The Shams Band, a rambunctious and eclectic alt-country band based here in Chicago, are headlining the Chicago Roots Collective One Year Anniversary Showcase January 27th at Lincoln Hall. (Also performing: Derek Nelson & The Musicians and Cole DeGenova & The People’s Republic. The show starts at 8pm and tickets are $8.) One of the group’s three songwriters and singers, Donnie Biggins, answered some of our questions in the days before the show.

Assault.it: Your new thing is this record Champagne.

Donnie: Yes.

And that came out last year.

Yeah, it came out September 2010.

And before that you had an EP, right?

We had a three song EP that came out a year before that.

So this is your first full length album.

It’s a nine song -- you know, some people call it an EP, some people call it a full length. Definitely a larger project than the previous stuff.

How did you guys approach that differently?

We basically waited until we were ready to -- we actually recorded twelve songs. We just approached it by being fully prepared to go into the studio and get the drum tracks for twelve in a weekend.

Where did you guys record this at?

We recorded at a place called Kilo Studios in Pilsen.

Did you guys have a producer?

In a way. Paul [Gulyas], my bandmate, is a sound engineer and he did the majority of the recordings. But at the studio, we worked with a guy that we credited, Mitchell Cepaitis, who also mixed and mastered Champagne.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NIaExbH2bQ

You guys split the songwriting up 3 ways, right?

Yes.

How does that work itself out -- how did you come up with these 12 song?

They were just our favorite songs that we had been playing, and the majority of the songwriting is right now coming from Paul and myself. Brian [Patterson] is still pretty new to songwriting, and we have two of his songs that we play and that we actually recorded. But how we go about it, presenting songs to one another, is we kinda come up with them on our own and then present them to the group. Then we read off each other how it’s coming out, people’s reactions and any ideas that come up for the first time when we play a new song.

What instrument do you like to write with?

I’d say all the songwriters start with an acoustic guitar.

What’s your personal process for coming up with lyrics? How do you decide what you’re going to sing about?

I use straight life experiences. I never try to sit down and force songs out of me. It has to happen kinda in the moment.

What are some of your favorite places to play in Chicago?

I think we’ve played all the 500-person venues, but some of our favorites would definitely be Lincoln Hall and Schubas. Double Door. We actually we like playing out in Berwyn, at FitzGerald’s. It’s a real good country bar.

How would you classify the sound of the Shams Band?

I think it’s kind of a country rock / alternative country type of band. A lot of music, no matter what, stems from the blues, and you can hear that naturally coming out of us. But when you start with an acoustic guitar, a lot of it tends to be a folk song that’s then turned into a rock song when you add electric [guitar] and bass and drums.

How did you get interested in this particular kind of music?

Had to be from listening to a lot of Woody Guthrie in my early 20s. Just spending a lot of time listening to him, learning his picking techniques. So basically from Woody Guthrie.

Who were some other influential artists?

Definitely Jeff Tweedy. Conor Oberst from Bright Eyes. People still that I’m listening to today would be Avett Brothers, they’ve got a big influence on me.

Who are some of your favorite local bands?

Well, we’re luckily sharing the bill with one of our good friends and probably my favorite songwriter right now, Derek Nelson. There’s also a rock band called the Ornery Little Darlings -- their album has been on rotation a long time on our record player.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV1TTqO8r94

Do you guys play mostly around here, or do you go out a lot?

We’ve gone out a few times in the past year. That’s definitely the goal of 2011, is to be going out a lot more around the Midwest. We’ve been to Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa -  we’re just trying to revisit those places and add more dates in different towns. You know, an ideal places we like to find are the small town bars that maybe don’t have venues but they have a small stage and they give you a beer deal. That’s the environment we thrive in.

What do you like about that?

The people. The kind of people who hang out in dive-y bars always seem to just have no care in the world. They just want to enjoy themselves and dance. They’re not judging you, or even caring about anything -- they’re just there to listen to music and move their body.

When you guys play a place like that, do you throw in a lot of covers, or do you stick to your own stuff?

When we first started, we learned a few covers, just ’cause we were a young band. I don’t know if we ever practice them, but we have been known to pull them out sometimes. But we always try to stick to our originals, and we try to make sure that our originals are worth playing. We don’t want to play a cover song to get a crowd excited -- we’d rather be playing one of our own songs.

How’d you four guys start playing music together?

We have known each other since high school. We’re all from Oak Park. Brian and Paul were in a high school band together. And then while I was in college, I started playing music, so when I came home we just kinda got together. We signed up to play a small street festival in Forest Park. It was kinda just for fun, and it’s still for fun, but we started presenting our own music and it’s just continued to grow ever since that. And we do have a fifth member now, that we’ve been playing with for a year -- well, not a full year yet. He kinda committed around the time we were releasing the CD so we didn’t have him on the picture yet. Ben White, he’s a banjo player, and a percussionist, and a cello player. We haven’t featured the cello yet.

What are your goals beyond going out more this year? Are you gonna work on a new record?

Yeah, we’ve started that. We don’t have any prediction for when we’ll be finished with it, but we’re back in the studio, probably once a week. We do two or three practices and try to spend some time recording, too, every week.

Are you guys moving in any different directions?

Um, I don’t really know how to answer that. There is some similar stuff in the type of energy that we’re bringing into the songs, but I think a lot of it is different. We recorded our EP, and then Champagne ended up sounding different from the EP. So I think there’ll be some more, and I don’t know what some more will be, but I think it will be a little bit different.

How have you guys progressed since the early days?

I think one thing that we’ve definitely improved on throughout our whole career so far is the live performance, and engaging our audience. I think that’s something that happens naturally the more you’re playing out, and the more you’re playing for people who aren’t your friends and family. That’s when you really improve, because you have to grab a stranger’s attention.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hcqbqrl0_rc

The Shams Band:

• Official Site
• MySpace
• Facebook
• Bandcamp

Hey, it’s another interview! This time Oswald focuses his question laser on Alicia Dara, of Seattle’s The Volcano Diary, and turns it up to 11, asking some typically hard-hitting questions about what her new album is like, how she made it, and whether there are still grunge bands wandering around in the Pacific Northwest. You don’t want to miss this fabulous installment of America’s Favorite Podcast, Audio Assault!

For more info on The Volcano Diary, go here or here.

Direct Hit! is the best band to come out of Wisconsin since The Beatles. They recently released their fourth EP (#4) and it’s so awesome that we felt compelled to act DH! mastermind Nick Woods some probing questions in an attempt to get to the bottom of this Direct Hit! phenomenon. Read on to discover what gets the band pumped, where their ideas come from, and how the band would (probably) fare in a pull-up contest against the Assault.it crew.

Assault.it: What gets you pumped? Where do you find inspiration in your daily life?

Nick Woods: That’s a pretty heavy question. If you mean “daily life” as in, “what I do at work most days, and what I do after work when I get back to my apartment,” I’m usually pretty “inspired” by my live-in girlfriend and my paycheck. If you mean what inspires me to make music, that pretty much came from listening to too much Metallica in middle school, too much Green Day in high school, and not enough of either now that I’m in my 20s.

As far as our overall sound evolving -- I don’t worry about it too much. I think it all goes back to boredom. I write different-sounding songs when I’m bored of the old ones. But thus far, I’ve written over twenty songs with Direct Hit, and the vast majority are made up of Gb, Ab, Bb, and Db power chords, played in different orders, with different rhythms, and different vocal parts. I think we’ve done a pretty good job making a lot out of a little, and I don’t think we’ve exhausted the possibilities yet.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4l-ePeq8bI

What’s the hardest part of being in Direct Hit?

There’s honestly not a lot that can be construed as difficult with Direct Hit. And if something becomes difficult, we usually find a way to either kill it, or avoid it. I wanted this band to be 100% fun from the very beginning. So if something isn’t fun, we usually don’t do it. We won’t play a show unless we think there’s a reasonable chance that we’ll be able to party. We don’t sit and practice 4 bars of a song for hours at a time. That’s the kind of stuff that turns playing in a band into a job, and I’ve already got one of those. I don’t need another. It’s obviously work getting a tight band together, but I think there’s a line between ‘tight’ and ‘perfect’ that I’m not all that psyched about crossing. Not because I think a perfect band doesn’t sound good. It’s just cause sometimes I’d rather go get wasted at my apartment and watch Terminator than practice.

You guys have a super-catchy slogan w/ the “Fuck you! Get pumped!” Where did that come from?

