Arden Park Roots are at home on the road

The road is fuckin’ rough. Ask any DIY touring musicians and they’ll likely confirm this. Long drives, sketchy venues, snakey promoters trying to screw you out of gas money, pissing in water bottles while driving the van and then the van breaks down–it’s not a glamorous life by any means, and Sacramento’s reggae/rock group Arden Park Roots know this from first-hand experience. The local foursome, consisting of vocalist/guitarist Tyler Campbell, lead guitarist Nick Ledoux (aka “El Guapo”), bassist Spencer Murphy and drummer Jonny Snickerpippitz, have become road warriors, logging thousands of miles over the past couple years both in support of their self-released 2008 full-length album The Hard Way and as their alter-ego Sublime tribute band, The Livin’s Easy.

On one recent tour, the guys had a couple days off between Colorado and Arizona and decided to do some sightseeing. During a recent interview with Submerge, Jonny remembers, “We were like, ‘You know what? The Grand Canyon is right over there,’ so we started busting over that way.” Not long after, their vehicle overheated, forcing the guys to pull over to allow it to cool. Jonny, not being the type of guy who’ll just sit and wait for a vehicle to cool down, decided to charge up a mountain on the side of the highway. A little side-of-the-road hike, if you will. “There was just this huge mountain next to us,” says Jonny. “I was like, ‘This is kind of cool,’ so I started running up it and all of a sudden I heard, ‘Dude, Jonny, stop! You’re up too far.’” Meanwhile, Campbell and the rest of the crew were down below, looking up at Jonny climbing a mountain, laughing at him while filming his shenanigans on their cell phones. It was about this time when things went downhill fast for Jonny, literally.

“I looked back down and thought, ‘Hey, I’m going to dazzle the guys and just run all the way down,’” he remembers. “I missed about the last 20 feet and just shattered my ankle. I crawled up onto the highway, rolled onto my back and my foot flopped one way, rolled over the other way and my ankle flopped back, it was obviously offset.”

Ouch! A drummer with a broken ankle would have abruptly ended the tour for most bands, but not APR. They got Jonny to a hospital that night, where they reset his foot and told him he’d need reconstructive surgery. The timeline for the next couple days went a little something like this: Monday night, Jonny checked in, Tuesday he had surgery, Thursday evening he was released and Thursday night he played a “painful” gig. What a savage!

Jonny and Tyler Campbell stress how cool the venue in Flagstaff, Ariz., was with the whole situation. Campbell remembers rushing there first thing Tuesday morning after crashing in a hotel the night before (Jonny was in a hospital bed of course) and explaining to them what happened. “They were like, ‘Dude, it’s cool. You guys can stay in our apartment while you’re here.’ So they housed us for three whole nights. Meanwhile, I’m showing them the video on my cell phone,” Campbell says with a good laugh, “So they knew it was legit.” The understanding staff from the venue even called up a bunch of local musicians to come in and jam on APR’s equipment that night. Campbell remembers the good vibes well. “So the night we actually played, it was this big musician forum and a really cool, touching, ‘town come together’ type of night.” Luckily, that was the last scheduled night on the tour, so APR headed home with both Jonny’s ankle and their spirits elevated.

Turns out, APR is used to this kind of warm and welcoming reception when on the road. As our conversation turns toward which random markets around the country they do well in, it suddenly becomes clear why these guys love touring so much.

“The Midwest man, they just like fucking California bands and they love reggae music,” Campbell says. “Rapid City, S.D., is our best town on the road, I don’t know why.” Jonny interrupts with, “We sell out every time. We usually play there two nights in a row.”

If this is not enough proof that APR is the ultimate party band, said venue in Rapid City quite literally ran out of liquor by the end of the night after APR had played their three-hour set (half originals, half Sublime tribute). “They had nothing,” jokes Campbell. “Literally by the end of the night they ran out of liquor. They were like, ‘Do you want a Corona, because that’s all we have.’” The two also point to Durango, Colo., as another one of their favorite random towns to play. There’s a neat old theater that has been pimped out with a top-notch sound system complete with four audio guys to assist APR in sounding as good as possible. But the steakhouse down the street where they get treated to five-course meals is just as big of a draw.

“That’s why we spend so much time in the Midwest,” says Campbell. ”They fucking feed us, they house us and they fill up the clubs. A nice meal out on the road is heaven.”

Currently Arden Park Roots are home, eagerly awaiting the release of their second full-length album, No Regrets in the Garden of Weeden, which was recorded over the winter at Pus Cavern just before the group left on the infamous ankle-shattering tour. No Regrets…, which is a huge leap forward for the band as far as diversity in sound goes, will be released on July 9, 2010 at Harlow’s. Fourteen songs made the final cut, with a good number of tracks getting the axe, not because they were B-side material, but because APR was confident they already had enough songs for it to be a solid album with “no skippers,” as Campbell puts it. That extra material will be used for the band’s third album, which the two agree is already about halfway done. One track from No Regrets… that kept coming up during our conversation was “What You Got to Lose,” which, with its haunting vocal melodies and hybrid electronic/dub/reggae-rock vibe, is Campbell’s favorite.

“I can listen to that song and not think about myself,” he says. “Which is weird because every song I hear of myself, I just analyze my performance. With this song I can just sit back and listen to it and go, ‘Now that’s a good fucking song.’”

“What You Got to Lose” is a perfect example of just how much APR branched out on No Regrets…. While in the studio, the band left no idea unexplored; they experimented with new instruments, layered sounds and most importantly they learned that one of the most important aspects of making an album is allowing the engineer to do his job, to give him the time and space necessary to do what he does best. “We didn’t have a blank check,” says Campbell, “But we had a budget that was comfortable. We were able to go in and not worry about time.” For that reason, Pus Cavern’s Joe Johnston was able to take his time when engineering the record–and it really shows in the final product. No Regrets… is polished but not over-produced; it’s a leap forward for APR, no doubt, but not so much that it leaves their old fans behind. They still rock, they can still bring the party; they just do it with a little more class. “When it comes to vocals,” Jonny says of Campbell’s performances on No Regrets…, “You can tell we’ve been out on the road quite a bit between the first and second albums. He can do more stuff now. He’s got a gorgeous voice, man. You can hear stuff that he does differently, more maturely.”

