The Chris Paterno Band

Photo Credit Tim Lee

Catch up with Philadelphia-based alt-soul group The Chris Paterno Band's Chris and listen to lead track, "Unfaithful", from their forthcoming debut self-titled EP.

What brought you all together?

Chris: I received a phone call from a friend that works for the Philadelphia Freedoms, which is the tennis team with Billie Jean King, and they wanted me to play a show but I needed a band, so I brought together my current roommate, Connor McElwee, on the guitar and our old high school English teacher - he taught me in 9th grade, like, eight years ago - he plays the drums, and then we just built the band around that; asking around people that we knew in Philadelphia, hitting up the art institutues like U of Arts and Temple and Curtis and just brought together some horn players - Mike Clark and Frank Rein - and our mandolin player, Adam Monaco, was a good friend of mine. The gig really brought us together and we didn't know where we were going to go from there. We played in front of about 2,000 people our first show and it went well, so we decided, let's go for it, so then we started booking some more shows.

Which musicians have you been influenced by, individually or as a group?

I would say, personally, I'm definitely influenced by some of the oldies like Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder and also a couple singer-songwriters like John Mayer, James Bay, and Ed Sheeran. I like to describe our sound as an alternative soul, a combination of John Mayer meets Stevie Wonder. We've got the Philly soul roots of raw emotion and funky horn lines with the singer-songwriter complex voicing of somebody like John Mayer. I know a lot of the guys really like The Grateful Dead in the group, so we kind of veer towards a jam band and we like to pass out solos when we play live, but in the studio we're definitely more of a tightknit, alternative soul group.

What words would you use to describe your sound to someone who had never heard you?

I would definitely say alternative soul and other things that I would point to are, we just try to embody Philadelphia; the city and the emotion that's here and the roots that were laid by Philly soul down in Philadelphia by acts like The O'Jays and Patti Labelle, they really encompass this raw emotion with these driving horn lines and I think we put a modern flair on that. We've got these great horn players that come up with great arrangements, some percussive guitar and bass, and just raw emotion in the lyrics and vocals.

What were your inspirations behind your single "Unfaithful"?

The chord progression comes from an old song, actually, that I wrote back in high school and I could never get it out of my fingers. I was just playing around with it one day and made a couple changes here and there and then, at the time - there's a line in the bridge that goes "all we've built, burn it down" - and, at the time in my life, about a year and a half ago, I had just gotten out of a long relationship, my friendships that I'd had the year before were starting to go awry, and there were some issues with my family and it was just at a very emotional time. It was also at the time when I decided to focus more on music and less on my potential career in medicine and just let those bridges burn down and start anew and that's where the emotion comes from. The actual theme of the song comes from just being on a college campus and seeing what goes on on the weekends and some of my friends were dealing with untrustworthy people, so I just really related to that at the time, so that was my inspiration.

Can you tell us more about your forthcoming self-titled debut EP?

Yeah, definitely! So, there's six tracks - I wanted to cover a song that we're really excited about and I'll leave that one a surprise, but it might be my favorite track on the EP - but the other five songs were written by me and I like to write about everyday experiences and music is really my journal, so I write down everything that I feel and I don't really hold back and those thoughts and emotions go right into the songs. There's songs like "Unfaithful" about infidelity and not being able to trust people; there's a song about feeling pressure and stress from expectations and just everyday life; then a couple songs about love found, love lost, and a hopeful theme in there, too. I think the EP really has something for everybody, it's got a lot of driving horn sounds and a couple tracks that sound like "Unfaithful" with the faster groove, but there's some slow paced and we've got a folky tune, as well. I think we really span across a couple of genres and hopefully people find the tracks relatable.

Is there a track from this record you're most excited to perform live - other than the cover?