When Direct Hit first started, I used to tell people to get pumped just as an obnoxious slogan to signify what we were all about. We’ve never really written ‘music with a message.’ But you can’t really tell people that, because then they think your group doesn’t have a point. It’s weird that everyone’s band has to be ‘political,’ or ‘emo,’ or ‘DIY,’ or ‘funny,’ or ‘traditional’ or whatever nowadays. And I thought it was weird how novel it had become for a band to just play to entertain other people, instead of making some kind of grandiose statement about how the rest of the world should be leading its collective life. So ‘get pumped’ was just kind of the most obvious message -- that we write music to psych people up, or to excite a crowd. We aren’t trying to inspire thought, but we’re definitely trying to inspire a feeling. Kid Rock tries to do the same thing though, and his music blows, so maybe it’s not the best mission statement. I guess we’ll find out.

We added the ‘fuck you’ just because we think it’s funny. Profanity usually makes anything a lot more hilarious, in my book.

Is there any particular reason you chose to release 5 EPs rather than a full length? Is it easier or harder to write songs when you know you’re writing for an EP?

There are a lot of reasons we’ve approached recording that way. I guess it all stems from the fact that I’m a pretty vain guy, and like having good, well-produced copies of the songs I’ve worked on. Problem is that you have to pay if you want to do that kind of thing, and I’m not good at saving money. So it was a lot easier for me, especially in the beginning, to fund those kind of recordings if I did them in little batches, on a more frequent basis. We’ve gone into every session having more than four songs written, but we’ve usually picked the best four, and just rolled with those so I didn’t have to come up with money for twice the time in a studio.

As time went on, I think we stuck with the 4-song formula just because it’s easier to hold people’s attention if you’re putting new stuff out every few months, instead of once every couple of years. Plus, it gave us a chance to try new things in the studio and hone the sound we wanted without pissing off an audience that had invested two years of time into our band, only to get a piece of shit full-length record. Releasing small batches of songs kind of gives you a built in do-over since you have new stuff coming out so often.

By my calculations, you guys are the second craziest thing to ever emerge from Wisconsin (after the practice of dissolving bodies in industrial tubs of acid once the flesh has been removed and stored safely in a refrigerator). Is there something in the WI water that makes you guys nuts? Or do you come by it “the hard way”?

I dunno man. There’s plenty of crazy fucking people that hang out at Lambeau Field in -2 degree weather multiple times a year. I think we’re pretty low on the totem pole in comparison.

What are your ultimate plans for Direct Hit? How far will you pursue this dream of musical superstardom?

We don’t really make plans, to tell you the truth. The way we figure it, if we keep having a ludicrously good time, the people coming to see us play will too. And when you think about it, that’s really the best dumb business strategy any band can have -- Make sure you bring an awesome time with you wherever you go.

I can’t speak for the other members in my band, but I’m not pursuing musical superstardom. If someone wants to pay me a few million bucks for my tunes, and I don’t have to work again for the rest of my life as a result, I welcome those phone calls. That shit doesn’t happen though -- I know from experience. You make a living like that by spending 10 years acting like a bitch backstage at the Warped Tour, kissing some stage manager’s ass just to get moved from the 1:30PM to the 2:00PM time slot on some side stage, so you can play to 150 uncaring teenagers instead of 100. Fuck that. Like I said before, I’ve got a job -- I don’t need another one. I’d rather keep playing music for fun and work at a slightly less cool day job. It’s way more awesome for me to show up at a house with 40 people I know personally who are ready to party and get nuts than it is playing for a thousand strangers, half of whom are there because they want to get laid.

Will you ever re-release the older EPs in the series, or are those forever lost to the sands of time?

We don’t have plans to re-release any of them ourselves, but if someone wants to pay to put ‘em out, I don’t think any of us will raise a stink about it. The full length we eventually release will probably be compiled from all of the best songs on our EPs, so people will have a chance to listen to what we think is the best stuff we’ve written. But if you wanna hear the old material, you’ll probably have to get it either from me, or from people who have copies.

Do you have any advice for young bands just getting started? What do you consider the working musician’s best tools in this day & age, besides good songwriting and hallucinogens?

The best advice? Work on your skills first, and your MySpace page later. People care about the latter a lot less than you might think when the first half is good.

The best tools? Good equipment, Bandcamp.com, Gmail, a cell phone, and a reliable van. You don’t need much more than that.

Do you have any musical recommendations for our readers? Real boner-popping crazy shit that will make us go nuts, please.

Career Suicide‘s album Attempted Suicide hasn’t left the CD player in my car for the last month. Them, and their guitarist’s other band, Fucked Up, are my two favorite punk rock bands at the moment. Fucked Up has a split coming out with NOFX soon, I think, if it hasn’t come out already, that I’m pretty psyched out of my mind about.

If we had done this interview in person, after your show at Slam Castle, Tim planned to challenge the entire band to a pull-up contest. (He installed a pull-up bar in his apartment.) Do you think you would have won? If so, why?

Nope. I’m a fatass. So’s Danny. So’s Mike. Alex has problems with fainting, so she’s out too. Robbie would’ve owned all of you though -- He builds houses in Winter in Wisconsin. You don’t fuck with people like that. At least I don’t.

Direct Hit!:

• Band Camp
• MySpace
• Facebook
• Last FM
• Death To False Hope Records

Anyone who’s lived in the South knows that if you’re not a country band, metal band, or rapper–that there’s really no scene for your particular genre of music. If you plucked Newamerica (formerly The Discover Radio) out of Clarksville and plopped them into the local pop-punk scene in any big city there’s no doubt they’d fit right in.

Assault.it: I noticed you guys are from Clarksville, Georgia. If Georgia is anything like I remember (I went to school at SCAD) then it probably sucks in that area. Have you had luck touring locally in your area, and if so, what’s the scene like in that region of the country?

Jared: Yeah, Georgia seems to get a pretty bad reputation – not only for its lack of a defined music scene, but also for its lack of. . . well, things to do. We are from Clarkesville. We don’t kid ourselves like a lot of Georgia pop/punkers and say we’re from the ATL. We’re not that cool. But I think we like that about us – it fits. We’re just some honest kids who do what we can musically, and then hang out and do the whole small-town thing in the meantime. I guess we are what we seem to be – not trying to be city kids with bright purple shirts with monsters on them. Just normal, small-town kids. As far as the music scene goes, there isn’t really one – at least for our genre. And the bands that are in it, we’re not really into. This has probably been good for us though, allowing us to define our own sound and mature at our own pace.

If you had to pick your biggest influences as a band, who would it be and why?

Alex: We have a lot of different individual influences. Some bands that have definitely influenced us as a whole are Taking Back Sunday, New Found Glory, The Get Up Kids, Jimmy Eat World, and Brand New.

Assault.it: I noticed that your MySpace didn’t have any tour dates on it–any plans to totour in the near future? Are there any other bands in your area you’d like to tour/play with?

Joel: Well, as of now, we’re in the studio for a few more weeks (which we’re super stoked about), we are beginning to book for the month of March and we’ll be doing mini tours throughout the spring to build up some hype about the band. We like to think that this is a new era for the band so we’re making sure that everything is sort of ‘ in-tune so we can take Georgia as a whole instead of bits and pieces. We’re currently booking a 3 week summer tour that’ll be all the way up the East coast. As far as bands in our area, there aren’t too many as it is. They’re either metal or country. So I’m going to have to say, as of now, we’re in the works of building a scene for this area.

Seems to me like you guys were early adopters into the pop-punk scene–any ideas where your music is headed next? Will you be at the forefront of the next major shift in the punk/rock genre?

Jared: We like to think that we were kind of part of this incredible scene from the beginning – well, as much as we could be for being our age. As far as where the direction our music is heading – it’s hard to say exactly, but I do know it will not be electronic. We did that whole thing, it got wore out, so we’re out. I think just solid pop/punk-genuine pop/punk – a genre that has been messed with and messed up by so many bands these days that it’s almost lost the very thing that attracted us to it in the beginning – that’s what we’re hoping for at least! We’ll see! I think we have the potential to redirect the scene, but we’re still learning ourselves (and I mean that doubly).

Can you walk us through the process in which you create songs from concept to actualization, especially the song writing process?

Alex: We don’t really have a set way of writing our songs. Usually either Jared will start the process with something he wrote on the guitar, or it starts with a melody or lyrics on Joel’s end. Once the song idea has been thought out, we add drums, bass, more guitar, and lead. It’s nothing too complicated but it seems to work out well.

