Hope all you RAWKERS turned up for the FREE New Music Friday this past week! Fanshawe is privileged to be able to see live up and coming artists, bands and acts in diverse styles for FREE! So please come out and enjoy the sweet moving tunes! As always email me if you have any comments, or you want me to ask a performer a particular question and I will do my best to accommodate! This week we had 2 RAWK n' Roll bands roll through the Out Back; Songs From a Room and Monster Truck!

I hung out backstage in the green room for a bit just to get a feel for how these guys all acted outside of performing. It was run-of-the-mill regular conversation with them as they were all preparing for the show, eating dinner and joking around and just being themselves. One thing that I do not want for my interviews is to be overly formal or awkward. Getting to know them a little bit before the actual interviews is a terrific way to get to know the real people within the bands. This is attainable in smaller venues and before bands get too famous or too busy to be able to just hang out. I feel very privileged to be able to get to know all these guys and figure out what makes them tick.

First up was Monster Truck, from Hamilton, ON. They are a band made up of friends and three of the members are from two other bands. They are a four-piece band. Jeremy — guitar/vox (also in the band The Reason), Jon — bass/lead vox (Eaglefight — a metal band), Brandon — keys/vox (also in the band Saint Alvia Cartel and the Diner Bells — a country band), and Steve — drums/vox (also in The Reason). They are a rock n' roll band straight up. They are a relatively new band having only been together for the past six months. They like to hang out and feel that this band works so well because everything comes so easily for them. Everything from coming up with ideas to putting lyrics to meaning just seems to flow super easy for them. They are working on recording their EP and plan on releasing it on their website for free. You can either hear streaming music or download it for free from their myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/monstertruckfuck

Monster Truck took to the stage first and although they have a short set they packed a lot of explosive energy into their performance. Jeremy had the highest energy of the four and gave everything he had into entertaining the small crowd. Jon equally gave it all he had with the vocals and trying to entertain the crowd in between songs. The keyboards and drums were pretty tight during the performance. The few things I have to say that they should consider changing or improving are minor and come with more time together and a bigger repertoire. I think that they should consider some placement changes on the stage as it was pretty unbalanced and also they need to work on their vocals. The differences were staggering between Jeremy and Jon. Jon was pretty much eating the mic and Jeremy was sometimes inaudible, and was playing to his amp more than the audience. Also they should consider exploring more musical structures than the one they are currently using or people may become bored from ‘too much of the same thing' syndrome. Again time will help them to break out and do something really cool! The crowd was digging the music and performance. They opened up their set with Huge & Awesome, and played a solid set. One of my favourite tunes that they played was Black Spider.

When I was interviewing Monster Truck, they told me that they not only create music with ease and enjoy doing that; they also write material about odd things that wouldn't normally fit into the sex, drugs and rock ‘n' roll themes. While they still explore those themes, they also like writing about fictional scenarios such as outer space and tales of betrayal and murder!

What I liked so much when I was talking with them is they were very sincere and really want to go far with this project, but at the same time they don't feel like having fun should be sacrificed when they create their art. They will continue to do this until its no longer fun. The three songs they suggested listening to are Death Mistake, Running and Space Nebula. All are available on their Myspace page.

Songs From a Room are mainly from Toronto. The lead singer and the drummer are brothers Brayden and Dustin, and Nick the bassist were the members of the band that I had a chance to speak with. The other two members are keyboard player Craig and guitarist Dave (although Dave is leaving the band and is just finishing a few last shows).

Songs From a Room's interview was much more chaotic for lack of a better word! Monster Truck were also talking and adding in their voices as if the two bands were melded into one band. Sometimes I wasn't sure what I should be paying attention to or what in fact was actually true and what I could actually use for this article!


I can say for sure that this bunch of rowdy musicians, were in fact, having the most fun possible with this interviewer! Questions that I asked were being twisted and manipulated into absolute nonsense, but after a while I started to get some truthful and sincere answers in-between all the chaos. I just had to delve deeper. Some questions even dumbfounded the three members of the band; funny thing is that they were not hard questions.

One past time that they do like to do that I can actually share with the public is cooking and competitive drinking, although they did tell me some other stories that were pretty insane. They all definitely like scary/gore/disgusting type horror films and Nick likes “Scandinavian contemporary films” and was even able to name a few directors, and Brayden likes summer blockbuster movies. The three songs they would want people to hear to get an overall feel for their music are Revival, The Black That We Clad and Believing. All of these can be heard on their Myspace page as streaming audio: http://www.myspace.com/fromtheroom.

The easiest question I thought I asked drew the most silence, and all I asked was what is their favourite part about playing live? I don't think I got an actual answer, but I gather that they just like playing live and having fun. I asked what they are currently listening to and they told me the new AC/DC album, Ban of Skulls, Blitzentrapper, and Motown, which also inspires them; as well as Monster Truck and Pantera. Helps them when they are traveling all over the place touring.

Songs From a Room opened up with Stay Up, and then the last three songs of the set were the same as the ones that they had given as the three songs that people should listen to! It was a good set, although Brayden did blow out his voice and I think although the energy was running high for them, the set could have been better. Dave the guitarist was there but it felt and looked like he really didn't want to be there and he was just going through the motions. He wasn't making mistakes but he just wasn't into it and it showed. Hopefully once they have a new guitarist the overall feeling of the band will be better.

So what are you all waiting for? Get on the Internet and take a listen to these two bands and RAWK ON! Also don't forget to get to the Out Back Shack for FREE New Music Friday! Until next week keep on RAWKIN!