The foothills of Northern California are a breeding ground for creative talent. Reggae/hip-hop/dancehall artist J Ras is just one of a seemingly endless list of people churning out quality tunes from towns like Grass Valley, Auburn, Nevada City, etc. J Ras’ newest full-length album Find My Way just dropped last week and quickly started building some major hype online, making it all the way to the No. 1 spot of the “100 best selling reggae songs” chart on iTunes on Nov. 12, 2014, ahead of headlining reggae acts like Common Kings, The Movement and Iration. “Feeling so blessed and grateful for all of the support and feedback from this album,” J Ras wrote on his Facebook page (Facebook.com/JRasMusic) upon announcing the big news with a screen capture of the website Musicianwages.com, which tracks up-to-date sales on the albums released each week.

J Ras’ recent success comes as no surprise, as he spent the entire summer performing on Warped Tour, grinding hard and self-promoting every single day all across the country. J Ras is living proof of the old “hard work pays off” saying.

“It was seriously crazy but so much fun,” J Ras told Submerge of his time on Warped. “I think of it like boot camp for musicians. If you can make it through Warped Tour, you’re ready for any other tour!”

Find My Way is 10 tracks and features guest appearances from Scarub of the Living Legends hip-hop collective, Jamaican reggae artist Prezident Brown and a few others. It’s out now on iTunes and Spotify. You can see J Ras live in Tahoe City on Nov. 28, 2014 at Hacienda Del Lago (760 North Lake Boulevard No. 30) and his next Sacramento show is Dec. 26, 2014, at Capitol Garage (1500 K Street). Visit Jrasmusic.com for more information and to sample some tunes.

A Skylit Drive comes into their own on their latest album and gears up for another Warped summer

Summer. It’s as if just the sound of the word can make you feel young again. It conjures memories of skinned knees, camping, day trips to the lake (any lake, just pick one) or endless carefree hours at the beach. Fun? You bet, but all that running around, traveling and carousing can also be exhausting. Just ask Michael “Jag” Jagmin, vocalist for Lodi, California’s A Skylit Drive. This summer, he and his band mates will be taking part in another great seasonal tradition, the Vans Warped Tour, which turns 20 in 2014.

Since 1995, the Vans Warped tour has become synonymous with summer, especially for bands and fans of punk, hardcore, metalcore, emo and any and every hyphenated-hybrid thereof, and it’s not difficult to see why. The tour brings a veritable army of bands to fields, parking lots and amphitheaters all over North America. This will be A Skylit Drive’s third stint on punk rock’s most popular traveling circus.

The band had recently hit the road in support of their latest album, Rise, which was released in September 2013. Their fourth full-length album, Rise was something of a coming of age for A Skylit Drive. It boasts a bolder sound than their previous efforts thanks in part to a more painstaking writing and recording process, according to Jagmin.

The band first entered into pre-production with Jim Wirt (Hoobastank, Incubus, Something Corporate) as well as Mitchell Marlow and Kit Walters, who worked with A Skylit Drive on their debut Wires…and the Concept of Breathing before nailing down the finished product with producer Cameron Mizell at Chango Studios in Arizona.

Jagmin says this was the first time the band really had the opportunity to take their time recording an album, and he was really pleased with the results. In the past, however, writing and recording had to be done at breakneck speed.

“Everything is so fast-paced, there’s not a lot of planning that goes into it,” Jagmin explains. “You put out an album, and a year later the label is knocking down your door for the next one. And it’s like, what’s the game plan? And they’re like, you’re going here for a month, and that starts in three weeks. So we’ve got three weeks to write and a month to record, but we’re probably going to be writing that month in the studio as well. That was usually how it went.”

With a few successful albums under their belts, A Skylit Drive felt confident enough to speak up about how they wanted to do things.

“We put our foot down and wanted to take our time,” Jagmin says. “We weren’t promising when this album was going to come out. We wanted to make the right album…just give us the time, and we’ll give you the album. Things finally went and operated the way we wanted them to.”

