank full of gas and it just cracked open. We were completely bummed because we had to buy a new one while we were on the road. It was crazy!
That's insane. We kind of went over this before with the new album release, but when you did 'Numbers', it was more on your own and then now you had cowriters and you were signed to a major record label when you got to that second album. So, was it incredibly different or was it the still same basic process? It's funny, when you're on a label everything is rushed and the situation is rushed. You have to meet deadlines to make you finish the stuff, everything moves quickly and then you wait a year. But with 'Numbers', when we made that album, it was all self produced. We wrote everything ourselves. It was pretty 100 % me writing and then us just putting together what we could. On our most recent album, we really got to do work with people in the industry who really knew what they were doing, which I just loved. You know that was much more of like a collaboration with other people and I think it really shows on the album.
I know you've been kind of involved with the Disney Channel. You, Michael and I believe your brother were in the Hannah Montana movie as the backing band. Do you feel that some might have a prejudice against your music because of the disney stereotype. Do you feel that from some people and how do you react to that? I think our demographic is like 14 to 24 year olds which is what you want to go for anyways and it's mostly female (laughs). Like on our facebook, we have statistics of like the numbers and stuff, like 95% are female. It's kind of what we appeal to from what we've been doing but for the most part, really people haven't been giving us too much beef about it. I think the people that do are just jealous and a ton of people that just hate on people that are successful. It's like we opened for Owl City at a college show, and the audience was completely all of college age like there was no one really younger at all. Kids would be watching, and they just loved it. We had the same reaction from them that we had gotten from people that would be watching the disney channel. I feel like our music definitely has a broader appeal then Disney, but we definitely do well with that, so like why not you know? The bigger, the better.
For sure, and one of the last ones is do you ever find it hard working with your brother so closely a challenge or is it different because he's going through the same thing? Oh it's a great thing! My brother and I are best friends. We're actually like taking boxing together and stuff like that. We have a lot of camaraderie between the two of and us and we work on vocals and harmonies and things like that so I love it, I wouldn't have it any other way. I really enjoy having someone like that. I feel like we're really like minded so it just feels like you're in a group of people in a band, it's really like you're a family. I mean, my brother is my family but I mean even Jeremiah and Michael. We all are similar in the same way, we just all like come together in that sense. We do get on each other's nerves once in a while but really rarely. My brother, man, he can annoy me but knowing him like no one else, we work it out. It's just little stuff.
Besides PopCon, what can fans look forward to in 2010? Will you be back on the road? Yes, our first single Sunrise will be releasing in mid February to top forty radio and from there we're working on a lot of tours. So touring in March, April, May to the end of the year really. That's really our goal. So, radio in February and touring from March to beyond.Thank you to Jeremy from Days Difference for taking the time to do this interview and get your fix from the band here on their myspace. Since our interview, the band has been announced as support on the new Jordin Sparks tour and hopefully we see a lot more of this band on the road this year!
Over the past year or so that I have been actively writing about the music industry and the scene, I have began to listen to genres that I never thought I would, and one of those is screamo/hardcore. Most often the music choices I make in that genre in particular are ones that aren't just screaming through out but those who also balance singing into it and a few that have been particulary successful in that way are Breathe Carolina, A Skylit Drive and this next band of Mice and Men. I've been lucky enough to sit down with all three of them and these guys in particular blew me away. After a whole lot of waiting and promises of good things, the debut album for Of Mice and Men dropped on March 9th. It's something that both the fans and the band have been waiting for a long time, and from listening to it I believe both would be satisfied.
With stand out tracks like YDG and Those in Glass Houses amongst many others, their live shows are finally not the only thing fans can listen to and experience to really know the band. I talked to the group while they were on the second day of Alesana's 'The Emptiness tour' and they let me in on many different things. They explained to me what snarf is and gave me the insider edge on what is sure to be an insanely popular genre come the end of this year with farmcore. On a more serious note, they also gave me an in depth look at their songwriting process that has made them something different in the scene today and so much more.
How did Of Mice and Men first come together? Jaxin: Well when the band first started out, it was Austin who was living in Columbus, Ohio and he has just finished his prveious music project and was looking for something else and I was looking for one as well. So we decided to get togther and with Rise and Artery backing us, we moved out to California and picked up these two guys and basically started writing music straight away and went into the recording studio a few months later, recorded our album and just started touring right after that so its (laughs) basically how it happened.
Who would you say are some of your bigger musical influences as a band and for the sound? Shayley: I'm pretty opposite from what they listen to. I'm more of a nu metal kid, classic rock kid and that's pretty much my influences a lot for vocals. Inclubus, all of those really meaningful and emotional content filled songs. Not so much agressive. That's my influences anyways. Tino's a rapper for sure.
