Radionaut

Catch up with lead singer, Frankie Divis, of Los Angeles hard rock band, Radionaut, and look for their debut self-titled LP to be released this April.

What brought Radionaut together?

Frankie: We kind of unofficially met in 2009. I had just moved out to LA and we all migrated out here for the same reason. Diego and Aaron and Anthony had been playing together underneath a different name but they were just a three piece at the time and it just so happened, through social media - nothing too exciting, I guess [laughs] - but through social media and musician networking, we met up with each other and just hit it off right away. And although we come from vastly different backgrounds, we all have the same mindset, and the combination of all of it comes together in the music.

Where does your name, Radionaut, come from?

It took a while. You don't think your name would be the hard part; the music came a lot easier than the name [laughs]. We were struggling for a little while and we played under another name actually and this finally came to us. Having all grown up with the radio as such a primary influence, we were wrestling around with 'radio' and Diego actually, I got to give him a little credit, he brought the other side of it, the 'naut', which means 'to sail'; so the literal meaning is to sail on radio waves, which we thought was cool. It's pretty literal to the ambition of the band to get on the radio, right? So, yeah, travelor of the radio kind of fit.

Which musicians have you been influenced by?

As a group it's more diverse. Aaron and Anthony come from a little more of a metal background, Slayer, Metallica, Tool - not that Tool's necessarily metal, but I know they pull from there - and Diego and myself have more of that blues rock background; I can pull from anything from Roy Orbison to probably Pink Floyd who was and is my favorite personal influence. But, all the big ones; The Stones for sure, I know that's a big one for Diego. The Doors, especially moving out here to LA I felt like you had to immerse yourself a little bit in The Doors and learn about the Sunset Strip in the late '60s, early '70s and what a cool time that was out here.

Who's in your playlist now?

Black Keys. Alabama Shakes, getting into them, a few tracks here and there. A little bit of everything. I like to have a diverse set of artists I listen to. There's a lot of old school stuff still streaming through there though.

How would you describe your sound, as a whole?

Hard rock. But there's a groove and almost a familiarity to it. It's a combination, having that edge of the metal sound from (drummer) Aaron and (bassist) Anthony, and Diego bringing a lot of blues and emotion with his riffs. One of the things that drives me with music is the changes from one riff to the next and how it can just capture you. I'm starting to hear, especially in the live scene out here, a lot of bands coming back around with more of that sound, which is encouraging.

What was the inspiration behind your latest single "The Dark Side"?

We were jamming on this real heavy, driving beat and it had a little bit of that darkness to it. It was definitely a heavy groove, and at the time I happened to be reading Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde and, thematically, it just kind of fit together. It pulls from the literature, but in a lot of ways through the struggles we face, be it failure, addiction, loss, or whatever it may be, we relate to it on a personal level as well. 

Could you sum up your upcoming album, Radionaut?

This is really the essence of Radionaut as a band, as four individuals coming together. It's the culmination of our first four years out here in LA, finding our way, sometimes scraping along, making wrong turns but, ultimately, refining and creating the Radionaut sound. It's a good collection of those first formative years together where, you know, we've found our way and our sweet spot as we've kind of made our own path out here. Hopefully that makes sense [laughs]. We're excited about it.

Is there a track from the album you're most excited for your fans to hear?

Oh, boy. If you asked each of us we'd probably have a different answer [laughs]. I think "Be Mine" is a track that I feel really shows the dynamics of this band and it's gotta groove to it, it's got the transitions, the heavy side, but it's but it's also got a beat that gets people moving. We've played it live a few times and it's quickly becoming a fan favorite. Both lyrically and musically - it just kind of pulls on you and creates movement. A fun one to play live for sure.

What do you hope your listeners and fans can take away from your music?

We hope people have fun with it. We play the music that we feel and we have a blast doing it, so we just want to bring that hard rock, let loose, and that atmosphere where you get caught up in the moment and get people back out to live shows, I think that's something. A few years ago, when we first started, it was a bit discouraging and we've had some rough times along the way, but LA's always been known as a rock and roll city and we're trying to inject some of that back into the community and we're starting to see it out there, people are coming out. Just come out, have fun, rock out with us and there are plenty of other bands, like I said, that are starting to pop up here, that's encouraging to see.

Is there anything you'd like to add?

