Ryan Shupe & the RubberBand: "Dream Big" Video
Related Videos
Milwaukee, Wisconsin's Decibully is a band's band. Featuring numerous multi-instrumentalists and having earned a strong reputation for their live performances, Decibully brandishes a wide variety of influences, mixing a rich blend of finely interspersed layers tinged with country-esque flourishes, subtle electronic twinges, and rockist undertones. Formed as a trio in Fall 2001 by William J. Seidel (vocals, guitar, percussion, Rhodes), guitarist W. Kenneth Siebert and keyboardist Nick Westfahl, the group soon added Ryan Weber (lap steel, synths, guitar, percussion), bassist Justin Klug, and drummer Jason Gnewikow to further round out their sound. Decibully spent the rest of 2001-02 practicing when time could be found, touring and self-releasing their debut album You Might Be A Winner, You May Be A Loser, But You'll Always Be A Gambler. When Gnewikow moved to New York, he was replaced on drums by Aaron Vold. At the same time, banjo player Eric Holliday joined the band. Following a successful January 2003 tour, Decibully returned to the studio to begin working on their second full-length, the tentatively-titled When We Learned How To Dance. In late May 2003 Westfahl was replaced by Nicholas Sanborn on keyboards and the band began looking for a label. Prior to Decibully, Seidel and Weber were founding members of Camden. In 1999, Camden recorded demos with Chris Rosenau, guitarist for Pele and Collections of Colonies of Bees. Based on their prior relationship and having seen Decibully live numerous times, Rosenau contacted Polyvinyl Records via a two o'clock in the morning phone message lauding the band. A few days later, an unmastered, incomplete version of the album arrived by mail. Band and label began talking and, following a return to the studio, the album was released as City of Festivals on October 14, 2003 followed by a self-booked national tour and an appearance at Polyvinyl's 2003 CMJ Showcase. With nearly a hundred shows played in support of City of Festivals, Decibully again returned to the studio to begin recording their follow-up album to the Polyvinyl debut. City of Festivals had been a mix of different songs written while the band was undergoing personnel changes. A little over half the songs had been written before the band became the solidified line-up that toured in support of City of Festivals. From the initial roughs sent to Polyvinyl, it was obvious the dividends from touring were paying off in the studio. Sing Out America! (scheduled for release March 8, 2005), Decibully's third album, is the first one to be written entirely by the band as a cohesive septet from start to finish. Although more stylistically varied than previous albums, the continuity of Sing Out America! reflects the consistency that can only be found by a band spending so much time on the road together. Sing Out America! is the most representative work the band has turned in to date, bringing their recorded output in step with their live show.
THE ADORED combine elements of discopunk, new wave, and pure power pop to create an intelligent yet catchy, different yet danceable sound. Inspired by the likes of The Clash, The Jam, and Blur, scenepointblank.com calls them Garagey, catchy, and as much as I hate the word, sassy. The Adored were born when four best friends and bon vivants joined up to make spiky party music. What came out draws from the more angular elements of early punk & postpunk and the less pompous elements of fin-de-siecle Britpop. Ryan (vocals) and Nat (drums) met in the mid-90s in NorCal and both played with a locally legendary punk band before moving southward. Max (bass) and Drew (guitar) met as students in Boston, studying media, all the while dreaming of a Los Angeles pop life. The four finally came together in LA and never looked back. So far, their adventures as Hollywood golden boys have included shows with eclectic artists new and old like Supergrass, The Zombies, Ima Robot, Bow Wow Wow, The Futureheads and Les Sav Fav. The Adored have also performed at parties hosted by members of buzz bands Mount Sims, Interpol and the Moving Units. The band has also appeared in clips on the UK?s Channel Four and Southern California?s Fox 11 ---as the current LA ?it band?! With mentions in the NME, the California press, and a grassroots network of blogs and webzines have all helped build an international fan base for the Adored. Again and again, they have performed in San Francisco, Las Vegas and Californias beach counties, bringing their music to grateful, music starved suburban scenesters and leaving their mark on the West Coast. The boys finished a successful 4-night mini-tour to New York City this spring and a weekly residency at Sunset Strips KEY CLUB. Following a 4-song demo in 2003, the Adored recorded a 5-song EP for V2 Records in fall 2004, with producer Dave Trumfio and a special guest vocalist friend and mutual fan Pete Shelley [Buzzcocks]. Due in stores January 2005. These 2004 LA WEEKLY MUSIC AWARDS BEST DANCE ARTIST nominees deceptively simple lineup of guitars, drums and three vocals help the four lovely lads produce a rhythm unique to the California scene -- the first stage in their plan to induce global simultaneous Adorgasm.
