Interview with hollowboy

By Deaglan Howlett | Posted Saturday, May 7, 2022

Matthew Kessig has been releasing his fuzzed-out and introspective rock and roll under the name hollowboy since his first single under the name in August 2019. Since then, Matthew has released a handful of more tunes, ranging from early-era Weezer to modern bedroom pop. Throughout these releases there has been a constant with which hollowboy gets its unique sound; that constant being Matthew writing and performing all the instruments on his recordings. His latest single “something in the air” was self-produced and part of the Voices of Freedom: Artists in Support of Ukraine put together by local NJ artists Luke Lenczuk and Nicolas Palermo (Have a Good Season). I reached out to Matthew to tell me more about hollowboy and his songwriting/recording process. Thanks again, Matt! 

Who were your influences when first starting hollowboy? How have they changed over the years?

Honestly, there are a million bands that I could say I have taken inspiration from, but my friends have been my biggest influence. So many of my friends are incredibly talented creatives and push me to be a better musician at all times. There's almost a sort of mushy-competitiveness about it where we all are trying to achieve our own versions of 'success' while also supporting each other. I'm really, really lucky to be surrounded by so many great people that also happen to make great art, so it feels like my music has been shaped by those relationships. But also 1994-2001 era Weezer.

How does hollowboy differ from any of your past projects and bands?

hollowboy essentially began because I was sitting on a stockpile of unreleased songs. I have been in a few bands in my life and loved all of those experiences, but I was never the core songwriter for any of them. I just wanted to have an outlet where I'd have 100% creative control over the music and not have to try and fit my pieces into somebody else's puzzle. It's a blessing and a curse. Sometimes it's nice to have another mind to keep yours in check, but I find myself more attached to these songs than anything else I've done because of it.

You play all the instruments for your own songs. Which instrument do you start with first? What usually follows?

I would say almost all of my songs are written on acoustic guitar. I am an enigma in that I am a musician that gets anxious about being too loud, so if I'm playing at home it's almost always acoustic. That being said, drums are lowkey the most important thing to me. I spent so many years playing drums that it's just a part of my soul now, can't be separated, so while I'm writing the guitar parts I'm envisioning what the drums will be in my head. It's not until I lay down the guitar and drums in GarageBand that I start to figure out any additional parts, which there are typically many of. 

Your latest release "something in the air" was part of the Voices of Freedom: Artists in Support of Ukraine compilation. Can you tell us about that track and how you got involved with this compilation?

Two of my very close friends Nic and Luke put together this compilation. Luke approached me with the details and asked about possibly contributing a song and obviously there was no other answer than yes. 'something in the air' was one of those previously mentioned stockpiled songs that I had written at a time when the world just wasn't feeling right to me. It, unfortunately, felt relevant again, so I sent it over to Luke. They did such an incredible job putting this compilation together and got so many great artists to be a part of it. I recommend everybody please go check it out and donate to the cause. It would mean a lot to us.

"something in the air" is also self-produced and sounds amazing. What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of self-produced recording?

The advantages/disadvantages are essentially the same as the band vs solo question. Working by myself is nice because I have complete creative control and unlimited time to be able to tinker it to how I hear it in my head. Explaining the sound in your head to someone is not easy. The downsides are that I have no idea what I'm doing and nobody can help me. 

All of your songs have a distinct feel since you are the sole instrumentalist. Any plans to record a hollowboy release with other musicians? And how do you think that would change the sound, if at all, to you? 

I've always tried to make hollowboy at least somewhat collaborative throughout. I always send my music to friends and encourage them to give me feedback or even contribute some parts if they have ideas. Speak of the devil, you've ripped a few guitar solos and bass lines on hollowboy tunes. It would be a massive waste for me not to utilize all of the talent I'm surrounded by, so whenever I get the chance I try and get my friends to add their own touch to my songs. 

The thing is that I don't have any plans at all. I pretty much have been operating on my own out of necessity. I sadly don't have unlimited time to dedicate to music even though I wish I could drop everything to do it, so gathering members and regularly practicing is not easy. hollowboy may be a 5-piece one day, who knows, I'm honestly just here to have fun. The second it stops feeling fun is when it'll be over.

Who have you been listening to lately that you can see influencing hollowboy music going forward?

I'm always trying to listen to new bands. Fast, slow, light, heavy, whatever. As long as it's catchy or makes me feel something, it's going to make me want to write a song of my own. “Baby Bye Bye” by Beauty is a hell of a song, though.

You can keep up with all things hollowboy here and support Voices of Freedom here!

Interview with Kqhyt Kqhyt

By Deaglan Howlett | Posted Monday, April 25, 2022

Kqhyt Kqhyt has to be one of my favorite bands to emerge from Asbury Park since I started writing for Jersey Indie. Whether you know how to pronounce their name or not, you have no doubt caught them playing their booze soaked rock and roll throughout Asbury Park. Since forming in 2019, their long anticipated first single “Carey Bronson” was released April 8th of this year. Accompanied by a great music video, their self-titled release came out April 22nd and is available to purchase here. I recently reached out to lead guitarist Alex Rosen and the band to talk about the beginnings of the band and their upcoming plans. Thanks again, Alex. <><>

When did you first start making music together? How was the band formed?

In early 2019. It is a bit of a long story, but the short of it is I had gotten Brian and Brendon down to jam. I went to Brendon's house and Bronson came down and asked when practice was. That was pretty much that.

What is your songwriting process like?

Brendon pretty much has a couple albums worth and growing of songs. So he brings some to practice and we just kind of work ‘em out.  Or he has older fully realized tunes and we all just work it to full band. I have contributed some songs and Brian has a few up his sleeve. It is a mostly collaborative effort. You hear this a lot with bands, but it is always cool to see how the idea you had for a song completely transforms when you bring it to other people and jam on it.

Favorite song you have written as a group so far? Why? 

Brendon wrote "Mullica" and I really dig how everyone kind of added their own little mark to it. Brendon had the song already done, but each member added themselves to it. Lyrically, it is great as well.  

Favorite venue to perform at? 

Not sure if we have a favorite of all time since we are pretty new. But places like The Saint, Asbury Park Yacht Club, and Bond St. have always been good to us.

You recorded an album last year. Who did you work with? How was that experience?

We worked with Pete Steinkopf at Little Eden. The experience went great, and I am really so happy with how the tunes sound and how everything came out. Pete knocked it out of the park!

The band name is super unique. How did you end up with it and what does the band name mean to you?

No comment at the moment.

Your first single “Carey Bronson” is accompanied by a great video. Who did you work with for the video and how was that experience?

I went to my bud Mike Brown (Phasor Video) who is a really interesting dude. Does a lot of touring with big musicians as well as has a bit of a cult following in the WWE or wrestling world. I asked him if he would do a music video for us. We just gave him free creative control and that was that. I sent him, I think, three songs, and he picked “Carey Bronson.” It is cool just letting someone have their own vision on something you did. Kind of shows you how a song can mean different things to different people.

Any upcoming plans for the group?

We have a full-length out on vinyl and digital on 4/22. It is self-titled and limited to 100.  In late April, we are going to record our new record with Mike Mobius at Moonlight Mile. We also have a live album recorded, actually the final show at the Brighton Bar, just been slow-moving with it. We have some shows in Buffalo later this year and May 15th at Red Tank brewery. I would like to get a brewery to do a beer for us, get a tattoo gun and maybe give Bronson another nickname. Just try and make up for some lost time.

We have a bunch of merch we are working on and if you would like to grab our record and future items please check out our Bandcamp: kqhytkqhyt.bandcamp.com

Instagram: @kqhytkqhyt

You can find our stuff on Spotify and all that stuff too.

Thanks again.

You can listen to and support Kqhyt Kqhyt here <><>

Interview with Bobby Mahoney (New EP, "We Go On")

By Deaglan Howlett | Posted Friday, April 15, 2022

Bobby Mahoney and the Seventh Son are no strangers here on Jersey Indie, and we are always anticipating their next release. Their work ethic is unmatched and their appetite for songs with big choruses and hooks just seems to grow more and more with each new single. Bobby and his band had been hard at work for their newest release, “We Go On” (which premiered on 4/8), and we can now hear what they have been working on these past few years. To help celebrate this momentous release, they hosted a two-day Release Weekend at The Saint in Asbury Park with a handful of talent from up and down the East Coast. I caught up with Bobby to take a closer look at their latest singles “Moth to the Flame” and “Lay It On Me”, as well as what’s next for the band. Thanks, Bobby!

When did you start writing for your newest release, “We Go On”?

We started writing these songs in fragments in the later half of 2019. They have definitely been a slow-burn. There are other ideas that have been around longer, but I felt strongly about these as they came together, so they got to cut the line a bit. 

How did writing for this record differ from past Seventh Son records? How have you grown as a songwriter? 

This record was collaborative with all four of us, James McIntosh, Andrew Saul, Jon Chang-Soon, and I writing together. I would come up with skeletons/outlines/hooks in acoustic demo form, then I brought them to the others for us to flesh out as a group. The actual pre-production was done remotely, or in-person but masked and socially distanced due to the pandemic. James and I jammed through songs on his electric drum kit, Andrew and I made home pre-production Logic demos, and Jon and I discussed overall “vibe”, soundscape, structure, and arrangement at length ahead of recording as well. We didn’t know if it was going to be an EP, or the first half of a full length, but we felt the five songs we chose really stood on their own, and were a dense, impactful twenty minutes of music. 

“Moth to the Flame” is a rocker, the song also seems autobiographical. What remains to be your favorite thing about playing live shows?

”Moth to the Flame” is extremely autobiographical! It is about our need to create, despite all the factors that try to deter us from doing so. My favorite thing about playing live is when all the hours of practice and prep come together so I don’t have to think, I can feel. Which sounds silly, but I think there is a Keith Richards quote about something like that. When the four of us lock in, we can ride the energy, follow gut/instinct, and do what we know we can do. There are so many hours of things that are NOT playing the guitar that go into being a musician, so when we get to actually do what we signed up for for 20-60 minutes, and connect with people who care about what we do, it makes it all worth it. 

You’ve been playing shows for quite some time. How do you feel shows have changed if at all since the pandemic? 

I think it would have been a nice change to come back to shows with people being a bit more respectful of other audience members and the performers, but I don’t necessarily think that has happened. I think if anything, we are all now less likely to take it all for granted, at least I would really hope so. Before the pandemic, I caught myself taking live music for granted, and after losing it for over a year, I am extremely thankful for any chance I have to go see a performance or to perform myself. In a lot of ways, nothing has changed, yet everything has changed. We are still in weird times, but things are healing.

Who did you record “We Go On” with? Did you and the group do anything differently from previous recordings that you’re excited about?

We recorded “We Go On” with our good pal Joe Pomarico in his parents' basement in Holmdel, NJ. Aside from home demos and some pre-production phone meetings, we actually only rehearsed these songs a handful of times as a unit before we began tracking in Fall 2020. I wanted the songs to feel fresh, live, real, and given the circumstances, I wanted to capture the basic sound of people playing music in a room together. We tracked drums, bass, and rhythm guitars live over one weekend, and then spent a year overdubbing when we were able to get together, and doing Zoom editing/mixing/production meetings remotely! It was a weird way to make a record, but for this record — these songs, at this moment in time — it worked and I am very proud of what we were able to create.

The songs are “classic Seventh Son” — catchy with loud guitars and drums — but they have a new spin with this current line-up working together that led to some of the most exciting and unique songs we have ever recorded. We definitely wanted to push ourselves in every aspect to put out an EP that we felt represented what we do, and where we would like to go. 

What were you influenced by for your latest single “Lay It On Me”? How did that song come together?

I started taking notes for what became “Lay It On Me” while visiting Paris in August 2019. In the lobby of a hotel, they had old American Western movie posters on the wall, and I wrote some titles and taglines down. Many of our favorite songs were inspired from cinema, and many of the best songs are movies in themselves. Incident at Phantom Hill was too good not to note, and Fistful of Dollars is a classic. The irony of going all the way to France to be inspired by the American “West that never was” isn’t lost on me.

“Flower power and violence” is directly about the protests we saw in 2020 for the murder of George Floyd, the fights many Americans have had to wage on our own soil in order to secure their own rights/freedom in our history — painfully recent history — and present. Who the fuck is anyone to deny another human being the same rights they themselves desire and demand? “Will we find redemption?/Tune in next week.”

The song ultimately is about recognizing our own boundaries, and how much each of us can take on at once without being burnt out, burned, or burnt alive.

Musically, I wanted to focus on dynamics- starting very quiet and then gradually getting louder and louder, until it becomes one of the heavier moments on the EP. 

Thanks to everyone who has supported myself and this project over the years. We are excited to share with you all, and excited to see what the future holds! 

~

You can keep up with Bobby Mahoney and the Seventh Son here. 

Interview with The City Limit

By Sonia Schnee | Posted Thursday, April 14, 2022

Stanhope, NJ band The City Limit is cooking up new music for 2022, drawing on a diverse range of influences, from blues to pop, rock, funk, jazz, and folk. I interviewed bandmates Scott Lewis, Anthony Ambrosio, Sean Farrelly, and Mike Casson twice last year to ask them about their future music plans. Just a little over a month ago, they teased on Instagram part of a new single, which we may get to hear on April 22nd when they perform at Newton, NJ's Greek's Bar. Then, on Saturday, May 14th, The City Limit will be traveling down south, performing for the first time in North Carolina at Wampus Cat Music Festival. 

In our interview, bandmates Scott, Anthony, Sean, and Mike reflected on the good parts of 2020/2021, plans for their new EP, what it’s like getting messages from international fans, and they gave some shout-outs to some very influential family members. Catch it all by watching our interview above or reading the transcript below. 

(Video and transcript have been edited for time and clarity.) 

Interview 2: December 2021 

SCOTT LEWIS: I'm Scott.

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: My name is Anthony. I play bass guitar.

SEAN FARRELLY: My name's Sean. I play drums.

MIKE CASSON: My name is Mike, and I play keyboards.

SCOTT LEWIS: And we are The City Limit.

Going back to the first interview (March 14, 2021), the day we did the interview, you said the night before you were recording a music video.

SCOTT LEWIS: Yeah! We recorded the music video for our last single "Wake Up Your Mind” [see above].

You had a friend from L.A. who was a videographer/cinematographer who came and filmed it. Tell me a little bit about that.

SCOTT LEWIS: Yeah, so he's a childhood friend of Anthony's.

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: Yeah, me and him were in bands together, grew up together playing music, and he went on the path of film. He worked in L.A., doing all sorts of odd jobs working in the industry. He really needed something for his portfolio, so he came out and basically did it for free. We had to pay for whatever expenses, but we didn't have to pay him anything. The video turned out awesome.

SCOTT LEWIS: He did such an amazing job with it.  

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: For no budget.

SCOTT LEWIS: Yeah, and it looks fantastic when you watch the video.

Yeah, it looks really, really aesthetically pleasing, with all the twinkle lights and the colors and everything.

SCOTT LEWIS: That was all to Steve [Stephen Joseph Craig] -- the director's -- credit.

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: Yeah, he set up everything.

SCOTT LEWIS: He sent me to Lowe's and I was like, "Get a bunch of lights." I'm like, "Alright" so I got a bunch of lights and then we strung 'em up and the rest was just his talent.

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: It was all in my garage, too. It worked out great.

You did a ton of shows then after that. Are there any that stand out, or do you have any general observations of what that was like during the pandemic?

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: You know what, we didn't notice the pandemic, per se. It was a little harder booking gigs that pay and stuff, but in terms of playing gigs, there were a lot of gigs out there to grab.

