Posts Tagged ‘The Beatles’

Let’s Get It are a crazy 5-member band. According to the biography on their Myspace, they have “a sound that ranges from pop to rock, glued together by the melodies of an R&B song and the lyrics of a rapper”. I’d say that sounds right.

Here’s the interview with Kevin, the drummer for Lets Get It:

Where did the name Let’s Get It come from?

The name stems from that inner most core feeling of going out and getting whatever you want in life with no barriers in your way. You go and get it. Let’s Get It. It also sounds fun to say.

Who all is in the band?

Joseph Gilford (Vocals)

Christopher Lairmore (Guitar/Keys)

Kevin Hammond (Drums)

Tyler Smyth (Guitar)

Taylor Foiles (Bass)

How did the band start?

Really weird story actually.  I used to have my personal alone space out in this field 10 miles outside of town. You know, just a place to go and think. Anywho, it was February 9, 2008 and I headed out to this personal spot as always just to clear my mind. As I approached the middle of the field I saw 4 other figures coming out of the woods at 4 various parts. At first I was thrown off like, damn these might be werewolves but as we all neared each other I could tell they weren’t werewolves. These were my friends who I have been friends with in other bands and grown up with. It was that night we raised our fists in the air and declared our war cry “Let’s Get It.”

What are some of Let’s Get It’s musical influences?

LeBron James, HeMan, John Dillinger

If you could tour with any band, dead, or alive, who would it be?

I would love to tour with the Beatles just so I could jam with them acoustically. A tour with Leonidus would be pretty brutal as well.

What one word or phrase would you use to describe the band’s sound?

Confident.

How did you guys end up getting a song (Do Not Disturb…) available on Rock Band 2?

Fearless Records is an absolutely incredible record label with vast resources and dabbles in black magic as well. I’m not sure which resources they used yet.

What is the band currently working on?

We are writing and rewriting and scrapping and discussing and writing more and more material for our debut full length album. I can promise you that what we have is unique and worth telling your friends about. Let’s Get It is getting even better.

What are some future plans for Let’s Get It?

Ideally world domination but we will be recording our full length soon and touring a lot more!!

Go give the band a listen and be sure to check them out at this year’s Bamboozle festival, but be warned, you might end up dancing!

This Is My Suitcase is a pretty crazy band. You might remember a certain video featuring Patrick Stumph saying “see you in cat heaven”. Remember that awesome song in the background with the meows? That my friends is the genius work of This Is My Suitcase.

Joe of This Is My Suitcase answered some questions for Double Dance:

How did This Is My Suitcase become a band?

The musical cyclone of This Is My Suitcase was originally conceived because, throughout my many years spent heading up punk bands, I had grown tired from constantly relying on other band members who simply did not have the same level of concern for what we were doing. I care way too much- it’s like a sickness. I wanted to have somewhere that i could musically go to be alone and freak out as I saw fit; a place to care about my weird songs by my lonesome until the cows came home- and This Is My Suitcase was birthed. By the time I had released the first This Is My Suitcase full length album, Missent to Thailand, I had already enlisted three band members to play alongside me at shows, as I missed friendship and headbanging  aspects of band life too much to remain alone. Over the next couple of years, we had solidified our lineup to what it is now: myself, Nicholas Manos (on the electric guitar and percussion), Jeremy Skeen (a true drum mastermind), Joseph O’ Riordan (the bass guitar), and Mary Lynn Gloeckle (our pianist and pitch-wonderful female vocalist). Obviously, our band has become an actual “band” and no longer a “solo project”, if i must use such dreaded terms as these to describe our situation. LONG ANSWER SHORT: This Is My Suitcase was originally the product of my madness, but, since then, This Is My Suitcase has blossomed into a full band musical explosion that I love more than ever.

For those who haven’t heard music from This Is My Suitcase, how would you describe the band’s sound?

For the millions of unfortunate souls who, for whatever reason, choose to read about how music sounds rather than listen to how music sounds: the music of This Is My Suitcase does not sound like the music from any band I’ve heard to date. The simplest answer I can give to this mind-bending question is: the wily music of This Is My Suitcase sounds like the even-wilier music I constantly hear inside my brain as I try to live out my pathetic life as a sad-yet-optimistic cat-person who dies for fast music and writing love stories through sad metaphors. To be honest, This Is My Suitcase tends to accidentally sound 1% like everything I listen to: a little bit like The Beatles, a little bit like Elliott Smith, a little bit like Ben Folds, a little bit like Mozart, a little bit like Good Luck, a little bit like Ok Go, a little bit like Dr Dog, a little bit like Death Cab for Cutie, a little bit like The Zombies, a little bit like The Flaming Lips, etc, forever and ever; HOWEVER, this begs the question: if you sound a weensy-little bit like a boatload of very-different bands, then what do you actually sound like? EXACTLY! This Is My Suitcase sounds like nothing, and This Is My Suitcase sounds like everything. Confused? Good. Now go listen to something from THE KEYS TO CAT HEAVEN (our full length album, released in 2009 through Paper + Plastick records) way too loud, and decide for yourself how we sound!!! When asked how our record sounds, I usually say something along the lines of: THE KEYS TO CAT HEAVEN sounds like the Muppets as The Flaming Lips covering (The Beach Boy’s) Pet Sounds in Hell, produced by Ben Folds.

Where did the band’s name come from?

Justin Zrenner, a brilliant poet that I am lucky to call “friend”, thought up the band name, and I thought to myself “holy shit, that band name is so good that I need to make a band for it!”