The Raconteurs: "Steady, As She Goes"
The Raconteurs are a new band made up of old friends, consisting of Jack Lawrence (bass), Patrick Keeler (drums), Brendan Benson (guitars, vocals, keys) and Jack White (guitars, vocals, keys). The seed was sewn in an attic in the middle of a hot summer when friends Jack White and Brendan Benson got together and wrote a song that truly inspired them. This song was "Steady, As She Goes" and the inspiration led to the creation of a full band with the addition of Lawrence and Keeler. While each of these four individuals have had successful careers with their own bands, the culmination of all of their talents is what truly makes The Raconteurs a force to be reckoned with.
The quartet convened at Benson's East Grand Studio to lay down the basic tracks for Broken Boy Soldiers. Work would continue whenever the boys could get together over the next year. Finally, the album has found a window for its release in May of 2006. The band is now, for its members, all consuming and they now present themselves to be....consumed, or at best simply heard.
From the ready-made, radio-friendly quality built into songs like "Steady, As She Goes", to the explosive tenacity of "Store Bought Bones", all the way down to the 'hits the cockles of your heart' lullabies that encompass the full length recording, The Raconteurs are more than capable of conquering any genre challenge or tale that they encounter. After all, a raconteur is, by definition, a deft storyteller. And now a new story is unfolding.
In the summer of 1998 ? brought together by a slew of disparate-yet-alluring musical reference points ? high school friends Eddie Baranek (vocals/guitar), Mike Trombley (drums), and Mark Leahey (bass/vocals) formed The Sights. The trio began playing around their hometown of Detroit shortly thereafter, around which time Trombley, founding drummer, headed to California for what would come to be a three-year respite from the band and also the impetus for a revolving door of drummers, bassist and keyboard players. Undaunted , The Sights took to the studio and began recording their debut album, Are You Green?, at Jim Diamond?s Ghetto Recorders in Detroit . Originally released in June of 1999, Are You Green? was picked up by L.A.-based Fall of Rome Records and re-released the following year. Never big on rest, The Sights went to work on their sophomore album, Got What We Want (released in 2002). With this, the band?s freakishly precocious ability to blend frenetic garage rock, Motown and 60?s pop into something equal parts classic and catchy got them noticed. Got What We Want was released in the U.K. a year later, garnering them some very nice words from both the British press ("Got What We Want is a revelation - a treasure trove of sparky and wildly immediate songwriting." --NME) and the not-so British press ("At last - a new Detroit-garage band that comes in colors." --Rolling Stone). The Sights hit the road for a year of touring both countries, including a 10-week stint sleeping inside the group?s 1991 Ford Econoline van and stealing bagels for sustenance. In the spring of 2004, The Sights - now including relative newbie Bobby Emmett as organist/bassist and Keith Fox as drummer- caught the ear of ex-Smashing Pumpkins guitarist James Iha, who signed them to his own Scratchie Records ( an imprint of New Line Records). And with that, the band headed back to Ghetto Recorders to record their self-titled third LP, The Sights, due out in April 2005. No small feat, the album combines the unobtrusive honesty of The Band with slivers of influence from The Sights? own personal record collections: Ike & Tina, Solomon Burke, Everly Brothers , Bob Seger, Tim Hardin and all manner of raucous songwriting. The end result is an album that?s classic, not derivative?filled with swagger and deference?and ridiculously catchy. Really.