Come check us out. We've got some exciting stuff coming up; some shows this Summer on Sunset Strip and our website is the best place to go to get all those updates. We encourage people to get out there and get in their local scenes, because there's nothing else like it.  Being in a local band and living independent music can be a rough road, so get out there and support your local artists.

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Sunny Gang

Look for Punk‐rap band, Sunny Gang, to release their debut LP, Party/Animal, this Spring and catch their latest single, "Burn It Down", out now.

What brought you all together?

Joe: We were all students at Rutgers-Newark and just met each other on campus through partying and being musicians and that's how we started out. Nate was rapping and I was working here in the recording studio and we put together Nate's first mixtape, just as a solo rapper and, after that, we started trying to figure out - the four of us - how to put live instruments with the stuff he had written and that kind of spiraled into being a band.

Which bands or artists have you been influenced by?

Joe: We always try to describe ourselves as a pissed off version of The Roots with a drinking problem.

Chris: I really like John Denver, so I tend to base my music off of him.

Joe: So, bands like Rage Against The Machine and we take a lot of influence from a lot of different places because we all come from similar but slightly different musical backgrounds so you'll hear punk influences, dance influences, hip hop, and basically anything else you can come up with; we throw it all at the wall and see what sticks.

What words you use to describe your sound?

Joe: Loud. Fast, usually.

Nate: Aggressive. Rhythmic.

"Burn It Down" is your latest single, what's the inspiration behind that track?

Nate: I wrote the lyrics and it's just about violent revolution, killing the oppressor, like the French Revolution, or the Algerian Revolution, or even the American Revolution, there's a lot of different revolutions where the oppressor uses violence so the oppressed are forced to use violence to battle them back but the revolution itself usually leads into more violent oppression. It's like a cyclical series of violence.

That's off your forthcoming album Party/Animal, how would you describe that?

Nate: Well, the album is like a two-part album. We're all pretty conscious and aware of what's going on in the world and we wanted to be a little bit serious, but we understand, when you're too serious, people can tune you out. So, it's called Party/Animal and the first half is party music anyone can get into and have fun to and the second half is a more serious take on what's going on around us. So you put those two together and you have who we are as a band.

Is there a track from that album you're most excited for your fans to hear?

Joe: We really like "Burn It Down".

Nate: Yeah, I'd say that's probably our favorite song, is "Burn It Down".

Joe: "Pit Maneuvers" is really cool; that one's not out yet.

Nate: Yeah, there's another song called "Pit Maneuvers" which is about the police and running from them even when you're not doing anything wrong 'cause police are just scary as hell, man. This morning I walked past a cop and said, 'hey, what's up,' and he looked at me like I stole something. I should've just walked past and said, 'fuck you,' and maybe he wouldn't have looked at me so suspiciously [laughs]. It's just about, when you walk past a cop, why do you feel like a criminal, even when you're not doing a crime?

What do you hope your listeners can take away from your music?

Nate: You can see yourself.

Joe: Get wasted and break shit.

Nate: Yeah, have fun, don't take life too seriously 'cause you only live once.

Joe: But also don't be an idiot, but don't keep your head in the sand.

Is there anything you'd like to add?

Joe: Our album's dropping in April so keep an eye out for it. The video for "Burn It Down" is coming real soon, we just shot that last weekend.

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Kyle Reynolds

 Photo Credit Melanie Foster

Catch up with Nashville‐based pop singer‐songwriter Kyle Reynolds and listen to his new single, “Hold You Tighter”, from his upcoming EP.

What got you interested in music?

Kyle Reynolds: I didn't start till I was a junior in high school actually and I started teaching myself covers off of YouTube. My freshman and sophomore years of high school were kind of rough and I made some bad decisions and did some dumb things so I just decided to turn my life around and do something different, that's when I started playing piano and I just fell in love with the way it made me feel. So, after six months of learning covers, I wrote my first song, which probably wasn't very great, but I wrote it and I had this moment where I was like, 'oh my gosh, I can take all these things I think about, I see, and I've felt and put it into a song, this is amazing,' and so I fell in love with it and just really never stopped. I think I was about 17.

I read you learned piano from YouTube videos, what was the first song you learned?