What separates you from the rest of the bands out there on the scene now?

Jared: I think the biggest thing that separates us from the rest of the bands in the scene right now is the fact that we actually have a genuine sincerity for the scene. We’ve grown up in it and kind of know the history of it – so our appreciation goes deeper than the All Time Low rip-off band’s. That and the fact that we are pretty nice guys – we don’t think higher of ourselves than anyone else. We listen to every band we play with, whether it’s four hours before our set, or four hours after. We care about people, we care about the scene, and we just want to get as much out of this as we can. Also, we’re not trying to hook up with any of the desperate-for-attention girls that feed off the scene at the shows.

If we were to give everyone to read this article $3, what would you have them do with it?

Alex: I’d say buy some songs from our EP! Or buy some songs from other local bands who could really use the money.

If everyone we gave $3 was forced to buy songs form your album, what 3 would you say were your best and why?

Joel: Jeez, this is a tough one. Well, I really don’t know. We’ve changed so much since we’ve recorded those songs. I’d feel weird recommending those songs to anyone now that we’ve started recording our new stuff. But I’d say “I’ve Got You,” “Raising the Bar,” and “What’s Missing.” But I’d definitely tell them our new stuff is something to look out for!

Is there anyone you wouldn’t want to listen to your music?

Jared: Of course not! I want everyone to listen to us! Metalheads and gangsta-thugs alike. All are wanted.

On a dream tour, who would you be playing with? Who would be your openers?

Jared: Dream tour: Paramore (those guys are legit people), Hellogoodbye (preferably with the old members because they were hilarious), You Me and Everyone We Know (maybe the best EP of all time), and either Jimmy Eat World, Panic!, or FOB, just ’cause. I can’t imagine any of them opening for us. They are such good role models.

Have you had any interest from record labels? What would be your dream label to sign to?

Joel: Well, we’re working on some new stuff for several labels. We’d love to be a part of Fueled By Ramen, Doghouse, Epitaph, and Fearless.  We don’t have an interest in the majors. We aren’t in this for the money. We love music and the people who love ours. Indie labels are where it’s at.

Have you had any crazy ideas to help market yourselves? (Such as secret shows, an impromptu show in a mall, or dropping your cds in stores on your own.)

Alex: One day, after Different & We Know It had just been released, we went to the mall to try and sell some CDs but ended up handing them out more than selling them. Back in high school I used to walk around the halls selling them to my friends or whoever I thought would by one.

It seems like you guys go way back as friends and aren’t just band buds–have any crazy stories that happened when you were younger, or while you were in the band?

Jared: Yes we do! Joel, Jordan, and Jared are family, so we have thousands of stories about our ridiculously awesome family times. And we know Jo from playing in a church youth band in middle school. One thing that I think most people will find hilarious – and they may get mad at me for saying – is that Joel and Alex met each other after Alex started dating Joel’s ex, then were on the same rec. basketball team.

Alex: There’s been so many crazy, awesome times. The funniest time was probably after one of our shows us and a bunch of our friends went to Steak & Shake. Joel was dared to drink from his coke using a cigarette as a straw. One of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.

Joel: Well, to set the record straight, Alex and I met before he dated my ex, which is even worse. But I think, like Jared said, we all go so far back that we’re truly all like family.  Sometimes we fuss, complain, and push each other around, but there isn’t really ever any band drama. We all have each others backs.  We’re like the Jersey Shore group in a way. I’m Mike, Jared’s Pauly D, Alex is Vinny, Jordan would be Ronny, and Jo would be Angelina (but mainly ’cause he has been here for the shortest of time).  No, we don’t all live on the beach, we’re not super tan, we don’t wear sleeveless shirts or use hair product, but we do try and make something fun out of every situation that gets thrown our way. One time, when we played with Sparks the Rescue, there was this crazy, rabid dog in someone’s car, and Pat (Sparks), Jared, and I took turns taking people to see the dog. When they got close to the window, the thing went crazy. It’s one of those, you had to be there, kind of things. But you really can’t ever tell what might happen next. We’re a pretty fun group though.    

Newamerica:

• MySpace
• Twitter

The Invincible Gods is a band that needs no introduction. But, for the people that really enjoy introductions, here’s one anyway: They’re from New Jersey, it’s two dudes and a lady, and they play a truly rad amalgam of punk, garage, and shoegaze, draping everything in the kind of psychedelic goodness that triggers violent acid flashbacks. They recently took some time out of their busy schedule to answer a few of our questions about their creative process, the excellent genes they’ve been blessed with, and Jared Leto’s stint in the Hitler Youth.

Assault.it: You guys are all ridiculously good-looking, yet you don’t include any photos of yourselves with your CD. Isn’t that kind of a missed opportunity?

Sean: Well, we’re also pretty humble – epically humble, in fact. We’re so humble that we didn’t want to go rubbing our extreme gorgeousness in anyone’s face, but thank you. We’re flattered. Next time, we’ll send out pictures and locks of hair.

How did you guys all hook up? I know Nick and Sean have some history together, but what was the genesis of Invincible Gods?

Sean: Well, we’re billions of years old, so it’s actually weird how long it took for us to all meet.

Candace: I’m kinda foggy on the details. I do remember going to one awesome raging house party in LA and waking up 2 weeks later in a van in New Hope, though. At first I thought I was being kidnapped again, but, no, it turns out I just joined a new band.

Sean: Nick and I played together in The Atomic Missiles [as a side note: you can download every A-Missiles song for free @ http://www.reverbnation.com/theatomicmissiles ] for years. We got together in NJ, moved to Brooklyn, and then again to Hollywood, where we eventually split up. That’s also where we met Candace and started jamming together. It was supposed to be just for fun, but it came together so naturally.

Nick: Then we moved back to NJ and fell under the influence of a few cool bands like Screaming Females, Thomas Francis Takes His Chances, The Imperialists, The Sex Zombies, and later, Ben Franklin, A few of those bands have been sort of starting a resurgence of the old streetwave scene.

Candace, according to the press release in my hands, you’re Alaskan. What’s that like?

Candace: I can see Russia from my backyard. I left because I was sick of being chased by giant moose and catching wild lynx, I’m still not quite used to the weather outside of my igloo.

Nick: Alaska has to be the most gnarly place I’ve ever come from. Those are some mean hills up there. Everywhere you turn there is flannel, guns, saloons…. It’s kind of like the Canadian wild west with people riding snow mobiles instead of horses. And there’s bears! Up there those motherfuckers got horns! Everything is extreme.

Sean: Ummm, Nick?

Nick: Yeah?

Sean: You’re from NJ. We grew up together.

Nick: Oh.

What’s your songwriting process? Who brings what to the table?

Sean: Usually, we meditate for thirty to forty minutes in the dungeon before lighting the ceremonial candles and drinking mugs of absinthe. By the time that is over, the song has revealed itself to us and we begin the process of etching it into stone. A lot of times when we tell people that we take a long time writing songs, they think we take a long time coming up with the ideas for songs or for the way that we are going to play them. That simply isn’t true. We are literally carving the songs into granite. It’s not easy. Nick holds the granite over his head, while Candace and I take turns carving words into it. It’s honestly a group effort.

What was the recording process like for Slightly More Ballsy Than Pretentious? It’s pretty short but stylistically elaborate – does that take a lot of time, or is it pretty natural?

Sean: I’d say both. It comes extrememly naturally, but in a band with one guitarist and no bass, it takes a certain amount of time to lay down all of those tracks, no matter what.

Candace: Yeah. But if you subtract all the time we spent playing shows, going to shows, eating, sleeping, watching tv, having parties, cleaning up parties, instructing yoga, posing nude for art classes, watching iMax porno, baking cookies, making up complicated handshakes, talking about streetwave, voodoo zombies, robbing banks, and being hung-over it was actually really short. Like 2 days.

Sean: Not to mention, the temple we rented to record in was filled with snakes and spiders. That took forever to sort out.

I know bands hate to explicitly discuss their influences, but who influences the Invincible Gods?

Sean: A lot of what we do is shaped by people who have influenced us outside of the music world. If it weren’t for Kurt Vonnegut, George Carlin, Aleister Crowley, and other great 20th century minds, we wouldn’t be making the music we are in this new millenium. Musically I think my biggest sources of inspiration are probably The Velvet Underground, Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, psychedelic Beatles stuff, and, of course, The Ramones, but I try to listen to other people’s favorite music as much as possible, just to keep my mind open. At this point, I’m just as comfortable listening to Drake, The Grateful Dead, and Taylor Swift as I am with Iggy and The Stooges or The Misfits.

