Saosin
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Beginnings - Translating The Name
Saosin started off as the brainchild of two musicians; Justin Shekoski, a former guitarist in As Hope Dies, and Beau Burchell. They planned to be called "The Gift", but there was another band by that name. They recorded an instrumental demo, with Justin and Beau, and MIDI drums. The first song on this demo was called You're No Angel and had Beau Burchell on vocals. They were trying to find a vocalist and they asked Keith Goodwin from the band Days Away. He said, "I know this guy Anthony". They sent him 2 instrumentals and he recorded vocals over them. The two songs became known as Seven Years and Translating the Name, the first two tracks on the Translating the Name EP. Anthony flew in from Philadelphia and stayed for five days, and recorded the vocals to the EP in about 4 nights.
Drummer Pat McGrath was brought in to do drumming for the Translating the Name EP. Saosin had been trying hard to get Alex to join the band, but he was in Open Hand, and was touring with them. They picked up McGrath who was a studio drummer. According to Burchell, the Translating the Name EP was 3/4 of McGrath's ability. "There were certain passages where we were like, Dude, play something else no one is going to be able to play. And he would do it, and we were shitting ourselves. He was there doing the most insane rolls, all while doing stick twirls, all like it was nothing, and we were shitting our pants." When Beau met Pat, they handed him the Open Hand CD and told him that was the drummer they wanted to have in the band. Beau asked Pat if he could stylize the drumming to make it sound like Alex’s sort of style. Even though McGrath never played a single show with the band, they had some fun times together and get along well. McGrath also still enjoys Saosin's music.
Departure of Anthony Green
Cove sent in his demo tape, which was an acoustic demo with "Mookie's Last Christmas" (this demo has leaked to the internet) and is widely speculated to have included a few songs from Translating the Name, which also includes Seven Years and 3rd Measurement in C. When Beau first heard the demo, he thought it was Anthony pulling a trick on them. He said he wanted someone like Anthony but "not to bring in someone that sounded like Creed." According to Beau, "Gabe from Midtown tried to sing a couple songs. Jason Gleason was asked to come out and do it, but he had his own thing going on." Beau said "I would put them in the studio and pull up the ProTools session of Translating the Name, and would mute all of Anthony’s vocals and just let the guys sing. And dudes would come in and sound like total Spinal Tap, just so bad. So then I would have to spend about two hours trying to find a nice way to get the guy to just leave, so you would basically sit there and waste your night.". Even through all of this, Saosin said they would have went on with Beau, Justin, and Chris all doing vocals because they were not going to give up.
Bassist Zach Kennedy also parted from the band early on, leaving because of personal issues and to focus on his art career. He went on to play bass in Ashlee Simpson's band, but left her band in 2005. He was replaced in Saosin with Chris Sorenson.
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