We had a piano at our house and I actually had lessons for a year in seventh grade but I hated it. It was one of those things where, just like a lot of kids that take guitar lessons or piano lessons as a kid, I was just like, this kind of sucks, but I'm going to do it because I'm supposed to. But we had a piano in the house and my sister's boyfriend at the time taught me how to play "Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey [laughs] and that was the first song I learned on piano, which is not the easiest song, but that was the first song I ever learned and I guess I had this renewed passion to play when I was a little older.

You said your first song wasn't great, what was it about?

I mean, I guess I was proud of it back then so maybe I shouldn't say that, but it was called "Opposite Direction" and, at one point, that was out for the world to hear but, hopefully, you can't find it anywhere - and if you can, let me know and I'll make sure you can't find it - but it was called "Opposite Direction" and the whole concept and story of the song was, this person is pretty much walking in the opposite direction of everywhere that is healthy for him and good; running away from home and using home as a metaphor of things that are good for him and just running away from everything in life. That's kind of where I felt I was for a bit of my life and I still write about that a bit, in hopefully a more mature and tangible way as a songwriter, but that was the first thing I wrote about, just opposite directions, because I felt that was the way I'd been going for those two or three years of my life and I decided to write a song about that.

Which musicians have you been influenced by?

Ryan Tedder is my favorite songwriter ever. He's the frontman of OneRepublic and he is just like, a lot of the hits you hear on the radio are written by him and he is just a genius. I love Ryan Tedder and OneRepublic is a huge influence. Ben Rector, as far as a Nashville guy, I just love everything Ben stands for and his songs are just so honest; I love very honest songwriters who are authentic and Ben is very much that. Andy Grammer I love. A lot of these people are very piano based songwriters and, like I said, I love writing on piano. I'd say, for the most part, Andy Grammer, OneRepublic, The Fray, even John Mayer; I love all that. I write a lot of love songs too, so if you're good at writing love songs I'll probably like you and your music.

How would you describe your own music?

Piano pop singer-songwriter. I just try to write about real things and I understand it's unrealistic expectations for every song you write to tug at your heart and make you feel something but, for the most part, I don't want to just put songs out in the air that just exist; I have high expectations and I want people to feel something and I want to try to change the world with the songs I write and I want to make people think about things and I want to write powerful songs. I try to just figure out a positive message or something that's just honest and real in my music, so I'd say the best way to describe my music - I do have some fun, upbeat songs and I love to write those - is just honest. I try to be authentic and say things that maybe everyone thinks, but not everyone talks about and I think that they're important things to speak up about it.

What was the inspiration for your single, "Hold You Tighter"?

There's a lot of bad things that go on in the world and it almost becomes such a norm that it almost becomes not a bad thing anymore which, to me, is actually sad that that is the case, but that was the main thing. My parents got divorced when I was a freshman in high school and almost all of my friends' parents are divorced and I was looking around and had this moment of, 'this sucks and it's super sad,' and I know it was something that affected me a lot and I feel like we live in this age and time where, as soon as things get difficult or tough, people just look for the quickest exit strategy and they're like, 'oh, this is really inconvenient, how can I escape from this?' instead of facing it. It takes a lot to face things that are uncomfortable and difficult but I also think it's worth it. This works in any relationship, for your girlfriend or boyfriend, but this is more specific for marriage, after you've promised this thing to someone, and I guess I don't know how much credit I have because I'm not married, but I would like to assume that I would think this way and I feel like if people are going through something tough in a marriage, instead of running away from it, if they were to face it and work through it, I think people would be really surprised to see the outcome and what could happen when you just work through things and stick to these problems - unless it's something toxic and you're hurting yourself or the other person's hurting you, whether physically or emotionally - but, for the most part, so many things that people just throw their hands up in the air and walk away from are so very possible to work through.

So, I felt very inspired. I want for someone to listen to this song and think, 'wow, this is a commitment or a promise I made to someone,' whether it's a friendship or whatever, but just not giving up and to, metaphorically, hold the person tighter; if you usually walk one mile, when things get tough, run ten. I really want this song to be an anthem for people to just not give up and I know it sounds corny, but it's something I'm really passionate about that I think people don't really understand or get. I'm not saying it's easy, it's definitely not an easy thing, at all, and I think there are things in society that really contribute to that thought process. Like, obviously I love Instagram and it's a great social media platform, but you look at something and it's exciting or someone's attractive and you're like, 'oh, she's cute,' and then you move on to the next photo and our brains are so triggered to just move on and I really think marriage and love is something so worth fighting for and I wanted to share something to inspire people to feel the same way and work hard through that.