Determined to take a more methodical approach to recording, A Skylit Drive left Fearless Records, which put out the band’s previous two albums, and returned to Tragic Hero, which released their aforementioned debut.

In the following interview, Jagmin speaks more about Rise and the band’s return to Tragic Hero and also waxes eloquent about the trials and tribulations of having so much fun in the sun on Warped Tour.

Was taking your time in recording something you brought to Tragic Hero but weren’t sure how they’d take it?
No, that was one of the biggest draws. Fearless is a powerful label and an extremely capable label, but our biggest concern with this album—being our fourth full-length, and we’re not a new band anymore—we wanted that time to work on it. And we also knew that it was going to need a little extra attention. On Fearless, even that label has competition with all these bands in the same genre, and it’s kind of overwhelming. We just felt that for where we were and where we are in our careers, going back to Tragic would have been a smarter move, to be back on a label that could hone in on us.

It must have been cool to go back home, so to speak, and it definitely worked out, because it was your biggest charting debut weekend, and their best seller as well.
I’m sure every band says this, but even a year later, this is the best album that we’ve ever done. The way that we wrote it, the time that was spent on it and the fact that we were able to do it the way that we wanted to do it, that kind of freedom had never been offered to us.

Was there anything you missed about the fast-paced recording process?
I would never want to do it at a fast pace again. It’s amazingly stressful. You don’t get to try all your ideas. You’re left listening to the album for the rest of your life hearing all the things you’d wished you’d done differently. Even on Rise, I’m sure I’ll hear one or two things that I’ll think could have been slightly cooler, but on the other ones, all the way through, I’m like, man, we could have worked on this so much more had we been given more time.

This will be your third time on Warped Tour this summer. Do you have a certain way of preparing for it? It’s such a long haul with a lot of long days.
As for performance and such, we prepare the same as we would for any other tour. As far as preparing for the long, grueling days, that comes with the experience of doing it before. There’s no real way to prepare for it. It’s not like we go running around outside, because even doing that, that doesn’t really get you ready for that. Sure, you have a bus or a van to go back to, but it’s not like going on a run because you’re whole day is different every single day. There’s no plan to it until when you wake up. You wake up, and it’s like, “Oh, you play at 1 today.” I just got up at noon, and I’ve got to play in an hour, or you woke up at 10 a.m. and you have play in an hour and a half. It’s like, oh crap. Time to wake up. Then it’s like, you’ve got a signing at this time at this tent. You have to do this at this time. It’s like, alright, I guess that’s my day.

When you’re in it, it must seem pretty hectic, but at the end it must felt like it all flew by…
I don’t know. Both times that we’ve done Warped, it definitely felt like it was as long as it was. As far as I remember, the days do not fly by. It’s just so hot, every day is a long day, and by the end of it you just can’t wait to go to bed.

As a vocalist, it must be tough on you not knowing when you’re performing. When I wake up and I just speak I sound like crap, so it must be a lot tougher for you considering you have to sing in front of so many people every day on the tour.
Yeah, it’s definitely a whole different experience. You’ll hear a guitarist complaining before having to go on early, and it’s like, your guitar doesn’t have to wake up. It sounds the same whether it has gotten an hour of sleep or slept all day, whereas I am my instrument. That definitely makes it harder, not having that repetition for your body to get used to. On a normal tour, your body almost naturally starts getting used to you performing at a certain time. Your body knows when it’s game time. On Warped Tour, you have to force the game time. There’s almost no perfect time for you to play for your body. If you play too early, you didn’t get enough sleep; if you play toward the end, almost all of your energy is gone because you’ve been waiting to play all day, and you’ve been out in the sun all day. I feel like most bands shoot for that middle of the day spot, because you’re finally awake, and the sun hasn’t sucked all the energy out of you just yet [laughs]. Every day is a different thing. I don’t think there’s any way to prepare for it.

All that being said, this is your third time doing the tour, so it must be something you really enjoy.
Oh yeah. All of this stuff about being tired, it’s not me saying all that sucks. It really is the best experience. It’s like mobile summer camp. I remember doing summer camp, and those days were tiring too. You’re running around, doing the [Water]Blob thing in the lake, playing games and everything, and by the end of the day, you’re knocked out, but you’re having such a great time. It’s definitely the most taxing tour I’ve ever done, and I’m pretty sure it’ll always stay that way, but at the same time it’s the most memorable tour I’ve ever done.