Tino: Definitely listen to a lot of rap. I feel like I developed my style of drumming back when I was listening to music and growing up in the music industry and going to shows and stuff. Definitely like I obviously don't play rap drums but I love breakdowns and I feel like I kind of bring a faster, more aggressive style of drumming from the stuff I listened to. August Burns Red, Misery Signals, Poison The Well, As I Lay Dying, Underoath, Prada. I feel that we all kind of listen to our own kind of stuff and it really brings a different background and a different element which really makes us unique but in the sense of how well it all come stogether and how well we can make everything gel.
And the brand new CD is coming out less then a month from now. How long has this album been in the process? Jaxin: We arrived in California in March and basically we went straight into the writign studio and we worked all the way up to like four or five days a week. At least five days a week in the writing. Right up until July we were mostly in the recording studio so I guess it started in March. We finished recording in September and we headed out on the road on our first tour. So we've been patiently waiting since September to be able to show to everybody what we've been doing.
So um yeah since March already, so it's been a long time coming and I've never been so anxious to get everything out because being a band without a album and kids being able to listen to your music and really get into and to create a following because the kids like your songs is a hard thing. We only had one song on our myspace and really two songs but one of them was a cover song so it was hard for us to be able to share with everybody who's like following us what we were actually doing so that was probably the hardest part in waiting but we finished in September.
Tino: And we've been touring since then, just kind of in addition to what Jaxin is saying. To tour with no music is really, really difficult and the release date was originally supposed to be February 23rd so that seemed like a long time away from the time that we finished recording. So we tried to figure out how to get the music to the kids you know earlier and to let them hear what we've been doing other than live because that's all we had because we didn't get our tracks back until after they're mixed and mastered. It's definitely been a long time coming so we couldn't be more excited for it to come out.
And how did you go about the writing process since it is your first debut into kids listening to you? Jaxin: Phil, want to answer that one? How do we go about the songwriting process? Phil: Oh man, Tino and I would just jam. We just you know would fiddle something out at home and then demo that 'oh that sounds cool, maybe we'll work that out at practice'. We just keep moving on and that's how it all worked out. Just how the energy keeps flowing, just fast paced and that's basically how it happens. Tino:Shay ends up coming into the process maybe a week before we went into the studio and he just kind of was into it and maybe do you want to talk about how you join in the writing process? Shay: I basically you know, they told me what kind of music that inspired them sound wise with our own influences but in that genre which is you know like post hardcore or whatever genre we are. I always wrote about the meaningful stuff, just putting a message out there but in a really well read way. I guess with the melody, I just pretty much did what my heart told me and whatever they told me, sucked it all in.
Tino: He probably had the hardest time because Shay's old band doesn't sound like us that much and his background and his music isn't exactly what our background was so him coming in, while we were recording, and starting to write was once we started getting the songs finished. That's when he came in and did vocals. He had to come in and be like 'hey is this good? is this good' and we'd be like 'Yeah! Let's do it! More of it!'. He had to take the most criticism because we had never really heard him sing before. I mean he had showed us demos and stuff but when he started laying down the vocals, I feel that his voice brought the record in an almost completely different direction but we loved it even more then we expected to because his voice carries. You can really feel the passion in the way he sings and with his meaningful lyrics and it really brings a whole different element that I don't feel like many bands in our genre really have. There is singing and screaming but his singing, like is not something that you would expect over like breakdowns or even rock.
Jaxin: It's a good contrast. It's like a positive contrast. It's extreme, but it's a positive contrast to what Austin's doing. Austin's got his like screams and stuff and Shay comes in with this really unique sounding voice, so we were super suprised and stoked to have this development through this cd which was like a crash course in music like we said. You know it happened once we got to the recording studio and it worked.
Shay: There were times though, since where we were recording there was no like rehearsal booth or practice space so I had to go in the van and actually sit there, blast hte music, sing my melodies and after that there would be times where I go into the van, twenty minutes later we're recording the song, the melody that I just wrote and I'm like 'Oh Shoot, that's going to sound so dumb', play it back with the harmonies on it, and actually think 'Wow, when I'm under pressure, I do well'.
And then this is kind of goofy, it's only the second day but you're probably familiar with the other bands styles. If you could collaborate with another band on this tour, and what do you think the song would be about? Jaxin: It's hard because we're actually really all the same in a kind of way. We're all pretty similar as far as our music kind of goes. I guess probably I'd personally want to do it with A Skylit Drive because it's like Jag's voice is so different then anything we do so it would be cool to do something with those guys. We've been friends with those guys for a long time. Tino: Especially like Nick and Joey for such a long time like from when Skylit Drive played their first show like ever and they're just such good guys. I think everybody in that band is such a talented musician. Not that everybody else in any of the other bands aren't you know but they would definitely be a great band do something with. I'm down! Jaxin: Snarf! What is Snarf? I follow most of you on twitter just to get an idea of what to expect and the last five tweets from Nick are snarfing. Jaxin: Wewant to collaborate together to make a band called Snarf which is a crazy melodic death metal pig band. Basically, like have real pigs on stage and just play music with pig squeals done by real pigs. I had no idea what that was. Tino:Now it's a musical project, idea, adjective. Jaxin: Man that was so snarf! Snarf is the new thing. Farmcore.