As Jonny’s foot slowly heals (he was still on crutches at the time of our interview), the group is realizing that this downtime in between releasing No Regrets… and hitting the road again isn’t such a bad thing. Campbell sums it up best when he says, “On the bright side, with this ankle injury we’ve had some time to recollect ourselves and really get hungry again.” With a new album and an insatiable appetite to hit the road again, Arden Park Roots are looking forward to finishing 2010 on a high note doing what they do best: working hard. “You can’t expect opportunities to be handed to you,” says Campbell, “You’ve got to cover your own ass.”

Arden Park Roots will celebrate the release of No Regrets in the Garden of Weeden on July 9 at Harlow’s and yes, Jonny Snickerpippitz will be healed enough to play. The album will be available through all digital outlets, at all Dimple locations and at shows.

Sacramento music wunderkind Michael Franzino talks A Lot Like Birds
Words by Julie De La Torre
Photo by Daniel Dare

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A Lot Like Birds isn’t, well, a lot like anything else you’ve heard before. Starting out as a two-man project led by frontman Michael Franzino, the experimental group soon picked up five additional members and hasn’t looked back. Since winning the Jammies with former band She’s a Dead Man in 2007, the precocious 20-year-old has not only grown up mentally, but musically, as well.

Submerge had the chance to chat with Franzino about everything from his main sources of inspiration to what it was like recording an insanely sophisticated debut release in the confines of a suburban living room. With their ball-busting stage presence and new full-length album, Plan B, A Lot Like Birds is proving to be one of the most promising up-and-comers of 2010.

So, first off, what are you trying to accomplish with A Lot Like Birds that’s different from your other musical projects?
In my previous and first band, our appeal lied solely in our live shows, due to youthful inexperience and naiveté in musicianship and our wildly eccentric and strong stage presence. People came to our shows to dance or laugh at how silly we could be. A lot has changed in my life in the two years since the demise of She’s a Dead Man, and a hell of a lot has changed since the beginning of it four years ago, when the majority of that music was written. It’s kind of like being a senior laughing at your goofy freshman self in retrospect. I’d like to think (or hope, really) that A Lot Like Birds gives people something stimulating or moving to listen to, while we lose our fucking minds on stage night after night.

What were your biggest challenges while recording Plan B?
That would most definitely be the drum programming process, which took five of the nine total months in the studio with the great Jack O’Donnell’s Shattered Records. I basically had a big MIDI spreadsheet before me with every possible beat and every possible drum and cymbal where I had to dictate, as a guitarist, every single drum note and how hard it was to be hit. That, and we had all kinds of nail-biting computer troubles; Jack never expected to record songs with over 100 tracks.

What have you taken from this entire experience? What have you learned since your days of winning the Jammies in high school?
What I learned most from this experience was the recording process really, and how to utilize it as another dynamic in my music. There are all kinds of tricks [and] ways to change moods or make parts sound bigger or spacey or creepy. Utilizing effects and compression appropriately can really make a song or part something different. There’s so much more to making a record than people think; it gives me such a new love for the albums I revere.

It seems like the album has a lot of Mars Volta/At the Drive In inspiration behind it. If so, how does that come into play? What/who are your main influences? 
Omar Rodriguez-Lopez is certainly a hero of mine. If I take anything from the man, it’s a driving insistence upon challenging myself and an audience. Using chaos and discord to contrast gentle and beautiful or making tension and anxiety in a big build are some of my favorite dynamics, and Omar is a master of them among many other things. If the music I write is influenced by anything I can articulate, it’s moods or phases in my life. The past few years in which Plan B formed in my head were some of the darkest times I’ve seen. I think you can hear it in comparison to my embarrassing former work.

What was it like to record with 10-plus musicians?
It’s absolutely amazing. I wouldn’t have it any other way; I like big compositions with all kinds of layers to tear apart and fall into. I’d be tragically bored in a typical three-piece rock band. The performances I witnessed in Jack’s studio were absolutely beautiful. Most of these guest musicians came in without hearing the music once and laid their parts down in one to two takes. I could not be more grateful to have such helpful and incredibly talented friends.

This album was very reminiscent of a rock opera—was that your intent?
It was not, but I had certainly hoped for the songs to flow well into each other and for it to be an album, not just a collection of songs. I think there is a difference; each song on the album is intentionally placed where it is.

Describe the live show of A Lot Like Birds… What do you think sets you guys apart from anyone else right now?
Our live show was an interesting entity to orchestrate, with the album consisting of so many musicians and all. Originally intended as guests on the album, Cory Lockwood, screamer; Ben Wiacek, guitarist [of post-hardcore project, Discovery of a Lifelong Error]; Athena Koumis, violinist [of folk-rock project, Life as Ghosts]; Juli Lydell, vocalist/keyboardist and Tyler Lydell, drummer [of experimental-folk project, The Dreaded Diamond] have all banded around myself and bassist Michael Litterfield. Making us seven strong, there’s rarely a time when you don’t have something to watch. We arrive to shows with every intent to walk off stage extremely sore, sweaty and out of breath.

What are your plans for 2010? Any ideas for a tour or additional albums?
We are going in to record an acoustic EP called Fuck Morrissey within the next two weeks and after that another full length, because if this took nine months to record, only God knows how long the next one will. As far as touring, we are most definitely going to tour at all costs this summer, hopefully with the backing of a label or management company, but DIY will suffice.

Any last words?
Yes, please listen to the bands whose musicians were guest on this album, including: The Dreaded Diamond, H. Letham, Life as Ghosts, Discovery of a Lifelong Error, Zuhg and our friends The Speed of Sound in Sea Water!

A Lot Like Birds headlined Jan. 16 at the Shire Road Club in Sacramento.
To find out when and where they’re playing next check out www.myspace.com/alotlikebirds

Bows & Arrows secondhand hipster apparel boutique is not known for its live entertainment, but the dozen or so hip enough to be in the know got a brief, but aurally excitable performance from Placerville’s Pregnant Dec. 3.