And that's off your upcoming EP, could you tell us more about that?

Yeah, so I'm writing for the new record right now. We don't have an exact release date, but I just have a manager now, which is a new thing, and he's great and he came on board so it's a lot of new stuff, like the single just came out, we're starting to build a team around me, just taking a lot of meetings and talking to a bunch of different people so, right now, we're just looking for the songs. I have a lot of songs that we feel really good about and we're excited, but we're taking our time and just want to do it really right. I'm hoping definitely something will be out this year, but we don't necessarily have an exact release date for the record yet. That's something we're taking slow and I feel totally okay with, because I just want it to be great and whatever I share with you guys and the world and my fans and my mom and dad [laughs] - anyone who can listen - I want it to be super great and I want to feel awesome about it. Unfortunately, I can't give you too much as far as what we're doing with that, but that's the plan for now.

What do you want your fans and listeners to take away from your music when they hear it?

I want people to feel something, hopefully joy. If someone feels hopeless or sad, I want them to find hope and maybe attaching to a lyric or even a melody and just finding hope in that. Whether it's happy, sad, mad, angry, excited, I just want people to feel something. Being able to feel something at all, that's awesome and one of the reasons I love to play music; it's a very difficult career choice, but I feel alive every day I do it and it's a risk in a way. I just hope people feel something, 'cause I feel like that's something we take for granted and it's such an awesome thing - not to be all hippie - but I just want people to feel something and I hope people can think to themselves, 'oh my gosh, I'm not alone,' because that's an awesome feeling. Sometimes we feel alone in our situations, in what we're going through, and to know that someone's going through it alongside you and with you is a very comforting feeling, so I hope people can feel that, too.

Is there anything you'd like to add?

We're just kind of pitching the new single and we have a music video that's coming out soon for it and we don't have an exact date yet, but that's definitely in the works. We're getting ready to release the music video and we're about to play some shows; I might be doing some college tour stuff in the Fall and we're about to get on the road and do stuff like that.

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Steamboats

Catch up with Nick Throop of New York-based Americana group, Steamboats, and be sure to listen to and get your copy of their recent sophomore release, Chosen Peace.

What brought you all together?

Nick Throop: Me and Jon were high school friends. We went to high school in Newton, which is right outside of Boston, and pretty much since freshman year we've been playing in some amalgam of a band together. So, we played in high school and we went to college and found ourselves rooming together in New York, still playing music, and Mario, the third member of the band, went to Purchase, which is also where Jon went to college. Jon recommended he was a great player and, I think, around the Fall of 2011, we all got together and started playing folk traditional songs and I had a couple originals, Mario had a couple originals, and from there it kind of steamrolled [laughs] no pun intended.

Where does your name, Steamboats, come from?

You know, it's tricky [laughs]. It was one of those things where we were just sick of calling our project by each others names and I just suggested, 'hey, why don't we call it this?', and none of us feel strongly against it or for it, so that means it probably can stand the test of time. Me and Jon have been in so many different bands and we've come to acknowledge that if you initially like a band name, chances are, a month from now, you're going to hate that band name, so we picked a name that we were like, 'this is fine; I don't feel strongly about it, for it, or against it,' and, from there, it just became something where the music and the band name, they seemed to fit together pretty well. It's very nondescript, but it also harkens to what we do with our folk band and steamboats are this old-timey, not used form of transportation anymore which is similar to folk music, in general, which we're trying to revive in our own way.

You had your own originals and I read you took your time making sure your voices could harmonize well, so how does that creative process work in your group?

Yeah, there was a lot of development of harmonies and stuff like that. We had been singing in choirs - each one of us were in a choir in high school - so we're used to singing with a group, but we really leveled up when we really focused on the blend of each one of our distinctive voices; like, how Mario says a certain vowel versus how I say it and how Jon says a certain consonant versus how Mario says it, that kind of thing. We just blended them all together to see if we could create this unified voice that is Steamboats [laughs].

Which musicians have you been influenced?