[Laughs] I think I'm most excited - and the band is most excited - about this one track called "Pressure". When we went into the studio it really didn't sound good [laughs] and we had to take a little bit of a break just so I could go out and rewrite the track. The track is about just being stressed out, trying to decide what I need to do with my life and how I want to do it, and it's about feeling stress and pressure from myself and people around me and that's something that I deal with on a daily basis and that I impose on myself, that it's my life; it was so hard for me to actually write about something that was so common that it took me awhile to actually get the track to where we wanted it to be, but now we've got some James Brown, funk soul brother drumming going on and these great horn lines and I think it's probably our favorite track to play live.

What do you hope your fans and listeners are able to take away from your music?

I really hope, first and foremost, that they find the songs relatable. We're down to Earth guys, we just like to have fun and play music and try to start a conversation about things that are going on in peoples' lives. Secondly, I hope that they just find it enjoyable to listen to and listen to them all more than one time and nod their heads to it and move through their lives with that as a soundtrack in the background. Like I've been saying, we put all of ourselves into the music so when you're listening, you're getting all of us and that's a lot to give to other people, so we just hope that people recognize that and can appreciate it and take it at face value and enjoy it.

Is there anything you'd like to add?

I just want to tell people to be on the lookout for a couple more singles that are coming out: one each month until late August when we're going to drop the whole EP. I would love to invite people out to come see us play; we've got a show this Saturday at MilkBoy and then our next show is at Connie's Ric Rac on 6/16 in Philly. We're really excited to get out and share this stuff live so people can hear it before it comes out and they're always welcome to text me at 610-955-8684 if they want a sneak peek or to chat.

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Graveyard Lovers

Catch up with Graveyard Lovers' Zach Reynolds and listen to the Brooklyn rock trio's latest single, "Told A Lie", taken from their upcoming two part album, Past The Forest Of The Fruitless Thoughts, Part 1 to be released in June.

What got you interested in starting a band together?

Zach Reynolds: Well, it's funny. Tricia and I were a couple and I was dabbling with playing with other musicians when I first moved to New York but it wasn't really working out. Tricia had been playing for about five years but I just didn't know how serious she was about it and she had drummer friends and a drum teacher - she'd been going to class for it - but she's a really quiet, shy person, and she didn't mention it much so, when I was playing with other musicians, she was secretly jealous and didn't let onto that until about a year into our relationship when we kind of had it out about it and she divulged all these things and she wanted to play with me so I was like, 'okay, shit, I had no idea,' [laughs] so we started playing together and it just immediately worked. I had had trouble keeping a drummer with whatever project I had going on and clicking with musicians and she was right in front of me the whole time, so it was good. We started writing songs immediately.

Where does your name, Graveyard Lovers, come from?

At the time when we were jamming a lot, we were really into blues music. I was really homesick at the time for Louisiana and I had never really liked blues music growing up - it was kind of old school music - but I got into it once I got up here and was buying a bunch of blues records and stuff. So "Graveyard Love" was an old song and graveyard love was a term that was used back then to mean a relationship that was destined to end in homicide - like, a really passionate relationship. We just thought that was a cool definition and basis for the name; it's funny.

Which musicians have you been influenced by?

As a group, we all have different interests, which you can definitely hear if you pick it apart. Individually, when we first started out, I was really into Mark Knopfler, the guitar player, so I think you can hear that on our first albums; I was experimenting with that type of stuff and classic rock stuff, trying to do bluesy riffs which didn't sound cheesy. Tricia really wanted to pound the drums; she's into loud '80s rock and stuff [laughs] as far as playing influences. We listen to all kinds of stuff. Also, on top of that, I'm really into '90s indie rock and stuff like Modest Mouse and bands like that so I always try to mix the two and do almost classic rock mixed with newer indie rock. With the new album, Joel is into a whole more diverse range of music than we are with a lot of heavier music and more experimental, some post rock stuff and hard core bands, stuff like that. We're trying to throw it all into the pot and see what happens.

What words would you use to describe your sound?