Nick: I think that what we are influenced by plays a little bit bigger role in our music than who. I mean we grew up listening to a lot of punk rock in high school and then later broadened our horizons and really started listening to almost everything. We really just wanted to make awesome punk rock that you can dance too. But most of our songs are really influenced by the experiences of life, the ups and downs, love, parties, religion etc.

Candace: For me, Karen O from the YeahYeahYeahs and Blondie.

30 Seconds to Mars stole your album cover. What the fuck is up with that?

Sean: I keep reading on the internet that Jared Leto is a big fan of ours, but I’ve never met him or anything. It’s weird, we were just sort of minding our own business and then some corporate rock band from Hollywood comes along and vomits at our party.

Nick: That’s not even the worst of it. He entitled it This Is War, declaring war on us. I’d like to put his nuts in a Slap Chop.

Candace: Jared Leto is almost my favorite actor, only after Freddie Prinze Jr. I loved watching him get hacked to pieces in American Psycho.

Sean: I wouldn’t be so offended if they weren’t so godawful. Their music is like easy listening for teenage girls who cut themselves. It makes me feel hopeless. If Andrew W.K. or Jack White stole our album art, we could live with it. But, 30 Seconds to Mars? Just horrible. A lot of people think we hate them because of the Nazi rumors about Jared Leto, or the kiddie porn that people have alleged that 30STM makes, but really, it’s just because of how terrible their music is. We’re not the type of people who go around spreading rumors, you know? I mean, who cares if people say he was in the Hitler Youth? We’re not just going to believe everything people tell us. But even if they are good people, it doesn’t make up for their sonic awfulness.

—

Invincible Gods on the Interweb:

• MySpace
• ReverbNation
• Official Site
• CDBaby

The Action Blast is undoubtedly one of the coolest new bands in Chicago. They played their first show in December and formed shortly before that, but their sound is fully-formed and exceptionally confident. We were lucky enough to score an interview with the band’s guitarist, Kevin Singleton, and he explained who the band is, what they do, and why they’ll never compromise or water down the intensity of their rock attack.

Assault.it: Since there isn’t very much info about the band online (besides I’ve recently learned that Anthony was in Inept and that you all have a connection to them in some way or another) can  we get a basic introduction about everyone in the band, who they played with before, how you all met each other, and how The Action Blast formed?

Kevin: Me and Anthony formed Inept. I was actually the first original member of a previous band to Inept that fell apart. We needed a new singer and found Anthony, and Inept formed. Dan was also the last drummer for Inept for about 4 months. Eric (Guitar) and Joel (Bass) were in some local bands here and there in Chicago as well.

You mentioned honest rock music on your tumblr studio blog, how would you classify yourselves into a genre of music, and who influences your style of music most?

We are a rock band. Some of our songs are aggressive, some are a bit upbeat; we are just first and foremost a rock band, though. We are seriously just all about rocking and having a good time. We write our music for ourselves and we’re not trying to follow any trends or be anything besides our band.

I noticed some of your songs had funny names – like “Sports Center” – while you were tracking them in the studio. Besides music, where else do you find inspiration?

Yeah. “Where We build A Life” was called “Devastator.” “Let This Go” was called “Boom Da Boom.” We have a few other songs with weird names like “Thunderdome” and “Gunslinger.” We don’t take anything too seriously; we are just dudes who love having a good time and hanging with people and such. We like sports, video games, and the norm. We’re just dudes who happen to be in a rock band.

On Assault.it we’re all about spreading the love around, are there any local acts right now that you’re following closely that you’d like to someday play with?

All the bands we follow we ususally play with. With our old bands we pretty much played with everyone in Chicago, and now it’s just all about rebuilding and such. Our current local favorites are Made Avail, On The Front, Seven Day Sonnet, and our singer Anthony is really digging this new band Trainwreck Symphony. I’d also like to give a shoutout to my boys in Artifex Pereo, they are our best friends on earth and their band is amazing.

Being that we’re all from Chicago, it’s important to us at Assault.it that you like a baseball team. Sox or Cubs?

Well, it’s funny – three of us are diehard Sox fans, and one of us is a Cubs fan. He gets roasted about it all the time.

What are the plans on releasing the full length album in its entirety?

We have big plans for the future and a full length is for sure one of them.

What separates The Action Blast from the majority of the bands out there now?

We are just trying to do our own thing, not mock anyone else. We have a bunch of newer music coming out that goes into a few different areas. We are also very hungry, excited, and are not slowing down for anyone. This is our band, our terms, our lives. Hopefully people can find the sincerity in how we are approaching this band lyrically. This is real life, no sugarcoated BS. This is who we are.

If you had to choose a career path of another band that you’d like to model yourselves after who would it be and why?

It would probably be a band like Metallica. They toured and toured and toured till the end of time. That is what we want to do. If we can play 400 shows in 365 days we’ll do it.

Ever cover any other bands live or have any plans to do so in the future? If so, what songs?

Nope. Probably won’t, either. If we had to do a cover, though, I always wanted to do “Kiss From A Rose” by Seal.

I was lucky enough to see your live show in December. What’s different about your live show that makes it worth seeing?

Our show in December was our first show ever. We were very blessed to play with Lucky Boys Confusion for our first show. What you can expect from us is the fact that we live up to our name. We want to be 30 straight minutes of energy. We leave everything we have on the stage and we’ve only played five shows now. It’s just going to get more and more and more intense.

Was there ever a time that you hit a crossroads and decided that you wanted to make music your life? Can you describe that moment?

I was 15 years old and I wanted a guitar. Since that moment I first got my guitar, I knew what I wanted to do with my life.

From concept to realization, can you walk us through your song writing process?

Well, so far the writing has been myself writing the music at home. All the songs so far I wrote for this project aside from one of the riffs Anthony brought to the table. The songs were mostly too aggressive for my older band, so I took the music home and worked on the songs for myself. I present the music to the band and everyone puts in their part. Then Anthony comes in last and lays his vocal ideas over the music.

What’s the hardest part about being an opening band?

The hardest part about being an opening band is that sometimes people don’t pay attention to you, or don’t think you are worth their time. Just remember all those headliners that you see were all opening bands at one time too. Everyone starts somewhere.

To date what’s the best show you’ve ever played either with TAB or when you were all in other bands?

The best show we’ve ever played with Tab so far was probably this Saturday at Beat Kitchen, it was our first headline show and we were very stoked about it. The first show was great too, I can honestly say that so far every show we’ve played has been a great time.

When you’re not working on music what do you like to do?

Watching some TV, playing games, hanging with friends. Normal stuff, go catch new bands, book shows, keep working.

Zombies or vampires? (Pre-Twilight vampires)

Vampires. When I think of the word “vampire,” I never think of Twilight. I think of The Lost Boys or Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Spike and Angel were bad ass.

Is there any band you wouldn’t play with? Be honest.

No. We’d love to get our music out to everyone. Although I don’t think playing with Kenny G would go over so well.

If you were going to play a dream tour with 4 bands (including yourselves) who would it be?

Rise Against, Story of the year, Thrice, and Deftones. That would be one of my favorite shows ever.

If you were a force to be reckoned with in the industry, with a huge loyal following of fans, what would be one thing you’d to to mobilize the troops and change the world?

I think I would just keep everything the same, and just tell everyone of our fans to check out smaller bands. We’re all about helping as many people as possible.

Some bands – in fact, a lot of bands – don’t party anymore because of contracts with labels or their moral beliefs. Do you party?

We party. However I do not drink. The other guys do but there is no drug use.  Although I don’t think you need that kind of stuff to have a good time. We can get down all night and get rowdy until the break of dawn without that kind of stuff.

What are your deal breakers when it comes to compromising your song writing, music style, and or beliefs as it pertains to music?

We write our songs for ourselves, we don’t write songs that other people think we should write. Our music style will always be what we want. It has to be done our way. Nobody else’s opinion counts aside from our own. One thing this band has is artistic integrity.

With the evolution of the web, and the removal of “the gatekeepers,” how has that changed the way you market yourselves as a band?

We don’t really care about the internet right now. We’re using real personal connection to get out there. We like to go to shows, meet new people, and really go out there and show people that this band is more than an internet-based band. We want to really get to know our fans and have them be a part of something. I feel that the whole internet thing has really made things impersonal and we would really like to change that.