Michael “Jag” Jagmin on Game of Thrones

I saw on your Facebook page, you made a comment about this season of Game of Thrones. How are you enjoying the fourth season?
I don’t think I can handle anything else. Just when you think something is going one way… I could tell you that something is going to surprise you, but it will still surprise you. That’s the beauty of it. It’s almost like it’s right in front of your face, what’s going to happen, but you ultimately have no idea. As soon as it happens, you feel dumb. Like, Really? How did I not see that? That’s what makes the show so great. It can deviate you for that one second and then just sucker punch you.

How did you get into the show?
I started watching it in between the second and third season. Someone gave me the first and second season to watch. If I remember correctly, it lined up that as soon as I finished the second season, the third season started up. It was a major blessing, because I thought the first two seasons were the hardest to get through. All the characters were so overwhelming. To this date, I still don’t know all their names. I have not memorized the names. If someone from this house is talking about someone from another house, I have no idea who they’re talking about. I’ll pause it and google that person’s name and be like, oh OK, that’s who it is.

They should have an onscreen Wiki so you know who everyone is.
Yeah, or one of those pop-up bubbles like I Love the ‘90s. They should just have the person’s name pop up with an arrow that says, “This is so and so from the House Baratheon.”

Were you stoked when King Joffrey was killed? Because I jumped out of my seat.
Oh man. I almost kicked the cat. That was one of those shocker moments where I wanted to high five everyone I didn’t know.

The Vans Warped Tour rolls through the Sacramento area with a stop at the Sleep Train Amphitheater in Wheatland, California on June 26, 2014. A Skylit Drive will perform along with Finch, Saves the Day, Anberlin, 3OH!3, Bayside, I Fight Dragons, MC Chris…and pretty much every band ever. Go to Vanswarpedtour.com for a full list of performers and also to purchase tickets.

The Pride of Lodi, In Oceans Prepares to Play Sacramento

Before the progressive rock group In Oceans starts band practice, they prepare to embark on a mini journey. All six band members pack up their instruments and meet at a cottage, located in the “boonies” to get the creative juices flowing. While jamming in the small cottage, the band has turned their random guitar strums, bass notes, drumbeats and song lyrics into music that can make anyone want to jump around in a mosh pit.

The Lodi, Calif.-based group is ready to share their five-song EP Earthwalker with music fans everywhere. Submerge caught up with vocalists Stephen Parrish and Matt Miller over the phone after a day of practicing for an upcoming gig.

“We just came together and made this awesome collaboration of magic. We’re really stoked to see what people think about it,” Parrish said.

During the year and a half they’ve been playing music together, the group has created a unique rock sound. “Our music [has] extremely progressed and we got our signature,” Miller said. Each band member (Parrish, Miller, guitarists Ryan Hinch and Jake Knutson, drummer Jesse Reeves and bassist James Garner) played a vital role in making their EP sound stage ready.

“Music-wise we make sure everyone puts in their stance. Everyone has different stuff: funk, mainstream, experimental, we all [have] our different little traits,” Parrish said. “That’s why we’re glad that everything came together in this EP.”

“Everyone brings their own influences,” Miller added. “What we aimed for is something that a lot of people can relate to.”

Even though the music was just released in the beginning of June, the band has already received positive feedback through social networking sites, gaining more than 4,000 likes on their Facebook band page. And if you decide to like them on Facebook, you can expect to see them interacting with almost every fan through status updates, comments and likes. Even though they are gaining strong momentum in the small city of Lodi, their music is spreading across the United States. The Facebook page tells them that they have tons of fans that live in Seattle who are waiting for them to take their show north of their hometown.

“We would like to take a trip up to Seattle and walk around the streets and see if anyone knows us there,” Miller said.

