Showing posts with label Saosin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Saosin. Show all posts

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Saosin

Monday, March 10, 2008

Live In Jakarta


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Saosin

Thursday, February 7, 2008

Fan Reports In: Saosin and Bootyhole


One particularly rocking AP member went to see Saosin recently and was fortunate enough to be in the crowd while they were filming for their upcoming DVD. Read his derrière-riddled story below.
Fan ReportThis isn't so much news, however, it is VERY entertaining. At the Saosin show on Saturday night in Philly (the show they shot for their DVD), fans were yelling out songs for them to play and a few people at once yelled for them to play "Show me Yo Bootyhole!". At this request Cove said, "We will play Show me Yo Bootyhole if you first show us yours. At this point the person who was in the center of an open pit bent over with his ass in the air and spread his bare cheeks. Since it was a DVD shoot the crowd lights were on in between songs and I saw half the cameras go right toward the kid and his bootyhole. The crowd went insane and a most bewildered and amazed look swept the band. Unfortunately, they did NOT play Bootyhole but I am sure you will see that interesting footage pop up on the DVD of a truly amazing set by Saosin.



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Saosin

The Billboard

Southern California quintet Saosin are one of the fastest-growing headliners in rock – earning mainstage slots on the Vans Warped Tour, selling out clubs in a flash, going out with heavyweights like AFI, Avenged Sevenfold, My Chemical Romance and Taking Back Sunday and garnering an ocean of fans who’ve downloaded their songs from MySpace over five million times – all before they’ve released a full-length album.

That will all change on September 26th with the Capitol Records release of their self-titled debut. As your average Saosin fan (and there are legions) will be quick to point out, the wait was a considerable one. “We were waiting until the songs were right,” says frontman Cove Reber with some understatement.

It’s been three years since word of the band’s full-length debut first surfaced, and in that time a lot has changed within the music scene from which they originally emerged and within the band itself.

Seemingly overnight, stylized bands playing strains of melodic post-hardcore have sailed up the pop charts. But for Saosin -- Reber, bassist Chris Sorenson, drummer Alex Rodriguez, and guitarists Beau Burchell and Justin Shekoski -- things have played out a bit differently. During the scene’s ascension, the band’s members have all but shunned the idea of a genre tag or an “image” -- unless, of course, you count the jeans and t-shirts they soak in sweat every night onstage -- and have instead focused their energies on making an album that will live or die strictly on musical merits.

“At first we said we weren’t interested in putting the album out on a major label,” says Burchell. “We wanted to grow first.”

But the band’s sound and its ambition grew tremendously during the recording of their 12-song debut, an album that exceeds even the wildest of expectations. From the dueling guitar crunch of opener “It’s Far Better to Learn” to the nosebleed anthemic heights of lead single “Voices,” the livewire maelstrom of “Follow and Feel” and epic heartstring-puller “You’re Not Alone,” Saosin have created the kind of debut album that announces something indisputably new under rock’s sun.

“It was a long time coming,” says Sorenson, “but finishing the album really put a fire under our asses and we were better for it.”

The initial stages of the band’s debut date back to late 2003 when founding guitarists Burchell and Shekoski and original frontman Anthony Green began playing out, recorded a quick EP, Translating the Name, and embarked on a U.S. tour during which time Green exited the band. To the group’s surprise Translating the Name garnered the band a massive fanbase both online and at their live shows, which grew organically, and quickly.

The band, however, was so hands-off about promoting themselves that Google searches of the band turned up precious little info.

“It was cool if you knew about the band, we weren’t always easy to find,” says Burchell. “But I think that really brought kids together, having to actually make the effort to track us down.”

A collection of rabid fans with Ethernet connections soon began arguing about such pressing matters as how the band’s name was actually pronounced (it’s “say-o-sin”) and what it actually means (Saosin means “small heart” in Chinese. The word comes from a 15th century proverb about fathers telling their sons who are being married off for money not to get emotionally involved with their wives, who could die at any time.)

In the winter of 2005 the revamped Saosin lineup with Sorenson, Rodriguez and new frontman Reber signed to Capitol, released a self-titled EP of demos and live tracks, and began pre-production on their long-awaited full-length debut. As the band recorded various versions of their new songs -- both at their home studios and on a mobile recording unit that they set up on their tour bus – the burden of heavy expectations eventually gave way to genuine excitement.

“I would demo stuff with Chris,” Reber recalls, “and say, ‘This is really good – we can’t not run with this.’”

In turn, the album that Saosin began recording with producer Howard Benson (My Chemical Romance, Head Automatica) this past January -- nearly a full year after they began properly demoing its songs -- would live up to the band’s great expectations, and then some. More importantly, though, it proves that in a world of overnight success at least one group is devoted enough to write songs that are built to last.

“This record is going to take us places,” says Sorenson. “We don’t know exactly where, but it will definitely be an experience getting there.”

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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

Translating the name, was an instant success, especially through online sources. The band was actually approached by numerous record companies before playing their first show due to the soaring popularity of the EP. However, the band's vocalist Anthony Green left after the release of their first EP and later formed the band Circa Survive. Anthony was very homesick and said he was missing his family. He says he felt bad for leaving his friends in a tough situation without a singer, but he "would have gone crazy had he stayed any longer". A public, nationwide audition then took place. Beau Burchell has stated in interviews that, "The main things that we are looking for now, is someone that does not do drugs, someone who can actually sing live, and someone who is good looking and fun to get along with. Oh, and they have to have a really dry sense of humor, because the rest of us do."[1] After the public audition process and several guest vocalists on demos, Cove Reber, previously the vocalist of the band Mormon In The Middle and Stamp Out Detroit, was announced as their new permanent lead singer and is an adept guitar player.

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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