Major changes are in store for this year’s Launch Festival, which will now be known as TBD Fest. The name swap is a reflection of a change in venues, as this year the fest will go down in West Sacramento in The Bridge District. The event grounds will be just over the Tower Bridge along the river (behind Raley Field) and will offer epic, sweeping views of downtown Sacramento’s skyline. Also different this year, the fest is now three days of music, not just two. One other difference from past years is that TBD Fest is now happening the weekend of Oct. 3 to 5, a little later than Launch has been previously. What’s not different, you ask? The fact that the lineup, just announced last week, is mind-blowingly amazing!

A couple months ago Submerge was lucky enough to sit down with one of the festival’s founders, Michael Hargis (also co-owner of LowBrau and Block Butcher Bar along with his partner and fellow OG Clay Nutting), and he allowed us to sneak a peek at the level of talent they were aiming to land for TBD Fest. Let’s just say we walked out of the meeting scratching our heads thinking, “Can they really? Will they really? How in the world can they pull those bands?” Pretty much every act Hargis mentioned to us has now been confirmed and apparently some more announcements are still on the way. Currently announced as headliners are the wildly popular French electronic/dance duo Justice and the influential new wave/punk group Blondie! Also getting top billing is Australian electronic duo Empire of the Sun, Los Angeles-based producer Dillon Francis, and Austin, Texas-based post-rock/instrumental powerhouse Explosions in the Sky. It doesn’t stop there. Peep it, you’ve also got: MS MR, The War on Drugs, Gramatik, Kurt Vile and the Violators, RAC (DJ Set), Yacht, Deltron 3030, Blackalicious, Com Truise, Beach Fossils, Sister Crayon and too many other rad artists to list here. Three-day tickets are available now at Tbdfest.com for just $159 and VIP passes are $250. Keep turning to Submerge all summer for more TBD Fest news, announcements and interviews with performing artists.

UPDATE: TBD Fest organizers have also confirmed that Moby (DJ Set) and rapper Danny Brown will be performing!

Charting the Meteoric Rise of Sacramento’s LAUNCH Festival

When the Canadian duo Chromeo unleashed their brand of electronica-imbued funk on the masses at Cesar Chavez Plaza last year, it was like a shockwave of electrofunk energy surged through the crowd, sending thousands into a music-induced trance as the hoard heaved in time with the synth-laden beats.

It was at that moment that Sacramento’s LAUNCH Music Festival appeared poised to join the music festival glitterati. And now, after five years on the summer music festival circuit, the little festival that could appears ready to take on the mainstream.

“The basic ethos [of LAUNCH] is celebrating the overlaps of art, architecture, fashion, music—music really being the backdrop of it all—and celebrating the creative culture,” says LAUNCH founder Michael Hargis. “And really, since we’ve grown into this, it’s really about creating a culture that keeps the local creators here in Sacramento.”

Hargis says LAUNCH was born out of a passion for all things creative and a commitment to expanding the reach of the Sacramento brand. Through his experience as an architect and fascination with the entirety of the local creative culture, Hargis’ “Why not here?” mentality is what inspired him to bring a little bit of the Coachella magic, a source of his inspiration for LAUNCH, back to Sacramento.

With major buzz surrounding the event, LAUNCH has also become a major talent magnet, bringing in acts that are blowing up on the national and international scene. Case in point: this year, Hargis is flying in Van She from Australia to complement this year’s already stellar lineup, which includes indie-rock powerhouse Imagine Dragons..

“This year…bands started coming to us,” says Greg Patterson, one of the LAUNCH partners and co-founder of the ticketing and concert logistics company Ground(ctrl). “So, Blonde Redhead is a prime example of where, it’s a band that I wouldn’t even have thought that we could have gotten, but their agent reached out to us.”

“This is the top agent, the owner of The Windish Agency, which is one of the biggest independent booking agencies,” Hargis adds. “He’s the owner and the personal contact for that band, [and he] reached out to us, and that’s kind of a big deal.”

In just five short years, LAUNCH has grown from a single-day event exhibiting the talents of local creative types to a few hundred attendees, to a multi-day, multi-venue collaboration of local and international artists exposing their talents to a few thousand voracious music, art, fashion and design enthusiasts. Proving that last year’s surging crowds wasn’t a fluke, Patterson says this year’s event is on track to sell as many tickets as it did last year. And with a budget in the high six-figures, you know this year’s event is going to bring it.