Formerly grid kids, Pregnant moved out to the sticks, possibly to their greatest benefit. Their album, Liquidation on Swans, is a complicated experience. Bountiful in picturesque collages, the record will rack your brain in wonderment as to where Daniel Trudeau found these sultry sounds—which is why seeing Pregnant perform is such an enlightening delight.

The Bows & Arrows atmosphere complemented Trudeau and his guitar-strumming assistant, Michael Saalman. The lights were turned off except in the small floor space, cleared for their instruments. The band played in the lighting of kitschy lamps for sale, while onlookers sat on the floor, giving these living room scientists a fitting workspace to kneel among their array of pedals and build each song from scratch.

The joy of watching Pregnant comes precisely from that. Saalman noodled at his guitar endlessly, while Trudeau methodically looped each piece of his instrumentation into the fold. Trudeau beatboxed, pitch shifted his voice into kooky layers and strummed a wooden lizard to complete the steps of “Do That.” He created bass from rhythmically breathing heavily into the microphone, tweaked a kazoo into a swarm-of-bees buzz, and skronked on a saxophone, proving his talents beyond the junkyard noise. The scatter of percussion tools on the floor and the effects pedals were all utilized to steadily bring each song to fruition. The sound was reminiscent of Brooklyn-based noise bands like Say No! To Architecture, GDFX and Zs. However, Pregnant is inherently California freak folk. Those Brooklyn kids are all harsh noise from buzz saw reverb and nose bleeds, while Pregnant is countrified and tender. Birds chirp, wind chimes made of bones jingle and the warmth is candid.

There’s nothing to fear in a Pregnant record and that kindness is present in their performance. The duo never acknowledged the audience, far too engulfed in their process, but once they finished, they thanked us, awkwardly bowed, locked hands and dry humped a lamp.

Pregnant plays traditional venues, but if you have the chance, see them in a living room, a boutique or a basement. Make sure there’s carpet and a place to kneel. It’s best to be as comfortable as the musicians, which means removing your shoes and letting those toes wiggle a little.

Life in 24 Frames takes a progressive approach to their music, in more ways than one

It’s time the music industry faces the truth that soon the CD will be an obsolete technology. While it is heartbreaking that record stores might disappear as well, it’s impossible to deny the power and ease of the MP3. With this in mind Sacramento’s Life in 24 Frames has developed a clever marketing strategy as an act of accepting these changing times.

The download card is so new it feels awkward. Life in 24 Frames use these business cards with download codes to spread the word. No physical copy exists of the band’s music; rather demand is created through limited time offers on its Web site. The response has been mostly enthusiastic, but the band worries that perhaps there is something lost in translation when they give out cards to fans.

After a show in San Diego, the band was loading up when a girl looking to purchase the band’s music approached. When the lead singer Kris tried to give her a card, she respectfully declined, saying she would prefer to buy a CD. “I don’t think she understood what it was,” he said. “I think she thought I was trying to pick up on her. Not a week later I gave someone a download card and he said, ‘This is sweet, but do you have anything I could buy?'” Tony added that given this economy they never thought people would be so insistent on buying a record instead of getting free music.

Eventually Life in 24 Frames will compile its songs onto a CD. The band hopes to have it completed by the spring or summer of 2010. Until that day though, they are continuing the awkward exchanges in hopes that the cards will catch on. Kris said having a pocketful of cards excites him, as he’s often been tempted to make it rain cards on the audience, but can not justify wasting free downloads.

Life in 24 Frames expressed a focused approach to its writing process. The cards make it a task to have three new songs available every two months. The drummer, who simply goes by Mango, said the band has set a standard that requires discipline.

“There’s nothing worse than when your favorite band takes two years to put out a new album,” Kris said. Life in 24 Frames is constantly writing to maintain fan interest in this digital age where music is available with just a click.

“Some bands can do that,” lead guitarist Tony C. said in reference to taking years between records. “But, obviously with a new band like ourselves, we can’t afford to do that.”

As for their sound, Kris admitted the band has yet to write a song under five minutes. Life in 24 Frames has an experimental sound that builds toward ethereal crescendos.

“None of it is intentional at all,” Kris said. “We never go into the studio with the plan of making a seven-minute epic, but we also don’t stop building the song until everyone is comfortable with their part.”

The band often gets comparisons to Radiohead and Pink Floyd, but the members came together in their appreciation for ’90s indie rock like Built to Spill and Sunny Day Real Estate. Mango was the last member to join. He heard Life in 24 Frames’ first EP and immediately envisioned playing drums for the band.

The bassist Wes said the band hopes to eventually achieve that perfect pop song greatness, referencing The Beatles’ “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” as an example of fitting dozens of great ideas into the three and a half minute pop mold. “They are long songs, but they don’t feel like long songs,” Mango said. “We don’t focus on how long it is. They all have to reach a specific energy.”

Life in 24 Frames said it came to terms with its current sound four months ago. Wes said despite each member having different backgrounds and playing in bands that sound nothing like Life in 24 Frames, they all seemed to be arching toward this moment. “I’m sure we won’t be the same band a year from now,” he said.

Press so far for Life in 24 Frames has the band adopting a bad publicity is still publicity mentality. One show review that amused them in particular was after a last minute scheduling in San Francisco. The reviewer that night trashed the band for having an atmospheric sound that did not translate to the live setting, suggesting that the band be best enjoyed while doing homework, making out or falling asleep. Despite the writer’s intentions, Life in 24 Frames considered the remark a compliment.

From its inception the band has been based around technological savvy. The members all met on Craigslist. Kris joked that whether you’re trying to sell your lawnmower, need a girlfriend for the night or a new drummer, the list will fulfill your needs. Kris has a background in video production. Life in 24 Frames hopes to eventually incorporate video into its recording sessions, but he quickly admitted that filming and playing music at the same time is a difficult task. It did few favors for The Beatles when they attempted to document its Let It Be sessions and Life in 24 Frames are aware of those concerns. “When you’re part of the music writing process there’s absolutely no way you can also from an outside perspective to film it,” he said. “I would like to shoot one of our long drives back from Los Angeles as a music video.”