It's always tough. I start naming bands usually. We're almost like - someone once said - we're a mix between The Pixies, The White Stripes, and The Clash is in there, for sure. I always just say we're a rock band, because that's actually kind of unique now. When someone asks I say, 'we're rock'; it's open-ended, but no one says that anymore and I think we are actually staying true to that. We have a big '90s aesthetic, so I'll tell people we're kind of like '90s indie rock/'90s grunge, but it's a really hard question because there's thousands of genres now.

What were your inspirations behind your single "Told A Lie"?

I think I was dealing with this idea that everyone feels like they need to be famous to be special nowadays. This quest for people to notice you and the idea that you have to do something huge in your life to be validated, to validate your existence, I think there's a lot of just weird, new age memes going around that are all about following your dreams and doing epic shit and everything and it really, really just started to get to me because, it's obviously influenced by the times, but I think we don't put enough importance on people who are doing super important small things and you don't have to do epic shit to be important or validated and our desires are excessive and, inevitably, they're going to cause pain and suffering later on down the road if you want so much and think you're entitled to have the world. So, that's kind of the basis for that.

Could you tell us what we can expect to hear from your upcoming album, parts 1 and 2?

It is a full album, but we're just releasing it as two EPs and I have a feeling it'll come back together online as one full album within the next year, after the EPs are released, because I'd like it to be one album, but this is just a way for us to get more out of it throughout the year. It's definitely a bigger sound - bigger as there's more instruments and more complicated parts because it's not just Tricia and I. It's more involved and we've got this really awesome, complex bass throughout the whole thing because Joel is an amazing bass player. In sound, I would compare it to almost '90s grunge meets Interpol, so we're definitely influenced by grunge - we were going back and listening to all of our favorite records from when we were kids during the making of it and stuff, so it's cool. It's more involved. It's deeper. The first EP's going to be the more upbeat, happier songs and the second one, in the Fall, is all the darker stuff and it's split about half and half.

Could you sum up the album in one sentence?

That's hard, I don't know if I could. I would not not know what to say in one sentence about the album... It's a rock and roll album, that's all I know [laughs].

What do you hope your listeners and fans are able to take away from your music?

I hope they get out of it the same thing I get out of a good record which is just being inspired for a little while: a week while I'm listening to it over and over or whatever. If it can inspire you to just feel enthusiastic for a little while, that's enough for me. I think that that's music's purpose; that's what I get out of it so if it achieves that, I'm happy.

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Manny

Catch up with singer-songwriter Manny and listen to his single, "Out My Way", taken from his new album, Prequel, out now.

What got you interested in music and songwriting?

Manny: I actually started making music at a young age, I was like 12 years old when I started writing lyrics. As far as why, I'm not really sure. I grew up listening to a lot of RnB and my sister used to play a lot of Boyz II Men and I just really got into music from her and her boyfriend at the time who's now her husband who was a DJ. I got a lot of music from her and I just really loved the music so I started making music and I just kept doing it, so that's how I got started.

You said you started writing at 12, do you remember the first song you wrote?

No, I definitely don't remember the first song I wrote - I've written a lot of songs. I said 13 or 12, but I do remember when I was in 5th grade - which I don't know how old I was in 5th grade - I wrote something and somebody had sent me to perform it at the front of the class - it was a substitute teacher that day - and I ended up rapping it in front of the class, but I have no idea what it was. That was probably one of my earliest works, but I don't remember the song at all [laughs].

Which musicians would you say you've been influenced by?

Man, I listen to so much music that I'm influenced by a lot. I'm just a really big fan of music; every single Friday I'm listening to whatever's new and I listen to a lot of different things. If I had to choose a style - when I was coming up I thought about that question a lot - I really was inspired by Ne-Yo as a songwriter for a very long time, I was a huge fan - I still am a huge fan. In terms of rapping, I was inspired by Lloyd Banks - he was really big at the time. In terms of producing, I was really inspired by Timbaland, I just liked everything about Justin Timberlake's album and I just thought he was an amazing producer. Then, a lot of different RnB artists just gave me the style that I have now. The artists that probably inspire me the most today are The Weeknd and I'm a big fan of Bryson Tiller's work.