SCOTT LEWIS: They take a little bit more legwork to find now. It's a little bit more like you have to actively hunt them out, whereas before the pandemic, places were playing tug-of-war, like, "We want you to play." "No, we want you to play." "No, we want you to play." Now, it's a little bit more you searching them out. As he mentioned, they don't have as much money to play with anymore. Obviously, a lot of restaurants closed down during the lockdowns during the pandemic, so everyone's kind of financially struggling, so they just don't have as much money to play with. So, those things make being a performer or a gigging musician a little bit more difficult, but we just love playing together. We love playing on stage and playing our songs for people. So, despite the pay cut, we have not been deterred whatsoever. We're just as happy as ever to get on stage and play for people.

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: The upstate New York shows were definitely some of the better ones. There were festivals, a lot of people. A lot of fun.

SCOTT LEWIS: That one in Barryville.

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: Kenny's Cosmic Campout. That was good. And then, The Grateful Daze. Same area.

SCOTT LEWIS: So, we're hugely influenced by The Grateful Dead. We're all obsessed with The Grateful Dead. In upstate New York is this whole community of Deadheads up there that throw these great music festivals, and we got to be a part of two of them this year and one of them last year. Those are some of the most fun shows you ever played. Everybody's there for the same reason, which is just to play and listen to great music, and it's a very communal vibe. We were outsiders coming into it, and they were so welcoming to us. We're going to be back there again in 2022 at all those shows, so love upstate New York, love the whole Deadhead culture up there. It's a really, really great place to play music.

SEAN FARRELLY: We have some other potential gigs coming up that could be cool, too, that aren't just in the area, like down in North Carolina.

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: In North Carolina, we have a gig set.

SEAN FARRELLY: Wampus Cat Music Festival. We got selected to play in North Carolina at this festival, so we're going to be taking a road trip out there, and we have a couple of other gigs that we're working out in the Louisiana area and Virginia. So, we're trying to move southward with our music. That's something that we intended to do in 2020, but then, obviously, the carpet got pulled out from under everyone, so now we're excited to pick it back up.

SCOTT LEWIS: The Wampus Cat's going to be in late-May, and then we're going to try to be in the Louisiana area in mid-summer, sometime around there. One thing that we're learning as we go along in the years of being a band is plan your summers and stuff way in advance. In the past year, we were scrambled, like "Oh my God, summer's here. Let's find shows."

SCOTT LEWIS: By the way, if you see me popping up and sitting back down, I have a pot of gumbo I've been making since 2 o'clock in the afternoon over there, so I just keep running over to it and tending to it to make sure it doesn't get out of hand.

That sounds pretty good. Hey, do what you got to do!

SEAN FARRELLY: Scott likes to cook for us.  

SCOTT LEWIS: I need to feed my boys.

SEAN FARRELLY: It's one of his favorite pastimes.

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: It's the only way he's going to get us over his house, basically.  

SCOTT LEWIS: They're growing boys. I've gotta keep them nurtured.

Congratulations on Spotify! I saw that you got a lot of streams, a lot of followers in a lot of countries. That's pretty wild.

SCOTT LEWIS: Yeah, we've been trying to build our online following a little bit.

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: That's a hard thing to do.

SCOTT LEWIS: It is.

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: Emails and playlists and whatnot and curators. It takes a lot of work.  

[Keyboard player Mike Casson joins the interview.]

SCOTT LEWIS: Here is our piano prodigy extraordinaire.  

MIKE CASSON: How's it going?

We were just going over the past shows that you've done over the year. You guys have been really busy. Are there any that stick out in your mind that you particularly enjoyed?

MIKE CASSON: Yeah, there were a bunch. What was it, Riverfest?

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: That was a couple of years ago, but still. We were saying The Grateful Daze and Kenny's Cosmic Campout.

MIKE CASSON: Oh yeah, The Grateful Daze was really cool. We played at a brewery recently, too, that was really cool.

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: Yeah, Fort Nonsense Brewing Company had a grand re-opening. That was a Halloween show, too.

What are your plans in terms of new music? Is it a similar sound and feel compared to what you've done in the past?

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: Pretty similar sound and feel. We try to change it up, but we've got some songs in the works. Nothing ready to put on record yet, but we did record a single over this past summer that's ready to be released probably within the next month or so.

SCOTT LEWIS: Yeah, me and Anthony are kind of approaching the end of the writing process for this next record that we're going to start doing in 2022. I'm really excited about it because I feel like this next record, just based on the raw form of the songs we have now, it's going to be kind of like the final realization of what we've been trying to do with this band. Look at the last record, and it kind of has elements of the first record in it. This next one is going to be, I think, a total breaking new ground type of thing where it's going to be something completely fresh. It's going to be the four of us working like lockstep with each other as one cohesive unit. We're all going to be putting our creativity together in one, and that's going to be really fun to see.  

Clockwise: Mike Casson, Scott Lews, Sean Farrelly and Anthony Ambrosio recording at Backroom Studios in Rockaway, NJ.

Are you going back to Backroom Studios with Kevin [Antreassian]? 

SCOTT LEWIS: Yeah, he's like our George Martin, you know what I mean?

MIKE CASSON: He's really good.  

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: He works well with us. He knows us.  

MIKE CASSON: He's been doing it for a while with the band.

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: And he's very easy to work with. You say anything and he'll do it. Like, "Oh yeah, let's do it! Let's try it," you know?

SCOTT LEWIS: This will be our fourth session with him, and I just feel like now we have a bit of a shorthand and we have a rapport with him where we don't have to overexplain anything. He just kind of intuitively knows what to do for our band and our sound and our songs.

You guys didn't really stop during the pandemic. You kept going, staying really busy, and playing shows. Did you find that, in terms of the audience reaction, people were grateful to be able to be outside of their houses/apartments? Was there a good vibe? What was that audience reaction like?

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: People just started coming back out, especially when it got nice out. A lot of the stuff was outside. During the winter Scott and I were doing some acoustic stuff, or Mike and Scott were doing some acoustic stuff, and people just loved it. People were just trying to get out and live their lives again.

SCOTT LEWIS: I almost feel like now people are more grateful than ever for live music, you know what I mean? People went through a period of time when they were all locked in their houses streaming Netflix, and so now when they're at a place with live music, they appreciate it. It's Like, "Wow, life would be bleak without this." So there is that little thing. I think people are more excited for live music now than ever before.

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: Even for us, guys, we're guys who go to concerts all the time. We hadn't gone to any shows, but luckily all four of us together got to go see Hall & Oates this summer.  

SCOTT LEWIS: That was amazing!

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: It was down at PNC Bank Arts Center.

MIKE CASSON: That was a great night.  

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: A great little outing. It was the first concert of the last couple of years, sort of thing. 

SCOTT LEWIS: We're all into so many different kinds of music, but we all love pop music so much. To see one of the greatest pop music writing duos, to see them on stage, and they sounded as good as ever, it was really, really inspiring and cool.  

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: It was.  

MIKE CASSON: Daryl was getting mad at the sound guys, though. He kept on getting feedback.

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: We're sorry about that, Daryl.

SCOTT LEWIS: The sound sucks at PNC, and I'm so happy that Daryl held their feet to the fire on that one.

MIKE CASSON: He was getting mad, but they killed it, though. 

SCOTT LEWIS: I was getting mad.

SEAN FARRELLY: I didn't even mind spending the $14 on the beer.

What are your plans for 2022? You mentioned new music, the festivals. 

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: That's our biggest goal, to get some new music. We want to be back in the studio at some point, hopefully real soon.

SCOTT LEWIS: Yeah, we pretty much have like the next EP written out, and I'm personally so excited about it because I think that some of the songs on this next record are going to be our best ones yet. Just this new single alone that we recorded, we showed it to a few close friends and they were like, "This is better than anything from the last two records." In my mind, I'm like, "Well, wait 'til you see what else is on the next EP. It's going to be even better than this." So, I think that we're just keeping that upwards trajectory going, of getting better and better with the songs. I'm really excited. 

For the new EP, do you have any collaborations in mind?

SCOTT LEWIS: The last record, we worked with two amazing musicians named Earl Maneeine and Jennifer Devore who are members of... It's actually a funny story. So Earl is an amazing violinist, and his wife, Jennifer, is an amazing cellist. They're part of this quartet called The Vitamin String Quartet. They do these amazing tributes to great songwriters like Elliott Smith and Fiona Apple and all these great songwriters who we admire. So I'd been listening to them since I was in high school, and then one day we were talking to Kevin [Antressian], like "We need strings" and he was like, "Oh, I have some string players I could hook you up with." He gave us the contact info, we started talking, we added each other on Facebook, and like a week after we added each other on Facebook, I was bored and I was looking at their Facebook and it says "Violinist and cellist at Vitamin String Quartet." I was like, "Wait, WHAT?" I didn't even know these guys who I had been talking to about the project and working on our songs were from this quartet I had been listening to for like 10-12 years and who I loved so much. That was a really cool, full-circle moment. So, that was on the last record.

We don't really know who we're going to work with on this next one. We're a very tight-knit group when it comes to recording. Like, we usually don't let anybody in the studio other than us, but as we get to a song and we say, "Oh, this needs this instrument, this needs that instrument..." For the first record, we hired a saxophone player. So we kind of play by ear and see what the song needs, and then we kind of hunt out someone to play the part.

Our first drummer on our first record was a good friend of ours — and is still a close friend of the band — Sean Meyers. He has this great project called Gates to the Morning. On the first record on our song "Wreckage", track 3 on our first EP, there's this is a line where it says "Every time it rains so hard, a little bit of us weathers away" and when I say the word "rain", Sean did a rain stick, so “Every time it rains” it goes "tshhhh." We forced Kevin to take that recording of the rain stick.

SEAN FARRELLY: Yeah, take the rain stick and put it in every other release.

SCOTT LEWIS: Every single release we ever do, like 40 years from now, we're going to be using the rain stick.

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: It's in the new single. You'll hear it.

MIKE CASSON: It's subtle.

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: It's very subtle.

MIKE CASSON: But it's nice.

SCOTT LEWIS: Basically, we want, 40 years from now, to still have Sean have a credit on our record and he hasn't talked to us in like 30 years but we just want him to be there, just so he opens the record and he's like, "These idiots." So, we're looking forward to seeing how we can utilize the rain stick.  

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: This new EP, I am pretty sure on one track there is going to be some sort of instrument. Something. We don't know what yet, but something will be there, just for fun, you know? Horns or something.

MIKE CASSON: I personally think it's cool to collab with people that you like in the local scene.

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: Oh yeah, definitely. 

MIKE CASSON: Because there's so many talented people that we know that, you know, a lot of people, sometimes we get caught up in being a band and just focusing on what the band should sound like, but at the end of the day, we're just trying to get our music out there to as many people as possible, and sometimes a collab can just take a good song and make it something special. I definitely am open to that.

SCOTT LEWIS: Me, too. 

MIKE CASSON: If we know the people that would fit, you know?

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: It's not planned. It just kind of gets figured out as the process is happening.  

Since Spotify is so international, do you ever get messages from people in different parts of the country or different parts of the world that are surprising?

SCOTT LEWIS: We got a really lovely review from a music blog in Mexico, and we had to use Google Translate to understand what they were saying. It said something to the effect of, "This is a great blend of pop, funk, blues, disco" and I was like, "I guess there is disco in there." They were like, "You've gotta have this in your music library." As we're reading out the Google Translate, we were like, "These guys are so nice." So there's been little instances of that. We're going to try to have that same outreach with the next single.

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: We've been working with a radio promotion company called Twin Vision, and they were the ones that were helping us spread it around. We're going to be working with them with this new single as well. So hopefully we get the same kind of feedback with people reaching out.

SEAN FARRELLY: We're hoping they remember us from the last one, so they see that we released a new one and will be like, "Oh yeah, I remember these guys. We'll check it out."

Where are they based?

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: They're based out in Brooklyn. They work with everyone all over the country, but their main offices are in Brooklyn. They found us. We played at Rockwood Music Hall two years ago. They searched the website and found us through the website, listened to our music, and reached out to us about helping us promote shit, but we didn't have anything out at the time, so we used them last year and we reached out again this year for the new single. So, hopefully, it works out.

Is there anyone who you'd like to give a shout-out to?

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: I’d like to give a shout-out to "the two Jim’s." Sean's father and Mike's father, Jim Casson and Jim Farrelly. They come to every show we play.

SEAN FARRELLY: Every show. No matter where it is.

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: They just show up.

SCOTT LEWIS: Jim squared.

MIKE CASSON: They're a good duo.

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: Excellent duo..

SCOTT LEWIS: We've had this pipe dream of a photoshoot where we dress up our dads as us. 

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: And they're the band, they just wear outfits we happen to wear. Sweater vests and beards and stuff.

SCOTT LEWIS: Me in like a beer-stained shirt. Anthony in a snap-on jacket. Mike in a Nintendo T-shirt with a beanie on.

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: Man bun.

MIKE CASSON: I’ll wear something ridiculous, like tigers…

SCOTT LEWIS: Like a muscle shirt covered in watermelons.  

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: Jim's gotta start working out to do this.

SCOTT LEWIS: Didn't we have an idea where, for some reason, we were going to be in the background? Like, you know in a cartoon when a bunch of characters poke their heads around a corner and their heads are stacked? It's gonna be us looking around the corner at our dads as us.  

MIKE CASSON: It’s a good idea for a cover.

SCOTT LEWIS: We were really high when we came up with this idea, but it sounded great at the time.

Yeah, that could be the artwork for the cover.

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: We can't help that we're geniuses.

SCOTT LEWIS: If you saw that album cover, wouldn't you go, "I vaguely want to take a listen to this"?

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: You'd shut it off after the first 20 seconds.

SCOTT LEWIS: But at least you started it!

I would be intrigued, for sure.

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: Even if they didn't have their shirts on. Actually, our dads are almost in better shape than us. 

SCOTT LEWIS: Our dads are in way better shape than us.

Are any of them musical? Would they ever have a guest spot?

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: My dad's actually a drummer, almost like a casual hobby. When I was a kid, he'd put on Journey CDs and just play along to them. So that's kind of what got me into it. I started jamming on drums. He got me a guitar and a bass and whatnot. But other than that, not really.

SCOTT LEWIS: My dad learned "Badge" by Cream on the bass when he was, like, 25 and then never did anything else musical again.

SEAN FARRELLY: My dad kind of knows how to play drums because I've shown him a couple of things in recent past years. I think he just needs to get over the confidence part.

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: He is a black belt, though.

SEAN FARRELLY: Yeah. He needs to get out and just play in front of people. He is a black belt, though. I know that's not really a musical instrument.

MIKE CASSON: My dad did choir when he was younger and he'll sing, kind of. He's not into music really, but he's always had a great taste in music. I owe him a lot for all the insane catalogs of different genres, of all the classics that he had showed me growing up, that has just seeped into your subconscious and then you grow up and it’s kind of influences you.

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: Same with me. My dad introduced me to so much music. Never was a huge musician, but he was just a huge music fan.  

Shout-out to them!

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: Oh yeah. Other than that, everyone else can suck it, I would have to say, right?

A shout-out to our friend, Nicole. She helped us a lot.  

SCOTT LEWIS: Oh yeah. Let's give a shout-out to Nicole! She's always there for us, even when we are not there for ourselves. We really appreciate that.

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: She helps us with a lot of things. She's gotten us gigs. She's taken pictures.

MIKE CASSON: Helped us book.