Riding the wave of success from 2012’s behemoth of an event, after which the festival was nominated for a 2012 V.I.B.E. (Visionary Innovators in Building Excellence) award by the Downtown Sacramento Partnership, the worlds of music, design and fashion blasts off again on Sept. 4. And its partners are convinced that this year’s festival will prove that Sacramento can hang with the festival big boys.

With the meteoric rise of the festival, Hargis realized that in order to really pull off an event that could top last year’s spectacle, a team of local producers, booking agents and technicians had to be employed. This year, Transmission Events is managing the fencing and some of the other logistics once managed by Hargis and crew. Eric Rushing, owner of Ace of Spades, took on the role of booking the bands. Rushing says the process of developing the lineup was like assembling a dream list of acts.

“We basically sat on a committee and kind of put together a bunch of acts that we’d like to see,” Rushing explains. “LAUNCH has a certain demographic and art about it that Michael really wants to bring across, so it started as more of an electronic and art festival and it’s kind of evolved a little bit, but [we’re] still keeping a lot of the creativity of the festival intact now that there are a lot more partners involved in the festival.”

Local multi-media company Ground(ctrl) also proved to be a major asset to the LAUNCH team, handling some of the other logistical details like ticket sales, website design and helping the LAUNCH team realize their staggering vision to transform the park into something that would top last year’s staging.

“You’re not going to believe you’re in Cesar Chavez Park,” says Patterson. “You’re not going to believe what you’re going to witness. It is going to be freaking incredible.”

From its humble beginnings, including a heavy personal investment from its founders—yes, even Hargis had to dip into his 401(k) to make it all happen—this year’s party in the park promises to deliver big.

“I feel like, from my perspective, it grew from a very organic, really small arts and fashion and music festival into a multi-day, multi-location festival,” Rushing says. “We have the MARRS location with the kick off on Wednesday, Thursday night we have a pre-party at Ace of Spades, Friday night we have the fashion show and then Saturday and Sunday we have the big blowout as well, and we have after-parties planned. It’s one of the biggest things Sacramento has ever seen when it comes to music in the inner city.”

So, if you think that you have to caravan down to the dust bowl that is Coachella or jet out to Austin for South by Southwest to see some of the best music acts to hit the scene, then think again, and prepare to unpack your bags, because LAUNCH is about to jump off, again.

2009

• In 2009, the inaugural Launch event featured local music heavyweights Sister Crayon, electronica maestro Tycho, family trio Dusty Brown, DJ Mike Diamond and Must.Not.Die.

• A contingent of out-of-town bands ripped through the Green Hotel enclave, including L.A. Riots, Wallpaper and Dances With White Girls.

• Set up like an interactive wonderland, the Greens was transformed into a three-stage, mid-century modern homage to Sacramento’s vibrant artistic community. The main stage, poolside deejay station and electro lounge provided booty-bumping grooves while the hotel rooms served as vignettes for vendors and artists to showcase their wares and talents. Adam Saake also helped plan
the event.

2010

• The fashion set included designs by several local design mavens, including Adrienne Cheng’s Reject Clothing line and the futuristic designs of Van Der Neer, Velvet Leaf and Artifacts.

• Invigorated by the success of Launch’s first year on the scene, Hargis set up shop at The Artisan Building, a premier, multi-use facility in Del Paso Heights.

• Live musical performances from visiting artists included a deejay set by The Faint’s alter ego, Depressed Buttons, out of Omaha, Neb.; Woodhands, an outfit out of Toronto specializing in ambient electro-pop tunes; Oakland’s HOTtub; and Los Angeles’ RESA.

• Bands representing Sacramento included The Generals; New Humans; Shaun Slaughter’s project, D.A.M.B.; Sea of Bees; DoomBird and Exquisite Corps.

• DJ sets throughout the night featured the turntable prowess of Jon Droll, Mike Diamond, Sex and Weight, DJ Whores and John Michael Michaels.

2011

• The runway oozed with styles from Krazy Mary’s boutique, R. Douglas Custom Clothiers, Van Der Neer, Fringe and YSJ Vintage.