Do you ever think you’ll sign to a record label, and if so, do you have any in mind that you think would be a good fit?

We would love to sign to a label. We don’t have a specific one in mind, we just want to be given a fair chance of showing our music to the masses. So if any labels are looking for a band that is willing to tour forever, and write honest rock music, we are your band! We’d like to be on a major label because we feel that radio play and promo is crucial for a band like us. However we’ll take anything that can help us advance our musical career.

One of my favorite things about your live show is getting the crowd involved, specifically at your show at Beat Kitchen on the 23rd Anthony had everyone turn to the right and left and introduce themselves and make friends. Who was the best friend you’ve ever met at a show?

That’s something Anthony has been doing for years. We’ve actually had a couple meet at a show and get married – how rad is that? I can honestly say that via shows I personally have met some amazing people. Other amazing bands, and one of my best friends I’ve met via my music is this dude Justin Roelfs. If it wasn’t for music I probably would not know that dude. Same with a few of my current and past band members. I owe my life to music and am thankful for it every day.

More Action Blast:

• MySpace
• Tumblr
• Twitter

Anna Vogelzang is what we in the industry call “the total package.” She writes her own songs, she plays a variety of instruments with impressive skill, and she’s a charismatic, compelling live performer. She’s someone to look out for on the current indie scene, and she has a new record coming out this year called Paper Boats that mixes the unvarnished honesty of her earlier work with a more polished and professional sound. Ms. Vogelzang was kind enough to share some early mixes of that record with us, and I’m happy to report that it’s one that’ll definitely rack up massive play counts in your iTunes when it drops a little bit later in 2010. She was also nice enough to answer some of our questions via e-mail, the transcript of which is below. Enjoy:

AssaultBLOG: How long have you been making music for?

Photograph by Anna Dakini

Anna Vogelzang: I’ve been writing for about ten years, but I’ve been making music my whole life. I always sang and took piano lessons growing up, and our entire family is musical. Pretty much my entire extended family — grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles — are all musical in some capacity; my mom is a professional singer and conductor, and my dad sings and plays a few instruments. It was just inherent. I always wrote poetry, and I started writing songs on piano and guitar in my freshman year of high school. I joined a rock/funk band as their lead singer when I was about sixteen and loved it — the band co-wrote songs and I loved being part of a group. When I got to college I started digging into writing and performing as a solo singer/songwriter, and that first fall of 2003 I put out my first “real” CD for sale. I’ve been going on guitar, piano, banjo & baritone uke since then.

What is the scene in Madison like? What made you choose Madison as your home base?

I honestly never thought I’d end up in Madison. Due to a long series of unexpected events, I just kind of landed here. When I moved here from Chicago I had visited quite a bit, and had even traveled from Chicago to Madison to see shows in cheaper and smaller venues. Because of the student population, most acts who stop in Chicago make the extra trip up to Madison, and similarly, people actually come out to shows here. There’s always a good crowd for good music. It’s also quite a bit cheaper to live here, which has made it much easier to tour. I think the proximity to Chicago (not to mention Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and other Midwestern havens) is unbeatable, too — I’m usually in town (Chicago) at least twice a month to play. When I lived in town I never liked playing more frequently than that anyways because your friends start to get irritated with you. I do miss Chicago, though. Especially the Lula breakfast burrito. Oy.

Who are some of your biggest influences?

I love ladies who sing, hands down. I love people who write songs like poems. I love jazz. I love sing-alongs and songs that you want to yell along to in the car. I love a good pop riff that gets stuck in your head. I love folks who mess with their instruments & make you say, “whoa, I didn’t know a (insert instrument here) could sound like that!?” I love musicians who make me want to go play. That’s really the best. Today I?m on a flight to California. So far on this flight my iPod has shuffled through: Billie Holiday, Jason Anderson, Ray Charles, The New Pornographers, Emily Hope Price, The Mountain Goats, Aretha Franklin, Ani DiFranco, Thomas Fersen, Devendra Banhart, Etta James, Regina Spektor, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Bon Iver, The Decemberists, Lyle Lovett, Beyonce, Andrew Bird, Lucinda Williams, St. Vincent, Mirah, Emilyn Brodsky, Radar Bros., Sufjan Stevens.
Cartography has a nice, stripped-down sound & home-made feel. Is that something you’ll continue with your new album, or was that out of necessity?

Thanks! It was kind of both. On both Nesting and Cartography — my 2 at-home recordings from the beginning of 2009 — I wanted to recreate what had been happening with me in my live shows — kind of messy, lots of folks singing & stomping & clapping, the human slip-ups here and there. On The Things That Airplanes Do (2007), I made the best studio album I could make, and I really love that record. I was surrounded by a music conservatory, I was working with some of the best players possible, and we made it a really full, lush sound. But it was hard to recreate the songs live without a full band, and even sometimes when all of us were together (which was rare since I moved right after we released it), it still wasn’t the same as the record. It was a completely different live experience. Obviously I almost always play songs differently live than they sound recorded, but sometimes you get lonesome up there by yourself once you’re used to such a full sound. When I record at home, I mess around, I’m less picky, and it feels that much realer to me. That’s what I was going for with the Nesting EP. Cartography was a bit more necessity than anything — I was making that project for New Hampshire’s RPM challenge (www.rpmchallenge.com/), and I only had about a week to finish the project as soon as I got home from tour. So the bare & messy quality is something I really like about the record — I feel like you actually hear the pieces coming into being on tape, as opposed to records that you think about or plan out before laying anything down.
The new record, Paper Boats, is a compromise. There are sing-alongs and songs where I passed out different percussion instruments to each person and let it run just to see what people came up with. There are songs where we experimented with singing into piano strings & recording the vibrations; there’s quite a bit of improvisation and there’s definitely the act of figuring-it-out-as-we go (as a lot of songs were written once I’d arrived in New Hampshire, preparing for our sessions). I really like being able to hear that process on a record, I think it makes it that much more relatable to the listener. Because we were in a studio, though, & because we did have more of a gameplan, the record also has a really nice full sound to it, kind of a combination of lush studio sound with the realness of an at-home recording. I am so excited about this new record. It’s absolutely my favorite thing I’ve ever done. I’m really excited for people to hear it. It looks like it’ll be out in late March or early April, on Slothtrop Music (www.slothtropmusic.com) here in Madison. We’re also releasing a single for a small February tour here in the Midwest, which I’ll be selling on 7″ vinyl at my shows! I’m stoked.

Photograph by Anna Dakini

You’ve played with some of the current indie scene’s leading lights. Any good stories?

I’ve been really lucky & have known, and still know a lot of talented people. It’s awesome to see folks you know succeed at what they love. Mostly I’ve just gotten great advice over & over again.

What lessons did you learn while touring w/ the Dresden Dolls, and how have you incorporated them into your current attack plan?

The Dolls are a band that always put their whole selves on stage and made every single live show an event, when they were performing in a basement of a goth clothing store or in a sold-out club. There’s a lot of business that I learned from them by watching their transition from independent to label and by helping out at their merch table, but their passion was really what struck me. I still admire their example of making each show really special for the crowd, of leaving it all on the stage.

Which artist’s career trajectory would you most like to emulate, if any?

There’s a lot of folks that I admire. I think that Ani DiFranco is pretty much every singer/songwriter’s business icon. She owns all of her shit, she tours all of the time, she puts out a record a year, and 20 years later she’s still going strong. There’s also quite a few people who are making their careers happen on a smaller scale, making a decent living in music, and I think that’s just as respectable. There are so many tools right now to make a successful career happen independently, especially with social media, independent distribution opportunities, and blah blah blah. We’ve all heard it, the different ways to take advantage of this “golden age of the independent musician.” And because of that, luckily there are plenty of folks that I look up to, especially many of my friends. Honestly, as long as I can make a living doing music, I?ll be happy with my career.

You’ve released music through your website with the somewhat controversial “pay what you want” plan. How do your personal experiences with this format stack up? Do you think it’s a successful distribution method for unsigned artists?