My parents pretty much fed me Beatles from the womb, so my mom was a musician, my dad was a musician, so they recognize the importance of all that stuff and I appreciate that. In the new school of thought, I was really influenced by bands like Fleet Foxes, Band Of Horses - those indie bands that are doing a lot with vocal harmonies and blending - as well as the more bluegrassy numbers, like Nickel Creek and Crooked Still, they just shred on their mandolins and banjos and I'm a sucker for all that stuff. Using those, that new school folk and old school folk, seeing what we can combine and put together, see what comes out the other end.

What's in your playlist now?

[Laughs] Right now, this is interesting, I'm actually going through a hip-hop phase but, for the sake of Steamboats, my top albums that I always go back to are Fleet Foxes' Helplessness Blues, the Dawes album, North Hills; anytime someone plays anything by the band I tell them to turn it up, so that band is always there. Some of the more traditional ones, like James Taylor, I'm a sucker for his voice and his songwriting, all that stuff. Probably, as a guitarist and as classical guitarist, Fleetwood Mac, Lindsey Buckingham's guitar playing is just out of this world; I'm listening to Rumours once a month, at least.

How would you describe your sound to someone who had never heard Steamboats before?

I would say that we're a folk band at heart, but you can hear those influences of some of the more indie bands coming out of California and Seattle, like Fleet Foxes and Dawes but, at the end of the day, "Magnify" is a very simple, traditional folk song and, even in the lyrics, it's about a musician and he's on the road and he's tired of being on the road he's excited to be coming home to his own bed. I think, if I were to give three words, it would probably be a folky Americana band, with a heavy emphasis on musical arrangement; kind of guitar, mandolin, banjo interplay - there's complex arrangements throughout all of our songs.

So what was the inspiration behind "Magnify"?

Steamboats was coming along as a band and we were touring more and more and that was my first introduction to touring regularly. I'd been playing gigs here and there but doing four day runs and every night you're in a different city and then, come Sunday, you see the lights of New York City and you're like, 'oh great, I'm finally home and I'm going to sleep in Brooklyn tonight, that's great'. Yeah, that was my inspiration for "Magnify".

That's off your new album, could you tell us more about Chosen Peace?

Chosen Peace is definitely a level up from the EP. The EP we recorded, that was in our first year and a half of playing together and we were like, 'we just need it as a product so we can give it to venues and stuff like that and this is going to be just a simple, here's what we sound like, these are our four songs and if you like us, you should book us'. The album, Chosen Peace, was a little bit more premeditated. A friend of mine from college who is an engineer, he works at Electric Wilburland Studios, which is where we recorded the album, up in Ithaca, New York, and he has worked with a number of different bands very similar to our style and he was just very integral in creating an overall sound for the album. Each song has their own distinguishing qualities but, as an album, our engineer was really pivotal in making it, I don't want to say conceptual, but these songs flow into one another and there's one thing that you can find in every song that is similar. And, in those couple years that we played together, our songwriting and our playing and our blending, singing-wise, has doubled, if not tripled, in quality. So, it was really a level up for us, we're really proud of what we did with it and it surpassed all of our expectations in terms of the final product. These songs were good on their own, but then we put them down on the album and we had all these ideas in the studio; it was a fun experimental path and we're really proud of Chosen Peace.

What do you hope your listeners will take away from your music?

I want our listeners to put on this album - they just want to check it out because they're a friend of mine or something - and they're listening to it, doing whatever they're doing, and they stop and they're like, 'whoa, wait, what was that song? I need to go back and listen to it again'. For me, personally, the first time I hear an album it usually doesn't stick with me, it's usually the second or third listen where I'm really like, 'wow, this album is really good'. I want that for Steamboats, I want people to listen to us and be like, 'wow, that was really good,' and then, the second time they listen to it, be like, 'wow, this is like really good,' and then the third time they listen to it, they're like, 'I need to go see them live,' that kind of thing. Kind of an evolution of their appreciation for Steamboats.

Is there anything you'd like to add?

Just that we're excited to tour. We've been mostly touring the Northeast, but we're trying to expand outward; we're going to LA this weekend just to feel out the scene and see if they would be amenable to any shows that we would want to put on. But if there's anyone out there that wants to check out Steamboats in their local arena, we'll be in Manhattan playing shows for the foreseeable future.

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