SCOTT LEWIS: She's a jack-of-all-trades.

MIKE CASSON: Yeah, she's great.

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: She's a good friend.

MIKE CASSON: Shout-out to Nicole. Nicole's cool. She's a good friend.

OK, well, I will let you guys enjoy your gumbo and cornbread and pizza.

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: We've been waiting for the gumbo for hours.

SCOTT LEWIS: That's not true, it's ready. Don't listen to him! We should do this once a year. This is fun. This is nice.

Hey, it's always good to catch up.

MIKE CASSON: We should make a Patreon.  

SCOTT LEWIS: We should.

MIKE CASSON: We should.

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: I was thinking an OnlyFans.

MIKE CASSON: We could do an OnlyFans.

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: They think it's nudes and they click on it and it's one of our shitty songs. “We paid for this shit?!”

SCOTT LEWIS: They think it's nudes but they click on it and it's just me making gumbo for 11 hours straight.

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: And me yelling at him. "Where's dinner? Where's my dinner?!" 

SCOTT LEWIS: I’d pay for that. I’d watch that.

Yeah, you should do that on YouTube! What do they have? The yule log that plays in a loop for 24 hours?

SCOTT LEWIS: It’s Scott stirring gumbo.

SEAN FARRELLY: I love that idea!

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: We'll give you royalties.

You can have that, and then people can tip you along the way.

MIKE CASSON: Livestreaming on Twitch.tv.

ANTHONY AMBROSIO: With a City Limits track on repeat in the background.

SCOTT LEWIS: We'll give you a producer's credit, Sonia. 

Interview with Sara Abdelbarry (Teen Idle)

By Sonia Schnee | Posted Wednesday, April 13, 2022

In February of this year, Asbury Park alt-rock songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Sara Abdelbarry (a.k.a Teen Idle) released her first single in 2 years, entitled “Burning”, and this Friday, 4/15, she’ll also be releasing the official music video for it.

With the exception of drums recorded by Simon Ogilvie and Danny Murray, Sara played all the instruments featured in the song and recorded them in her basement. (Shoutout to Andy Schichter for mixing and Kramer for mastering!)

In March, Sara’s guitar and synth skills plus backing vocals were featured on the Arabic-language song “La ElWa2t Yesra2”, produced in collaboration with Egyptian artist 200 Shams, which you can listen to here.

If you’re craving more by Teen Idle, you can catch Sara performing live on 4/28 at Finnegan’s Pub in Hoboken, NJ with Sonic Blume and ØM-53, and again on 4/29 at Stage Dive in Glassboro, NJ with Awesome Possum, Winkler, and Nadir Bliss.

Sara/Teen Idle is currently working on a full-length album. If you want to be the first to find out when it drops, and stay up-to-date on upcoming shows and other announcements, be sure to follow @teenidlemusic on Instagram and Twitter.

To learn more about the inspiration behind “Burning”, Sara Abdelbarry’s personal and musical journey, and her plans for the future, check out our interview below.

Congratulations on the release of your recent single, “Burning." You had me hooked in the first 18 seconds. I was transported. Would you say “Burning” is a continuation of your past work or a departure from it?

Thank you so much. I’m glad the song was able to transport you — that to me is the best compliment. “Burning” feels like it grew naturally from the sounds of my EP, since I wrote it during the same time, but it’s also strikingly different in some ways (at least to my ears). Some people who listened to the single described it as shoegazey, which is interesting because I think of it as the least shoegaze inspired song I’ve released. The song incorporates a lot of the fuzzy guitars and sonic patterns of my prior releases, but with this song I definitely wanted the focus to be on vocals and lyrics in a way I wasn’t thinking about on my EP.

What can you tell us about the inspiration behind the song? Did you have a clear idea of what you wanted it to be about when you started writing? What was that journey like?

It was definitely a journey. I remember starting the song about 3 years ago when I was a senior in college. The first part I wrote was the instrumental, which I recorded into a computer. I remember thinking there was strong potential there. At that time I wasn’t thinking about subject matter or lyrics at all; I just thought I had a fun guitar riff. The instrumental ended up sitting around until one weekend when I came home from school. I was feeling torn about a crush I had, which sort of characterized my last few months of college, so I started to write some lines of poetry in a notebook. I was just spilling my feelings. Later, when I wanted to put those words to song, I remembered I had the instrumental for “Burning”; luckily it seemed to match up with the words.

I kept tinkering around with certain lyrics. I doubt anyone would think this a song about an unrequited crush by looking only at the lyrics, yet it is! Some of the lyrics are pretty dark without context — “glowing is the sunlight, but all I see is black” — but they‘re about being in a funk because of a complicated crush gone sour. For some reason, whenever I sing the song and get to that lyric, I end up smiling. I think it’s because this seemingly bleak lyric is actually empowering when I think about how tiny of a struggle this crush was in my life compared to what it felt like back then. Almost comically. It’s awesome to feel like you’ve matured.

Where did you record/who did you record with?

I actually produced the song alone and recorded it in my basement, which I turned into a DIY studio. I was lucky to have my friend Danny play live drums on the song and record it at a separate studio. Other than that, I played all the other instruments myself. It was definitely a learning experience, and super fun. You really have to commit to finding certain sounds for a song — in a dream situation they come in five minutes, and other times in five days. It took weeks for this one riff to come out that I think made the whole song. The nice thing about recording at home is that you’re not under some deadline or budget, but I definitely have more fun when friends play on my songs.

Is music-making something that runs in your family? How did you get to where you are today?

Boy, I feel like this is a fun one. I don’t know of anyone in my family, even generations back, who pursued music as a career, but one side of my family is definitely the more creative one — it seems like all my first and second cousins make art in some way, whether singing, visual art, or even tattooing. My mom used to make paint and collage and my grandmother used to write poetry. My dad also makes these doodles that I find artistic.

Back in Egypt, where my family is from, my one side of the family was involved in the film industry, with my grandmother’s first cousin managing to make a name for herself. Some of the family started acting or getting involved with film, so I feel like that’s a major influence for me. Even if it’s film, not music. The sentimentality of Arab cinema is actually a huge influence on my creativity, which I didn’t realize until recently.

The reason I became obsessed with music in the first place was because of family — my older cousins, who I thought were the coolest people ever, would watch MTV with me and illegally download songs for me on LimeWire. This is why I was listening to 50 Cent in kindergarten. I was so into MTV that the first album I ever bought as a child was Sweet Escape by Gwen Stefani, after seeing her music videos on there. This and Kelly Clarkson made me want to be a performer.

What do you hope people will walk away feeling or thinking about when they listen to “Burning”, specifically, and/or your music in general?

Dang, I just hope that you gain something from listening to this song or my other songs. Whether that’s a comforting feeling, a realization about something in your own life after listening to the lyrics, or just a new song that you can add to your playlist and bop your head to. I secretly (yet not so secretly) hope that people are playing “Burning” in the car and feeling nostalgia. I don’t think about this when I write, but it’s cool when someone listens to your song and walks away with a lingering feeling of happiness, hope, reflection, whatever, that they’re thinking about for days.

What’s next on the horizon for you? Are you playing any shows? When can we expect to hear your full-length album?

So many things! I’ve been hard at work on a full-length album for what seems like 5 million years now, so once I get around to reaching out to some people and making the moves I need to finish it, it’ll be out. Hopefully before the end of the year. I’m definitely starting to play more shows in NJ. I’m playing at the basement of Bond Street Bar on 4/7 with Idle Wave, and 4/28 at Finnegan’s Pub in Hoboken with Sonic Blume & 0M-53. Tickets for Hoboken are on sale at the link in my Instagram bio.

Is there anyone who you’d like to give a shout-out to?

Most definitely — everyone who listens to my music and especially those who take the time to message me about it. I appreciate you. Also my parents for being literally the most supportive people ever. Catch them at most of my shows. My mom helped me make some stop motion art for the promo of “Burning,” and it turned out incredible, so go take a look at the Canva video that Spotify plays on your phone with the song! My mom made that.

Is there anything else that you want people to know about you and your work?

I started putting together a compilation during Women’s History Month, which will include female artists from around the area and beyond (as far as Australia) covering songs by other female artists. It will be available on Bandcamp and all proceeds will go to Nomi Network, which helps women who are at risk or victims of human trafficking get a jumpstart on their lives through social and economic assistance. Follow my Bandcamp for notifications when it’s released. I wanted to do something to celebrate talented women making music, but it’s also important that we’ll be doing our small part to raise money for a great cause that empowers women globally.

Do you have any words of advice or encouragement that you'd like to share with people who need it?

When it comes to making music, I feel like the most success is had when people stop focusing on fancy gear or plugins, and instead just try to make the best song they can make. For life in general, my life started to open up in ways I could never have imagined when I stopped giving in to fears. If you take baby steps to get rid of whatever fear holds you back, you’ll see how magically the world starts to open up. Take a step out of your comfort zone! And eventually your old comfort zone will be uncomfortable.

Finally, where can people listen to your music and connect with you online?

You can find me on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, YouTube, all the usual streaming platforms! Even TikTok which I’m trying to master. My music is also on Bandcamp at teenidle.bandcamp.com

I’m on Instagram and Twitter as @teenidlemusic!

Interview with Paul Haley and John Ramsburg of Thrill Ride

By Sonia Schnee | Posted Saturday, March 12, 2022

Punk n’ roll band, Thrill Ride, brought some much-needed joy to passersby in South Orange-Maplewood (SOMA, for short) when they decided to move their practice sessions outdoors during the pandemic. I spoke with Paul Haley (guitar/vocals) and John Ramsburg (bass/vocals) of Thrill Ride at the end of March 2021, and now, almost a full year later, it’s interesting to see what things have changed and what has stayed the same. Paul and John are both cool guys, so it was a blast to learn about the inspiration behind their sound, their songs, and how their music has been received locally as well as internationally.

Joined by their drummer, Will Kramer — plus the band Forget the Whale — Thrill Ride will be performing live at Picket’s Village Bar in Maplewood on Saturday, March 19th, 7-10pm. Be sure to check it out! Also, be sure to follow Thrill Ride on social media for up-to-date announcements about new recordings and shows.

Thrill Ride is on Portland, OR via NYC via Buffalo, NY's Honey Puller Records.

Watch our interview above, or read the transcript below.

(Video and transcript have been edited for time and clarity.)

What are your names, where are you from, and what do you do? What do you play?  

JOHN RAMSBURG: I'm John Ramsburg. I play the bass, I sing, and I write some of the songs in Thrill Ride.

PAUL HALEY: My name is Paul Haley. I'm the guitarist. John and I, we share songwriting responsibilities. We live in SOMA, NJ. I don't know what the outsiders think of that term, but we in South Orange or Maplewood call it "SOMA" for short. Will Kramer, our drummer, also lives in Maplewood.

Thrill Ride is actually the remaining members of our previous band, Dollar Store Riot. Thea Kearney, our singer at the time, needed to take a break. Dollar Store Riot went on hiatus, and John, Will, and I looked at each other and said, "Well, do we want to keep going or what?" We decided to keep going, so we came up with a new name, Thrill Ride, and we've been going ever since.

John came into the band shortly after Dollar Store Riot played Maplewoodstock back in 2016. It's probably the biggest musical event in Maplewood every year, every summer. Of course, last summer they canceled it because of the pandemic and, hopefully, we'll get back to that, but it's a very fun event. Dollar Store Riot had the opportunity to play. That was our original bass player's last show. I think John saw us playing and we offered him the job, which he happily took. Do I have the history right, John?

JOHN RAMSBURG: Yeah. So I've been friends with the drummer, Will, for quite some time. Our boys are the same age, went to school together. So when their bass player left, he knew that I played bass and asked me to audition. I got the part, learned all their songs, and we played for a while.

PAUL HALEY: It's kind of funny, John. You were in the band for, like, 17 minutes and then we put him in a Dollar Store Riot video.

JOHN RAMSBURG: Yeah, I'm in a video. It's not even my bass!  

For first-time listeners, how would you describe your sound, and who are your musical influences?

PAUL HALEY: Oh, God. It'll take me three days to list mine. You go first, John.  

JOHN RAMSBURG: Basically, your standard alternative garage. "Dad bands" is what they call us around town now. Our influences are The Police, The Clash, Buffalo Tom. All three of us come from very similar yet varied enough backgrounds where we each bring something interesting when we're working on new songs. If you liked to listen to 120 Minutes back in the day on MTV, you'd probably enjoy watching one of our shows.

PAUL HALEY: John and I share a bunch of favorite bands. When I hear our music, especially that last song that you added to the NJ Artists You Should Know (2021) playlist, "Shelf", it kind of reminds me of a The-Police-meets-The-Clash kind of thing.

I also hear a lot of what I like to call "punk n' roll." I hear Social Distortion. I hear many different influences coming in. Definitely, I wouldn't be playing guitar if it wasn't for bands like Buffalo Tom and The Lemonheads —that pop-influenced fuzz rock, overdriven rock, and things like that.

Will [Kramer] went to college out in the Seattle area — I think Evergreen State — and he grew up in the Boston area, so he definitely brings a lot of influences from there. It's kind of interesting how it all comes together. Will, John, and I definitely click. We could start playing something and it'll all start falling together.

Thrill Ride performs "Last Night" while in social isolation for a "Live" remote gig!

I saw that you did a quarantine series on social media and YouTube. Whose idea was that?

PAUL HALEY: Well, we just can't sit around. I mean, the funny thing is — and I kind of said this to the band — even though the pandemic hit last year, Thrill Ride was very productive, and I don't know if it was just a timing thing, but John, didn't we release like five or six songs?

JOHN RAMSBURG: Well, we got lucky in that we had gotten in the studio and recorded a bunch of scratch tracks right before they shut everything down. So then I was able to record from home and sent tracks in to our buddy, Tom. He does all of our mixing and recording. Will and Paul would pop in when it was safe. Paul gets tested every week, so it was safer for him to go in than for me. I was more comfortable staying home. But yeah, it was frustrating because we had planned a five-song EP. We recorded a bunch of the scratch tracks, and then we had to stop everything. So we used part of that to put out the videos. So, we all recorded separately, listening to the same song. I edited a bunch of it together and posted it up. Then when we had time, we'd work through one of the songs, get it mixed, and put it out. So then our five-song EP became this slow drip of singles that kept coming out. It kept us moving, which is good.

Congrats on your most recent release, "Catching a Reset." I like the lyrics!

PAUL HALEY: Oh yeah. Ha!

What's the story behind that? Is that about someone specific?

PAUL HALEY: I was trying to remember who wrote the lyrics, and I said, "Oh, wait, I wrote those!" I'll plead the fifth on a lot of that. Especially the chorus.

John handled that song very well. When he was learning to sing this song, I sent him the lyrics. Then when we went to record, he had the original lyrics that I had since revised. When I heard him do it, I was like, "I thought I gave you revised lyrics" and he was like, "No, these are it", and I'm like, "Well, those are the original lyrics." You remember that, John? I said, "OK, we'll leave that. I like that." I guess I had to hear the original ones again. I'm kind of glad that he got the original lyrics as opposed to the revised ones.

JOHN RAMSBURG: He had so many words per minute, it was off the charts, especially for one of our songs. We're very short, succinct. Tom Lucas, our engineer, said it's our “prog” song.

I like it! What's the name of Tom's studio?

JOHN RAMSBURG: Laughing Boys Recording.