The Golden Cadillacs Evoke Classic California Country Sounds on Their Debut Album

Friends who drink together stay together. That’s a saying, right? Regardless, it’s worked in the case of Nick Swimley and Adam Wade, who have been friends since high school. Two and a half years ago, they combined their shared love for music and formed The Golden Cadillacs, a Sacramento-based country outfit, which now stands as a five-piece band that includes James Neil on drums, Aaron Welch on guitars and vocals and Joe Davancens on pedal steel guitar and organ. Submerge spoke with Swimley and Wade as they were “just sipping on a few cocktails,” and they filled us in on the group’s origins.

The Golden Cadillacs’ roots spread as far as Placerville, where Swimley and Wade are from. The small town on the doorstep to the El Dorado National Forest may not be known for much; but like any town, it had a bar, which turned out to be an important landmark in the band’s history. Poor Red’s Bar-B-Q, located in neighboring El Dorado, is housed in a building that dates back to the mid-19th century. Both Swimley and Wade remember frequenting the establishment with their fathers while growing up.

“It was down the street from where I grew up,” Wade says. “It’s this real historic, funky old country kind of place.”

It was there that he and Swimley decided to form the band, while sipping (what else?) golden Cadillacs.

“We were drinking The Golden Cadillacs at the time, and all we had to do was basically look down and get that band name,” Wade says. Listening to the band’s music, it would seem like Jim Beam or Budweiser would be more apt alcoholic beverage complements as opposed to a frou-frou concoction of crème de cacao, Galliano and cream; however, as Wade says, it could have been worse. “We didn’t want to be the Buttery Nipples,” he quips.

Poor Red’s wasn’t only The Golden Cadillacs’ birthplace, but it also served as inspiration for the band’s de facto first song. On Nov. 27, the band will release their first album, a nine-song self-titled effort, of which the opening track is titled “Poor Red’s.” Wade says he wrote the song while battling a bout of homesickness.

“It’s the first song I wrote,” Wade says. “I was living down in San Diego at the time, and I was kind of missing my hometown and wrote that song.”
Wade and Swimley have a long history of playing music together, even prior to that night at Poor Red’s. In fact, Wade reports that they played music together the first day they met. The two were introduced by friend and band mate Joe Davancens.

“I guess three of us”¦started jamming as early on as high school,” Wade recalls. “We all went our separate ways during our college years and went to schools in different states.”

Wade and Swimley reunited to play a show at the Cosmic Cafe in Placerville, and The Golden Cadillacs were born later at Poor Red’s that same night. However, at the time, the band was in a different form, performing as a three-piece.

“When it started out, it was just Adam, myself and my brother on drums,” Swimley says. “We made a little demo so we could get gigs. Joey was going to school in New York, but he moved back, so we added him to the band, and my brother kind of moved on to another group, and we hired our drummer, James, and then Aaron came in.”

Swimley says the current lineup has been together for about a year. He says the addition of the new pieces was “huge” in filling out The Golden Cadillacs’ sound, allowing them to do things that were difficult to pull off as a trio.

Their debut CD was recorded together as a five-piece over the summer in a barn on Davancens’ parents’ property in Placerville. Davancens had converted the barn into a studio, and the setting turned out to be a great place for the band to work. Without having to keep one eye on the clock and the other on their wallets as they would have at a traditional studio, The Golden Cadillacs were free to create at their own pace.

“They have a bunch of acreage, and they have horses out there and the whole nine,” Wade says. “We’d just go up there and drink beer and make music. Whatever came out, came out. They had a pool, and we barbecued. We got to hang out in the sun. It was a really relaxing experience. We just wanted to make sure that we got the sounds and the parts that we wanted.

“It was cool not worrying about who we were paying or who we’re working with or how much time we had.”

Having a band member who doubled as an engineer was a great boon as well.

“It helped to have Joey engineer all of it,” Swimley says. “He’s got a great ear, and I trust his judgment more than anybody’s.”

The result was a sun-baked country album that pays homage to the classic California country sound, a rich tradition that Wade and Swimley take very seriously. However, The Golden Cadillacs realize they have some way to go before they can be mentioned in the same breath as their heroes.

“We look up to”¦Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Dwight Yoakam—all those guys who came out of California and played honky tonk country music,” Swimley says “We hope our next record will be more straight up country sounding. I think we’re just trying to find our feet with our first record.”

Maybe they’re still working out the kinks, but The Golden Cadillacs are off to a great start. In fact, they’ve already caught the attention of notable California country songwriter Dave Gleason. The Golden Cadillacs have recently become Gleason’s backing band, a major compliment considering Wade and Swimley were big admirers of Gleason’s music before ever meeting him.

“Nick and I used to practice in Oakland, and we’d drive to Oakland and back every week,” Wade says “Nick turned me on to Gleason about three years before we ever knew him, and we were listening to Gleason the whole ride down and the whole ride back every week. It’s a mind bender to be in his band now.”

Despite their work with Gleason, and though their first album hasn’t been even released yet, The Golden Cadillacs are already at work on their next release. Though their self-titled album was mostly a product of Wade and Swimley “boozing and writing songs” together, their next release will be more of a true band effort.

“The thing we’re trying to go for is the less-is-more vibe,” Wade says. “The whole vibe of the songs that we’re all so fond of is the real lyrics and the real life aspect of it. It’s like being a great chef, right? You don’t want to get too crazy on it. You just want to make something really simple and good.”

If their early returns are any indication, it would seem that The Golden Cadillacs have the right recipe for a strong future. At the very least, they should find bright skies and good times along the way.

The Golden Cadillacs will celebrate the release of their first album at The Fox & Goose on Nov. 27, 2009. The cover will be just $3, and Leroy Virgil of Hellbound Glory will also perform.

Our Hometown Disaster delivers the goods on full-length debut

Local punk outfit Our Hometown Disaster wants you to know that they aren’t fucking around on their full-length debut, The Good Life, out Oct. 10, 2009. “We’re not pussies, we’re not fakes, we’re real guys with real experiences and that comes out in the music we write,” vocalist Brad Edison recently told Submerge. “We put heart into writing our music; we have well thought out and provocative lyrics that actually mean something to us. We are proud of our music; we couldn’t respect ourselves if we weren’t.”