• The spacious venue also provided ample gallery space to a slew of local and not-so-local artists, photographers, stylists and furniture designers, including Los Angeles-based illustrator, painter and digital artist Brady Tuazon, who also plays in the band RESA; Seattle’s John Horton and Joel Lee; ISO50’s Scott Hansen, aka Tycho; and Sacramento artist Alexa Wolfe.

• Completing the artistic circle, furniture designers David Tracy of Lego, Steve Hamm of Urban Design, Mike Whisten of 12mm Design, Marvin Maldonado of Inform Design, Scott Tiesing of Tiesing Design and Brian Fuller of Brian Fuller Design converged on the scene to display their creations.

• After Neon Indian unexpectedly bowed out of the 2011 Launch lineup, an unfettered Hargis forged on without ruffling a hair on his perfectly coiffed head and invited the reverb-laden Ganglians to join the bill when the festival returned to the Greens Hotel, billed as “Back to the Hotel.” At this point, local promoter Clay Nutting stepped in to help Hargis, and has contributed to the festival ever since.

• Music was front and center when Juli Lydell of the Dreaded Diamond opened the annual fete. The robust cast of musicians also included Chain Gang of 1974 (fresh from Lollapalooza), Sister Crayon, Who Cares, Little Foxes, Exquisite Corps, Favors, Evrika, Sam I Jam, Adam J and Taylor Cho.

• Swimming-pool shenanigans cooled down party-revelers and bathing beauties chilled out poolside while soaking in DJ sets by Mike Diamond, My Cousin Vinny and Jon Droll.

• Local vintage virtuosos Citizen Rosebud and Fringe boutique joined furniture designers Reclamation Art + Furniture and Tiesing Design.

2012

• In its fourth year, the Launch organizers unleashed a fury of events on the Sacramento scene by busting out the heavy guns and showcasing a selected discipline at different locations throughout the grid, concluding with an all-day music festival for its 2012 extravaganza.

• One of the festival’s highlights included a raucous performance by King Tuff at Harlow’s, with equally engaging performances by rockers Jaill and the Coathangers.

• The festival kicked off at Hot Italian with a pop-up shop by Model Citizens NYC, an independent collection of furniture and industrial designers. The crew over at Bows and Arrows then commandeered the reins with a screening of three independent silent films with original scores performed by live musicians.

• The ultimate block party at the MARRS building block erupted as Exquisite Corps set the corridor on fire with a free album-release party. Local architectural group SacDigiFab, longtime partners and collaborators with the Launch squad, created interactive installations constructed out of recycled cardboard that littered the street. The brew team at Ruhstaller was also on hand.

• The festival’s finale, at its new home in Cesar Chavez Plaza, brought the crowd of nearly 6,000 to its collective feet as Chromeo, Grouplove, Chk Chk Chk (!!!), DJ Shadow and others performed throughout the day.

LAUNCH kicks off Sept. 4, 2013 with LAUNCH X MARRS, a free block party at 20th Street between J and K, and features a kickass event every day of the week (LAUNCH X Party Sept. 5, LAUNCH X Fashion Sept. 6) before culminating in LAUNCH x Music at Cesar Chavez Plaza Sept. 7 and 8. All events are all-ages. For tickets, the full lineup and more info, visit LAUNCHsacramento.com.

In case you missed it over the weekend, the folks behind Launch revealed the lineup for their music festival, which has expanded to two days this year, on Saturday, Sept. 7 and Sunday, Sept. 8 at Cesar Chavez Plaza. Headlining will be mash-up and digital sampling hero Girl Talk, who puts on a crazy live show, and Las Vegas radio-rockers Imagine Dragons, who are getting crazy airplay on at least three stations in Sacramento and are just absolutely blowing up right now (that song “Radioactive” is everywhere: TV commercials, movie trailers, everywhere). For sure one of the shockers on the bill is Rocket from the Crypt, a legendary rock band from San Diego that was originally active from 1985 to the mid-‘00s. Other national (and international) acts booked for Launch are Minus the Bear, Blonde Redhead, Van She (flying in all the way from Australia!), Grieves, Cults, Surfer Blood, Doomtree, Geographer, Family of the Year, P.O.S., Gold Fields, Dessa and Turquoise Jeep. Some very lucky locals will also join the bill for what may be the gig of their lifetimes, congrats to Exquisite Corps, Doom Bird, Life in 24 Frames, Paper Pistols, DLRN and The Bell Boys. Two-day passes are on sale now, so support rad things, Sacramento, or else we won’t have rad things anymore! It’s that simple. Hit up Launchsacramento.com for more information. Launch actually kicks off on Sept. 4 with a party at the MARRS Building that for now is top-secret, but will likely be all sorts of rad. On Sept. 5 the party moves to Ace of Spades and on Sept. 6 there will be a giant fashion showcase at an undisclosed location. Details may be sparse on the events leading up to the two-day shebang at Cesar Chavez Plaza (a little suspense is fun), but what we do know is that Launch 2013 is looking pretty damn good already.