Longtime musical collaborators Kyle Fischer (guitar, vocals) and William Kuehn (drums) began writing a new batch of songs in the late summer of 1995, thinking they lacked only a bassist. When they found Caithlin De Marrais (vocals, bass), they knew they had found a uniquely captivating voice to front the band as well. Fischer and Kuehn had met at all-ages shows in Madison, Wisconsin, where Kuehn was cajoled into replacing Fischer on the drums in Ezra Pound (with Matt Tennessen of Pele). Fischer switched to guitar, and the two departed together a year later in search of broader sonic horizons. Meanwhile, Fischer had met De Marrais in a University of Wisconsin poetry workshop where the two had organized extra evening sessions of the class and soon found they were the only ones attending. Here they wrote the poems that would later become songs on the band's first album. Rainer Maria's various releases began mapping their trajectory. The original demo cassette, a run of 350 now long out of print, documents the excited initial efforts of a band just 6 weeks old. Their debut self-titled EP appeared on Polyvinyl as a result of the experience of early tours, playing house shows or all ages "spaces" from Austin TX to Kent OH, even a double-wide house trailer in rural Mississippi packed with 100 melting kids. With the "New York, 1955" single, the band began experimenting with what happened when they turned the volume down. Past Worn Searching signaled the beginning of Rainer Maria as a full-time band. Recorded at the sweltering hot, now defunct Ghetto Love studios in Chicago during Summer 1997, Past Worn Searching and its stripped-down production ushered the full arrival of dueling vocals, sonic excess, and youthful exuberance. That fall, Rainer Maria toured the entire continental U.S. for the first time--more than 50 shows booked by Kuehn himself, including a west coast tour with Braid. The band?s second LP, Look Now Look Again, was released in April 1999 to the open arms of fans and critics alike. Look Now Look Again climbed to 19 on CMJ?s top 200 and spent 16 weeks on the charts. Stellar reviews and write-ups appeared in The New York Times, Alternative Press, Magnet, CMJ, and The Village Voice to name a few. Rainer Maria appeared in Spin three times in the latter half of 1999 and Look Now Look Again was named one of the magazine?s 20 best records of the year. The band would go on that year to record and release Atlantic, a three-song CDEP recorded at Pachyderm Studios (P.J. Harvey, In Utero) in August. Just days later, they band relocated to the East Coast. Rainer Maria then spent the better part of a year holed up in a converted cow barn, the previous home of Pepperidge Farm Bakery?s original dairy farmer. There, they wrote their third and most ambitious album, A Better Version of Me, which was released in January 2001. The album hit the #1 spot on CMJ and was supported by a relentless tour schedule of over 200 shows. Fall 2002 the band again returned the studio to record Long Knives Drawn, their fourth album. As a teaser, the Ears Ring EP appeared early November 2002 and was the band's first new material in over a year-and-a-half. Two months later Long Knives Drawn was released and the band embarked on a two month tour with Mates of State followed by a mini-tour in Canada, and then a tour with Denali. Next up for Rainer Maria is a three week tour with Coheed and Cambria in support of their newest release, Anyone in Love with You (Already Knows) , a DVD of their 3/11/03 Cat's Cradle show filmed by members of Bifocal Media (Braid Killing a Camera, Michigan Fest 2002) which includes a bonus audio CD featuring selected various live tracks the band has been accumulating over the years. Anyone in Love with You (Already Knows) will be released on March 9, 2004.