While somewhat new to the scene with this line-up, all of Our Hometown Disaster’s members, including Ted Rauenhorst (guitar, backing vocals), Clint Cargill (guitar, backing vocals), Jeremy Roberts (drums), Brian Lee (bass, backing vocals) and Edison (vocals), have been in well-established Sacramento bands over the years. The note-worthy list of past groups includes Losing All Pride, Drowning Adam, A Borrowed Life, The Revelry, Five Victims Four Graves, Hoods and Vomit. With a résumé like that, you’d expect Our Hometown Disaster to hit the ground running. And they have. They’ve got a new full-length record, The Good Life, set to be released on Oct. 10 at the Boardwalk, a tight sound and big plans for the future.

Submerge recently caught up with some of the guys to cover the basics.

How did Our Hometown Disaster form?
Ted Rauenhorst: It all started with Clint and I around July ’08. We both missed playing punk rock and decided to get together and start a side project just for shits. We started writing and really enjoyed it and started looking for members about a month later. Long story short, we found some kick ass dudes that we really meshed well with and really got going on it. All of our other bands were not doing too well and all pretty much fell apart at the same time. We liked what we started doing a lot and decided to take the band seriously. We played our first show with Authority Zero in February ’09 and knew right then we really wanted to do this band full-time, and here we are.

I got a good laugh out of your Myspace page where it says, “Their goal is to prove that Sacramento’s punk roots are still firmly planted in a land where pussy emo and cock rock are running rampant!” Can you elaborate on that?
Brad Edison: The fact is there is a massive abundance of shitty music. Brian and I were talking a while ago about the fact that we still listen to the same CDs we bought when we were kids. Only every once in a while can we welcome a new CD to the list of quality music.

How does the songwriting process work in OHD? Is there one main songwriter, or is it collaborative?
TR: It’s pretty collaborative. Clint, Brian or myself will come up with a riff or even a full song, and we all get together and throw ideas around. Brad and Brian write the lyrics for the most part. We all like to give input in everything we do.
BE: For lyrics, usually Brian and I take an idea from an experience in our life or one of the other guys and just build on that while listening to the riff over and over and over. Sometimes it’s fairly quick and sometimes it takes a while and a lot of different settings. Some of my favorite lines have come to me while I’m driving or in the middle of the night. And sometimes there are parts that get changed even after all that because I won’t sing something that doesn’t convey the message I want the way I want to convey it.

What does a typical OHD practice look like?
Brian Lee: We all show up late and pissed off from work. We make fun of each other the whole time and run through the set and then work on something new. We got the next two albums written already, but we’re still working on our set because this OHD thing is so new to us all being from metal, punk, rock and hardcore bands. The next shit is amazing.

The Good Life sounds great! When and where was it recorded?
TR: We recorded it a few months back at Pus Cavern.

Nice. How was it working with Joe Johnston?
BL: He doesn’t let shit slide and really pushed us to do the best we could. It was awesome and we are stoked!
BE: Definitely. Joe is a great guy, smart and easy to work with. He knows what he’s doing. The proof is in the pudding; the CD sounds amazing.

What’s the plan for releasing The Good Life? Any label interest? Do you even care about record labels anymore? Or are you going the DIY route?
BL: Labels are what they are. We are old school “work hard for what you want” kind of guys. Smaller labels are cool, because they have the same goal as we do: play hard.
TR: We are just going to put it out ourselves for now. We are talking with a few labels and are looking for someone to put it out. We want to be patient and wait for the right label to come along. We don’t want to jump on the first offer and get screwed. Some of us have had that happen and don’t want to have it happen again.

Any touring plans?
BL: We got some shit going on.
TR: We are planning on going out a lot early next year. We have so much we want to do. It’s hard to say right now where we are going to be going.

I’m sure most of you have done the DIY tour thing before. Do you think touring is important in an age where bands break overnight via the Internet?
BL: The Internet is rad; you can see bands or boobs or whatever you want. Emo pop kids love to be sad and take pictures of themselves all day and will find bands that will do the same. We want to appeal to the skaters and motocross kids that are out and about that actually have CDs rolling around their trucks and loan out to their friends. It’s a totally different crowd. Go out and live fast. How rad can you get staying in your room listening to some losers that dress up for the Internet?

Aroarah Returns from the Road with a Big Package

The party girls of Aroarah are home and back to their day jobs after a July tour, but in their minds their real jobs are on hiatus. These four ladies from Orangevale could teach a class on touring, proving they can rough it just as much as the boys—and still have room in the van for makeup.

“If we had our way, we would permanently be on tour,” lead guitarist Morgan said. Aroarah travels in “a big ol’ Chevy van,” an extended back version with a reclining bed backseat—the family vacation special, before RVs owned the road. Road habits include nights spent on campgrounds, friends’ couches and even rest stops. “There’s enough room for us to sleep in the van,” Lydia said. “If we can’t afford a hotel or no one is giving us a place to crash for the night, we’ll just crash in there and get really sweaty.” It’s a romantic lifestyle, but sometimes it yields unwanted results, like a giant moose carcass at one of the rest stops.

Bassist Chelsea compared their touring lifestyle to traveling gypsies, working the angles to live off the grid. To clean up after that night’s sweat smell out, they hit up chain mega-gym 24 Hour Fitness, the national chain they have memberships to. “We look like hobos going in there,” lead vocalist Lydia said.

After years of touring, the band has noticed significant touring differences between guys and girls—the most obvious was the lack of “smelliest balls” contests in their van. “We like to look nice and wear makeup on stage,” Morgan said. “Even though we have raccoon eyes at the end of the set.”

It might be odd to imagine, but even girl rock bands have groupies. It was the first query Morgan’s co-workers had when she returned from the tour—and of course, the follow-up question of whether she slept with them.