PAUL HALEY: Laughing Boys is out of South Orange. I'll probably get this wrong a little bit, but Tom was a producer in New York for many years and then he built a home studio. It's a home away from home. He's a great guy, I mean, all-around good guy. He plays in every band in South Orange and Maplewood. I can't think of one band he never stepped into, except maybe ours. He added tracks to some of our songs, and even Dollar Store Riot songs. Some, we didn't even know he was going to do. I was listening to, I think it was the last Dollar Store Riot song we recorded. I heard organs in the chorus and I'm like, "Did we record that?" So I went to Tom. Tom, he is a sweetheart. I always say he's "the glue of SOMA", the music. He's just so involved. I said, "Tom, did you record organ?" He goes, "Yeah, I felt like doing that. What do you think?" I said, "Yeah, it sounds great!" I recommend everybody to go to his studio to record, for sure. One block off of South Orange Avenue.

That's nice that you have a short commute from your homes to the recording studio.

PAUL HALEY: John can basically hit Tom's house with a rock. I'm a little bit farther, but it's still very close. Tom's great to work with. He'll give you feedback. You know, a lot of studios, they're demanding money. With Tom, you've got to remind him, "Hey, we owe you some money." He'll be like, "Oh, yeah." You know what I mean? He does it for the love of the music. That's a great person to work with, for sure. So we're very lucky in that respect.

The song that was added to the playlist, "Shelf", has some French in it. I speak zero French, so I went into Google Translate.

PAUL HALEY: That was John's brilliant idea. Those organs that you have, it’s all John. That's a John song from start to finish. I mean that in the highest regard. It's a fantastic song. John, I don't think I ever told you, but I love the fact that you put French in it. I think it's great.

JOHN RAMSBURG: I woke up one morning and I had the whole song, the verse-chorus. I ran downstairs. It's one of those moments where I was like, "I gotta write this down." I got my phone, a recorder, and I just played it straight out and it was done, the song was over. I showed it to the guys and we came up with the bridge, so it wasn't a minute long. The French is the first verse just repeated. I don't know where I got the idea for the French, but I just started singing it in French, my broken high school French, and it stuck. In just, like, five minutes I had the song done. That's the only time that's ever happened to me in my life.

PAUL HALEY: I have to say, that's definitely one of my favorite songs in our catalog. It's a fun, catchy song. John really put a great song together for us.

Thrill Ride. Top: Paul Haley (Bass/Vocals). Left: Will Kramer (Drums). Right: John Ramsburg (Bass/Vocals).

Do you have any special collaborations, any tidbits that you can drop about what we can expect for this new selection?

JOHN RAMSBURG: Well, the one song we were working on at this last rehearsal, it's called "Started to Stop." I actually wrote it with my daughter. She's 11 now, but she was 10 when we wrote it.

PAUL HALEY: The next song we're working on is a song called "Ride" that John also wrote. Again, a fun song to play.

JOHN RAMSBURG: I like working with Will and Paul because a lot of the times when I write songs at home, it's more like alt-country for the sound because I just sit with my acoustic guitar and play something either sad or trying to tell a bit of a story. Then I bring it to them, and they're like, "OK, so we're going to play it faster than this, right?" and then it progresses and becomes our grungy, punky feel that we have. So "Ride" started like that. When I play it on the piano, it sounds more like a Springsteen song than when we play it together as a band. It's like a straight Social Distortion-esque rockabilly style. So it comes at you really fast and just keeps on going right to the end. Very danceable. I want to see people dancing at our gigs.  

So you both have a hand in the songwriting. So do you start with the lyrics first? What's that process like, and do you draw largely upon personal experiences?

JOHN RAMSBURG: For me, it all happens at the same time. I'll be messed around with some chords or have an idea and the words will just come out. They might be nonsensical, but I might get a core of something I want to talk about, and then I'll expand off of that on the lyrics. Sometimes I'm inspired by sitting on the train, New Jersey Transit. I heard a couple talking. They were basically saying, "We've gotta slow this relationship down." That's where "Chill Out" came from.

"Half as Much" is more about the social media obsession I was going through at the time, where I was just never present, I was always looking at my phone, and there was no reciprocation because it's social media — it doesn't care. Things like that. So I've pulled from all over. Sometimes I hear a song and I'll say, "I really like the way that song sounds" and I try to figure out that chord structure and see what I can change to make it mine and then build on that. So just a little bit of everything. It's a potpourri of songwriting.

PAUL HALEY: I would say usually it's the guitar riff that comes together. I'll dig through a bunch of lyrics and not like any of them. I tend to be more of a stickler with the lyrics. I can tell you that every line that I write means something. The meaning may be a subtle joke or somebody in mind. I would argue that all the lyrics that I write are usually about somebody.

When I think of songs like "Over His Emo", it's about one specific person.

"Beat a Skip" is, again, about a specific person. We wrote a really, really heroin chic version of it, and then one day we just decided to speed it up, and so we got two versions of it. We tend to play to the methamphetamine version of it now. I like playing it both ways, but I have to say the faster way is the fun way to play it.  

I got this little acoustic guitar that I bought my son a long time ago. It's one of those three-quarter travel ones. I have it right next to the couch. I'll be watching March Madness and working on a riff and be like "Oh, this works!" But it's usually the riff first and then the lyrics, for sure.

You have a pretty international following.  

PAUL HALEY: That's all John. He's got the connections. 

What was it like, the first time you had someone outside of the US contact you and say, "Hey, I discovered you"?

JOHN RAMSBURG: I was checking either CD Baby or Spotify for Artists, and I saw someone in Vietnam had listened to our whole album, which I thought was great. So that was cool because Paul's right, I have friends who live in Europe and Canada. Their friends are nice, they take a listen to it. But now it's starting to pop up in different playlists, which is pretty cool because I'm not doing this to be famous. I really enjoy writing and playing music, and I have a fun time doing it, and if other people like what I put down, that's great.

PAUL HALEY: There were some interesting ones that popped up. It makes you wonder. Actually, while we're talking, I think I'll look!

JOHN RAMSBURG: To hear or see that there are other people who like the music enough to listen to it again on Spotify, or they're discovering it on their own separate from me somehow, I just think it's cool. I'm very grateful. It's very humbling.

You both have kids that are in their teen years. Do all their friends know about the band? Do they come to shows? Have they given you feedback? What's that like?

PAUL HALEY: My kids are a little bit older than John's. I've got a junior and a freshman. I don't know if they ever listen to it, but every once in a while my oldest son, Aiden, will come and say, "Oh, I saw somebody in town wearing your band shirt." He'll say it just like that. My youngest, Liam, none of his friends say anything, but some of Aiden's friends have said things to me, like "Oh, I heard your new song. It sounds great."

JOHN RAMSBURG: My boy's older. He's in seventh grade, and one of his friends really, really likes us. He has our stickers on his wall, on his desk. He has both versions of our T-shirt. His parents come and see our shows a lot. You know, we're a neighborhood band. A lot of our friends come see us when we do gigs around town.

My daughter, she does backing vocals on "Bleed For Three", but that's about it. Her friends are like, they don't care. My kids don't care when we're playing. It's like, "Oh, are you going to come to the gig?" They're like, "Well, who's going to be there?" and then they go play with their friends while we're doing the show, you know? That's about it.

PAUL HALEY: I think the funniest thing is when you walk around SOMA or you're driving somewhere and you see somebody with the shirt. I saw someone a couple of months ago, and I just started laughing because you just don't expect to see it. I'm like, "Oh, wow, somebody actually owns one of our shirts!" It's cool. It's fun.

Do your coworkers know what you do? Have they come to shows?

JOHN RAMSBURG: When we play in the city, a couple of people I work with will come out, which is nice. It's good, too, because we're normally one of the first sets. At 7 or 8 o'clock, no one's in the bar anyway, so actually having people show up makes it more than just a glorified practice. Some of my coworkers and ex-coworkers from previous jobs still keep tabs on the band. I let them know when we have a new release out and they'll listen. Some of them ask for the new shirts, so Paul's kind enough to ship them out.  

PAUL HALEY: With my new job here, our office is officially open but we only have about four or five people, and I don't really know everybody yet. It was kind of weird, like this week there was somebody actually sitting a safe distance away from me. After months of nobody, it was like a Cast Away kind of moment. I was like, "Whoa! Are you going to be here tomorrow?" because it kind of freaked me out! I'm just not used to so many people here, you know? But my bigger point is I really am just starting to get to know people, and it's kind of difficult when no one's in the office and you're just depending on Teams or Zoom and stuff like that. No one even knows that I play music yet, and that's OK.

JOHN RAMSBURG: In my office, our global office newsletter actually included either the video for "Last Night" or "Chill Out." It was in the beginning of the pandemic when they were saying, "This is what people are doing while they're at home." So a whole bunch of people in my company found out that way, and I got positive feedback from that. So that was nice, to get exposure any way you can.

What would you say are some of the highlights that you've experienced so far, either as individual musicians/songwriters or collectively as a band? 

PAUL HALEY: I think 2020 is a highlight for me. I think we played two shows before the pandemic hit, and then we were able to play an outdoor show on November 20th or something like that, right, John? You would think would be cold and nasty, but it turned out to be, like, 68 degrees and we were playing outdoors on Springfield Ave at this open market kind of thing. So many people showed up.

 There are so many bands in SOMA, NJ and beyond that we're friends with, that we get to play with. Recording and getting those singles out in 2020, I think those are the highlights for me — just continuing to play despite the pandemic and everything else and playing with our friends and having friends come and see us. People were aching so much [to see live music] in November. I got so many texts like, "Hey, I drove by and saw your band!" I would consider that a highlight, and just getting those songs out. That momentum.

JOHN RAMSBURG: This band is actually the first one where I actually got to step up front and do the writing and singing and have a lot of support. The other bands I've been with have been supportive, I really liked working with them. One of my really good friends from college and I've been in a band forever and he is an amazing musician and singer, and I was always happy to be playing bass and working with him on his songs, but being able to finally come out in Thrill Ride and say, "Here are my songs. Do you want to play them?" and Paul and Will are like, "Yes, let's do this" and the affirmation that comes along with that, it's like, "I can do this!" Also, accepting the fact that a song's never really going to be finished, but I'm going to say it's good enough for me to play it out loud for people to hear. I think those are good personal highlights for me, just accepting that I can do this, and I'm really enjoying it. It's fun.

I was a theater major in school, so acting and stuff and being in front of people was fine for me, but I always felt that songwriting and singing was never something I was very strong at. So being able to overcome that with this group is the biggest highlight.

Also, some of the places we've gotten to play, like Asbury Park, Pianos in the city, just a lot of venues that I'd walk by or see other friends' bands play, and just popping in and getting to meet all these other great bands. This community here in South Orange-Maplewood, getting to play with our friends Tri-State, there's Maplewolf. They're a country cover band and they're great and it's fun to do a set with them because it just flips everything on its head when you're doing sets together. I love playing in this town. Everyone's so supportive. I can't wait to play gigs with some of the new bands that are coming up, like Thea [Kearney]'s band, Megasparkle. I think it'd be fun to go play with them, too.

Paulie’s Boutique. SOMA NJ rocker Paul J. Haley (Thrill Ride, Die-Cast Cars, Dollar Store Riot, Drunken Bird) plays 60 minutes of an eclectic musical mix (hardcore/punk to indie rock to hip-hop and more), including Local SOMA/NJ band spotlights and theme-based episodes for your auditory and spiritual healing.    

LISTEN LIVE! Tuesdays at 10 p.m. & Wednesday at 11 p.m.

Listen at bonepoolradio.com.

PAUL HALEY: John and I also have radio shows on Bone Pool Radio. I tend to do a lot of mixed shows. I'm 30 shows in — Paulie’s Boutique, it's called. Whenever I do a mixed show, it's an eclectic mix. I always made sure to put a local band in the show. Then, I increased it from one local band — and this basically means SOMA, NJ and beyond, but in New Jersey — and then I decided, well, I can't keep up with this, I have to add two. Then eventually it turned into where I just put together two exclusive shows about all the great bands in New Jersey, and I'm not even done yet! You can probably relate to that. Then I realize that every time I put one of those exclusive shows together, I forgot about all these bands over here.

SOMA, NJ has so many great bands within close vicinity, a lot of fantastic bands. I don't want to speak on behalf of John, but I feel very lucky to be part of that whole musical scene, being friends with all these bands. Everybody gets along playing along, and it's just a great thing. I hope to see it continue. It's definitely a fun scene. It took a little bit of time to come to fruition, but it definitely did. There are all these great bands, from the doom metal Green Dragon, to what I call the "Indigo Girls-sound" of Marry the Sea, to Tom Lucas of Laughing Boys Recording. He's got that great band, Sad About Girls. It's just crazy.

Two last questions. Are there any dream collaborations you would love to do with artists or bands — alive or dead? Also, where can people find you and connect with you online?  

JOHN RAMSBURG: We are on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @thrillridebandnj. You can find us on Spotify, Apple Music, and iTunes. Google "Thrill Ride." You can also hear us played on Bone Pool Radio. That's an iHeartRadio station, so you can check them out there. That's the New Jersey local station where Paul and I have shows.

You can reach out to me on Instagram and Facebook if you want to talk about band stuff. I'm always happy to chat. Same with Paul Haley. You can look us up any time.

So Paul, who would you want to play with?

PAUL HALEY: You said "alive or dead." I would love a chance to play with The Clash, or maybe when hell freezes over and The Smiths get back together. Another one of my favorite bands, Buffalo Tom. If I had to collaborate, I'd probably do it with members of local bands. Members of Tri-State, I would love to have a chance to play with. Allied Chemical is no more, but I would love to have a chance to play with some of those guys. Tom Lucas of Laughing Boys Recording and Sad About Girls, for sure. So, definitely a lot of local bands.

JOHN RAMSBURG: I like a lot of different styles. I'm obsessed with Toad the Wet Sprocket ever since I was in high school, so I would love to get a chance just to play, let alone hang out with Glen Phillips and just see how he does his songwriting or just playing, jamming some songs, just having a good time with them. Lucero, an alt-country band. Not everybody's heard of them, but they write some really beautiful, heartfelt music. I really enjoy the way they write a song. If I had a chance to go back and sit with Black Sabbath and play bass along. I love blues metal. It's just fantastic. I was just listening to an earlier Wolfmother record. That guy changes his band every three weeks, so if I can get a cycle in there for one tour, that'd be awesome.

To what Paul was saying about collaborating locally, I've had this idea knocking around my head for a while where we do a charity record, but we all do a cover of somebody else's song in town. I think that would be a lot of fun.

Is there anything else that you'd like to add that I haven't asked you about or that we haven't discussed yet? 

PAUL HALEY: I want to give a plug for Bone Pool Radio. Everybody should give Bone Pool Radio a listen, not necessarily for John or my show, but just overall listen to it, www.BonePoolRadio.com. They've got the app, iHeartRadio. They have their own app. It's just a great radio station. John and I are friends with the owner [Michelle S. Lomuscio]. She always wanted to have a radio station, so she made one. It's a lot of fun to do, and it's just great to have a radio station again. So whoever wants to listen, definitely give it a listen. It's a great station.

Interview with Ryan Hilsinger (Sleepy Rye)

By Sonia Schnee | Posted Tuesday, March 1, 2022

South Jersey drummer, songwriter, and studio owner Ryan Hilsinger, also known as Sleepy Rye, last month released the first single off of his upcoming debut EP. Blending together multiple influences, his EP A Bit of a Non-Person has a little something for everyone. In addition to getting ready to release his own music, Ryan is also working on a musical compilation via his studio AGL Sounds in Cherry Hill, NJ to benefit multiple charities (reach out to him to get involved). Be sure to check out his EP which drops tomorrow, March 2nd, and to learn more about Ryan and the ways you can collaborate with him, check out our interview below.