The band also caught the eye of Jonny Craig, lead vocalist for Dance Gavin Dance, after playing the 2010 Battle of the Bands Ernie Ball stage at Warped Tour. “He came up and talked to us afterward and he was pretty impressed with our set, so that was a nice little booster for us,” Parrish said. Both members agree that they hope to play Warped Tour again but are now focused on prepping for upcoming gigs, including a headlining show at the Ace of Spaces in downtown Sacramento.

“It’s our first show in Sacramento. I think it’s my first show out with the band in Sacramento, besides the Boardwalk,” Miller said.

If you decide to catch their first headlining show in town, be prepared to find yourself jumping around the stage one minute then laughing the next, because these rockers like to act “goofy” on and off stage. They take the music very seriously but seem to go with the flow for everything else that jumps in their way–even when deciding upon their band name, they just chose it as a “safe” name and hoped that it would catch on with people that listened to their tunes. They even joked that they could be called the “Fluffy Farts” as long as it would catch on.

“We paid for a guy to go to Sizzler, and he gave us the rights to the name [In Oceans],” Miller joked. “We just want people to listen to the music really.”

The members of In Oceans are the type of rockers that anyone would want to hang out with and tell a few jokes with after their shows. Especially in their hometown, they chat with fans and eat tacos at the local Jack-in-the-Box. “We sign the receipts,” Miller said. “I’m just kidding, we don’t sign the receipts, but if they want us to sign the receipts we would love to.”

They also like to have fun during their mini road trips to different shows. They play rounds of their own version of a word make-up game, where they improvise and start to rap in the car. “We start to freestyle. It gets insane,” Parrish said. After the band finally arrives at their destination, they have a pre-show ritual of huddling together backstage to get revved up to take the stage. “The whole focus is on playing a good show and keeping the energy up,” Miller said.

“I like to put on a show that we would like to go watch,” Parrish added.

According to both vocalists, “fun, crazy, extravaganza and awesomeness” are a few of the things that a member of their audience can expect from one of their live performances. Residents in Stockton might have caught them playing a high-energy show at one of their favorite venues called Empire Theatre, an old movie theater that houses film screenings and live shows. But outside of local venues, they hope to place their music in as many ears as possible. “Hopefully something crazy happens with it because it’s something everyone definitely needs to hear,” Miller said. “We love anyone and everyone that listens to our music. Come out to a show and see; it’s going to be a party.”

In Oceans’ new EP, Earthwalker, was released June 1 and can be purchased on iTunes. If you’d like to keep abreast on the band’s latest happenings, or maybe find out where they’re eating tacos, friend them on Facebook at Facebook.com/inoceansband.

Andrew W.K. puts a tumultuous five years behind him

Hardships can be blessings in disguise. At least, that’s how Andrew W.K. sees it–maybe because he has little other choice. In 2001, W.K., born Andrew Wilkes-Krier in Stanford, Calif., burst on the scene and relased the best thing to happen to pop-metal since Mötley Crüe’s Dr. Feelgood. I Get Wet, W.K.’s debut album, catapulted the relatively unknown songwriter/party starter into the thick of pop culture’s collective unconscious. No doubt, anyone embarking on the road to stardom–for those lucky enough to achieve such a height–marks a strange and interesting journey. However, W.K’s path has seemed downright bizarre.

With the uneasiness of the past five years behind him, W.K. is back to doing what he does best: rocking the fuck out and igniting fans worldwide with his undeniable enthusiasm. He says a new album is on the horizon for 2011, but in the meantime, you can check him out on this year’s Vans’ Warped Tour.

How is Warped Tour going for you? This isn’t your first time. Do you still enjoy the experience?
I enjoy it more now than ever before. The first time we got to do Warped Tour was in 2002. We did a handful of shows. We were doing Ozzfest that summer, but we were able to duck out and get a little taste of the Warped Tour. We loved it and were able to do the entire tour in 2003. To be invited back to do it again after seven years is a big surprise. I’m really able to appreciate the professionalism and efficiency and the hard work of everyone involved much more than ever before. I think the tour has just gotten better. Every year it improves.

