Ok...for anyone that doesn't know, I'm in a band called Driveby Sonata in the Tulsa, OK area. Here's a quick and dirty history. My good friend Jocelyn used to be in a metal group called Rook here in Oklahoma. Rook was on hiatus and she was looking to start something new. Enter the alt/rock band Copious, who had also been on hiatus for several years. Jocelyn decided to bring me into the new group as a bass player along with Brent Ober, a guitarist who did the songwriting and arrangements, and Sean Miller, a drums guru with a good ear for production. After a few practices, Brent and I realized that we wanted a big two-guitar sound, so I transitioned to playing rhythm geetar. This prompted Jocelyn to bring on board an old friend, Erik Dabrowsky of the metal group SolRaven to take my place on bass guitar. We practiced fairly regularly and got a nice 30 minute set ready for our debut at the Freaker's Ball, an annual Halloween music-fest here in town. We got a crappy timeslot, but we played it and had a blast. However, a few weeks afterwards as we were thinking about doing some recording work, Brent came to the decision to leave Driveby Sonata and take his music in another direction. We bid each other adieu and good luck, and set about the work of composing new songs as a four-piece alternative rock group.
It's been an absolute thrill to work as a four-piece. It's really rewarding for me, since I've been able to take a lot of original compositions I've had "in the bag" for a long time - and by the time Erik, Sean, and Jocelyn put their input on them, the finished product is something so much better than my original visions of the song. All of these months of preparation culminated last week as Driveby Sonata hit the studio to lay the groundwork on a three-song EP that will eventually grace the MySpace site, our official .com, and be sold at any future gigs we come across. We've had the good fortune to work with a fantastic recording engineer. If you're an old school punk fan you probably know who he is. Stephen Egerton, formerly of the Descendents recorded us over a period of three days at Armstrong Studios in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
He's meticulous and has one hell of an ear for sublety and songcraft. I actually came to think of him as more of a producer as well. He gave us a lot of good feedback on the construction of our songs and suggested subtle changes to open the whole thing up and make it far more balanced and ear-friendly. Anyway, there's still quite a ways to go on the recording...we still need to track Jocelyn's violin, vocals, and mixing but what we have so far is really damn impressive and man, am I ever proud of it.
So...it looks like in April we'll be able to unleashed our twisted baby on the intertubes. We've gotten some early feedback which has pegged our sound as Smashing Pumpkins-Perfect Circle-meets 70's and 80's AOR for lack of any sort of real description. It's been months and months of hard work...but the end result is a musical concoction unlike anything the four of us have ever heard. Hopefully you'll like it too.
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