Grouplove turns a chance meeting into beautiful music

The story of how indie rock band Grouplove formed is so unlikely, it’s practically mythic. It’s fitting then that the band first met in Greece on the island of Crete. New Yorkers Hannah Hooper and Christian Zucconi were attending an artists commune there where they bonded with other like-minded individuals from around the globe: Brit Sean Gadd and Californians Andrew Wessen and Ryan Rabin. Though the quintet hit it off, it seemed unlikely that their meeting would be anything more than just a one-off occurrence in a foreign land.

But there would be more in store for the members of Grouplove than just a fond memory. A reunion brought them back together again, this time in Los Angeles, where Rabin, now drummer/producer for Grouplove, had a studio. He invited everyone down to record just for fun. The recordings resulted in the band’s self-titled debut EP, which was released in January 2011.

“When we made the EP, it came to us naturally,” says Zucconi, Grouplove’s guitarist/vocalist.

They were all stoked on the recording, but there were still obstacles, namely the thousands of miles and an ocean that separated them. Eventually word started to spread about the band over blogs, and it became apparent to Zucconi that they had to make a real go at being a band or they would regret it.

“We were all kind of in our own lives. Sean was in England, and Hannah and I were in New York. We all wanted it to happen, but we were afraid to speak up and really make it happen because there were so many obstacles in the way,” he says. “When we got home, and we were listening to the recording and sharing it with friends and everyone started reacting so well, it just started to feel like we should really try to make this a thing.

“I remember writing an email to Sean, I said do you want to drop everything, your life, your family and friends and move out to L.A. and try to do this thing, and he was like, ‘Of course,’” Zucconi continues. “He was on the flight a week later.”

Grouplove didn’t waste any time. In September 2011, the band released its first full-length album, Never Trust a Happy Song, a 12-track clinic on the possibilities of electro-pop infused indie rock. Snarling guitars play well with glitchy beats, and the lead vocal duo of Hooper and Zucconi create melodic bliss with their soaring harmonies. It’s not all blips and bloops either, as the spare, folk-tinged track “Cruel and Beautiful World” will attest. Each member shares writing credits on every song on the album, which speaks highly of the band members’ chemistry. It would seem that they had been writing songs together for a decade or more, but Zucconi says it’s the newness of their partnership that aids them in their wide-open songwriting process.

“There are no bad habits that you picked up from joining up with the kids you grew up with and started a band when you were 12,” he says. “We all kind of started with a clean slate, which is something cool and refreshing. Being someone who has played in bands for a long time, it’s really cool to experience that.”

In the following interview, Zucconi talks about a recent reimagining of Andrew W.K.’s “Party Hard,” which the band performed for the Onion A.V. Club, and gives Submerge some insight on “Tongue Tied,” the band’s biggest hit to date, which in addition to topping charts, has also appeared on Glee and in a popular Apple commercial.

I was messing around online, and I saw you guys did an Andrew W.K. cover for the A.V. Club. I’m a big Andrew W.K. fan.
Oh cool, what did you think of it?

I thought you guys did an amazing job. I love covers that stray from the original.
We wanted to do a reinterpretation of it, change all the chords and the chord progression, but still keep the melody.

I liked the bit you guys did with the chorus, “We will always party hard.”
Thanks, man. I don’t know if you saw online, but he [Andrew W.K.] really liked it. It was really cool.