I think when you’re releasing something without support of a label, it’s absolutely something worth trying. I released Cartography for free with an option to pay, because it was a fun project for me, and as I said about recording it in 12 days at home, I really figured it out while the mics were rolling, so it’s messy. I’m proud of it, but I also view it as an experiment, & don’t mind people having it for free — I’d rather just have people listening to the songs. Similarly with the Nesting EP, I give folks an option of a minimum, which I think is $1/song (rather than just a total pay-what-you-will with a free option), since I went through the process of pressing those CDs, making t-shirts, having other people mix & master it, etc. There were more people involved on that record, and I feel like when there’s a group of people making an intentional body of work, then a small payment is a courtesy — paying folks for their time, really. You don’t expect your baker acquaintance to give you their newest, most beautiful, elaborate cake for free. Cupcakes, maybe. Or the baker can give them a discount, or an option on the cake size. I think that if folks are willing to pay the minimum, then it works as a compromise for me, & if they aren’t, then they have the option to stream the whole thing online anyways. I think the pay-what-you-will option has a lot of freedom in it that the musician can really play with to their advantage, & it will depend on what you’re willing to give up for free. That said, at this point in my career, and a lot of new artists’ careers, I think you need to sacrifice as much as you possibly can for free. It’s not about the money, it’s about the number of people who can access your music, and who want to pass it along to their friends. To do things truly grassroots, your only option is really to make things as affordable as possible so more people will want to own it. I’ve also found that when you give folks an option, more often than not the people who buy the record pay more than the minimum you ask for, and sometimes it’s much more than you as the artist ever would have asked for. The people who are going to pay for the download at all are the ones who tend support the arts & so often they will add an extra donation to support you in your endeavors. I think it’s been a really interesting way to release music, and I?m proud that I had the opportunity to do it on these last few at-home recordings.

——-

As a bonus treat, check out Anna covering Lada Gaga’s “Bad Romance” in a laundry room:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofGfoo5ppfk

Get Your Vogelzang On:

• Twitter
• Official Website
• BandCamp
• Facebook

It’s no secret that we love the Swellers here at the Assault offices – their latest record, 2009′s Ups & Downsizing, provided us with plenty of inspiration during long coffee-fueled nights of writing reviews and hammering out tutorials. So it was a real honor when lead Sweller Nick Diener graciously consented to answering a few questions for us via e-mail while taking a much-deserved break from the road.

AssaultBLOG: What’s the typical journey for a Swellers song from conception to actualization?

Nick Diener: Jonathan and I are the songwriters. We’ll have a riff, a chorus, sometimes a whole song’s music just happening in our heads. We bring it to each other, and if we like it, we keep it. If we sorta like it, we trash it. That’s probably why it takes us like a year to write 6 songs. We rarely have “extra” songs to play around with. Sometimes it’ll take 9 months to get a song right, sometimes it’ll take 9 minutes. Either way, usually lyrics come last, to make sure they’re exactly presented how we want them.

Being on an indie label, do you have to meet certain expectations, or do you get free reign? For instance, is there any pressure to deliver a song that “sounds” like a single?

FBR [Fueled By Ramen] has been great and believes in us 100%. We recorded our album and paid for it ourselves before we even got signed. I’m sure they’d like us to do well and get huge and have a big radio jam some day, but they know we’re a punk band and not to tell us what to do!

How important do you consider traditional measures of success, such as sales and radio play?

Sales are very important because the numbers are what get good things for bands. The higher the numbers you have, the better the tours, the more money to make touring easier, etc. Sales are down like 99% from what they used to be, though. If you’ve sold 100,000 records, it means probably 2 million have already downloaded it for free. Only weirdos listen to the radio, but hey, it helps.

How do you keep the equation of “career” and “calling” properly balanced? How has the work-to-fun ratio changed as the band has become more popular?

Good question. I think it just kind of happened. As more people started coming to shows and we got on bigger tours, there was more money going around. We went from breaking even, to making enough to “get by” and keep touring. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. I can live, just from playing in this band. But I don’t live very extravagantly. I try not to buy expensive things. Just food! It’s a lot more fun, now, actually, than it used to be, because we don’t have to worry about so many things, like will we eat today? Will we have enough gas money to get home? It’s a lot more relaxed. We’re working even harder though now too!

Being on the road so much, are you able to balance your personal life with band business? Is it hard to normalize when you finally get home?

Very hard to normalize when I get home. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do when I’m home. I’m made to play songs and tour. It’s good to see friends, girlfriends, family, and everyone else for awhile though.

What lessons have you learned from being on the road with heavy-hitters like Paramore and Less Than Jake? And is that level of popularity scary or inspiring?

The Paramore and Less Than Jake tours were both two of the biggest tours we’ve done, but they were also very different tours. Paramore plays to mostly “concert-goers” and Less Than Jake plays to “punk rock fans”. Very different people, very different staff and crews on the tour, but both did great things for our band and we loved hanging out with everybody on both. Definitely makes us want to keep working up to that point.

At your shows you talk about playing in real bands with real instruments. Any idea why kids nowadays are more likely to pick up a video game controller than a guitar? What got you started playing music?

Video games are easier than real life, in every aspect. A video game costs less than a real guitar, too. My bro and I started playing music together when we were 9 and 10, so it’s all i’ve known for 13 years. Never went with the trends of what was popular.. just played rock music from day one. Still am, just in front of more people than just my parents. I picked up a guitar so I could play Nirvana songs.

It’s no secret that you and your brother are straight-edge vegans. What made you decide to be straight edge and vegan?

I don’t like the idea of not being able to drive. I don’t like the idea of spending money on drinks that taste like shit. I don’t like the idea of my breath smelling like white trash. I don’t like the idea of contributing to animals being killed for selfish reasons. Hence, the vegan straight edge. Makes me feel good.

You’ve opened for Paramore, Less Than Jake, and pretty soon you’ll be opening for Motion City Soundtrack, is there one band that you haven’t opened up for that you’d like to?

Weezer, Green Day, Jimmy Eat world, Foo Fighters, NOFX, Get Up Kids. I’d like to be with those guys.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given by another band or person in the music industry?

It was from Bill Stevenson when we toured with Only Crime. He was in Black Flag and the Descendants. He said that no matter how many kids are in the crowd that night, even if it’s two, they still could have done ANYTHING they wanted that night, and they came to see your band. So give them a hell of a show.

When you guys start headlining, who are the bands you’d like to have opening up?

A band called Heartsounds from California. Living With Lions, A Wilhelm Scream, Broadway Calls, Cheap Girls from Michigan, just to name a few!

Besides getting boners to stop from having to pee while driving, what are some other crazy/weird/funny things that have happened to you and the guys while on the road?

I just think its crazy, weird, and funny that anyone would like us or our music enough to put a poster of us on their wall. We’re just weirdo kids who play rock songs. Makes me really happy, though. There are too many random and weird moments to really pick just one.. but I think it’s nuts how much we actually drive. Brutal.

I know you guys just came out with a new CD, but are you planning on coming out with anything else in the near future?

Not really the near future, but hopefully early to mid 2011 will be our next record release. Can’t wait. Already writing it.

What’s the end game for The Swellers? At what point can you say, “yup, we’ve done it all now.”

I think the second we stop growing is the second I’ll start thinking of wrapping things up. Don’t wanna beat a dead horse.

(Additional reporting by Third World Timmy.)

I’m sure most people have in one way or another heard of Puddle of Mudd. If there was one thing I surely wasn’t going to pass up, being a wannabe rock star myself, it’s interviewing a band that has done it all: partied, toured virtually nonstop, and most importantly, been successful doing so. (8 million records sold to all you haters out there.) I got a chance to talk to them on the phone about their strange stories as well as ask them a few questions about their new album, Songs in the Key of Love & Hate.

Link opens in iTunes

Since the guys had already done 35-40 interviews, I decided to pepper them with questions like, “Is it true you had the Puddle of Mudd logo on condoms at one point?“, but I also decided to grind out a few details about how the band chooses an opening band, as well as ask them why bands don’t party like they use to. Check out the full interview download below, or just check out a few of the highlights.

Have you explored any alternate release strategies, and how has the internet changed the playing field?

(Label Dude responded) For this album we are doing a direct to consumer strategy as part of the option, so there will be special packages that the fans can buy where the band will be signing the booklets, and they’ll get an exclusive shirt. So we are employing a different, more direct to the fan relationship with this album, but we will be going through all the various retail outlets including iTunes.

Wes Scantlin: We did do a thing off of our previous record where we put a golden ticket in  one of our records and this chick from… I don’t even know where she lived but her and a bunch of her friends got to come out in their own tour bus with us for a week. Although, I was the only one who would hang out with them the whole time. The rest of the guys in the band didn’t even like, talk to ‘em. [laughs]

Ryan Yerdon: We were debating doing that on this album, but not actually putting the golden ticket in

Wes Scantlin: Yea, and then no one will ever find it.