“It’s different,” she said. “We’re not out there partying, doing drugs and having sex with them. They usually offer us a place to stay. It’s a far cry from the cliché male role.” Even the girl groupies who love Aroarah are not getting a chance backstage. “We’re not sluts, yo,” Lydia said.

The pranks that come from countless hours cooped up in a van together are manifested through getting their groupies drunk, convincing them into embarrassing antics, and inside jokes too contained to be understood outside the four-girl circle. Several times during our conversation, odd catch phrases were echoed amongst the girls, making them laugh and me feel left out.

“It helps that we were friends before we were a band,” Lydia said. “Two weeks into being a band we kicked Chelsea out, only to regret it minutes later. At this point we’ve got a deep family bond that if any of us tried to quit, the others wouldn’t let it happen.”

Drummer Mackenzie is described by her bandmates as the designated road warrior; fueled by weed and pomegranate Rockstar energy drinks. “We have to make her stop driving to eat when she gets too wound up,” Morgan said. “Someone also has to stay alert in case she crashes [from the Rockstar].”

Chelsea broke down the post-show routine. “Morgan and I are usually wasted,” she said. “Lydia has to sleep to rest her voice or she’s wasted as well. So Mackenzie and Carl, our tour manager, are driving.”

The furthest Mackenzie has driven is South Dakota, which led to a gig overshadowed by the Sturgis motorcycle rally. To boot, the bar was so small the band could not fit its equipment on stage, forcing them to use the house gear.

“I had a 15-inch bass amp, which was blown,” Chelsea said.

“Kenzie actually had a toy monkey with cymbals as her kit,” Lydia joked.

Since Sturgis stole Aroarah’s core biker crowd, the van rolled through to see what all the fuss was about, only to find American Idol‘s Chris Daughtry. Oddly enough, Daughtry haunted the girls’ tour schedule, playing the night after them each stop. “We might as well have opened for him,” Lydia said. “Sorry Chris, we were headlining this tour, maybe next time.”

Even so, the girls managed to sell a few CDs to a few Hells Angels they encountered at a rest stop outside of Sturgis, and have gotten some rave reviews from them on their MySpace page.

Aroarah seems to operate best in the seedy underbelly bars. The band played at the Hellbent Clubhouse biker bar in south Sacramento this June, winning adoration from the counterculture’s most intimidating sweethearts. Minutes before the set, Morgan got a tattoo on her wrist that reads “patience” as she frantically insisted the tattooist finish so she could plug in. “It was pretty intense,” Morgan said. “We had security, but they were all so unbelievably kind.”

“Whiskey” is all Chelsea had to say regarding their stop in Fresno last month. My first interview was a phone call after this night. “We just got out of IHOP this morning,” Lydia said, even though it was 2 p.m. The Fresno venue hooked it up with a $75 tab that, to Aroarah’s knowledge, was well surpassed. “We’ll definitely be going back,” Chelsea said. Sadly, Lydia’s vocal troubles kept her from partaking as she stuck her nose in a book and indulged in her vocal remedy of honey water and Chloraseptic strips.

States such as Utah that wield a cap of 3.2 percent alcohol by weight on beer sales get outsmarted by the raging ladies of Aroarah, who discovered an exception—Icehouse. “It’s 5.7 percent alcohol,” Morgan said. “But you have to get it from a specific liquor store at a specific time that’s run by the state”—making Icehouse not only difficult to swallow, but a chore to obtain.

The ladies of Aroarah spoke appreciatively about the promoters that gave them food, booze and sometimes a place to sleep and shower. But the band is anxious for bigger tours that come with full tour riders, and would love to stretch further east. What’s their first ridiculous rock star request? “Pink M&Ms,” Lydia joked. “I’ve decided that when we do get to have a decent tour rider, I’m requesting rainbow farts.”

Until the road calls again, Aroarah is back on its dull daily grind. In this down time, the band members are focused on recording and shopping new songs to labels in hopes of getting picked up by a major indie.

If the plan sticks, Aroarah will have another album ready by next summer, even if it’s self-released again.

This week the Boardwalk, the same venue that gave Aroarah its first gig, will commemorate nearly eight years of dedicated rocking with Aroarah’s The Big Package CD release party.

Sister Crayon to Release Its First Album as a Full Band

When Submerge spoke to Sister Crayon’s Terra Lopez, she and the band were mired in Southern California traffic. Currently on the road on the Broke Bitches tour along with fellow Sacramentans Agent Ribbons, Sister Crayon weren’t holed up “in a big van” like their tourmates. Instead, Lopez and company were situated in a cozy station wagon—a red Volvo.

Genaro in The Crawdad, a reliable yet cramped tour vehicle. She got us to where we needed to be

“It’s all over the place, actually,” Lopez says of Sister Crayon’s modest transportation. “But it’s been really good overall.”

Sister Crayon is still relatively young. The seeds for the band were first sown three years ago when Lopez’s prior band broke up and left her performing solo. She went on alone for about a year until she met Dani Fernandez, who plays drum machine and synthesizer for Sister Crayon. It was through this pairing that Sister Crayon’s sound began to take shape. Lopez says that when she was on her own, her music was “very quiet”—just Lopez and her guitar. Though she had used loop pedals and beat machines in her previous band, it wasn’t until she started working with Fernandez that Lopez began pooling all of her influences into her music. Lopez says that she and Fernandez “just clicked” and the two began incorporating hip-hop elements into Lopez’s not-quite-folksy singer/songwriter material.

“We both love hip-hop, but we like just all kinds of different music,” Lopez explains. “The first song we wrote together was ‘Lavender Liars'”¦ I played this weird organ and she just played beats over it, and it just stuck. We figured out that was what we wanted to do. When I met Dani, that’s when things changed. I was like, ‘I finally met someone who could help me out with the sounds I had.'”

Chelsea Wolfe and I at the Smell in L.A. This show was with VOICEs VOICEs
and had Keith Haring murals!

Even when Lopez was performing on her own, she recalls that she always felt as if her music would lend itself to a bigger sound.

“When I was playing by myself, I liked what I was doing, but I always heard more,” Lopez says. “I always wanted more.”