(Video and transcript have been edited for time and clarity.)

Thank you so much for taking some time out of your busy day to chat with me.

RYAN HILSINGER: Of course. Thanks for having me, I appreciate it.

First off, what's your name, where are you from, and what do you do?

My name's Ryan, or Sleepy Rye. I'm currently in Cherry Hill, NJ. I run AGL Sounds with Doug Gallo. I've been running this studio for almost five years now. I started recording people years and years before that and just recently decided to start working on my own stuff.

Congratulations on the release of your single "Nameless" which dropped on February 9th. What can you tell us about the inspiration behind that?

So, "Nameless" actually happened after a psychedelic trip, and I woke up the next morning really having no sense of myself at all. It felt like I was re-learning who I was and what I wanted, and I had to challenge everything that I thought I knew.

I actually started writing the lyrics for “Nameless” while I was going through that. So it starts off with "He rises covered in ashes and poison still in his veins." I was writing that covered in ashes. 

That's wild. Is that the first track off of your upcoming EP that you wrote?

I think it is the oldest, yeah. All four of these songs were written at different times, but "Nameless" is the oldest.

Cover art for Sleepy Rye’s upcoming EP, A Bit of a Non-Person.

Very cool. Let's talk about your upcoming EP, A Bit of a Non-Person, which is coming out on March 2nd. Very exciting. What can you tell us about that?

So I actually just officially announced the EP, and I said, "If you liked 'Nameless', listen to the EP.  If you didn't like 'Nameless', pre-save it anyways, so you can talk smack about it. It's not really the same as 'Nameless', but it's got the same kind of vibe. So if you liked 'Nameless', come along. If you didn't like 'Nameless', still come along because it's different enough where you might actually enjoy something.    

What would you describe as the genres you touched upon or the vibe or mood you were going for?

So, the first track off the EP is kind of this jaunty rock vibe. The second track is 'Nameless.' The third track is only bass guitar and vocals, and it's really choral and ethereal. Then the last song is kind of post-rock. It's a love song without the love song vibes. These songs were written so far apart, I was being influenced by something different each time.

Are you performing all the instruments? Did you bring in session musicians?

I did everything on the EP except for master it. It was mastered by Alberto de Icaza. I gotta plug him real quick because he's amazing at what he does. But yeah, everything else – the performance, the writing, the production, the recording, the mixing -- that was all me.

Wow. Is this your first-time kind of doing something like that? I mean, having a studio you had your hands in a bunch of different aspects of that. So what was that like doing that for yourself?

So actually, I released music for the first time under just my name, Ryan Hilsinger, back in 2009 I think. At the time, I was just recording in my parents' basement. I was in high school so I was still living with family. I recorded everything by myself then, but it was just acoustic guitar and vocals. This time around, it was a lot more in-depth. It was maybe more than I was ready to take on when I decided to take it on, but it just happened all of a sudden, and the timing felt right so I did it. 

Who would you describe as your musical influences?

Well, for sure, Incubus. Incubus has been since I was about nine years old when my older brother showed them to me and gave me a CD of theirs. On this album, there's some Minus the Bear in there. There's a little bit of Bayside. I personally love Snarky Puppy and a lot of "neo-soul" is what they're calling it these days, like Lianne La Havas, Tom Misch, and Esperanza Spalding. That's what I've been listening to a lot.

Your music, is a lot of it inspired by things that have happened to you personally? 

The four songs on the EP are all about things that I've experienced, but I have I don’t know how many dozens and dozens or hundreds of songs that will live and die on my hard drive, that I will write about absolutely anything.  

I once went to visit a friend in Philly and I got my days mixed up and she had class the whole day. So I waited and waited and waited in a Starbucks and in different museums, and then when I finally ended up on a bench outside, I wrote a song about a cigarette butt that somebody flicked. So I'll write about whatever.

Do you ever write songs for other people do as a ghostwriter or a credited writer?

So I’m actually starting to do that with the benefit single series that I was talking about. I'm actually, next week, writing a song with Katie Miller, and I started doing collaborations with people in Philly. So I'm hoping to do more of that. I'm hoping to do more songwriting for other people.

And how do you know Katie Miller? You're a drummer, right? So, you've worked on one of her songs?

So actually, we met through the New Brunswick music scene. We just happened to cross paths. But we started working together a little more than two years ago, I think, was the first time that I played with her. I played a show at MilkBoy in Philly with Kate Dressed Up. That was my first show with them back in December, two years ago. Then we were supposed to go on tour and then COVID happened, and she was like, "I still want to work together. Let's keep on doing this music thing," and she asked me to be in the band.

Then after band practice one day, Kate was just like, "Ry, would you happen to be looking for a manager?" Meanwhile, me and my friend had just been talking about how good it would be to have a manager. I was, like "Funny, you should mention that." That's how that aspect of our relationships started. Now we're just super close and at this point she's just a great friend.

So she’s also your manager?

Yep.

Oh, that's so cool! I didn't know she did that. I had an interview with her a couple of weeks ago. She's so modest. She's very smart.

Yeah, she is. Oh my goodness, she is the best.

She knows a lot of things about a lot of things.

She really does, seriously! I am super lucky to have her.

I might have missed a little bit in the beginning (when we started recording our interview). Can you go back to the compilation that you're doing?

Oh, the benefit series?

Yeah, yeah.

So, it's going to be called “Sleep Numbers.”

I bring a band in for a day or two, and we record a single together. I did my first one last month, and I'm just wrapping up work on that.  

Every band is going to choose a charity, they'll come in, we'll either write a song together or just record it if they already have a song written, release it, and all the proceeds go to whatever charity they chose.

That's really cool. Have you done this before? Is this a tradition?

So, I want to turn it into a tradition. My studio, AGL, back when we were located in New Brunswick, we used to do monthly shows where we would record all the shows and run everything through the studio and have a bunch of videographers there. We don't charge anything. It's just for the sake of putting it together,and then the added bonus of the charity on top.

Oh, that’s cool.

Hopefully it becomes a tradition. I’ve already got three in the works.

You’re on a roll. Keep on doing what you're doing!

Where can people reach out if they want to be a part of this iteration or the next iteration?

You can reach out to me on Instagram @sleepyrye.wav, or you can email me at contact@SleepyRye.com.

What does “AGL” stand for? Is there a story behind the name?

So, Doug (Gallo) and I are both massive fans of Incubus. We were thinking of names. Doug threw out the name of this Incubus song, "Just a Phase" Studios. He wanted an acronym for the name, so I suggested Incubus has a song called “Summer Romance (Anti-Gravity Love Song).” So I suggested "Anti-Gravity Love Sounds." That's why the logo is three heart balloons because it’s “anti-gravity.”

Oh my gosh, I see it!

Yeah. So it's Anti-Gravity Love Sounds.

That's really clever. I like that.

We had to find some way to pay homage to Incubus.

How did you meet your co-founder of AGL? Did you guys know each other from high school?

Yeah, actually, we went to high school together, but only for a little bit because he moved and transferred high schools. We went to high school together for two years. During those two years, I was working at a show production company/record label, and we worked with Doug's band at the time, so that's how I started talking to him. Then eventually I joined that band, and then we became another band. Then I moved out to L.A. for a little bit and when I came back, Doug was like, "Hey, are you interested in starting a studio?" I was like, "Yeah, absolutely!"  

I just gave myself a tattoo.

Oh, I see it! Yes! That'll be the thumbnail for the video.

Perfect!

That is really cool. Is there a place that you recommend? Or did you actually sit there and give it to yourself?

I sat there and stick and poked myself.  

True story?

Yeah, actually.

Oh my gosh! OK. You’re multitalented! "He can mix and record everything for you and be your session drummer, and while he's doing that, he can also give you a tattoo on the spot. Anything Incubus-inspired." 

Actually, my friend Abigail just started doing stick and pokes. She’s already an incredible artist, but they just started doing stick and pokes. I was their first person.  

Oh, that's cool. Is that a mushroom?

It's a nice little mushroom. It's a little honey fungus.

That’s awesome!

So, actually, if you're in the Philly area and you're thinking of getting a tattoo, look up The Shape of Sanctum.

Shout-out to Abigail!

Hell yeah!

So, you have a lot of things going on. Aside from being a co-owner of AGL Studios, you're also a session/touring drummer. Of course, you have Sleepy Rye. You've been involved or associated with numerous bands.

Tell us about your musical journey. Do you come from a musical family? 

So it seems like all of my family has some kind of musical talent that they refuse to recognize. My dad was in high school band and had a lot of potential as a drummer. My mom has a beautiful, angelic voice, as does my sister. My sister also played the flute and the violin. My brother played the bass guitar and the trumpet. But it seems that after high school, no one chased it. So I guess I'm the one who chased it after high school. But that was always going to happen because I was banging on pots and pans and playing on toy acoustic guitars since I was five, so it seemed like that was always going to happen.  

I love that. That's a really interesting combination — the drums and the vocals.

What would you say, looking back, have been some of your career highlights or moments that really stand out to you?

Honestly, one of my favorite things is meeting all of the different people that I meet, just everyone that comes through the studio or different bands that hire me for one-offs. Like I just recently, last year, got hired to play drums for a pop artist, Zoe on Venus, exactly a week before the show, with no practice or anything. We just showed up and played the gig and it went great and we had a ton of fun. Just like things like that. I love moments like that and just being able to meet everybody that I meet.

Actually, I would say another highlight has been not necessarily related to my personal journey, whether it's AGL or Sleepy Rye, but I worked for a little while on something called The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus. It's a big tour bus, like that bands go on, and it was gutted and turned into a recording studio.

Oh wow.

Me and two other engineers, we just drove around the country -- well, we didn't drive the bus, there was a bus driver -- but the four of us went around the country teaching kids about music production and making music with the kids. That was the best job I ever had. That was great.

That’s wild! How long ago was that?

That was back in 2017, 2018-ish?

That is really cool.  It's nice to have been able to do that traveling before the pandemic and the world changed.

Yeah, seriously. That 2017, 2018 might be off. The pandemic has completely messed up my sense of time.

Same here. I always think every day is Wednesday. The days of the week don’t matter a whole lot anymore.

Right, seriously.

Is there anything in particular you're looking forward to in 2022, aside of course from releasing your debut EP?  

Well, actually, I have a lot of work that I did this past year that is slated to come out this year, and I'm really, really excited for people to hear it. One of the songs just recently came out. I recorded a 17-piece jazz big band called the Grace Fox Big Band. Amazing. The first song, "I Just Found Out About Love", just came out and it's amazing. I've got a bunch of different projects that I did coming out this year that I'm really excited for.

And, I turned 30.

Ayy! A milestone! How does it feel now being in your 30s?  

Well... we'll see. Haha! I'll give it some time.

To be determined…

Yeah.

It's so interesting how things have changed. A generation ago, it was like 30 was older, but now your 30s are a continuation of your 20s and everything's just gotten pushed back a decade in terms of milestones and things.

Yeah, I like the way my dad described it: Your 30s are the chance to do everything you wanted to do in your 20s, but with more knowledge and more money.

I love that!

That's the energy I'm taking into my 30s.

So, you already mentioned one person. Is there anyone who you'd like to give a shout-out to?

Well, obviously Katie. We talked about her. Shout-out Katie Miller! She's amazing. She's absolutely incredible.

I want to shout-out, actually, my parents. My parents really help keep me grounded long enough to do something like record and mix songs by myself. Thank you, Mom and Dad. I love you both.   

Good son.

Haha! Eh… I'm a sweet son. I don't know about a good son.

There is a distinction!

Do you have any music videos planned?

No. Music videos, to do well, you either need a grand mind or a lot of money, and I don't know if I have either, but I do actually have a canvas video that is paired up with the fourth track on my EP, "Never”, done by KXB Studio. They took my idea and they brought it to life exactly the way I wanted, so that'll be fun. That'll keep you occupied on that four-and-a-half-minute song.

Where can people find you online if they want to listen to your music, if they want to send you a  message? What's the best way to find you, or all the ways to find you?  

So Bandcamp is obviously the quickest and best way to see everything that I've got, and you can contact me through there. That goes straight to my email.

You can stream me on Tidal and Apple Music and Spotify and Deezer. I'm everywhere.

And Instagram, is that your preferred social media?

Yeah. On Instagram, I'm @sleepyrye.wav. @SleepyRye on Twitter. @SleepyRye on Facebook. Sleepy Rye pretty much everywhere.

Nice.  This has been awesome. Thank you again so much.

Of course, of course. Thank you. I really appreciate it. This is my first interview. I had no idea what to expect, but I really, really enjoyed myself. Thank you.

Interview with Chelsea Carlson (Singer/Songwriter, Musician)

By Sonia Schnee | Posted Wednesday, February 9, 2022

NJ’s Chelsea Carlson has been keeping busy during the pandemic as a multi-genre singer/songwriter, member of the Renaissance Faire-inspired trio Bardy Pardy, and as a music teacher giving virtual and in-person lessons to students K-12.

On Friday, February 11, you can also see her perform live as she opens for the band The Wag at The Coffee House in Edison, NJ.

Chelsea has a ton of new music coming out later this year, as both a solo artist and through Bardy Pardy. So how has she been able to juggle all these creative endeavors while remaining so upbeat? Find out by watching our interview above, or by reading the transcript below.

(Video and transcript have been edited for time and clarity.)

Chelsea, thank you for joining me. It's good to see you here today.

CHELSEA CARLSON: It’s nice to see you, too.

So why don't you tell our viewers/listeners a little bit of background about yourself, who you are, what you do, where you're from?

My name is Chelsea Carlson. I am originally from Mount Olive, NJ, but right now I live in Brick, NJ. So, I'm enjoying the shore. I've been playing music forever, but I've been doing the whole singer/songwriter thing for about 12 years now, which is crazy to me. I also am in a folk trio called Bardy Pardy, so I've got some music going on there as well. I'm also a music teacher and a cat mom.

I, too, am a cat mom. Cat moms unite!

For first-time listeners, how would you describe your music? What genres would you say that you touch upon?  

I don't like to box myself into a genre because I listen to almost everything and so I kind of write almost everything, too. My music that's already out there is very much classic rock-inspired. So if you were to go online today and look me up, a lot of the stuff you'll find is very rock. My new music that I've been working on is a little bit more in the singer-songwriter/pop realm, kind of like Sara Bareilles/Adele style. I have a little bit of everything going on.

So you do solo work and you also have the trio. How did that come about? How do those two worlds interact?  

Well, I've been doing the solo thing for a long time. I've been in a number of different bands. I love being in bands, it's a lot of fun, but it can also be very hard with scheduling and stuff like that. So, sort of all along the way, when I've been in bands I've also done solo stuff. At some point, around 2013 or so, I just decided, you know what? I'm mostly going to do solo stuff, and that is mostly what I've done.

My trio Bardy Pardy (I know, it's a fun name), we actually met while we were on the cast of the New Jersey Renaissance Faire in 2017. We were just assigned to work with each other to put together a show for the Faire that year, but we ended up gelling so well that we were like, "We should just be a band." So we have been since then, and we actually just finished up in November recording our first album, so we're hoping to release that this spring.

Who are your bandmates in Bardy Pardy?

 Stephanie Krause and Hannah Ward. They're actually both from Pennsylvania, so we're an interstate band. 

Your new music — can you tease us a little bit? What are the songs about? How many tracks are there?