Mates of State is the organ and drums, vocal-laden duo of Kori Gardner and Jason Hammel. Formed in the nation's heartland December 1997, their infectious songs and long-standing motto of play anywhere, anytime has earned them a legion of fans from coast to coast and everywhere else in between. After years of playing in countless bands (nearly twenty between the two of them), Kori Gardner and Jason Hammel finally realized the ease of playing with only one other person. Ditching their guitars for just an organ and drum set, the trick now was getting two people to sound like a full band. With the two instruments, they added call and response vocal melodies and harmonies to create a sound unique in its immenseness. An open-mic was scheduled and tensions ran high as they began to question their untraditional arrangement. Afterwards, they realized it didn't matter. Mates of State possibly played six times in Lawrence, Kansas before packing it in and driving to California in August 1998 where the band would release "Leave Me at the Tree" with Fighter D as a split 7" on Omnibus Records. After eight months in the suburbs, the band moved to San Francisco proper and Omnibus released two additional songs, "It's the Law" and "Invitation Inn," as a separate 7". Mates of State spent 1999 touring throughout the West Coast, playing consistently in California and solidifying their position in San Francisco's burgeoning pop scene. In April of 2000, the band chanced upon engineer John Croslin (Beulah, Spoon, Guided By Voices) whose reserved but confident knowledge immediately attracted the band. The same day, Mates of State scheduled studio time. The Croslin sessions resulted in their debut album My Solo Project, 12 tracks of unconventional pop appeal. Instantly, critical acclaim poured forth from fanzines, periodicals, and dailies such as the San Francisco Bay Guardian and New York Times (who included the album in their "10 worthwhile albums you may have missed in 2000"). A Midwest tour with longtime friends Appleseed Cast was quickly put together and followed by yet another string of shows up and down the West Coast. July 2001 saw Mates of State signing with Polyvinyl, and a month later they re-entered the studio to record their second album, this time with engineer Dave Trumfio (Butterglory, Dianogah, Wilco) behind the board. The band closed out the year by landing large tours alongside Beulah and Mars Volta. Their second full-length Our Constant Concern, was released in January 2002 and the tour machine was once again placed in motion. And what a machine it was. Unparalled by any band in Polyvinyl's history, not even Braid could come close to Mates' four national tours, three international tours, and the 200 plus shows they played in support of the album. Mates of State greeted 2003 with two new releases. The first was a split 7" with longtime friends Dear Nora which featured Mates' haunting rendition of Jackson Browne's "These Days." The latter was their next full-length Team Boo which was released September 2003. Now on their third album, the band discovered the perfect studio environment for their unique blend of vintage Yamaha organ, Gretch Round Badge drums, off-kilter harmonies, and the dynamism that holds it all together. The album was recorded and mixed over three weeks at both The Garage and Willie Nelson's Pedernales studios. Manning the knobs were John Croslin (My Solo Project) and Spoon's Jim Eno. Incredibly infectious, Team Boo was immediately embraced by college radio as the band toured with friends Victory at Sea, The Thermals, and Death Cab for Cutie. Mates of State fans have a lot to look forward to in 2004. Another tour is currently in the works that will take the band through the United States, out to Hawaii and up north through Canada. A DVD documentary is in the works. And who knows, another 7" or EP may be down the line.
Mates of State is the organ and drums, vocal-laden duo of Kori Gardner and Jason Hammel. Formed in the nation's heartland December 1997, their infectious songs and long-standing motto of play anywhere, anytime has earned them a legion of fans from coast to coast and everywhere else in between. After years of playing in countless bands (nearly twenty between the two of them), Kori Gardner and Jason Hammel finally realized the ease of playing with only one other person. Ditching their guitars for just an organ and drum set, the trick now was getting two people to sound like a full band. With the two instruments, they added call and response vocal melodies and harmonies to create a sound unique in its immenseness. An open-mic was scheduled and tensions ran high as they began to question their untraditional arrangement. Afterwards, they realized it didn't matter. Mates of State possibly played six times in Lawrence, Kansas before packing it in and driving to California in August 1998 where the band would release "Leave Me at the Tree" with Fighter D as a split 7" on Omnibus Records. After eight months in the suburbs, the band moved to San Francisco proper and Omnibus released two additional songs, "It's the Law" and "Invitation Inn," as a separate 7". Mates of State spent 1999 touring throughout the West Coast, playing consistently in California and solidifying their position in San Francisco's burgeoning