Oh, so he had heard it?
He Photoshopped himself in one of the shots of all of us in the costume. He put himself in the middle. It was really funny.

Were you a fan of the song?
You know, it’s weird. I kind of missed the popularity of that song. Hannah and the other guys were big fans of it. I guess Hannah a couple of years ago would dress up as Andrew W.K. in the city [New York] for Halloween. Of course, she came up with the idea of getting into costume for the cover. I didn’t have any attachment to the old version, and that kind of helped us. Being innocent sometimes helps with approaching songs, in a way. I remember the album cover really well. It was an iconic thing at the time, but I never really heard his music before.

Just last month, you topped the Modern Rock Radio charts with “Tongue Tied.” How did you react?
It was super surreal. The life of that song has been really interesting, and you step back sometimes to see what’s happening. It was at No. 3 for the past 12 or 13 weeks, and that we were all excited about, like, “Wow, this is really cool.” Then more people started playing the song radio station wise. It’s really exciting. It’s hard to really take in what it means, but we were really pumped on it, and everyone we worked with was pumped. We went out and celebrated. It was really cool.

When you get in a band and start writing songs, you probably don’t think about charts…
Never, yeah.

But when it happens, it must be something like you don’t realize how cool it is until it actually happens. Is it that sort of thing?
Yeah it’s kind of like that. It’s interesting, because it’s a weird concept. Like, when you’re writing a song and you’re playing with the band, you’re not thinking about that. “I wonder what our radio plays per week are going to be?” That was all new to me. As we entered that world, I was just learning about it every day because I never experienced it, and as a listener, I never really paid attention to that kind of stuff. We’re all really proud, and it’s great that people out there like our music and are responding to it. That’s why we do it. It’s great to get that kind of reaction.

That song in particular, I know that you guys share writing credits on all the songs, but how did “Tongue Tied” come about?
It was an early song… I was in L.A., and we just kind of moved there. Sean had just moved to L.A., and he’d only been out there for a week or two. I was scoring a really somber film for my friend. I had a piano out and this little home studio that I’d set up to score. I was working on this really heavy scene, and Sean and Hannah were in the house next door, and I just took a break for a minute and started messing around on the keyboard and just started playing that riff, and it was super fun. It just was a whole 180-degree turn from the song I was just working on. It was weird that this upbeat, happy thing just came out of me. I put down a drum beat behind it and some bass lines–there were no vocals at the time–and I brought it to Sean and Hannah and we started playing it in the yard, and everyone started dancing. They were like, “Play it again! Play it again!”… While we were listening back to it, and everyone was jumping up and down, Hannah started singing “Take me to your best friend’s house…” And we just kind of wrote the lyrics on the spot.

By the time it went through the whole Grouplove machine with Ryan producing, and everyone’s awesome ideas, trading thoughts, it just became a 10 at the end. It really came to life in the studio, and we were all just happy with it.

It was a fun learning process, too, for me personally and Hannah, because we’d never tried to write an upbeat electronic pop song, so it’s fun to experiment in that genre and put our stamp on it, so it was a good experience.

When you guys were done with that one in the studio, did you get an inkling that it would be one of the more recognizable songs on the album, or be the one to push it forward?
Yeah, we did kind of feel that after we were listening back to it. When we were recording, during the process Canvasback and Atlantic [Grouplove’s record labels] were super cool and let us do our thing in house. They were never checking up on us, so when the time came that we had some roughs of the album to bring into the record label office, like, “This is what we’ve been working on for the past eight months,” that was the first song we played them, and they were like, “Oh shit!”

You were talking about Ryan as producer, and he’s in the band also. Does he go into producer mode when you get in the studio? Is it almost a Jekyll and Hyde sort of thing?
When we met Ryan in Greece, he was talking about how he loves music and he’s into recording bands and has been doing so since he was 16. When we made the EP, by accident, we were all in L.A. after meeting in Greece, and we had nothing to do one day. He was like come over and record some stuff just for fun. He has this ability to take the beginnings of a song and put life into it in a way you’d never expect, just by his drumming, his ideas and his arrangements. When we met each other, that’s how I got to know him, through the recording process and writing together and producing. That’s just who he’s always been. We trust his ideas, and he’s super talented. I’ve been in bands a long time, but I never really knew what a producer did because whenever we’d go into the studio, we’d do it all ourselves, and we had all the ideas. A producer brings a whole other perspective on it. He says to speed things up or slow them down.