I've been bursting to tell people. I've kept it secret long enough, I feel like. I originally was going to record a new album, and I have recorded enough songs to make an album, but I think I'm probably going to release them as singles instead. So you're going to get a ton of singles over the next few months to a year. So there are 10 new songs. About half of them, I'd say, were written during the pandemic. So they're fairly new. So pretty much unless you've watched one of my livestream shows, you really haven't heard those songs, so that's pretty cool. And then some of them are a little bit older. I've got some what I would call "fan favorite" songs on there, including — this is the weirdest song I've ever written — "The Ballad of the Sausage King."

You'll definitely recognize some songs if you've listen to my music before, but I've got some new stuff as well, and kind of a lot of different genres. We're really playing around with different sounds and things. I have one song that I've put in the '90s rock Alanis Morissette zone, and then I have other ones that are very pretty singer-songwriter-y, and then "The Ballad of the Sausage King" is like a blues song. I have one song that's going to be very much more electronic that's called "No Superhero" which is really cool.

Content-wise, I try to not be too same-y with the topics I cover in my songs, so we've got a lot of different things going on. I have songs that are more story songs. I have songs that are definitely about the way the pandemic affected my mental health, and I'm sure a lot of other people's as well, and then everything in between. No breakup songs, though! I didn't write any breakup songs.

I'm looking forward to hearing the variety!

How would you describe your song creation process? Are you walking along and you get a melody in your head? Do you come up with the lyrics first? Are there any specific things that you like to draw inspiration from? Is it from your own life or do you get inspiration from movies?

It really depends on the song. In the past, I tended to write music first, or more or less do both at the same time and then just fine-tune it after the fact. A lot of my more recent songs, I found myself writing lyrics first, which is funny because it's something I have never, ever done in my entire life. So I was like, "Oh, this is new," and it seems to continue to happen.

There is one song that I wrote, and I actually released a demo of it in 2020, called "The Same Old Mind." I came up with the piano part and then months later wrote lyrics separately, not even thinking about that, and then was like, "Hey, I wonder if those will go together" and they did. So it really depends on the song for order of how I write things.

In terms of inspiration, pretty much always my songs are about myself or somebody close to me. Usually myself. I do have two songs on this new project I've been working on that are straight-up story songs that I got from other places, like "The Ballad of the Sausage King" of course is not a personal story. That's a story inspired by a True Crime documentary I watched. I have another song called "Oppy," which is about a Mars Rover. So those are not about me, but pretty much the rest of them are about me.

So you said you have one song that's inspired by the pandemic. What was your experience through the pandemic? How has that affected your songwriting? Are there any words of advice or encouragement that you have for people who are creative like yourself and could use a little boost?

Yeah, the pandemic definitely was hard on musicians because there were no shows. For 2020, especially, I had a lot of really exciting things lined up that when the cancelation started rolling in, it was very sad for myself and I know for a lot of other people. So at the beginning of the pandemic, I was very disappointed about a lot of things, but then I kind of settled in and was like, "Wow, I have a lot of time." Like back in the day, I spent so much time in my car because I was living half the week with my parents, half the week with my fiancee and I just never had time for myself.

When it was like, "Well, I'm working at home, I have no commitments," I just found myself becoming more creative, actually having time to be like, "Hey, let me write some songs and actually spend time on it and let me be creative about other aspects of my music career. Let me take new photos. Let me do all these things" because I actually had time. So in a way, it was kind of nice to not have a crazy schedule because it allowed me to focus more on my artistry.

The state of the world definitely found its way into my songs. One in particular, which I've been calling "Promise Me", I would have just called it "The 2020 Song." It kind of covers everything that happened, my feelings about it. It's definitely going to be the most rock and roll of my next 10 songs because that's just the feeling that was behind it.

The pandemic, I think, really forced a lot of people to think outside the box in how they could continue on their paths or maybe change their paths. So my advice for anyone who's still trying to find their way is just take it as an opportunity to reinvent yourself and find new places to do things and new avenues because there actually was a lot of opportunity for that over the past two years. Now that things are opening up again, I feel like I actually have a better sense of myself as an artist and where I want to go than I did before all of this happened.

Where have you been recording? Have you been doing things at home or have you been going to a studio? What's that process been like?  

I've been recording with my producer, Tommy Strazza, who I've played a lot of gigs with, like duo gigs and stuff. We've recorded at Volume IV Studios in New Brunswick, the majority of the stuff. Some of it we've done at home. It's been a really fun process getting to work with him. I've also been working with Joshua Van Ness, who played drums. It was just really nice because as a soloist I've heard my songs by myself with piano and guitar and nothing else, and so kind of hearing all of these other instruments bring my songs to life has just been really cool and they got my vision right away. So it's been really fun.

I haven't recorded in a studio for many, many years. My entire last album was done in a home studio. All the stuff I've recorded myself, obviously, was in a home studio. So actually going to like a real music studio again has been cool. It feels very official.

As for Bardy Pardy's album, we've been recording with Dave Pirrocco, who produced my debut album. His studio is JackedCat Productions. That's been a really fun experience, too, because this is actually the first time I've recorded with a band that wasn't just playing my music but we all collaborated on, so that was a lot of fun, too.

What would you say you're most looking forward to in 2022, aside from the pandemic going away and the world returning to "normal"?  

This is going to be the craziest year for me that I've had in a long time, and I feel like that's compounded by the fact that I haven't done anything for two years. But in my personal life, I'm getting married, so I'm very much looking forward to that. Of course, I have so much new music coming out. I'm just putting the finishing touches on my original music. I have some music video ideas lined up, so I'm very much looking forward to filming those and getting my own original music out.

I'm really, really looking forward to Bardy Pardy's album coming out because we did a Kickstarter to fund that album in December 2019 and then the pandemic happened, so it's been a long time coming, and I'm just excited that the world will finally get to hear it.

I have a lot of really exciting shows of my own coming up. My next gig is going to be at The Coffee House in Edison. I'm opening up for The Wag. It's going to be a lot of fun. That's on February 11th.

Bardy Pardy, we're mostly a Renaissance Faire act, so we're going to be playing at a lot of different Renaissance Faires. One really exciting one, which I'm not allowed to say yet because we haven't signed all of the paperwork, but we're going to be traveling quite far for one, so I'm very excited.

My fiance, Eric, started a nonprofit called the Artist Collective Troupe. We're based in Ocean and Monmouth County. It's to support the arts communities within our area, putting on theatrical shows, offering educational opportunities and different things, open mics. Our next show is going to be a musical revue, which is going to be on April 23rd. We're holding auditions, and I'm going to be Music Directing it. It's going to be all songs from your favorite animated movies. So I've got a lot of things happening that I'm very excited about.

I love that! Congratulations on your engagement!

The Artist Collective Troupe, is it a community group?

We're still in the process of becoming official, but we are a nonprofit organization. We had an open mic that we ran in October, and then we did Christmas caroling at several different things during the holidays to raise money for the Ashley Lauren Foundation, which is "Hope and help for children with cancer." So, our goal really is we want to support artists and children and teens who want to get into the arts in various different ways, but then use the events and things that we do to raise money for other local nonprofits. So we're hoping to have our next one go to Make-A-Wish. We're again in the paperwork for that, but we got a lot of good stuff going on. 

Where can people find you, both you as a solo artist and also Bardy Pardy and the new nonprofit?  

There's so many things, right? Well, you can find me on all of the social media — Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. The easiest way to get to it would be through my website, which is ChelseaCarlsonMusic.com.

You can also find us on all the social media for Barty Pardy as well. Our website is BardyPardy.com. As we were founded at a Renaissance Faire playing peasants you can't read, Bardy Pardy is misspelled, so "Pardy" is spelled with a "d", not a "t."

The Artist Collective Troupe, you can find at ArtistCollectiveTroupe.org.  

Is there anyone who you'd like to give a shout-out to?

Oh, there's so many people. I don't know how many I'm allowed to give shout-outs to.

As many as you’d like!

Well, of course, shout-out to Tommy Strazza, who's producing my album. He has a bunch of his own music and he's in a couple of different bands, so check him out.

Joshua Van Ness, who played drums on my album. He's also in The Wag.

I want to give a shout-out to two of my former students who have been releasing music. I've been teaching lessons for over a decade and two of my students who were with me for several years, they're now both in college, just released new music. One is Lauren Onufryk. She just released her debut single "Haircut" on Spotify a couple of weeks ago. Her stage name is Ren. Another one of my former students, Isabelle Tarran, just released her debut EP a few months ago on Spotify and everything, so check them out.

And then just two people that I love to listen to who are local New Jersey girls are Sof, who just released her debut album, "Dawn", and Gina Royal, who has just released a ton of fantastic music over the past year. So check them out.

Do you feel a pride, like a mom pride, of seeing your music students grow and take off?

Oh yeah, so much. One of my students, who's now a freshman in college, texted me last week a YouTube video of a benefit concert that she was in at her college, doing a song that I taught her in lessons like three years ago, and I literally was holding back tears. I was like, "Oh, my baby's all grown up!" because I taught her since she was 11, you know?

My longest-running student that I have now started in 2012, and she's now a junior, I think, in high school, so it's just like... Oh, no, she's a senior! Oh my God, she's a senior in high school! I started teaching her when she was in third grade.

Classroom teachers, you get them for 10 months. I get you for 10 years. Like, I really get to know you by the time we're done.

It's amazing that you've kept busy and also so positive and upbeat.  

I've been lucky. I know a lot of people have not been as lucky as I have over the past year. Even at the height of nobody going out and everything, I was able to continue teaching my lessons on the internet, and I feel like I got to see people as a result of that. Like I saw 30 people a week from teaching. So I was lucky that even though my life kind of came home, it didn't stop. But, yes, it's been a ride, hasn't it? The hardest times, sometimes we come back even better and stronger than before.

Stay connected!

CHELSEA CARLSON

Website: http://www.chelseacarlsonmusic.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cecmusic
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/chelseacarlsonmusic
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/chelseacarlsonmusic
Bandcamp: http://www.chelseacarlsonmusic.bandcamp.com
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2rW3khB2vAwULlvPfABAXS?si=wK5SyPGsTwimk4G3-_kZpw

"The Seed" - Aurora cover

"Belong" - Original song

BARDY PARDY

Website: http://www.bardypardy.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/bardypardy
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/bardypardmusic
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF8YJjhf24yoktd0iwjF91w
Bandcamp: http://www.bardypardy.bandcamp.com
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5cdFIJ6rLKRUmluZMiI38S?si=aYDKzWryQ5WraEU2wMPlVQ

Bardy Pardy - “The Parting Glass”

Bardy Pardy - “Like Ships Need the Sea”

ARTIST COLLECTIVE TROUPE

Website: http://www.artistcollectivetroupe.org
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/artistcollectivetroupe
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/artistcollectivetroupe

MUSIC LESSONS

Website: http://www.chelseacarlsonmusiclessons.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/chelseacarlsonmusiclessons
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/cecmusiclessons

Scheduled Live Music Concerts Return to South Orange for 2021

By Gregory Burrus | Posted Thursday, April 29, 2021

Wrecking Havoc with Our Lives - Pandemic 2020

There is no doubt that the Coronavirus Pandemic wreaked havoc on the live music industry, not just around South Orange but all over the world. Musicians went from traveling and performing 2-3 times a day to zilch, nada, zero performances, as large music halls and small restaurants with a single stage, all had to shut down. After all, what is live music but a communal and social interaction experience, but the virus pointed us all in the exact opposite direction. We entered into the world of necessary and forced social distancing in order to live and to survive. 

COVID-19 Pandemic Cautions

The Summer of 2020 saw us all cautiously returning to a new normal life while committing to all the preventive and precautionary measures required to survive. This, for some, meant not coming out and for others it meant wearing masks, social distancing, no hugs and no hand shakes. For the return of live music, we added in six feet apart circles on the ground at our events and sitting far apart from each other, and we also learned elbow greetings along with never ending hand washing. 

2020 Restart Live Music Season

Since 2010, we usually start our Downtown After Sundown live music season during the last week of May and usually at two locations in the evening. With the pandemic, that was not happening, but in July 2020 we came together and scrambled back outside. Part of the mission was to help businesses that were shuttered for months survive. We put together a live music season based on that and decided to progress by watching the COVID numbers on a week to week basis. 

We found some truly cool bands with fans, found a new stage located with the businesses, and a very large parking lot so folks could space out as much as they wanted. Since we couldn't all be together because of the COVID Pandemic, spreading out was the name of the game. For our daytime events, we also added a component to place the music around town in what amounted to live music pods adjacent to our businesses located all around South Orange. Then we started booking bands on a week to week basis, identified as Making Live Music Around South Orange, NJ While Adjusting for the COVID-19 Pandemic. And guess what? It worked out very well, as many folks came out, stayed safe, and enjoyed the music.

Moving Forward 2021 Live Music Season

Well, we are now announcing a new 2021 South Orange Summer Saturdays born out of last year's learnings. This year, we are starting our season almost a month earlier, extending it a month later, and formally using our new outdoor restaurant patio as our stage. In addition, we identified almost 14 locations for live music all around South Orange, NJ. For our performances, we charged up the lineup as 50% of the bands are new to our performance lineup. Check it out here: SOVillageCenter.org.

2021 South Orange Summer Saturdays Line Up

The 2021 South Orange Summer Saturdays Live Music season will feature blues, jazz, rock, latin, pop, country and more all around our town. 

Highly requested returning favorites are MPAC Band, Los Trafficanos, Andy Lackow and Mess Around,  Harmonic Conversion, Lynette Sheard Entertainment, Organist Radam Schwartz, Gene Ghee, NXSTAGE Music, Carlos Frias & Circulo Social, Mama D and Vexations, Stuff Bros, Dwight West and Spirit of Life Ensemble. 

2021 South Orange Summer Saturdays Coming On Board 

New to the Main Stage, as of this writing, for 2021: Meant To Be Jazz Quartet, Mike Lee Jazz and his Jazz Jam, the fabulous Big Train Band, Forget The Whale will finally grace the main stage, Alan Paul's Big In China, Jacqueline Harmon Johnson Jazz & Jam, pop rocker David Easton, Rafiki led by Norman Man, Sir G. Earl Grice and the truly awesome 19-piece Maplewood Community Music Big Band which is too big for the stage so they will be sharing the parking lot with us.

Around Town South Orange Events 

In addition, around town we’ll also have some of your favorites returning, like Hal Keshner’s Piano Lounge, Bossio Ukulele, Leonieke Scheuble Trio, Alex DeLazzari Jazz, The Zoos, Howlin Poets, Kyle Younger Jazz Group, Charlie Apicella, Mike Choi, New Jersey DJ Services, Laredo the Band, Joel Cotton and, yes, even Opera in the Park if we can work it out, and a number of other events that we will bring onboard throughout the summer.

Honoring and Celebrating Those We Lost 

As you know, due to COVID, most celebrations of life were canceled or postponed, but we remember. Hence, lest we forget, not everyone made it through the 2020 year. We had tributes during the 2020 Live Music Season and into 2021, where some of our musical friends left us while others fell victim to COVID, such as Lee Boswell May, Darryl Clark, Holli Ross and many, many more. All of our memories, our live music season, and a few musical tributes are listed below.

Thank you musician Caylen Bryant for performing at Reflecting Together: South Orange, Maplewood to Remember Lives Lost to COVID-19, March 21. My thoughts during this SOMA Ceremony -  Tribute to Darryl Clark Holli Ross and Lee Boswell May and Many More and their families. 