Ryan Yerdon: And then we were just going to give it to our guitar player Paul’s girlfriend so she can come out and be with us for a week.

Wes Scantlin: I was just going to say that I got it so I can get another tour bus for a week. [laughter]

What do you look for in an opening band?

Wes Scantlin: Alot of the time you want to have a couple of bands that are rolling with you that have got some heat, VH1, MTV, alot of radio airplay–stuff like that, and then ya know give some not so fortunate people. Ya know, cut one band some slack, the ones rolling in a van, slugging it out out there and give somebody else a chance to play in front of your crowd–the ones that don’t really have a deal or anything like that.

Ryan Yerdon: It’s the combination of a band that doesn’t have a deal, but your shit’s kinda cool so we’ll take you with us, and the other stuff is a band that will bring a few more people to the show.

Best place to play?

Wes Scantlin: Man, every city has their own little personality. I kinda like playing a smaller, b-market city, where you’re kinda rolling through a little town and you’re the party, showing up with an awesome show, and there’s nothing else going on in town. Everybody in the whole town is coming cause it’s the weekend–kids, families, picnic baskets, blankets, it’s like a day out for the family–everybody comes.

Ryan Yerdon: As long as the crowd is good and the energy is there then I don’t care if it’s in a club or an outdoors show or an indoor show. If people are excited to see us, that makes it a good show, and a favorite place to be.

Wes Scantlin: I like it when little kids show up and they’re like 8, 9, or ten years old, and it’s their first show and they’re having a blast, like the first blast of their life. Then you get to meet them later and give ‘em high fives and they’re totally in show and just loving it.

Ryan Yerdon: We bring kids on stage, Wes always invites the kids up on stage. We did a show a few weeks ago in Seattle, and this kid came up on stage and he stayed there for like 3 or 4 songs

Wes Scantlin: He was just kind of jamming dude. Most of the time they get up there and they’re like shocked, like “WOAAAAH!” This kid was just like let’s rock!

Ryan Yerdon: Yea this kid was up there for like 3 or 4 songs, dancing, making faces, so that made that a great show.

West Scantlin: It’s a good thing cause I was hammered that night, and I caught some shit for it.

Ryan Yerdon: No you weren’t.

West Scantlin: No… I wasn’t.

Do you party? What’s the wildest thing you’ve had happen

Ryan Yerdon: Well the craziest things we’ve had happen can’t really be shared. It’s like a band of brothers but…

Wes Scantlin: There was something that had to do with a banana getting inserted in a weird thing and actually exploding.

Ryan Yerdon: It wasn’t pretty.

Wes Scantlin: It was really weird man…. We’re pretty mellow right now, but you should have caught us back in the day when we were a bit crazier. Now it’s just mellow man. We just sit in the back of the bus and see who can drink the most beer till like 3 or 4 in the morning.

It doesn’t seem like you get too much of that partying anymore nowadays. Vegan/Straight-edge rock seems to be picking up momentum…

Wes Scantlin: There’s this thing in the record business now called the, “No Tolerance Clause” where they’ll just pull the plug on you if you get too fucked up. Which has happened to me. [laughs]

What was the best part about playing for the troops in Iraq?

Ryan Yerdon: I have to say the best thing is just seeing the faces of the soldiers after we got done playing. We do a meet and greet with everybody, and it seems like it was a really high percentage of the people that watched the show actually stay and came up to us and we signed things for them and they were so thankful. It all made sense in that moment looking at those guys saying, thank you guys for coming here, and we really need your support. Just hanging out with all those guys and playing for them–they made it worth it worth it when we got there. We kinda thought we were crazy to do it.

West Scantlin: I think the hardest thing about playing was seeing the young 18 year old soldiers who’ve had their arms or legs blown off, especially when they’re there with their family, or girlfriends or whatever, that’s definitely the hardest part about playing for the troops. They still have a good attitude about it, but it’s the saddest thing to have to see someone who’s just a kid that’s just blown to bits that’s still alive–who’s going to have to go and get prosthetics and shit. That’s the hardest thing about it. It just sucks to see that kind of shit.

What’s the most outrageous thing Puddle of Mudd has had their logo on?

Wes Scantlin: Yea we had condoms for awhile, and it was kinda strange cause my bass player Doug was embarrassed that I had made the condoms, and I’d just be throwing them out into the crowd, jokingly, and he took like 750 of them, and took them to his house and threw them away because he thought it was embarrassing to the band to have condoms. So he took them and threw them away. Yea, and I paid for them–so he’s basically throwing my shit down the drain.

…I like to go bare-back style.

Advice for guys getting started that are still playing local shows in one region?

Wes Scantlin: The only advice I can really throw out is practice your craft, and your writing ability. Don’t expect someone to come walking up to your front door with a record contract–ever. You gotta get out there and fight for it and get your music to the right people. Fortunately, we have the internet now, and we got the MySpace, the Youtubes, Facebook, so you can use that to your benefit, and uhhh… pray.

Get Puddle of Mudd music:

Download the full interview:

Puddle of Mudd Interview (mp3)

Puddle of Mudd have a new album out today (December 8th, 2009) called Volume 4: Songs in the Key of Love & Hate which you can purchase on iTunes.

More Puddle of  Mudd

Behind the scenes to Puddle of Mudd’s music video to their first single, Spaceship. (Link opens in iTunes)

I was lucky enough recently to partake in the Chicago Music Commission’s Social Media panel for musicians at the Cultural Center in Chicago. They just posted the MP3 for the panel which they’ve called, “Stand Out In A Digital World”. I highly recommend listening to the podcast if you’re somewhat new to marketing yourself as a musician online. There’s tons of links and resources we discuss throughout the panel, and I only say “fuck” once.

Social Media for Musicians – Musicians at Work Forum

Recorded Monday,  November 16,  2009

We discussed using Social Media to build fan relationships. Developing a strategy that helps you choose how to use the available services and networks. Getting the most for your effort in growing and maintaining your fan base. Setting expectations and converting those relationships into real-time results.

Moderator:
Jim Goodrich Chicago Music Commission

Panelists:
Jeffrey David Goldford The Everyday People
Miriam Brosseau Stereo Sinai
Alan Jay Sufrin Stereo Sinai
Matt Ryd Singer/Songwriter
Tim Toomey Assault, Inc. (Me you turds)

Links from the panel you may like:

• Reverb Nation – Better than MySpace and you get embeddable music widgets
• Tunecore – Digital Music Distribution
• CD Baby – Discover New Music
• Last.fm – Another place to get your music on, like Pandora

Tour:Smart and Break the Band by Martin Atkins, a must read for bands about to go on the road

I’ve never been in a band, and I’ve never been a producer or groupie, and I’ve never had what it takes to make it in a band. (Albeit my expert level singing and drumming skills on Rock Band) Lucky for those of you looking to embark on your first tour, there is an incredibly detailed guide on how to do it the right way. The book is called, Tour:Smart and Break the Band. The book was written by Chicago’s own Martin Atkins, and it outlines how to plan, manage and execute a successful tour on any level.

If you haven’t heard of Martin, you’ve surely heard of the bands he has played in including PiL, The Killing Joke, Ministry, and even Nine Inch Nails.

Without going to much into the details of the book,  (It’s nearly 600 pages!) let’s just say that the book covers every single aspect of touring, all the way down to groupies, alcohol, drugs, screen printing, and using spreadsheets! I was recently lucky enough to ask Martin a few questions about the biz, and his book via email.

Tim: I read a quote from you where you mentioned that education was the new thing that drives the creative fire in your mind — something along those lines. Can you tell me a little bit about your school and yourself? What made you decide to start it?

Martin Atkins: Well, I started playing drums when I was nine, started drinking Newcastle Brown Ale and backing strippers at 11 or 12! I joined PiL [Public Image Ltd.] in 1979, performed on the seminal Metal Box album and the next four or so with them over the next 5 years. Then Killing Joke, Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, Pigface, and Damage Manual. I started the label Invisible Records 20 years ago, built a recording studio, produced a bunch of stuff from Gravity Kills to Skinny Puppy; then, started teaching, went to China, made a documentary, and realized that the book they were using at Columbia for the Business of Touring class was written in 1962! So, I wrote Tour:Smart, then started to revamp a bunch of the courses there. Applied Marketing was a ton of work, but I’m really pleased with the results. I’m working on Band:Smart, the sequel to Tour:Smart, and another 16 days in China amongst many, many other things — and I have four young boys!