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

I would say it's around that. I don't really like to categorize it, I'd like people to listen to it and say, 'oh, you know, it sounds like Manny, it doesn't sound like this or sound like that'. I have been told that I definitely have some influences from The Weeknd and Frank Ocean - big fan of his work too - and I guess you can hear a little bit of everything in one, but I would love for people to listen to it and be like, 'you know what, it sounds like Manny'. I want other people to listen to music and be like, 'that sounds like something Manny would do'. Soundslikemanny is actually my Snapchat username [laughs].

What were your inspirations behind your single, "Out My Way"?

I was in my studio and I was going down my Facebook feed and I remember somebody wrote a paragraph talking about how every man is the same and - I don't remember what it said verbatim - they were done with love, so that was what triggered it in my mind and I just started writing this song and then it became "Out My Way". It was basically just something that I've seen one too many times. I can't remember actually the particular girl who posted that, but I've seen it too many times and it just kind of hit me like, you know what, no, it's not that way, don't say that. So that was the inspiration behind the song.

Could you tell us more about your new album, Prequel?

I designed the album to tell a story. Just recently, my music started moving to New York, so I just moved to New York to pursue my music and I reached out to a lot of my fans and I do a lot - I do the production, engineering, songwriting, the performance when it comes to the music - so I wanted to get an idea of what my fans really like when they are listening to music and by far they said it's the songwriting. So, what I decided to do was I grouped the music in order, so if you listen to it from Track 1 through Track 9, you'll actually hear me tell a story. You can be imagining me with a girl and just see it go through and then, on the later tracks, you can see what I'm going through as far as trying to make it in the music business, so that's why I ended up calling it Prequel, because it's like an introduction to a story that I'm going to be writing in music.

So, on my next album, I'm going to call it Chapter 1. It'll have that title and, basically, it's going to be a continuation of the story, everything that I'm going through now - even this interview with The Music Rag might end up being on a lyric, I don't know - so when you hear the album [Prequel], Track 1 through Track 9, it's basically an album about making music. Hopefully, down the road when I'm on Chapter 3, people that are listening for the first time will want to binge listen from the beginning and just go in order. It's kind of an interesting idea.

Obviously you love all your songs, but is there one from the album that stands out to you?

I definitely love all my songs but, if I have to say one is more personal to me, it's "Come Back" by far. I just kind of explain everything, in terms of when I was in Miami I had my music, but my fans were in New York and I wasn't there, I needed to come back; most of my family was in Boston and I needed to come back; I wasn't making music for a while and I needed to come back, so that song is definitely more personal. In terms of favorite or what I'm listening to the most is, by far, "Easy" and it's really just because - even though lyrically I love everything about it - it was just a magical moment I had when I was making the production of that song and I listened to it and was like 'I did that?'; it was one of those kind of feelings, so that's one of my favorites.

What do you hope your fans are able to take away from your music?

To be honest, I just make the music and get in the spirit: I don't really think about what I'm going to do before I do it, I just do it. I'm in a position where I can't even believe how many people really love it, because it's not like I'm making it for a mass group of people, I'm just literally putting my ideas on a track, so I would just love to inspire more people. Countlessly, every single day I get people who hit me up and say that "Out My Way" basically changed their lives for the better, which is exciting for me. To me, it's unfathomable; it's crazy. Songs like "All In" have inspired a lot of people to just do what they love and they really are starting to take stuff to do it, so if my music and stories can just inspire people, that's really what I would want but, at the end of the day, I'm just grateful that people are listening and people love what they hear.

Is there anything you'd like to add?

Definitely check out the music! I'm really, really connected with my fans on social media and I try my best to talk to everybody - I know most artists don't normally do that - and I hit up people in their DMs just to thank them for listening to my music and they're so happy that I've even reached out to them and I really love it. That's something about all of this that really gives me a lot of happiness, is reaching out to my fans, so I would say, if you are a fan, just definitely reach out to me.