Being gone for seven years, have you noticed the scene change since the last time you were on?
I don’t even know what the scene is other than a bunch of people–really young people, young people of all ages–coming out to enjoy a really memorable summer day with high energy music. As far as a scene or culture that goes beyond that, I don’t know if there is one or how to describe it. It doesn’t seem really appropriate to call it a punk scene, it doesn’t seem really appropriate to call it anything except high energy. It’s enthusiastic about life and friendly and open-minded and passionate vibes.

You have a party tent set up at this year’s Warped Tour…
It’s a big tent that allows me and anyone who wants to go in there to celebrate the day together and create some memories and have some fun. I’m there, my band is there. We’re all hanging out there not only to say thank you to the folks that are coming, but to get those experiences and memories under our own belts. Every day that I play or tour–not just Warped Tour, but in general, going around the world doing entertainment–I meet people all the time who either saw us for the first time at the Warped Tour or first heard about us there or had a friend that saw us there. It’s definitely a powerful opportunity to make an impact and meet people, and that’s what the party tent is all about.

Close Calls With Brick Walls finally got a full release here in the United States and United Kingdom. The album had limited release here and elsewhere in the past, but how did it feel for the album to finally be available in stores to a wider audience?
It just feels like relief on one hand. There’s nothing more that I can do for that record. It’s done. It’s had its time, and now we can move forward. It’s very satisfying now that everyone who’s ever wanted it can now have it more easily. Of course, anyone who’s ever wanted it from when it was first released in Asia could’ve had it by downloading it on the Internet. It just felt good to make an official worldwide version. We love playing the songs from that. It’s great to make sure people are aware that it’s there.

Now that the album is out, does that signify the end of your contract dispute? You’re free to release albums under the Andrew W.K. name again?
The main issues that we had been having have been resolved over the past six months. Over the past year, we’ve been piecing together, reassembling the plans we’d had in place since ’99. It’s not very interesting to me. I would imagine it to be kind of boring stuff. There are a lot of people that it takes to work in show business the way we want to work. I’m grateful for this entire team of people and everything they do. I don’t talk a lot about what we do behind the scenes, but I’m glad it’s all worked out.

There were a lot of allegations made about you, and you seemed to be pretty open with confronting them recently. Are you happy with the way you handled the situation?
I’ve been dealing with certain allegations, rumors and accusations since the first album came out. I’ve tried to handle them many different ways. The stuff that you saw more recently…I’ve tried a different approach to be more upfront. In the past, I ignored things entirely, and that did not help. It made people a lot more paranoid or curious as to why I would ignore these things and pretend they weren’t there. Certainly the approach of acknowledging the questions was a new one, and I think it does work better that way. Sometimes, you think you can ignore an issue and it’ll go away, and this one didn’t. Almost 10 years down the road into my career, it’s never fully been resolved. People will always have questions, so from now on my approach will be to answer them, or at least acknowledge them as best I can.

Do you think the mystery helped you in some way, like, by giving you some sort of rock star mystique?
It could be fun to some people in the audience, but most people seem pretty upset about it. That hasn’t been fun for me either. The people I work with don’t want to be in the limelight. When you’re in show business, everything is on display to a degree, because it’s a show. Most people don’t care about bankers or pharmaceutical company people, because they think those characters are boring–and they usually are. But because show business has this automatic excitement, they assume that everyone working in show business is exciting, but they’re usually not. And they’re usually not interested in being exciting. They’re just interested in the business…

What happened with us was that people began to accuse me of not being–not a real person–but not being who I said I was, or not being the way I said I was, and that’s just not true. That’s been the hardest part for me, the disappointment my fans have had or my friends have had, that feeling of being disillusioned and getting hung up on genuine concerns, but ones that have just been distracting them from the real point of this, which is that this is supposed to be very fun and exciting… I would prefer that it all go away, and that’s why I used to deal with it by ignoring it.