I decided to start the school because I saw a need for real world stuff in the classroom. I pitched the people at Columbia several times on allowing me to just bring all of my businesses up there: Label, book publishing, studio, music publishing, film production and all of that — but they didn’t seem to think it was a good idea. So, like I usually do, I just did it! Education — or, more correctly, the relationship and the conundrum of trying to show people an unexpected spark — really gets me going. I’ve loved teaching since the moment I started and I love trying to make my lectures entertaining — otherwise what’s the point?

The possibilities within this are huge and I find myself very excited to see what the future holds.

Tim: Your book is one of the most comprehensive guides I’ve ever read — of any kind. If you could write a second book, what would it be about? Post economic meltdown/apocalyptic zombie outbreak touring for dummies?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzNjmIWbns4

MA: Well thanks! I have nearly finished Band:Smart and, along the way, I’ve put 12,000 words down for the Killing Joke book and I’m working on the PiL one, and a new cool marketing book, too. I do need to get on the Zombie bandwagon, though!

Tim: What are a few of the indicators that it’s time to go on a band’s first nationwide tour? Should they be making money already locally? Should they have a good seed of money saved up?

MA: I think bands should let this stuff evolve organically. Get out to the next set of cities 20, 40 miles out — where fans might travel to see the larger shows; see the five-pointed star inward facing crush strategy! Keep heading out of town in a flower petal pattern. I like to say, “Returning home just in time to fall asleep at their day job!”…but seriously, that’s how hard you need to push it.

Don’t give up your day job until you are on the point of getting fired. And yes, a band should be able to go from a show with 10 people to 40 to 100 to 200 — something like that. If you can’t do that in amongst your local markets, then what makes you think you can do it 400 miles from home where you don’t know anyone? Can’t score any deals or free beer or a bunch of free copies because your mate works at Kinkos, ditto Starbucks etc., etc.

Tim: One of the most profound parts of the book Tour:Smart to me was the fact that running a tour was just like running any small business. The one item that stuck out to me was the use of spreadsheets! How important is it to be organized and keep track of your finances and information when running a tour or a small business?

MA: Well, it’s important — and it definitely fits into that category of not magic, but attention to this stuff enables more crazy magic to happen. For instance, when you start to track random crazy stuff, you learn — let’s say in the case of the sizes of the shirts you have sold. Maybe when you look at the information after 30 shows, you realize that the only size of shirts you sell are L and XL. So, you can stop making the dozen or so small and mediums that you have been wasting money on. Small stuff like that really start to add up.

Same thing with the guest list: Put it on a spreadsheet and take a printer out on the road with you. You can alphabetize and pump up the size of the font at the last minute to make sure — or try to — that there isn’t a problem. Easy shit to avoid, costly and time consuming to try and repair.

Tim: What advice would you give to a band that has a member that is “holding the band back”?

MA: Fire their ass immediately, or give me their phone number now and I’ll do it for you. There is so much working against you that if you know something isn’t right, you have to take care of it — because, rest assured, there are 10 other things fucking up your chances that you don’t know about.

Tim: If there was one gig that a band must take and one that they should avoid at all costs what would they be?

The venue that is too large: Don’t persuade yourself that you are big enough to fill it — you aren’t!

And the show for no money on a rainy Tuesday night at the last-minute because another band needs the help — and to borrow half of your equipment, and as many members of your audience as they can — and can you help with their van? And can they sleep at your house? But there’s no money and you have to play at 6:30 and don’t get a sound check — and you could pack that place on your own. If someone blesses you with the opportunity to do them a really big favor — then do it! This is a small world and what goes around, comes around — for sure.

Tim: What are your top three must do’s for a band trying to get exposure? Having an electronic press kit? Playing as many shows as possible? Having a quality EP? Merchandise?

MA: Err, you got it. And remember that free is the new black — give stuff away, treat your fans like they were your best friends — they are!

Tim: You had a great entry in Tour:Smart about getting sponsorships. Do you have any advice for companies trying to get their clothing to musicians they align their brand with? Is it a sound investment for smaller companies?

You have to be careful, but — as I say to bands — free is the new black. I have a bunch of ideas for you, but if you target national acts halfway through their tour and show up with some free — and clean! — shirts, then you will be heroes and the band and crew will wear your stuff for the next week!

Affliction put special, nice pillowcases on all of the pillows in Austin for South by Southwest. That was cool, and probably cost a bit, but there are ways to accomplish stuff like that without breaking the bank.

Tim: With Assault, we measure down to the penny sometimes with what we spend our money on. We try to do everything that we possibly can ourselves — see photography, web design, shirt design, accounting, SEO + online marketing, blogging, etc. etc. If there is an expense that’s worth paying for for bands playing relatively often on the local scene, what would it be?

MA: OK, in certain circumstances a buy on to a larger show can be a great idea — it can also be the worst waste of money. But, once again, if a band keeps good records of their sales and attendance — not how many people you wish were at the show, but the real numbers — then you can extrapolate and make decisions based on better facts rather than no facts.

I don’t mean this to sound like a plug for me — because I’m silly busy anyway — but a few bands have brought me in for a few hours or a day to really analyze what they are doing and consult to them on what they are doing right and wrong. Sometimes they are surprised when I call them out on some rock star bullshit or studio elitism stuff, or just their fears. I get to reinforce the good ideas, accelerate them, pour gasoline on them — and put ice down the pants of the insane, distracting shit that many bands surround themselves with, immerse themselves in. And, compared to losing everything — your love of music, your credit rating, your friends, your van and your partner — I’m cheap as fuck!

Tim: If there was one or two careers that would really help you supplement a career in music — as most parents would want for their aspiring musicians — what would it be? I wrote a post on this a while back and someone suggested “car mechanic” — I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t thought of that.

MA: Yeah, mechanic is great. Studio person, logistics, web, PR, screen printing — anything — welding, culinary, all of that stuff comes in handy. Xbox modding, hair cutting, tattoo — it’s all great shit and the more skills, the more chances you have of tapping into a new audience and involving them in your music.

Tim: Of all the touring you’ve done, which tour was the most fun and why?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTs5SoOteQQ

MA: Well, it seem like it’s the ones from way back. PiL across the USA in 1981 when we did American Bandstand — they still play it in Europe! I was very young and drunk, and speeding through most of it. I had no clue how much it all cost — none of us did really — but, 30 years later, it seems like it was fun.

Parts of Ministry was fun. Lots of Killing Joke. From a drumming point of view, I was at the height of my game — I did Pigface, Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, Killing Joke and Murder, Inc. all in a mad two-year period. I was drumming all the time.

Pigface was just fantastic in the breadth of the onstage experience: Sitars, cello, harp, belly dancers — Danny Carey from Tool!

I liked touring Europe with Killing Joke — Madrid, Barcelona — oh yeah! — and Japan and Australia.

I guess, every minute of it was terrific! Why, well, someone else — mostly — paid for it. And I’ve forgotten all of the horrible mind-numbing horror!

Tim: What’s the weirdest thing that ever happened to you while you were on tour?

MA: A guy came onstage with a shopping cart all hooked up with pickups and all this mad stuff. We [Pigface] were all really excited. It sounded like a shopping cart! I nearly pissed my pants onstage.

Tim: Of all the skills you mention in Tour:Smart — screen printing, learning HTML, accounting etc. — which proves to be the most valuable in putting together a tour for your band?

MA: You need every single one of them. You can split them up between the band members — that’s a great idea — but you need them all, and more!

Tour:Smart by Martin Atkins, a must read for bands about to go on the road

I HIGHLY recommend Martin’s Book, Tour:Smart: And Break the Band, to anyone who’s in a band. The book includes insight from other musicians, tour managers, producers, sound technicians, booking agents, and just about anyone and everyone involved with the music industry. The book also features guest chapters from Henry Rollins, and Chris Connelly.

I’d also check out the Tour:Smart Plus weekend events going on in October. (Check out the first Tour:Smart Plus Weekend wrap up here.) Martin’s school is called Revolution Number Three which you can check out at their Official Website.

If you’d like to keep up with Martin, or talk to him via the internetzzzz you can @reply him on twitter via @marteeeen. Ask him what he thinks about girlfriends, bacon salt, music, word of mouth marketing, and just about anything else!