What would you say are some of the band’s influences (musical or not)?

Although I pseudo-answered the musical half of this question in a previous answer, I will try to answer this doozie of a question as best as I can! Lyrically, more-often-than-not, I am influenced by what is going on with/around me. For example, “Goodbye Sky” from The Keys To Cat Heaven (a song about my looming and fast-approaching death, with an “oh well, let’s party!” overtone to it) was written as a completely open window to how I sadly felt when the song was created. Whereas other songs, such as “Mean Fish” (a song about two beta fish who are separated and willing die of total heartbreak), are less literal but still have parallels to my real life. Typically speaking, all of our lyrics are influenced by my actual life, and all of our music influenced by me being a maniac that never leaves the house and drinks 200 cups of coffee a day.

If you were given a chance to tour with any band, dead or alive, who would you choose to tour with?

Holy Shit, why would you even tease me with this question? Obviously, you opening up the “dead or” half of the question makes answering impossible. Obvious answer: THE BEATLES; however, i would ideally tour with them post Abbey Road (to see “Oh Darling” live) and they had stopped touring by this point, so my final “dead” answer is: ELLIOTT SMITH. I could write a book on why I believe Elliott and I were destined to be friends, so a tour would be a perfect chance to work my charm and befriend this genius. As far as living bands, that is easy: WE WANT TO TOUR WITH THE FLAMING LIPS EVERYDAY FOR THE REST OF OUR LIVES!

Who writes the songs in the band?

I (Joseph Anthony Camerlengo) write the music and lyrics for our band. Easy answer! hehe

What is your favorite color?

I am partially-colorblind, so I truthfully am not sure how to answer. The best answer is “blue”, although sometimes I think I am looking at blue and it is really purple, then everyone laughs at me and I tear up. My answer is either “blue”, “rainbow”, or “sad” (is sad a color?)

Would you say there is something (unique maybe) that sets This Is My Suitcase apart from other bands?

Let me answer that with an equally valid question, my dearest Kaitlin: Would you say that there is anything at all that This Is My Suitcase has in common with any other bands? Being in This Is My Suitcase is like being an albino squirrel in a park, no matter who sees us and no matter what we are compared to, we are always the craziest. Oh bother!

What are some of the band’s goals for the future?

We want to be able to survive, in general and financially; right now we are failing at both, it seems. With any luck at all, one day, enough people will be stoked on whatever it is that we do that I/we will be able to pay our rent and bills with it, HOPEFULLY leaving enough money for some Harry Nilsson records after life expenses are taken care of. That’s the goal, i suppose. Survival and/or Nilsson.

I’d say that was quite an interview, wouldn’t you? Now show some love to Joe and go purchase The Keys to Cat Heaven!

Raining and OK are a three piece, unsigned band from Phoenix, Arizona. The bands three members include, Trevor Tillery on guitar, piano, and vocals, Nick Duplessis as the band’s drummer and percussionist, and Stephen Spears on the bass and also vocals.

As a band they have released two albums. I got the chance to interview guitarist/pianist/vocalist Trevor Tillery over email. He has a lot of interesting things to say including how the band got their name!

How did Raining and OK start?

“Raining And OK started as a little 1 one man project when I started college in Seattle, Washington 3 years ago. When I moved I had a lot of alone time in my apartment and wrote a ton of songs. I never really sang until I started writing my own songs. I was just a closet singer singing in the car haha. After a semester in Seattle I moved back to Phoenix, Arizona and started up the band soon after.”

How did you come up with the name ‘Raining and OK’?

“The name came up before I even moved to Seattle. My friend and I were hanging out and were extremely bored. He was taking white out to a book on the table titled “Training Handbook” for something. He whited out the “T” the “H” and the “bo” and it was left with “Raining And OK” haha. We both agreed that would be a cool band name so I took it!”

What are some of your bands influences?

“We are all influenced by a lot of different bands, books, people and life in general. We listen to a decent amount of Radiohead, Coldplay, Muse, U2, Switchfoot, Phoenix, The Beatles, Queen, Eric Clapton, John Mayer, and The Cardigans.”

Best concert you’ve ever been to?

“By far Coldplay last year. Nick and I went and won front row tickets. Dead center. Amazing! Second best are tied with Muse and U2.”

If you were given the chance to tour with any band/bands, who would be on that tour?

“We would definitely love to tour with any of the bands we are influenced by. Realistically we’d love to tour with our friends in Barcelona and This Providence. We’re also in love with Paper Route, Switchfoot, and Relient K.”

How long does it take you to write a new song?

“Usually when I write a song, the entire main idea of the song comes out in a matter of a few minutes and then I’ll “finish” it in one sitting. The songs that stick around are usually the ones that are written this way. However there are songs that take more work and time. Like the song “The Loveless (True Love)” was a completely different song at first and went through a series of changes to be the song it is now.”

What are your future plans for the band?

“Tour, tour, tour … write .. record … release and repeat! Obviously some things in between. We plan to release something else soon. We are hoping to do this in the Winter but we will see. Right now we are getting a lot of great opportunities to get our current EP a lot of attention, so we want to take that as far as possible so that the new material can have even more impact.”

What is something that most fans probably don’t know about the band?

“We don’t play any of our instruments live, there’s 50 year old professional musicians under the stage that play for us……. not really. But wouldn’t that be a bummer if it were true??”

A big thanks to Trevor for the interview!  You can download the band’s previous releases on iTunes or buy them from the Raining and OK online store.