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Steal Away

Catch up with Matt Babers of San Diego-based trio Steal Away and listen to the band's new single, "Flower Shop" featuring Brooke Ehlert, out now.

What got you guys interested in starting a band?

Matt: We've been playing together since we were little kids. My mom was always in bands and all of that stuff, so she got us into orchestra and band when we were really young in elementary school and as we were getting older into middle school, one of my friends gave me a Jimi Hendrix CD of his greatest hits and that was pretty much it. I was in 7th grade and my brother was in 6th grade and I came home, put the headphones on his head, and was like, 'listen to this!' and we just both started freaking out listening to "Purple Haze" and "Fire". Then we just started playing guitar and messing around and trying to imitate all of our favorite people ourselves and, by the time we got to high school, we were able to actually write a song and started playing a little bit more. We grew up in Tucson, Arizona and once we graduated high school we came out to California to give it a shot and see what we could make out of being in a real band [laughs] instead of just messing around like when we were kids. 

Do you remember the first song you guys wrote?

Let me think... I mean, not really... Actually [laughs], yeah I do remember - it had a funny name. It was called "Benjamin Franklin's Key" and we thought that was a cool name because I thought it was like Benjamin Franklin's key that he actually tied to the kite and my brother was a little bit more musically inclined and thought that it was the key you were playing in type of thing, so he thought that was a cool play on words. I actually forgot about that up until just now but, yeah, I guess that was one of our first songs and it was this little punk rocky song. Now that you've mentioned it, we can probably still play it but, yeah, that was one of the ones that we first wrote. We always just forget about one song after the other when we come up with another one, but that was probably the one that started it all off and I always remember that because it had that funny, weird name, "Benjamin Franklin's Key".

Where does your name, Steal Away, come from?

We're huge classic rock fans, like I was saying. Right after we got into Jimi Hendrix and got into high school, we got obsessed with Led Zeppelin and there's a song called "How Many More Times" and there's a famous live rendition of it and they have a breakdown in the middle of the song and Robert Plant just goes into a vocal solo and he yells, 'steal away, steal away my baby,' and it's sort of like an old blues phrase - a lot of guys used to say, 'steal away to Jesus,' or that type of thing and it was an old blues guitar, Robert Johnson type of thing - and Led Zeppelin were always big blues guys. I was growing up watching these live performances of Led Zeppelin and they would always say 'steal away' in the middle of one of my favorite songs and I always just thought that was the coolest little two name phrase and I figured anybody that was as obsessed with Led Zeppelin as we were would be able to figure out the little code there and we'd be able to identify our friends anywhere we went if they could pick that out.

Other than Hendrix or Zeppelin, which musicians would you say you've been influenced by?

Growing up it was a lot of classic rock stuff like Tom Petty, Queen, The Eagles - in addition to Hendrix and Zeppelin - and stuff like that. As we were getting a little bit older, we grew up right in the heart of that 90's super pop rocky stuff, but we actually listened to more of the harder stuff like The Offspring, Third Eye Blind, The Spin Doctors, Blues Travelers, and a lot of that really good, not too hard core, good, solid rock music. We're kind of classic rock weird guys, so pretty much anything where they're playing guitars, hitting real drums, and do a good live show.

Any current artist you're hooked on?

As far as just really big ones, probably Kings Of Leon - I'm all about those guys. A lot of the local San Diego bands around here are doing some great stuff. I have a massive list of all the music I'm listening to but everything at the top of my list is just nothing but all this old classic stuff like Bowie and Rush... Elle King I actually really like - she's got that song "America's Sweetheart" - she's kind of like a folk rocker chick. I just like a lot of that folk rocky stuff like Edward Sharpe and, if you wanted to go super folk rocky, Mumford & Sons, stuff like that. Pretty much anybody that's keeping it a little bit more authentic as far as their instrument selections. Anybody that's playing a guitar and writing and singing, even if they can't play or sing that well, I'd rather just listen to somebody that's really trying to put their heart out and do something real with it. There's a lot of what I call 'disposable music' stuff coming out, as far as the pop rap genres and really, really pop-y stuff, so anything that's writing and singing and playing, we're pretty much into it.