It’s kind of like how we write. We’re all super open to each other’s influences, because they’re so different. Whoever writes the song, it has everyone’s influences all over it once it’s done.

Grouplove will be a part of this year’s Launch Festival. The band will play at Cesar Chavez Park on Saturday, July 28, 2012. Bring your shades and sun block, because this show gets underway at 11 a.m. For a full rundown on this year’s Launch Festival, go to http://www.launchsacramento.com/, and for more Grouplove, go to http://grouplovemusic.com/. (Submerge hasn’t looked, but we’d imagine that Grouplove.com will bring you to an entirely different sort of website.)

Exquisite Corps hopes debut album will resonate with the band’s growing fan base

It is exactly 4 p.m. on a Wednesday afternoon when Exquisite Corps’ frontman answers his cell phone.

“Dude, right on time,” Bryan Valenzuela says with a laugh, seemingly impressed.

Observing the magnetic character on stage lead a six-piece chamber rock band during a sold-out show at the Crocker Art Museum, one might imagine that the singer/guitarist of local band Exquisite Corps is unapproachable.

It quickly becomes apparent, however, that this musician is in fact more approachable than most.

After a morning spent painting, and playing a late show for a full house in Nevada City, Calif., the night before, Valenzuela is in great spirits. Exquisite Corps played at the Haven Underground, where they shared the stage with The Still Sea from Nevada City and Pillars and Tongues from Chicago. Apparently people were stacked on each other to watch the show, and Valenzuela had nothing but good things to say about the experience.

“I always love playing in Nevada City,” Valenzuela says. “It’s super cool there, everyone is really chill and interested in music.

“It was kind of crazy to have a show on a Sunday. There was a lot of people staying until one in the morning,” he adds.

Valenzuela has plenty to be excited about. After a few hiccups and lulls in the recording process, which began last summer, the band is now preparing to release its debut self-titled album at this year’s Launch Festival, which Exquisite Corps will be playing for the third year in a row.

For those who ever fell for cellist Gretta Cohn on Cursive’s Ugly Organ, this album is worth a listen. Since the spring of 2010, Exquisite Corps sprung from a cello and guitar duo, with Valenzuela on the guitar and Krystyna Taylor on the cello, to a full band. The current ensemble includes violinists Reylynn Goessling and Kristin Arnold, drummer Robby Dean and bassist Nathan Webb, in addition to Taylor and Valenzuela.

On headphones, the seven-song album allures the listener from the start, enchanting and ominous. Track one, “Tone Poem,” begins with Valenzuela’s voice oozing over the airy, ethereal resonance of an organ, soon joined by the warm hum of the cello. Then violins come in, high pitched and full-bodied, moving the song forward as Valenzuela’s voice reaches fervent, wailing heights.

The subsequent tracks progress in the same vein, commencing with soft, mysterious beginnings, and erupting into opulent, racing symphonies conjoined with Valenzuela’s vocals, impassioned and raging as he sings about subject matter varying from the followers of Dionysus to winter landscapes. Following “Tone Poem” is “Light As a Feather,” which appeared on local music blog Live in the City of Trees.

Now the band is releasing previews of the album, song by song, leading up to the release show.

To record the album, the band of six spent a considerable amount of time at Hangar Studios with music engineer Scott McChane, who has worked with the likes of local acts Sister Crayon, Agent Ribbons, Chelsea Wolfe and Ellie Fortune.

Valenzuela had his hands in both the recording and mixing processes, ensuring that he could guide the direction of the final product.

“I was there for every single aspect of it,” he says. “It’s expensive to record, and we wanted to record as professionally as possible and make it sound as good as we could with what we had.”

Exquisite Corps’ songs begin with Valenzuela, who writes the music, working through the melodies in his head. Then he approaches the others to arrange the songs. Each member brings something to the table, coming up with pieces to add or ways to solidify the songs.

The progression is not unlike how Exquisite Corps originated, with some string compositions Valenzuela wrote a while back and wanted to put into action.

