Since October

From a small town in Florida to national stages with mainstream bands like Saliva to the artist roster of Tooth & Nail, the guys of Since October have taken the journey most rock bands hope for and they’ve done it on the backs of hard rock and persistence. Personal demos emailed to producer Travis Wyrick (P.O.D., Disciple) opened the door for the quartet and they’ve never looked back.

Since then, they continue to tour both in Christian and mainstream scenes and hope for success in both venues. So it was quite amusing to catch vocalist Ben Graham headed for the golf course. It was hardly the place I expected to reach the band and yet it’s just another example that Since October is a band that will continue to do their own thing, no matter what those around them are saying.

SA: The album just dropped, so how is the band feeling?

Ben Graham: It feels really good, man. We’ve been playing together for a long time. We’ve actually been playing together for years and this record is a compilation of songs from over the last two and a half years that we’ve put together. It’s cool that people are going to get to hear them on a larger scale.

SA: On the day of the album release, what do you do?

Ben: I did interviews all day. [Laughs] But really it was just normal for us. We went out to the stores and saw it physically in the stores which was a cool thing. We did an appearance in-store at an FYE record store in the mall of our town we live in.

SA: In Florida?

Ben: Yeah, and we also did an acoustic performance of five of the songs there and did a CD signing. That was cool. Just being stripped down and doing things acoustically was a cool thing because we don’t get a lot of opportunities to do that sort of thing. We got a lot of phone calls from people and friends congratulating us who have been involved with us for a long time.

SA: How did you guys end up working with Travis Wyrick in the first place?

Ben: We had done just what every other band has done which is just record in our house. We got to a point where we knew we either needed to actively pursue a record deal or we need to just go out and fund something on our own but get a real, big-time producer to do the record so we could make some waves and get people to start noticing. The demos were just at my house and we emailed them to Travis. We had never met him before or anything but we’d just seen his name on the back of a lot of other records that we like. So we did that and he ended up calling me the next day which is crazy because the stuff he gets every day is ridiculous.

We know from being there we’ve seen a lot of the stuff that he gets - there’s a lot of bands who are wanting to work with them. So the fact that he actually opened the e-mail and listened to the songs and then liked it enough to say ‘I’m willing to risk my rep on it even though you’re not known at all.’ Another band had five weeks with him and that got cancelled because of contracts and stuff, so he called and said, ‘Hey I’ve got five weeks opening up because of this. You guys can have it if you want.’ Of course, it was two months from that time so we only had that time to beg and borrow some substantial money. [Laughs] We funded it on our own and it was great. It was great working with them. He’s a genius producer and songwriter and with song structure, so it was cool.

SA: What drew you to him in the first place? When you say you like those albums, were there particular things you pulled out and liked or was it an overall sound?

Ben: We just liked what he had done. He’s very big on doing big rock songs and big rock sounds and that’s what we like. That’s what we do. We don’t intentionally commercialize our songs, it’s just the kind of stuff we like to listen to and that’s why we did the record that we did. Some people have a thing against it. You guys wrote a review that bashed us for a while, which is weird that we’re doing an interview… I asked my manager why we’re doing an interview with somebody who gave us 5/10 on a record we did.

But then again, we want people to know that we don’t care what people think of us, we just are completely open and honest with what we do. The reason we write the music that we do is because it’s the music we like. We’ve always been the band that says that we understand our music’s not groundbreaking, it’s just big rock music. But we also point out that it’s what most people like to listen to. I don’t know who wrote the review there, but it had crazy things in there comparing us to Creed which was funny. But then he said it didn’t work for Creed, but apparently it worked quite well for them. It had some off the wall ideas in there.

But we want people to know that the reason we write what we do is that it’s what we like. We don’t commercialize it or anything else. Also, we do secular and Christian shows and we do mostly mainstream shows, but those go really well. We have people telling us that we’re too mainstream to do this, but it always seems to kick back in their face. We just did some bigger shows with Saliva and Drowning Pool and it was awesome. We got a great response from them.

SA: Is that something you want to do more of?

Ben: Yeah that’s really our niche. Our song’s been picked up by some active and alternative rock stations now, which is great. We just finished a video, the “Disaster” video, and they’re taking that to MTV2 to try to get some plays there. That’s why we went with Tooth & Nail also because they stepped up and said they understood what we were wanting to do and they wanted to support that.

They were willing to back us and help us make a push in the mainstream and Christian markets, so that’s why we went that way. Others weren’t wanting to do that. The majority of shows we do are mainstream clubs or bars and when we first started doing it, we took a little slack. It’s more of a respect thing. The crowds are really accepting to what we do. They love the songs and we love hanging out afterwards and explaining why we do what we do. They know we’re Christians, so it’s a respect thing on both sides.

We go in not thinking that we’re better than anybody there. The stereotype from most people towards a Christian is that we think of ourselves as higher or as perfect or better, so we come in with just a message that we’re here and we’re the same and that’s cool to them.

• www.sinceoctober.com
• www.myspace.com/sinceoctober

↓ One comment

#1 MattConner.net » Blog Archive » S-A Interview: Since October on August 6th, 2008 at 1:14 pm

[...] the rest of the interview here. Posted in Soul-Audio | Leave a [...]

Does it Resonate with you?

Name (required)

Email (will not be published) (required)

URL