What words would you use to describe your own sound?

I had it written down just 'cause it was funny the way somebody said it one time: a catchy blues based surf punk pop rock type of sound. I thought that was funny because it was pretty descriptive as far as pulling words from every genre, but I like that. All of my lyrics are pretty catchy and fun to sing along with and it's always nice to express yourself and the deeper, darker things that you've got going on but, for the most part, we like to make music that makes people happy and is fun to sing along to or play and lighten everybody's mood and take everybody out of the stuff that they're dealing with day in and day out. Some of the songs that we listen to, like Lana Del Rey or whoever it is, have these really heavy songs and it's relatable and definitely touching, but it's a little too much at times. We like to have a simple poignancy in our sound and our style; make it relatable, make it authentic but, at the same time, try to cheer everybody up a little bit, even if it's depressing.

What was your inspiration behind your single, "Flower Shop"?

My brother Chris wrote that one and [laughs] we actually give a posthumous credit to our old dog that passed away. We used to have a really killer dog and he used to sleep in my brother's room and my brother was writing a song in his room and came up with this weird version of the B chord that "Flower Shop" starts on and he was just playing it in an odd way in a weird place on the neck and found that little melody that's the basis for the song and he said that the dog's ears perked up and that's when he knew it was a good song and that was a done deal. He was just writing that one just trying to touch on the eternal struggle of every girl or every guy that has that person they have a crush on. It's not too big of a deal in real life, but when you're actually thinking about going to get some flowers and trying to make a move or let somebody know how you feel, it's actually pretty intimidating and it's that type of thing that people always have to deal with, no matter how old or young they are. He was going along, playing this melody, and he just wanted to extrapolate that little idea of always being having to be scared of going to get a girl flowers and everything that goes along with that. Then, we came up with that girl/guy dynamic of picking flowers up at the flower shop instead of actually just giving the flowers to the person and I guess that was the metaphor we wanted to go with: all they gotta do is just give the flowers to the other person and the other person is thinking the exact same thing and they're just a little too scared to bridge that gap but, hopefully, they end up together. I feel like that's the story of everybody's life.

Can you tell us more about your video for "Flower Shop"?

It's just me, my brother, and Brooke Ehlert, who we filmed it with - she's the girl that we featured. I was buddies with her older brother and we used to hang out a lot and he told me, 'dude, my sister's got a killer voice,' so we chose to sing with her and she was absolutely incredible and we cut that song and it only took us one or two sessions and she was awesome. We ended up filming the video and we did it at the Newport with some guys up there that are doing a lot of good work and hopefully he'll be making a name for himself - Erick Sanchez directed that video. I think we're going to have an exclusive release and then we're going to release it worldwide.

What do you hope listeners are able to take away from your music?

I just like people to know what we're going for is relatability on a real, real level. Whenever we're listening to music that we like, it makes you feel like you're not the only one in whatever fashion that may be; whether it's a love song or a sad song or a happy song, everybody likes to know that somebody out there is feeling the way they feel and it's always nice if somebody can put it in a way that's figured out how to phrase it a little bit better than you did and I just want to put out music that really makes people feel like they have a voice in it also. That's what we're going for and our songs are everybody's songs and when we write them we like to say we find the songs. They're already out there and all we have to do is uncover them and everybody else in the world has whatever it is inside of them that will identify with and get them excited about that too. All we gotta do is just go out there and find that song, show it to everybody else, and I always feel like, deep down inside, some part of somebody everywhere is going to have that same sort of reaction. We just really like to make sure that everybody can take something away in that regard, that they're not the only one to feel some way and somebody is out there feeling the same way that they do.

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