Now that you’re out on the Warped Tour, have you noticed that it’s starting to fade into the background?
Most people don’t know or care about what we’re talking about. A small percentage of people I meet are concerned with this… It can drain a lot of energy from me. I used to be way more stressed out about it, because it felt really bad when someone would say, “You’re a fake,” or “You’re not a real person,” or “You’re a paid actor.” That took a lot of energy away from me too, so now I just try to focus on what really matters with this stuff, and ignore the rest or just let it be on the side.

Are you going to make anything else like 55 Cadillac again?
Someday I’d like to make another instrumental album. That one will always be the way that one is, but the next one is going to be a rock album for sure. That one had a lot to do with the contracts I was in. It came at the right time. It made sense at that time. But thank you for asking about that. I want to make all kinds of albums, you know?

Gym Class Heroes’ Disashi Lumumba-Kasongo on His Quiet Life in the Spotlight

Often the inception story of Gym Class Heroes revolves around its founding members, drummer Matt McGinley and frontman Travis McCoy. It’s the fabled story of high school friends who met in gym class, started a band and kept at it despite rotating members, until they received the Pete Wentz seal of approval. They started the band, so they get the fame, right? Read the biography on the Gym Class Heroes Web site and it’s McCoy and McGinley who won the MTV Best New Artist award.

Before their breakthrough record Cupid’s Chokehold had teenyboppers singing a Supertramp melody while their parents suffered acid flashbacks, Gym Class Heroes was down a guitarist. The band was in upstate New York, Ithaca to be exact, recording with Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy. The missing piece was in town as well, attending Cornell University, but fussy with the academia status quo.

Disashi Lumumba-Kasongo has a name that challenges promoters, reporters, industry execs and fans alike, to a point that he tries to make them more comfortable by shortening it to “Sashi.” His name derives from the African Congo. “I’ve heard so many variations of my name,” he said. “Luckily I had plenty of practice with explaining my name growing up that when I joined a band I was used to it. Lately though, I’ve overheard people using my name in conversations and it always surprises me when they pronounce it or spell it correctly.” But, do not call him “D.” “That’s the only thing that irks me,” he said. “There was this one lady who couldn’t get my name and said, ‘I’m going to call you D.’ I feel like that’s disrespectful because she decided to just not put the effort in.”

Two years prior to joining GCH, guitarist Disashi’s pop-punk band played a show with his future band mates, unaware that the impression he made that day would lead to a life-changing phone call. “I was no longer playing regular shows with that band when [Gym Class Heroes] called,” Disashi said. On the same day he joined the band in the studio, groundwork for Cupid’s Chokehold was laid down. GCH previously spent several stints on Warped Tours and built a respectable fan base in upstate New York, but the inclusion of Disashi on guitar seems tantamount to the pop success it would achieve with one song.

With McCoy rapping and singing lead vocals, GCH was already pushing rap/rock boundaries, causing headaches for record store clerks trying to categorize their albums. The band’s aversion to narrowing its scope or ruling out genre influences forced Disashi to jog his memory for inspiration. “Learning how to use the different styles I had learned over the years was the biggest challenge,” he said. His previous band played with a heavier edge. Disashi said he had to learn how to play “clean guitar.”

Life speeds up when you have a hit single. Disashi admits it’s a welcome change, one of those good problems, to be constantly touring in front of hundreds to thousands of fans. But with the release of GCH’s fourth studio album, The Quilt, attention toward the band was less about the music, more about McCoy’s affairs.

With the spotlight fixed on McCoy and his breakup with pop star Katy Perry, the rest of the band was free to create without distractions. “Whether it’s people I’m meeting for the first time or people I haven’t seen in a while, they’ll be like, ‘Oh, I’m surprised you’re down to earth,’ or say things like that,” he said. “They do expect you to act a certain way, but that’s the overall perspective of how this industry works.”

Outside of GCH, Disashi quietly works on his solo project Soul. Soul is still in the bedroom stages, with Disashi acting as a one-man band. But Soul is not a backup plan should GCH dissolve; instead, his solo work suffers from a commitment to his band mates. Two of The Quilt‘s most critically acclaimed songs were originally meant for his Soul project, but once McCoy heard “Live a Little” and “No Place to Run” Disashi was coaxed into giving up two of his coveted babies. “At the time that I wrote those songs, they were my songs,” he said. “It was tough to give them up once Travis heard them, but it’s a cool thing that I was able to share these special songs with my band and play them every night in front of our fans.”