I know you're playing both Warped and Bamboozle. What are you most excited for? All(at the same time): Warped! Jaxin: They're both really huge but warped is like you know two months long, like a million bands. Tino: It's like summer camp! Shay: Being a band, not many bands get to actually be on the Warped Tour. It's such a good feeling. Tino: I was going to Warped Tour like when I was thirteen or fourteen and finding out about bands. Being like "Oh! This guy wants me to go check out this band at this time and I'd go to the stage and be like "He's in the band!" Just being so awestruck. That's how warped tour is you know. All the bands are all there, hanging out, trying to show all thsee kids that go to this. It's a really cool time to really promote your band and get to know your fans because it's hard to get their attention with so many bands on a tour like that! Shay: I'm really excited to be hanging out with kids and to be at the merch and you know. Mark my words for saying this or regret my words but being in the sun and outside..Watch, it gets old after like four days, sunburned like a lobster or something. Jaxin: When I came to America, I got picked up, went straight to the first day of Warped Tour and I was teching for a band called The Higher. Every single day, for the whole tour, I would stand on stage and watch the band play and wish that I was doing it. Just being like, 'Man this would be so cool. It's such an awesome experience to be there' and now that I'm going to have the opportunity to do that. It's just that dream that you wish you could be doing what they're doing and now we are so its' been awesome.
And now the last one since I know the show is getting close. What was the first show you went to as a kid? Shay: The first show I went to was Three Dog Night. Phil: Oh Wow. Tino: My first show that I wanted to go to was Rage Against The Machine but my dad didn't let me go and so then for my fourteenth birthday he took me to go see CAKE and that was ten years ago to this day. That was my first concert like that. I think one of my first shows that like I really listened to was probably like Bleeding Through and Underoath, Darkest Hour and Atreyu something like that and the venue was probably like a fifth the size of this one like a 250 capacity venue that wasn't sold out and I was probably like 'Man! These bands are so heavy!'. Jaxin: My first was 5ive! (laughs)
An excuse to listen to Cute Is What We Aim For was just given to me with one of the most surprising announcements I have heard this year so far. They have come off their hiatus/break up/whatever they were doing with their lives and will be back on the road this spring!
This is one show I will not be missing this year, and opening it are The Friday Night Boys, The Bigger Lights and Down With Webster. I remember back in high school, I would be over playing their songs way too much and it's a definite blast from the past. Through all those years, I always dreamed of going to a show from them but never found the chance.
I'll be covering the show and hope to see you out there as well! Here are all the dates and now it's time to blast Moan.
05.11 Cambridge, MA @ Middle East 05.12 New York, NY @ Highline Ballroom 05.13 Pittsburgh, PA @ Diesel 05.14 Philadelphia, PA @ First Unitarian Church 05.15 South Hackensack, NJ @ School Of Rock 05.16 Townson, MD @ The Recher Theatre 05.18 Richmond, VA @ The Canal Club 05.19 Charlotte, NC @ The Casbah 05.20 Atlanta, GA @ Masquerade 05.21 Orlando, FL @ The Social 05.22 Ft. Lauderdale, FL @ The Culture Room 05.23 St. Petersburg, FL @ State Theatre 05.25 Houston, TX @ Meridian Red Room 05.26 Austin, TX @ Antone’s 05.27 Dallas, TX @ The Loft 05.28 Albuquerque, NM @ Launchpad 05.29 Tempe, AZ @ Clubhouse 05.30 San Diego, CA @ Soma 06.01 Anaheim, CA @ Chain Reaction 06.02 Los Angeles, CA @ Troubadour 06.03 San Luis Obispo, CA @ Downtown Brew 06.04 San Francisco, CA @ Slim’s 06.05 Orangevale, CA @ The Boardwalk 06.07 Portland, OR @ Hawthorne Theatre 06.08 Seattle, WA @ El Corazon 06.10 Salt Lake City, UT @ Murray Theatre 06.11 Denver, CO @ Marquis Theatre 06.12 Colorado Springs, CO @ Black Sheep 06.14 St. Paul, MN @ Station 4 06.15 Chicago, IL @ Reggies Rock Club 06.16 Milwaukee, WI @ The Rave 06.17 Pontiac, MI @ Eagle Theater 06.18 Columbus, OH @ The Basement 06.19 Cleveland, OH @ The Grog Shop
This group is definitely a band I’ll be watching for and you should be too!