pop scene. In April of 2000, the band chanced upon engineer John Croslin (Beulah, Spoon, Guided By Voices) whose reserved but confident knowledge immediately attracted the band. The same day, Mates of State scheduled studio time. The Croslin sessions resulted in their debut album My Solo Project, 12 tracks of unconventional pop appeal. Instantly, critical acclaim poured forth from fanzines, periodicals, and dailies such as the San Francisco Bay Guardian and New York Times (who included the album in their "10 worthwhile albums you may have missed in 2000"). A Midwest tour with longtime friends Appleseed Cast was quickly put together and followed by yet another string of shows up and down the West Coast. July 2001 saw Mates of State signing with Polyvinyl, and a month later they re-entered the studio to record their second album, this time with engineer Dave Trumfio (Butterglory, Dianogah, Wilco) behind the board. The band closed out the year by landing large tours alongside Beulah and Mars Volta. Their second full-length Our Constant Concern, was released in January 2002 and the tour machine was once again placed in motion. And what a machine it was. Unparalled by any band in Polyvinyl's history, not even Braid could come close to Mates' four national tours, three international tours, and the 200 plus shows they played in support of the album. Mates of State greeted 2003 with two new releases. The first was a split 7" with longtime friends Dear Nora which featured Mates' haunting rendition of Jackson Browne's "These Days." The latter was their next full-length Team Boo which was released September 2003. Now on their third album, the band discovered the perfect studio environment for their unique blend of vintage Yamaha organ, Gretch Round Badge drums, off-kilter harmonies, and the dynamism that holds it all together. The album was recorded and mixed over three weeks at both The Garage and Willie Nelson's Pedernales studios. Manning the knobs were John Croslin (My Solo Project) and Spoon's Jim Eno. Incredibly infectious, Team Boo was immediately embraced by college radio as the band toured with friends Victory at Sea, The Thermals, and Death Cab for Cutie. Mates of State fans have a lot to look forward to in 2004. Another tour is currently in the works that will take the band through the United States, out to Hawaii and up north through Canada. A DVD documentary is in the works. And who knows, another 7" or EP may be down the line.
Enon is a band from Brooklyn and Philadelphia. John Schmersal (guitar, bass, synths, vocals), Toko Yasuda (bass, synths, vocals) and Matt Schulz (drums) have all been in a bunch of bands, and are still in a bunch of bands. But all that doesn't really matter, right? What does matter is that these three, together, are Enon, always, and they're always amazing.
One of the cornerstone punk bands of the '90s, Rancid's unabashedly classicist sound drew heavily from the Clash's early records, echoing their left-leaning politics and fascination with ska, while adding a dash of essential hardcore crunch. Critics praise their political commitment, surging energy, and undeniable way with a hook and the band's strengths have made them one of the most revered punk bands ever. Their third album, 1995's ...And Out Come the Wolves, made them a platinum-selling sensation and an inescapable presence on MTV and modern rock radio. While they never translated that success into an enormous blockbuster record, that wasn't necessarily their ambition, choosing to stay with the independent punk label Epitaph and the creative freedom it allowed them. That decision helped them retain a large, devoted core audience as revivalist punk-pop began to slip off the mainstream's musical radar. Rancid was formed in 1991 by San Francisco Bay Area punk scenesters Tim Armstrong (guitar/vocals) and Matt Freeman (bass). Lifelong friends and longtime punk fans, the two had grown up together in the small, working-class town of Albany, near Berkeley; they'd also played together in the legendary ska-punk band Operation Ivy.
One of the cornerstone punk bands of the '90s, Rancid's unabashedly classicist sound drew heavily from the Clash's early records, echoing their left-leaning politics and fascination with ska, while adding a dash of essential hardcore crunch. Critics praise their political commitment, surging energy, and undeniable way with a hook and the band's strengths have made them one of the most revered punk bands ever. Their third album, 1995's ...And Out Come the Wolves, made them a platinum-selling sensation and an inescapable presence on MTV and modern rock radio. While they never translated that success into an enormous blockbuster record, that wasn't necessarily their ambition, choosing to stay with the independent punk label Epitaph and the creative freedom it allowed them. That decision helped them retain a large, devoted core audience as revivalist punk-pop began to slip off the mainstream's musical radar. Rancid was formed in 1991 by San Francisco Bay Area punk scenesters Tim Armstrong (guitar/vocals) and Matt Freeman (bass). Lifelong friends and longtime punk fans, the two had grown up together in the small, working-class town of Albany, near Berkeley; they'd also played together in the legendary ska-punk band Operation Ivy.