Valenzuela grew up in Orange County, relocating with his parents to Placerville when he began high school. Around the same time he took up the violin at school, and was drawn to chamber music ever since. He studied music theory in college. When he was the singer/guitarist of former local band Call Me Ishmael, he wrote string accompaniments for the band’s CD release show.

It went over well, but for some reason the band never used strings again after that performance. He wanted to do it again ever since.

“I guess I was just in love with the sound,” he professes. “The string instruments can be, in my opinion, super versatile. They can be really sweet and beautiful, and then they can be really gritty and dirty. There’s so much range there that is great to utilize in music.”

Upon running into the right people at the right time, likeminded people like Taylor, Valenzuela fell upon an opportunity to start a chamber rock band, and thus Exquisite Corps was born.

They eventually recruited Dean and Webb, who played with Valenzuela in Call Me Ishmael.

“[The band] kind of took on a life of its own, in some ways, just by having the thought a long time ago,” Valenzuela says. “Sometimes things just fall into place, I guess.”

Though Exquisite Corps has come a long way since its beginnings, gaining a loyal following in Sacramento and playing sold out shows at venues around town, Valenzuela remains modest about his musical capabilities. The following is an excerpt from the phone conversation between Valenzuela and Submerge.

It sounds like you had played in a lot of other bands prior to Exquisite Corps as well?
Yeah, some bands here and there. Nothing really that notable, not that I’d like to talk about [laughs].

OK, that’s fair.
Because…when you are younger you are in all these different bands, and later in life it’s a little embarrassing.

But what would you say your thoughts are on your progression, anyway, musically, from Call Me Ishmael to Exquisite Corps?
I don’t know, just more experience as far as songwriting and how to arrange music [goes]. Since that band I’ve been studying how to arrange for string instruments, and I’m not a classically trained musician. But [I’m] learning, maturing, trying to ensure that the content of the music is all together. When you are younger, you’re just super excited, and you’re throwing everything out there.

Some of your songs sound almost soundtrack-like on the album. I was particularly thinking that [about] “Windswept” and “I Want What I Want.” Do you ever visualize storylines as you’re writing the songs or writing the lyrics?
Yeah, totally. Either there’s a specific story or it’s like a loose story and images, you know? Maybe it’s a non-linear narrative or something. It may not always come through in a lyric but it’s something you think about when you’re writing or even when you’re playing it. You know who I thought is really good is Neko Case.

Yeah, I love her music.
Dude, she’s so rad. But she tells these stories, and I don’t really know what the story is. The story is totally a non-linear narrative. I know there’s a story in there, and it kind of draws you along.

Would you say that’s the same with some of your songs as well?
I’m always inspired to do that. I’m always inspired by that kind of thing.

Did you ever receive vocal training? You really belt it out during some of your songs, and I was wondering if you’re voice ever gets strained.
In college I took choir [laughs]. I wouldn’t say I ever had vocal training, though. It’s just listening to other singers and watching other singers. I have no formal training in singing. And actually, this wasn’t even something I aspired to do at first. I was mostly a musician, a guitar player most of the time. I was in band in high school, and I was never a singer. But you start playing with people, and no one wants to sing [laughs], that’s pretty much how I started singing. You just try to get better, you just work on it every day and keep working on it. I’m sure I was really bad, I know I was really bad when I started singing… As far as vocal straining, I’ll just drink more water the next day and everything’s fine.

What kind of music are you listening to these days?
Shit, I’ve been listening to PJ Harvey. I kind of got obsessed with the last PJ Harvey record [Let England Shake]. And then I’ve totally been listening to tUnE-yArDs, even though we’re not even close to that kind of music, it is pretty awesome. I mean, we’re not that type of music but I do love it. Beforehand I was listening to Elliott Smith. I always listen to a lot of different stuff, like old stuff and new stuff. The Beatles to Blonde Redhead. I love David Bowie. I was listening to David Bowie coming back from Nevada City the whole time. It kind of keeps you going. It’s a long drive and it was late.

Exquisite Corps will celebrate the release of its self-titled album as part of the Launch Festival on July 25, 2012. The show will take place in front of the MARRS Building in Midtown. Doom Bird, The Honey Trees and I’m Dirty Too will also perform. This is a free, all-ages event and starts at 5 p.m.