March 6, 2021, the Township of South Orange named a street in Lee Boz May’s name, called “Boz Way.” I reported on that here: A Tribute to Lee "Boz" May -- Live Music Advocate Making South Orange, NJ Black History and Women's History. Long live “Boz Way.” 

We celebrated with a  ceremony.  Thank you to our musicians for your tributes to our fallen live music advocate, jazz lover, wife, family lover, community lover and more, Lee Boswell May.  

We hope to do more to honor them as COVID restrictions loosen up. 

Anticipating the 2021 South Orange Summer Saturdays Live Music Season

As we try and move forward, all of us here in town feel a sense of joyful anticipation about the 2021 South Orange Summer Saturdays season. We will once again make music for our devoted audience members. It promises to be a season to be remembered and cherish. Please join us.

About the Writer, Gregory Burrus

Gregory Burrus is writing about his first love, the creative people, towns and events all around South Orange NJ, Essex County and Beyond. Gregory continually observes, participates in, reports and writes on local community news, live music and the arts and entertainment scene of the JerseyNYC landscape, right here on Jersey Indie as JI blogger Gregory Burrus. Contact Gregory Burrus to promote your business or nonprofit across various social media and blogging platforms. http://gregoryburrus.me

Every Damn Day Releases 30th Anniversary Single

PRESS RELEASE | Posted Monday, February 15, 2021

Every Damn Day celebrat[ed] its 30th Anniversary by releasing a digital single, “Audio,” on February 12, 2021. The instrumental tracks for the song, recorded 30 years ago, were recently discovered via a transfer from tape to digital. Vocals and additional guitars were added late last year. The song pays homage to a high school senior with a cool nickname, a fake ID and a sense of adventure. [Check it out] it on Spotify!

Founded in 1991, EDD became a staple of the Hoboken, New Jersey music scene, appearing frequently at the downtown club Live Tonight! and later Maxwell’s. They also performed in New York at CBGB, the Hard Rock Café, The Cat Club, Desmond’s Tavern, Kenny’s Castaways, Bond Street Café and the Lion’s Den; in Asbury Park at The Stone Pony and The Fast Lane; Brighton Bar in Long Branch; and The Court Tavern in New Brunswick.

Every Damn Day recorded two full-length CDs and several EPs before going on hiatus in 2007 due to scheduling conflicts.

For more information, visit MikeDaly.com or EveryDamnDay.com.

Grin & Bear - "Be Gentle" (Interview)

By Deaglan Howlett | Posted Thursday, February 13, 2020

Be Gentle is the latest record from Wall Township’s Grin & Bear. Forming in 2014, the group has undergone line up changes throughout the years, leading to this latest effort from Brian Perrino. This album, while under the name Grin & Bear, has become more of a collaborative/solo project for Perrino. The record is an absolute powerhouse and a favorite of mine to come out this year. Be Gentle is self reflective and positive, perfect timing for we could all use a little extra positivity today.  I reached out to Brian to pick his brain about the making of this record and he was kind enough to do an interview. Thank you again, Brian!

When did Grin and Bear first form?

Grin & Bear first formed in 2014 during a time when we (Brian, Chris, Will, and Gavin) were all in college spread out over a few different states. I had been working on some songs, and we all naturally started sending ideas back and forth, and it turned into our first release "Range Wars" which ended up being a massively group-oriented effort. We self-recorded and released it in 2015.

How has the band changed over the years?

Since starting the band, we never ended up living in the same place at the same time. We met up when we could and played when we could. We operated that way for a few years and released "Range Wars" and "Everything is Gravy." I had been writing so much and in an effort to get more music out there started recording some acoustic tracks, which turned into "Hair Shirt Pt 1" and shortly after that release, Gavin (bass) made a long-term move to Georgia and we made the decision to end the band.

One day in 2018, I got back into writing and ended up with a few songs that I really loved and wanted to hear full band, so I reached back out to the band to ask if I could transition Grin & Bear into more of a solo project/collaborative effort. That is when Be Gentle began.

When did you start writing for Be Gentle?

In September of 2018, I wrote the songs "India" and "Not Bad" and became 100% sure I wanted to write an album. Every song (with the exception of “First Reaction”) came after that . We went into the studio in July of 2019 and were writing up until the day we left for the studio.

What is your songwriting process like?

Every song started with an acoustic guitar. I would mess around until something caught my interest, and then I would immediately start trying to sing whatever words and melody came out (sometimes using a note in my phone, mostly just trying to see what happens on the spot. There's so much boppin’ around up there, sometimes a pleasing guitar part draws something potent out). If I liked it enough, I would record a demo and then walk around my neighborhood listening to it until I heard something new, and then I would run into my house and record the new part.

This was the most fun I have ever had writing music (I remind myself often that those experiences in themselves are all I need to "get" out of this album). I heard a lot more than just my demos, so I reached out to a lot of my friends to see who was interested and had time to contribute. Some came over and we wrote together, some wrote totally on their own, and one part I didn't even hear until the second to last day of recording. These contributions made the album what it is. They kept it light and fun. I called the album Be Gentle because gentleness made this album possible. I had to remind myself to be gentle a whole lot (and still do).

Who did you record the album with and what was that experience like?

We recorded Be Gentle in Bayonne with Adam Cichocki at Timber Studios. It was the absolute best! Adam's studio is furnished with 2 dogs, 2 bean bags, extremely kind engineers and hosts, and is in close proximity to vegan "chicken" wings that are absolutely fire. Adam is so good at the technical aspect of recording an album that he's able to put you in a creative, stress-free, and positive environment right off the bat. This is not a paid ad for Timber Studios. Be Gentle would not sound the way it does without Adam and I love him!!

Who played on this release?

Okay, here we go.
Your boy (Brian) played a little of everything.
Chris Calabrese (drums, a little vocals)
Gavin Fischer (bass, a lot of backup vocals)
Will Avon (bass, lead guitar)
Matt Baker (bass, keyboard, backup vocals)
Nigel Whitley (bass)
Zach Henry (guest vocals)
Connor Mcarthur (guest vocals)
Stephen Kelly (guest vocals)
Tim Mullooly (guest vocals)
Grace Fox (trumpet)
Adam Cichocki (random stuff here and there, sleigh bells, post track clapping)
Bowser (double bean)

Favorite track on Be Gentle?

I think my favorite track is "India." The bass line at the end (Gavin wrote it) is my favorite part on the album. I danced a lot writing it and lyrically dug into a personal hang-up (pride) that has kept me from enjoying some important aspects of my life.

Upcoming plans?

Working to be more kind and gentle with myself and everyone else. And writing more music with my friends/biggest influences/people I love.

Interview with Silent Tides

By Sonia Schnee | Posted Wednesday, October 30, 2019

On October 19th, Central Jersey indie trio Silent Tides released their debut EP Fruitless Enterprise. Check out our interview, below, with Liam and Gus to learn about the inspiration behind their music.

What's your name, where are you from, where are you based now?

Our names are Liam Hughes and Gus Mirabella. Liam is from Westfield, NJ and Gus is from Milltown, NJ. We met while attending St. Joseph High School in Metuchen, but we’re now based in the New Brunswick area.

Who are the members of Silent Tides?

We are the members along with our friend Jesse Silva, who plays drums and sings backing vocals. We both write and sing lead on our own songs, so the band is a mix of our songwriting styles and personalities.

How would you describe your sound? Who are your musical influences?

Our sound is a cross between indie, garage, and psych rock. Our influences are Tame Impala, Radiohead, Arctic Monkeys, The Strokes, The Smiths, and The Beatles to name just a few. 

Congratulations on the release of your debut EP, Fruitless Enterprise. What's the inspiration behind the EP?

The inspiration behind this EP was to make a succinct statement on what Silent Tides is all about. This is our debut EP, so we wanted to capture the wide range of sounds we play, as well as touching on different themes that have captured us in recent years—personal growth, independence, religion, the ever-changing social climate, etc. 

As we both write songs, there is an ebb & flow both in theme and style throughout the record. Fruitless Enterprise may very well live up to its namesake, but regardless, it is a statement of growth and has been anything but fruitless for us. 

Is there a song that's your personal favorite? What's the creative process like for you (which comes first, the melody or the lyrics)?                  

LIAM: For me, my favorite is “Who Knows.” It’s a song that means a lot to me and it took a few different sessions to get right. It starts as a series of questions like: What should I do with my life? Is following a dream a good idea? And the second half is a kind of self-assurance and love song. Basically saying that although there’s confusion, and things seem meaningless I can find peace and meaning in knowing how I feel and believing in that feeling, whatever it’s towards. 

I’ll start with a musical idea, record it, and listen back to determine how it makes me feel. I ask myself, what does this song evoke? and I find a subject that works with the music. 

GUS: My favorite song on this record is “Grey Eyes.” I had written the first section independently, but it wasn’t until Liam and I worked on it together that it took its current form . It is our most collaborative song, and you can hear it—both Liam and I sing lead in different sections. 

I don’t have one method, it differs from song to song. Sometimes it starts with a riff or a drum beat, then the other instruments and vocals/lyrics follow. Other times, I have lyrics that I want to use and so I base the music off of that. I think having a concrete method is dangerous so I try to let the song just happen without overthinking. 

What's next on the horizon for you? Do you have any shows coming up?

We [had] our EP release at FM bar in Jersey City 10/17 (https://www.facebook.com/events/561024154713558/), and after that we’re taking a break from shows to put our focus towards the second record. We are opening for Delicate Steve at the Stanhope House on December 21st. 

Do you have any words of advice for people who share a similar passion or have maybe faced similar obstacles/challenges?

Well, we are in no position to give advice, but I would recommend finding other people with the same passions as you. Community is so important and having a group of people who can relate to you is one of the most valuable things in this world, don’t take it for granted.

Finally, what are some ways that fans can connect with you online? (Website? Facebook? Spotify? Etc.?)

We’ve got all the typical stuff. We finally got our website up—it’s still a work in progress but that’s our home base where you can find everything you need to follow us: SilentTides.com—nice and easy. We are on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple Music, etc.). Some additional links: 

Facebook: Facebook.com/silenttides 

Soundcloud: Soundcloud.com/silent-tides 

Bandcamp: Silenttides.bandcamp.com 

Instagram: @silenttidesmusic

Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Support local music! Also, shoutout to the longtime friend of the band and my (Liam) personal mentor EJ Gaub. I would not be here in so many different ways if it weren’t for him. He recorded this EP for us, and was a tremendous help throughout the mixing process. 

Interview with Rory D'Lasnow

By Sonia Schnee | Posted Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Bergen County singer-songwriter Rory D’Lasnow has been part of New Jersey’s music scene for well over a decade. He recently performed a solo acoustic set as part of Asbury Park PorchFest, earlier this month he was interviewed on Danny Coleman’s ROCK ON RADIO, and he also recently shot a music video for his new single “Never Be Mine” featuring Jamie McClanahan of The Victory Drive (coming soon). Rory released his first EP When All is Fading in 2011, followed by an Acoustic EP in 2015. Last month, he formed a new alternative rock band, Black Rose Revival. Check out our interview with Rory, below, to learn about his journey and the inspiration behind his music.

What’s your name, where are you from originally, and where are you based now?

My name is Rory D'Lasnow. I'm originally from Englewood, NJ and grew up there for sixteen years. I spent some time in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and California - but now I'm back in North Jersey over in Teaneck. The people are a lot friendlier everywhere else (just kidding), but my heart is here.

Tell us about your musical background. You do a bit of everything -- singing, songwriting, and playing multiple instruments.

I have been singing, playing guitar, and writing songs since I was in kindergarten but picked up the guitar upside down and backwards - which is how I still hold it. I actually recently found a home video of my father, who also played guitar, encouraging me to turn the guitar right side up as a little boy, but I seemed to gravitate toward playing it wrong - with the low E string at the bottom, not at the top. I also play a little piano.

How would you describe your genre/style?

I would say I gravitate between an acoustic singer-songwriter style and a harder alternative rock vibe, especially with my band - Black Rose Revival.

Who are your influences?

My influences are pretty varied. I grew up on The Beatles, Everly Brothers, John Fogerty, and other older music. I would say my music is influenced by them to a large extent - but I also am inspired by some more modern rock like Taking Back Sunday, Brand New, Say Anything, and Jimmy Eat World.

What's the inspiration behind your music?

A lot of my inspiration for my music comes from things that have impacted me in life. I often explain to people that I lost my mother when I was fourteen and this strongly shaped my world view and provided a lot of the ideas behind some of my sadder songs. I write a lot about love - shocking, I know - as well. I aim primarily to write songs about things that touch us on a deeper level, but hopefully in a way that hasn't been done a hundred times before.

How has it progressed over time?

I would say my music has progressed in that my songs have become a bit more contemplative. My first song was called "Nana's Still Askin' For Milk" about how my grandmother was displeased with what my father and I had picked up from the grocery store. I hope I address more complex issues than that these days, but then again - that definitely was a difficult topic ha!

How do you hope people will feel when they listen to your music?

My sincerest wish is that people feel something when they hear my music. Some of my greatest joy has come from people walking up to me and saying that one of my songs resonated with them. I do have simple pop songs, too, but I probably most value the songs that are raw and emotional.

What has your personal journey been like? When did you discover that you loved music?

As I alluded to before, I've actually been playing guitar since I was a little kid. My mom and dad encouraged me to play little concerts at the Englewood Library or Borders Books (back when they were in business), and I often participated in talent shows on cruises when I was younger, as my mother was a travel agent and we used to get discounts. This kind of love of performing was instilled in me at a young age. Music has been in my life since I was a little boy, and I was about as Beatles-obsessed as they come (I was Team John, now I'm more of a Paul guy!). I would listen to anything I could get my hands on, and I think I knew right out of the gate that music was my passion.

What are your goals as an artist? What would you like to accomplish by the end of this year?

I would say my primary goal is just to reach as many people across as many places as I can. Music to me is about connection and people are what make life so interesting, so I most look forward to sharing my experiences and sharing in others experiences along the way.

On a more practical level, I hope to be able to be a self-sustaining original music artist. I recently made the jump to becoming a full-time musician, and I've found that playing cover gigs has been financially sustainable for now (knock on wood) and has really helped me stay sharp. That said, as much as any songwriter would respect a song like “Sweet Caroline” - eventually you do tire a bit of playing it!

Who would you like to meet?

As far as people I'd like to meet - I'd say if you're reading this interview - I'd like to meet you! In all seriousness, there isn't one kind of person so to speak. I've found that no matter what your background or where you're from, there are often more commonalities than differences between us. That shared human experience is what makes connecting with others so special.

Are there any artists, bands, or producers who you'd love to collaborate with one day?

Boy, as far as collaboration goes - the list is long! I'm sure I, along with everybody else, would dream to some day work with Paul McCartney. I also greatly admire a lot of the musicians I listen to - Max Bemis of Say Anything, Hayley Williams of Paramore, Brandon Flowers of The Killers, Ben Platt, Regina Spektor. I'm one of those people who really delves into what inspires people and what peoples' stories are. I'm not writing fan fiction or anything (though if you're into it - I can't knock it!) but I do enjoy trying to get to know the people behind my favorite songs.

Do you have any shows coming up?

On Friday 11/15, I'll be taking part in a Citywide Charity Event sponsored by NorStep Productions down at Bourre in Atlantic City. On Wednesday 11/20, I'll be at Havana in New Hope, PA as part of Pat Foran's Music Showcase, and the next day - Thursday 11/21 - I'll be opening for Nick Clemons at Crossroads in Garwood, NJ with Mike Rocket.

What words of advice or encouragement would you give to someone who wants to follow a similar passion, or is maybe facing obstacles similar to what you've faced?