In reviews, The Quilt is often negatively critiqued for a lack of cohesive flow as purely hip-hop tracks featuring Busta Rhymes and The Dream, drenched in bravado and deviancy, are followed by power pop songs of urgency. “One thing that is challenging in working with other producers is we have our own thing going,” he said. “But I do think when we focus as a core group, it’s when we’re at our best.” While the singles that broke GCH into the mainstream were not fully appreciated until a year and an album late, the marginal success of the The Quilt and its singles, coupled with Disashi expressing no plans to push another single, suggests a band ready to move on.

My talk with Disashi interrupted a pre-show nap in Connecticut, but after some light conversation he snapped out of his groggy state to discuss the group’s plans after its college tour. “For the next record we’ve already started writing together,” Disashi said. “It was cool to have some other producers on the last record and have songs I had written myself. It was cool to go all different types of places, but with this next one the best way to start is writing songs together, as a band.”

Between tours, GCH retreats to where it all started, upstate New York, living together, demoing and writing new material in an old church basement. Disashi described the output thus far as “organic.” He said they hope to have next record out by mid-2010, but Disashi is not making a concrete quote on that due date. Along with rejuvenating his hit-making band, he’s pushing his Soul project out of the bedroom and onto the stage. Disashi said he has a drummer ready to go, but is still filling out the other members.

Returning to his almost-alma mater, Disashi often crosses paths with former Cornell classmates, most of whom are now alumni. Four years into Cornell, he left to be a full-time musician. When he runs into old college friends, Disashi notices the hesitancy of approval in his aberrant rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle over graduating from a prestigious Ivy League university, but it doesn’t faze him. He has an MTV Best New Artist trophy to acquit him of regret. “When we won the VMAs it was like the whole world was watching us gain acknowledgement,” he said. “Now, everyone can see I’m not just goofing off. Well, I have been, but now I’ve been rewarded for the band.”

Recently, Gym Class Heroes played as backing band for Onyx and DMX for the VH1 Hip Hop Honors ceremony. “DMX introduced me to hip-hop when I was younger, so it was a trip to meet him,” he said. Most would not think DMX, who barks when he raps, could be described as polite, but Disashi said it with earnest that each time they practiced with DMX, he made a point to greet each band member. “The most striking thing was rehearsing for the show,” he said. “There were only eight or so people there, but his energy level, you would have thought he was playing for thousands at Madison Square Garden.”

During the rehearsals, Disashi realized he needed batteries from the Target across the street. He strolled into the store conscious of his incognito, comforted by it. Minutes prior to his errand, he was playing alongside with living legends of hip-hop, but in Target he’s still another casual shopper in need of batteries. “It was funny because I was thinking about how much I value the freedom to be out and not get bombarded,” he said. “But as I was leaving the store, a guy came up to me and said, ‘Hey, I know who you are.'”

Dance Gavin Dance Has A New Line-up, A New Record and Big Summer Plans

Dance Gavin Dance has seen more roster changes than an MLB team. It’s tough to pinpoint why the Sacramento-based post-hardcore band has had a tough time keeping members, but one thing is for certain: it never slows their tremendous momentum when someone leaves. If anything, it further fuels the fire lit within their fixated fans, who cause a ruckus on Myspace pages, Twitter updates and message boards. The band owes a lot of their success to the Internet and their young, tech-savvy fans who never hesitate to turn to their computers, iphones and Blackberrys to show their undying love (and, in many cases, hate) toward the band.

With their third full-length album (Happiness, due out June 9), a new lineup and the entire summer spent on Warped Tour to look forward to, the band seems very happy indeed with where they are. Submerge recently sat down with guitarist/co-vocalist Will Swan during a rare break from touring to chat about the new record, hitting the road and their dedicated, albeit crazy, fans.

I got a copy of Happiness to prep for this interview and I must say, it sounds a lot different than previous material.
It always does; every new record is way different than the one before.