Sister Crayon’s sound became even fuller with the addition of keyboardist Genaro Ulloa-Juno. The band operated as a twosome for about a year until Ulloa-Juno entered into the mix. Lopez says that the multi-instrumentalist was an easy fit into the band’s dynamic.

“It came together really simply, actually,” she says. “I asked him over to my house one day to listen to some stuff and see if he could add any thing, and we just hit it off.”

The band grew even further only just recently. Nicholas Suhr hopped on board only a few months ago. Hailing from the Bay Area, Suhr is now Sister Crayon’s drummer, adding a visceral snap to the band’s ethereal electronic beats.

Dani at a mansion (literally) 5 houses down from Snoop Dogg. Crazy story how we ended up staying at a mansion but it was by far the best night on tour. Thank you Pomona, Calif.!

“It’s really awesome to have a fuller sound,” Lopez says.

Suhr’s drumming came at a crucial time for the band as they were preparing their first proper CD release. Lopez released a Sister Crayon album, Loneliness Is My Mother’s Gun, earlier in 2009 via Chicago indie label Juene Été Records; however, she says their upcoming effort will be more indicative of Sister Crayon’s current sound.

“That album is just my stuff; they’re bedroom recordings,” Lopez says of Loneliness”¦. “Dani’s on a couple of tracks on that as well. I never intended to put that out. I was just going to sell that for $5 at shows”¦but the label contacted me and they were like, ‘We really like what you’re doing. Can we put this out?’ And I was like, ‘Wow.’ They paid for it all, so I was like, ‘Sure.'”

On the other hand, Enter Into Holy (Or)ders, Sister Crayon’s upcoming release, features the entire band—including Suhr, who had only joined the group a “week or two” before they went into the studio.

Chelsea Wolfe, Nicholas Suhr and I passed out after the house party in Pomona, Calif. We were up until 5 a.m. with the most amazing new friends we met earlier that night.

“He had to learn and write all of his parts while we were recording,” Lopez says of Suhr’s kind of trial by fire. “It was really cool that he was able to do that, because we had all been playing those songs for months, and he had to learn everything in the studio.” Lopez called the recording sessions for the album “intense,” saying that the band was logging 14 – 18 hour days at The Hangar, where “¦Holy (Or)ders was recorded, produced by the band with help from Scott McChane, including “really long practices.”

The intensity with which “¦Holy (Or)ders was recorded is reflected in the music. Though Lopez says her lyrics and vocals are important to her, she says the album’s focus was more on the music.

“For me, for this album, I wanted the music to be the main focus because it was finally getting more intense, which is what I think we all wanted,” she explains.

Though her lyrics may have been more of an appetizer than “¦Holy (Or)ders‘s main course, Lopez believes the force of the band’s music has definitely rubbed off on her lyric writing. She says that her lyrics may have been more personal when Sister Crayon was a one-woman show; and though they still pull from her private life, her writing has become more aggressive. She says that the lyrics she wrote to the songs on “¦Holy (Or)ders revolve around the events of this past summer: including a relationship she’d entered into and a book she had been reading by controversial 20th century French writer Jean Genet. In fact, the title of the album is taken from a line in one of Genet’s books.

“He was one of the first French homosexual writers,” Lopez says. “His writing is really dirty and really aggressive. That kind of intrigued me.”

Performance-wise, Lopez is also no longer the quiet singer/songwriter with a guitar. She says that now that she has the power of a full band behind her, she’s had to become more assertive on stage.

“I sing a lot louder than I used to,” Lopez says through laughter.

Blessed with a stirring and soulful voice, a louder Lopez can only be considered a good thing. The band should be back home from the Broke Bitches Tour by the time this issue hits the streets. However, the band won’t be able to relax once they’re back in Sacramento. Lopez says Sister Crayon will quickly return to The Hangar to finish mixing “¦Holy (Or)ders so that it’s done by their CD release party on Aug. 21. Further on the horizon, Lopez says the band is hoping to have more of a nationwide tour, and in January, the band will perform in Spain, where their album will also see release.

Hardly Sleeping All Night

It wasn’t that long ago that a batch of pissed off, combat-booted, plaid-clad debutantes from the Pacific Northwest began creating racket in the garage, siphoning the marrow of blues, classic rock, psychedelia, punk and metal into a new kind of artistic fibula. The media called it grunge, but it was nothing if not a clean break from what had become a stale but ever-steady flow of rock-lite. To say that Sacramento’s Prieta is resurrecting the ghosts of grunge’s past would be wrong, and it would be incredibly stupid to boot. Which is why I didn’t do it”¦sort of. While the band has garnered (not unduly) comparisons to (insert genre here, anything but grunge) pioneers Soundgarden, the band isn’t out to emulate or revive a scene that died out pretty much exactly when it should have.

The band took some time out of their no-doubt busy schedules to talk to Submerge about, well, basically everything having to do with their band.

There’s an unmistakable late ’80s/early ’90s spin on blues, classic and psychedelic rock of the ’60s and ’70s in your music. It seems to remain almost exclusively true to that sound, with little modern embellishment. When you began, were you reticent to experiment with that to modernize it?
Alex Ayers (vocals): I assume you are talking about grunge. Which is a common thing mentioned to us, but none of us are huge grunge fans. We like select albums here and there, but that goes for any and all genres/decades. We have never even addressed the question of modern vs. vintage. There was never any expressed decision made in regards to our music. When the band was forming we would just sit around and jam out things that were easy to work as a group on. Our first batch of songs was absolutely not classic, so when the “classic” question comes up, we are kind
of dumbfounded.
Brian Breneman (drums): The part of the grunge thing I can understand is this: a lot of those bands took a decidedly less flamboyant, more back-to-basics approach to blues-based rock than what had been popular up to that point in time. But a unique take on the blues is nothing new. Bands from Deep Purple to Soundgarden to Queens of the Stone Age have all tapped into the same attitudes and musical conventions. I feel like we embody some of those principles.
Mat Woods (guitar): Everyone still likes Sabbath. Everyone still likes Creedence. If there was any decision made it was more along the lines of, “Let’s emulate bands that did a great job,” not, “let’s emulate bands that are doing new things.” But that is still a big “if.” All of the things I have written have been written because of something I was feeling or something I wanted to feel, and it really ends there.