Oh man - I actually have a lot to say about this. I spent almost ten years second guessing music as a career path. Please - don't doubt yourself. If you love something - pursue it with reckless abandon. And here's the biggest reason why (besides all of the YOLO stuff I could say and the preaching I could do about how life is too short): things do get easier.

If something scares you because you've never done it before - well guess what - it's only the first time ONCE. For the longest time I thought "Oh, I want to play in Hoboken, but I'm kind of nervous." I started with open mic’s and met some of the best people I've ever known. Then breaking into NYC a bit seemed like an insurmountable obstacle. Now I play shows in New York all the time and have come across tons of wonderful people over the course of different events I've attended. I'm hardly the world's biggest success story and I hope my journey isn't close to its end yet, but at the end of the day I think I embody pretty well the idea that you should just go for it because the pieces come together along the way. What is at one point anxiety-provoking and replete with possible obstacles can often become second nature. And then - it's a lot of fun.

Black Rose Revival

Is there anything else you'd like to add?

I'd just like to say, please don't hesitate to reach out - not just about music! I'd love to hear from you as I love people as much as I love music. And keep an eye out for my new band, Black Rose Revival. We just got started last month, but it's myself with three other veterans of the NJ Music Scene - Phil Beam and Roy Brunston of RESURGE and Sergio Arsenio on drums.

Where can people find you online? (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Spotify, YouTube, etc.

The best place for people to reach me is Instagram (instagram.com/rorydlasnow) or on my band account (instagram.com/blackroserevivalofficial).

My music pages are also on Facebook (facebook.com/rorydlasnowmusic) and (facebook.com/blackroserevivalofficial).

I have a couple of solo EPs and a single on Spotify and SoundCloud under my name and hopefully some BRR tunes will be to come as well.

Youtube and Twitter I have been trying to use more, but both are similarly able to be found by looking up Rory D'Lasnow or my band name, Black Rose Revival.

In addition, my official website, rorydlasnow.com, has a comprehensive list of all of the events I'll be a part of with press links/photos/videos etc - all that good stuff. Thank you for your time!

~

You can also listen to Rory’s music on Soundcloud, Spotify, and YouTube.

Interview with Joe Mifsud (Singer, Songwriter, Musician)

By Sonia Schnee | Posted Friday, May 17, 2019

In 2013, Bergen County singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Joe Mifsud released his sophomore album, Stay Calm And Carry On. Drawing from a variety of influences, his music has a decidedly alternative/rock/pop bent with new folk/lo-fi elements via his side project, Here for Now. (On top of that, Joe is also a standup comedian. Check out his Facebook page for upcoming performance dates.)

Now in 2019, Joe is ready to jump back into the scene, writing new songs, playing shows, and meeting/collaborating with like-minded creatives and music lovers. Before you listen to his new work, be sure to check out some of his past gems, as well as our interview below to find out more about his personal journey and hopes for the future.

What’s your name, where are you from originally, and where are you based now? 

My name is Joe Mifsud. I was born in New York, New York but grew up in Harrington Park, NJ in Bergen County. I currently reside in Harrington Park.

Tell us about your musical background. You do a bit of everything -- singing, songwriting, and playing multiple instruments. How would you describe your genre/style?  Who are your influences?  

I've generally described my music as a cross pollination of several influences, but if I HAD to describe it to people I usually say my sound would be if The Beatles met The Foo Fighters. Or just very Foo Fighters-like in nature.

Musically, I play guitar, bass, drums, sing, write my own lyrics and music. I do enjoy a lot of different types of music. Growing up, my dad really enjoyed Motown music, Doo-Wop music and the Jazz and Soul Singers. My mom listened to all different types of Spanish Music and top radio hits of the 80's. My sister listened to a lot of jam bands like Phish & Dave Matthews Band along with early 90's Alternative Rock. My brother was listening to 80's Metal and Progressive Rock like Rush when we shared the room together when we were kids.

My childhood best friend Kevin and I listened to a lot of 90's Alternative Rock as we grew up as well as a lot of Classic Rock. We would raid his parents' Classic Rock collection. My influences are many to name but a short list would include The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Who, Black Sabbath, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Radiohead, Foo Fighters. More importantly to me were the local influences, musical peers and my brother (who used to play guitar and bass in a band) and my dad (who used to sing in a barbershop group with his friends on the street corner).

What's the inspiration behind your music? How has it progressed over time? How do you hope people will feel when they listen to it? 

The main inspiration behind my music is relationships.
Not always a romantic love relationship,
but it comes from a very literary sense.
Man and nature.
Man and woman.
Man and himself.
Man and society.

I appreciate the very therapeutic value of songwriting. I tend to write very autobiographically as a way of coping and understanding myself and the world around me. I have been fortunate to use music and songwriting as a way to develop my personal and artistic voice. I hope that people find a connection and comfort in what I bring to music. Music to celebrate the good times and good memories and bring people together. Music to find solace and comfort in during the hard times. I hope that people are able to connect with the music on some level that strikes them even if it is just the tone or sonic soundscape or the lyrics and message or all of it. 

Ultimately, I would like to give back to music what it gave to me. Music gave me a sense of home, comfort and purpose.

What has your personal journey been like?  When did you discover that you loved music?

My personal journey started when I was young. My earliest memories of music were listening to Spanish music in the living room and tapping out the rhythm on the conga drum with my dad. The first song that really struck a chord with me was The Beatles' “Lady Madonna” because of the ragtime-type groove and the cartoon-like vocal section that reminded me of a Looney Tunes song. I loved when there would be classical music in cartoons when the characters would have a play off of classical songs on piano. Queen's “Bohemian Rhapsody” is my favorite rock song of all time. Nothing quite captured my imagination in so many ways about the possibilities of Rock than “Bohemian Rhapsody”! As I got to be about ten or eleven years old, the first band that I was able to claim as my own was Nirvana. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and its accompanying music video blew me away! When I saw Dave Grohl playing the drums, I knew that I wanted to do that! Play Drums! Play Music for a living ! I felt empowered by Nirvana and their music because, similarly to The Beatles' effect, they were just normal people making great music. I felt like I could do it, too, and that it wasn't totally beyond me.

 I discovered that I loved music very early on in my life and that it became a goal and a challenge that I accepted to be like my heroes. I wanted to learn to sing, write lyrics, play instruments and write my own original songs with a level of proficiency.

What are your goals as an artist? What would you like to accomplish by the end of this year? What kinds of people would you like to meet?  Are there any artists, bands, or producers who you'd love to collaborate with one day? Do you have any shows coming up? 

My goals as an artist are to have the music reach people and touch their lives in a positive way. By the end of the year, I would like to have accomplished jumpstarting a life in music and sharing music that I've written with as many people as possible and through multiple channels such as live shows, interviews, social media, streaming services, reviews and podcasts, personal connections, etc. I would like to reach people that genuinely love, support and appreciate music and the arts. I am open to meeting people that are creative, passionate and awesome! There are many artists, bands or producers that I'd love to collaborate with one day. At the top of my lists would be Rick Rubin for producer and Dave Grohl for Musician.

I do not have any shows coming up, but I am looking to plan shows for 2019 and beyond and will keep you updated!

What words of advice or encouragement would you give to someone who wants to follow a similar passion, or is maybe facing obstacles similar to what you've faced?

Words of advice or encouragement that I would give to someone who wants to follow a similar passion or is maybe facing obstacles similar to what I've faced: Believe in yourself. Trust your voice. Trust the process and trust that an audience will be attracted to your vision. Always stay true to yourself and the original vision because when it's all said and done you have yourself to be accountable to.

DO! Don't let anxiety or insecurity or excuses counteract productivity. Your older self will thank your younger self. 

Create, Create, Create! Hopefully you get a job where you have the time and income to fund and realize your art without interference.

It may take time but stick with it!

I will be your fan! 

Where can people find you online (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Spotify, YouTube, etc.)?

Official Music Website: https://www.mifmusic.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JoeMifsudBand 
Bandcamp: https://joemifsudband.bandcamp.com/
Spotify:  https://open.spotify.com/artist/1l3m0OFBgPLMmgssBl3cBO
Instagram (Seldom Used but I should use it more): https://www.instagram.com/mif95/?hl=en
Twitter (Seldom Used but I should use it more): https://twitter.com/JoeMifsudBand 

YouTube (Videos including live, promo and music videos that I've uploaded):  https://www.youtube.com/user/davidbedert/videos

YouTube Official Music from the Albums: 
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyz5pd9_aSOU0ROmAMHGWlg

For the Streaming Music, the music is available on all streaming platforms such as Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer, Amazon, Tidal, Google Play, etc.

My side acoustic/indie/folk project is called Here For Now. The album is called Letters Home.

Here For Now Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/herefornowband/
Here For Now Bandcamp : https://herefornowthereforlater.bandcamp.com/album/letters-home-there-for-later-edition

Also available on all streaming music platforms - Here For Now Letters Home

Interview with Derek Garabedian (True State Management)

By Sonia Schnee | Posted Thursday, December 20, 2018

What are you doing tonight? At 8pm, you could be enjoying the first-ever kick-off show of the “True State Presents:” concert series, at The Wooden Spoon in Bloomfield, NJ. Performing acts include pop-punk band Boy Blue, alternative rockers Wave Break, alternative/emo/shoegaze band Rémis, and Dover/Rockaway rock band Champ. Admission is free. Check out our interview below with concert series organizer Derek Garabedian of the artist development company True State Management.

What's your name, where are you from, where are you based now?

My name is Derek Garabedian. I am originally from Massachusetts, and I am now based in Mountainside, New Jersey.

You run a management company, True State Management. When did that first start? What bands are on the roster, and where are they from?  

True State management started only about 6 or 7 months ago (early summer 2018). The bands we have on roster right now are Hang Tight (@hangtightband), Black Caddy (@blackcaddynyc), The Summoned (@thesummoned), and Cat in the wall (@catinthewallband). All the bands are different genres — pop punk, hip hop, prog metal, and indie rock, in that order. The reason we are working with all genres is to expand our reach as much as possible. We are learning a lot within in each genre and it allows us to be in tune with everything going on. We believe in working with talented people, and talent exists in all genres of music.

Tell us about this new Bloomfield concert series. What is it about Bloomfield that attracts you?

I think North/Central Jersey in general is lacking in live music venues especially for local bands. Bloomfield is a city that has so much going on and is a very diverse place. The opportunity to have different genres and  bring a lot of different people together is very appealing to me.

What inspired you to want to do this? What are your goals?

The reason I am starting the “True State Presents:” concert series is to help create a thriving music scene and community, while at the same time expanding my network to make everything True State is doing reach a larger scale. The goal of the concert series is to create scene that is willing to help each other and bring excitement about local music!

How often are the shows?

 We are scheduled to one show a month right now but will be expanding in the near future. 

What kinds of bands do you hope to participate?

Right now we are starting out with Pop-Punk and Indie style bands. With that being said, we are looking to book for all genres in the future. If anyone out there is interested in booking with us please reach out, we would love to talk!

What kind of audience do you hope to reach?

I would love to bring in all types of passionate and contributing music fans.

Tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you get started with music? What's been your personal journey?   

The way I got started in music is a pretty typical story, I think. Me and a bunch of friends used to skateboard and listen to music. We all decided to get different instruments and start a band. The rest was history; I never stopped playing.

My journey is that after years of playing in different bands, I was lucky enough to end up with a record deal and got to tour the country. After that fizzled out and I got a little older, I started a family and took some time off of music. Eventually, I missed music too much and since I can’t tour myself I wanted to use what I learned to help other musicians on their own journey, by using the things I experienced in the past. Now we are here doing what I hoped to accomplish: helping bands! 

What words of advice or encouragement would you give to someone who wants to follow a passion similar to yours, or is maybe facing obstacles similar to what you've faced?  

Our biggest hurdle was to just pull the trigger and get started. I have been working on ideas for a long time, years even, on how to execute and what kinds of paths to take. The key is to just do it and roll with what comes your way. Utilize your passion to help others and make yourself happy.

Finally, how can people find out more about you/the Bloomfield concert series/True State Management online? (Website? Bandcamp? Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, etc.?)

You can find everything about our bands, us, and our shows on our website www.truestatemanagement.com and our socials (@truestatemgmt) on all platforms.

Is there anything else you'd like to add?

The thing I always stress to our bands and music fans is to always support in any way you can and to work as hard as possible to make it happen. I always tell bands, you should be trying to work harder than us (it won’t happen), but that should be the mindset. Help other bands get shows, go out to shows, even if you aren't playing (I know it's a crazy concept). The more friends you make and the bigger the network you have, the better you will do! 

Wild Dust – “Wild Dust” (EP Review)

By Sean McCall | Posted Friday, November 30, 2018

Wild Dust is an authentic Rock n’ Roll / Punk Band from South Jersey / Philadelphia area. The band consists of Derrick Robbins on vocals, Connor Rothstein on the rock stick, Eric Labar on the other rock stick, and Dave Girolami on drums. Their self-titled EP was released on August 1, 2017. Wild Dust recorded at Gradwell House in South Jersey.

Wild Dust opens the EP with “Open Graves” which is immediately energetic and punk as hell. I really enjoy the rhythm guitar work in this song, because it truly is pure rock n’ roll. This song is definitely a spooky one. It opens up with “a ghoul appeared to me in these waterless canyons- went by the name of God,” and ends with “I can’t be sorry that my hands were the last hands your cold, dead eyes have seen.”

The band seamlessly transitions with a hot baseline to set the mood for the second track, “Devil’s Water.” Lyrically, this song goes way harder than raining blood. “If it’s raining and it’s pouring, don’t slip in mud, because if you do, you’ll slip in blood tonight.” That’s hard. I noticed a lot of the EP has a variety of bass/drum grooves and breaks which I personally really appreciate. “Devil’s Water” has a sweet instrumental break around the 2:45 mark and ends perfectly. Definitely a track you should peep if you have yet to listen.

The third track, “Red Magic,” has my favorite guitar part on the entire record. It opens with this chorusy guitar riff that strangely reminds me of Nirvana in a good way. I really love the emotional in this song when they chant, “There’s not a soul here to save me” followed by some authentic rock n’ roll solo riffage. I also really loved the feeling of musical exhaustion towards the end of this track. If that doesn’t make sense (most things I say don’t), then check it out for yourself.

The second to last track, “Mojave Flower,” continues the energetic feeling and theme of blood, death, the devil, and most importantly, rock. “I’m a brushfire howling in the night, estranged gunslinger, I’ll murder you tonight” is a bold hook, and I f**k with the vision. This song also has another classic rock solo that’s definitely recorded with a Les Paul, in case you were itching for riffs.

The record closes with “Church in the Wildwood,” which is hands down my favorite title track of a song. This song is a slow jammer at the start. I love the lyrical theme of this song. You can hear the emotion and exhaustion in the vocals, which is a beautiful thing to be able to portray. The idea that you view heaven as “homes built by the Lord,” just to find yourself giving into vices and “finding God” in a bottle is a powerful thing.

Overall, this record is a dynamic journey of aggression, rock n’ roll, and mid-western feeling punk. Lyrically it is very raw, and poetic. I really like how they play with the idea of the Devil and God. This is definitely a record you’d want to throw on if you’re looking to get some aggression out. Also be sure to check out their first single, “Karaoke with the Devil,” from January of 2017.

Side-note: Wild Dust’s Live show is also a trip, and I definitely recommend seeing them. Their Next Show is at The Pharmacy in South Philadelphia, on December 15th, 2018 if you’re looking for something to do.