Is that something you go for consciously?
I just want to write whatever comes out. Being the main writer, I try not to have an agenda. So every record, I feel, is just a natural progression. This is just what we were feeling at the time.

The guitars seem less distorted and sound much clearer. Can you talk about that?
We wanted to get a really clear tone so you can hear all the riffs. It’s more like a classic rock tone.

Rhythmically speaking, it seems groovier and almost dance-y at times too.
Yeah, I wrote “Don’t tell Dave”—it’s song number eight, the like, dance-funk song—while we were on tour with Senses Fail. I recorded the drums, bass and guitar. I just wanted to play it with the band [laughs] and they were down, so I taught them the song. It just kind of came together. I was really happy to be able to put it on the record. I have lots of funk influences; I like George Clinton a lot. There’s definitely a lot of funk that came through on this record.

You took over the screaming responsibilities after John Mess left the band. Is that something you’re comfortable with?
You know, at first I didn’t really like it. I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable and better at screaming. On the new record, being able to write my own parts and now being able to perform those songs, it’s a lot better feeling than playing someone else’s stuff.

Would you say Happiness is your best material to date?
Yeah, well of course, I always like new stuff [laughs]. I do hardcore comparisons between records. I feel like this one is the most cohesive vocally. Me and Kurt [Travis, lead vocals] worked together to try and come up with actual themes. We worked more together as one.

There’s one part on the record that really stood out. Who is that rapping halfway through the song, “Powder to the People?”
That’s me.

No way! It doesn’t sound like you at all. How did that idea come about?
Everyone keeps telling me that; I had to lay something over that song and I didn’t really know what yet. I got to the studio and our producer calls me and says, “I’m not going to be there for half an hour.” So I just sat there and listened to the song and thought, “What can I even do here? Rap might work!” So I just wrote the rap right there and when our producer got there I laid it down and he liked it. That song was already so weird I thought it would be cool to do something off the wall.

Another track I’ve been curious about is, “I’m Down with Brown Town.” What does that song title mean?
It’s got a couple meanings. It’s a heroin reference; it’s also an anal sex reference, it just kind of came about. While Kurt is singing, “I’m down with Brown Town“ [on “Nasa,” the track leading up to “I’m Down with Brown Town”], I’m screaming, “it’s only seconds away,” then the next song starts.

So you’re foreshadowing the next song?
Yeah, exactly. But kids online have no idea; they are all confused. Then “I’m Down with Brown Town,” the actual song, has another heroin reference; it’s like the heroin section of the CD. None of us have had a heroin problem, but we know people who have. Those songs kind of tie together both musically and lyrically.

You guys will be shooting a new video soon. What song will that be for and can you hint at the treatment?
Yeah, up in Portland. It’s for the song “Tree Village.” We’re doing all our stuff in one day, then there will be other shoots for the story while we’re not there. So we’re going to go up there and do what we got to do. The treatment for the video, I’m going to keep that under wraps. It’s a weird, kind of abstract treatment. It’s more visual; you’d have to experience it. Anything I said about it would just be like, “what the fuck?”

You’re doing a couple weeks with The Audition and Closure in Moscow leading up to Warped Tour. Are you looking forward to the summer?
Yeah, for sure. I cannot wait to go on Warped Tour. We’ve never done Warped. We played it once in Sacramento, on the Ernie Ball stage. It was fun; we had a good crowd. If we have a crowd like that every day, it would be great.
Your lineup has changed again recently. Are you confident it’s solid now?
Yeah, I think so. I always feel pretty solid about it, though. [laughs]

After perusing your Myspace comments, message boards, etc., I’ve come to the conclusion that you guys have some crazy fans. Why do you think so many people love to hate you guys?
[Laughs] The Internet is just a place for people to complain. They don’t even understand. I try not to pay attention to anything anyone says anymore. Our fans are so crazy. I cut my hair, because it’s getting hot you know? And I’ve been getting a ton of shit for it. Kids are like, “Why did you cut your hair?”

Yeah, you had quite the afro going on. So they’re missing it?
Yeah, they totally are!