In what ways did the band progress musically, and in your approach to recording, with your new EP, Sleep All Night?
AA: Preproduction: a concept we have to work harder and harder at every time we go into the studio. The goal of every recording is to, for lack of a better word, embarrass the last recording. We are learning right now. Yes, we perform. Yes, we record. But until we get label support, we are
at school.
BB: I think we’ve managed to make our sound even more focused. We were really trying to make a record that sounds like us playing in a room together. The less production, the better. Our heroes didn’t need a lot of technology to sound good. They wrote great songs and performed the hell out of them. From a recording standpoint, we just need to capture it.
Ian McLachlan (bass): All in all, it is the same as it has always been for me. As far as the new recording goes, I tried to not nit-pick the bass lines; work more off the cuff and allow a little more experimenting with amps and basses. We got to use a lot of different equipment.
MW: We figured out that the less we internalized things and talked about them the easier things were. We don’t talk about songs, we write them. Our most solid songs were written surprisingly fast.

What do you feel sets you apart from the retro rock revival, so to speak, so inherent in bands like Wolfmother, whom you’ve been compared to. Is your music meant to be an ironic homage?
AA: Not at all. As we have said before, our music is a result of many things; a sense of revival is definitely not one of them. If there is any irony around our band it is the fact that we keep getting compared to rock revival bands that we don’t even know about. It may seem like a small thing, but look at us. Only one of us has long hair, one of us types in an office all day, none of us have “style” we cling to. There is no image or sound we are going for and that right there is enough to set us apart from other dudes, other dudes that shop exclusively at their father’s closet. It isn’t us.
MW: Seriously. No frills. We are just an honest-to-god rock ‘n’ roll band.
BB: It’s just about the songs. I’m here to give something back for all the music I’ve enjoyed throughout my life. Sometimes it can be kind of a turn-off to see bands actively encourage people to not take them seriously, to stand behind a wink and not be giving 100 percent of themselves. I think it takes far more conviction to be able to honestly say that you don’t need to control how people understand your music. If it is real, then people will connect with it.

What has been the band’s response to such a quick ascent into the local spotlight?
AA: It has been quick, I agree, but we are nowhere near the spotlight. There are thousands of people in this town alone who have no idea we exist. We’re fuck all at this point.
BB: Thanks to all our fans! We’re glad you like it. It’s only going to get better.
IM: Any ascension is completely welcome to me. I am ready for it because I have been in a lot of bands that have received little or no attention. It’s not like it fazes me in any way. I have been hungry for this for years.
MW: It’s been a little unnerving. People think we have been around for years when we haven’t. We are just beginning. We’ve got a lot of shit to do.

Middle Class Rut

Cesar Chavez Park – Friday, June 19, 2009

Last Friday’s Concert in the Park Series at Cesar Chavez saw the triumphant return of Middle Class Rut, another long-awaited addition to the short list of bands that have found mainstream success beyond our county lines. This success is partly due to the overwhelming response to their 2008 single, “New Low,” that was played almost nonstop on the now-defunct KWOD 106.5. The stoner-friendly, alternative radio station was a huge proponent of the band. In fact, one year ago on the same exact stage, KWOD DJ Andy Hawk announced them before they hit the stage to a much smaller crowd.

MC Rut, as they are referred to in short, consists of Zach Lopez on guitar and vocals and Sean Stockham on drums and back up vocals. That’s right, they’re a duo. But before you make up your mind based on all the preconceived notions of what a duo can and can’t do, hear me out. They aren’t the White Stripes and they sure as hell aren’t Hella. The energy that is harnessed by these two is stadium caliber, as was witnessed by a huge crowd at the Rock-am-Ring festival in Germany last June. Cesar Chavez Park isn’t exactly a stadium, but it isn’t The Press Club either, and I’ve seen the boys murder that tiny venue to a crowd of 20 on a Sunday night. The point? They’re a versatile band that owns any crowd, and Friday night was no different.

A chant of “MC Rut!” welcomed the two onto the stage; each of them casually settling in to their instruments. Lopez jabbed at his guitar like a child taunting a beehive, the feedback buzzing like angry bees. Stockham adjusted his well-worn orange drum kit and removed his shirt to reveal his “For Sale” tattoo that was inked across his chest in bold red letters. “What’s up, Sacramento?” said Lopez in a classic rock star moment. “How you guys doing?” A loving Sacramento crowd that was clearly there to support their hometown favorite answered back with an eruption of applause.

MC Rut opened their set with “Busy Being Born,” their most recent single that began with one of Stockham’s signature rim tap grooves that Lopez overlaid with slow melodic chords that scraped and dragged while he sang, “The days keep dragging on”¦“ Anticipation mounted until finally the chorus exploded wide open, Stockham punishing his cymbals on each downbeat. A cloud of dust from the stampeding mosh pit was carried toward the stage by a much-welcomed Delta breeze. This would continue for the whole length of their set that would only build in intensity as Lopez and Stockham galloped through song after well practiced song.

During what seemed like the crux of the set, a murder of crows flew overhead to the wafting soundtrack of Lopez’s guitar that melodramatically pulsed in synch with the beating of their wings. “Hold the person you love tight,” Lopez instructed the mesmerized crowd who were eating out of his hand at this point. “I like the way your shirt’s unbuttoned,” Stockham joked with Lopez. Their humor on stage is evidence alone that these two have been friends and bandmates for over a decade now. They seem to be enjoying every moment of their second chance at success after their previous band, Leisure, was signed to and then dropped from Dreamworks.

Before their final song, a white tank top was hucked onto the stage, landing at the feet of Lopez, who remarked that he’d rather they get some bras and panties. And, like clockwork, a black strapless bra made its way to the stage. Stockham was pleased and proceeded to strap the bra on himself with a little help from Lopez, who was all smiles at his bandmate’s cross-dressing showmanship. The familiar metallic percussion that opens “New Low” began, and at that point the whole crowd was in it. They sang every last word of the tune with fists pumping and heads nodding.