April 18, 2017 - Special Guest: Sub-Radio

This episode features Sub-Radio! Also featuring music by Pop Co-op, Black Alley, Andrew Tufano, Underdog Champs, His Dream of Lions and The Duskwhales . Details and important links from this episode are all on the website at www.dcmusicrocks.com/past-episodes

Big thank you to the incredible guys from Sub-Radio for coming by!

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FROM TODAY'S SHOWMUSICFeint of Heart by Pop Co-op (Pop/Power Pop)Caroline by Sub-Radio (Indie/Indie Rock)Insanity by Black Alley (Rock/Hip-Hop)Hear me out by Underdog Champs (Punk/Pop Punk)Fireworks in Autumn by Andrew Tufano (Folk/Acoustic)New Romantics by His Dream of Lions (Pop/Rock)Emerald Skates by The Duskwhales (Indie/Indie Pop Gypsy Rock)ANNOUNCEMENTS

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SUB-RADIOVIDEO - BIO - LINKS - TRANSCRIPT

Bio:

Washington DC's Sub-Radio makes smart, danceable pop rock that's always expanding its boundaries, with elements of funk, folk, and EDM present on their 2016 release Same Train // Different Station. The sextet's high-energy live performances and variety of outstanding vocalists have put them on the map up and down the East Coast. Sub-Radio is composed of Adam Bradley (vocals), Matt Prodanovich (guitar), Mike Chinen (guitar/keyboards), John Fengya (guitar/keyboards), Michael Pereira (drums), and Barry Siford (bass).  The band has garnered comparisons to established pop-rock acts like Maroon 5. Multiple songs have been recognized in national songwriting competitions as Sub-Radio played festivals from New York to North Carolina. Notable festivals include the Cherry Blossom Festival, Celebrate Fairfax, and LAUNCH Music Festival and Conference. The new album, Same Train // Different Station, is available on iTunes, Spotify and all other music outlets. The band is currently playing shows in support of the album up and down the East Coast. 

Links:

https://www.sub-radio.comhttp://www.facebook.com/subradiobandhttp://instagram.com/subradiobandhttp://twitter.com/subradioband

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INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

Brian:   Sub-Radio makes smart, danceable, pop rock that's always expanding it's boundaries. Their 2016 release entitled Smart Train Different Station incorporated elements of funk, folk, and EDM. Members include, we got Adam on vocals, Matt on guitar, Mike on guitar and keyboards, John on guitar and keyboards, Michael on drums, and Barry on base. These six guys produce high energy live shows which have become well known and have garnered comparisons to established pop acts, like the big ones like Maroon 5 and such. Great shows from these guys. I first came across them a few months ago. I caught a video for Caroline which is one of their big, it's one of my favorite music videos. They're all in the van. If you check out their profile on dcmusicrocks.com, that's the video I've got for them. Just cool things from these guys. Listeners, it's with great pleasure I get to formally introduce Sub-Radio. Hey guys. Welcome. Now, they can only hear your voices, so tell them who you are. Introduce yourself and what you play. I've got three of them here in the studio. Talk to us.

Michael:   Hey. I am Michael. I'm the drummer.

Adam:   My name is Adam. All I do is sing.

Matt:   My name is Matt and I play guitar.

Brian:   The other three guys who aren't here. Those guys are?

Adam:   Yeah. We are missing, we are a six piece band like you said. We are missing John who plays just about everything for us and probably could play instruments he's never heard of.

Brian:   Okay.

Adam:   We got Mike who plays guitar and keyboards and then Barry is our alterative base player.

Brian:   Got it. Those are the guys. Together you make this magic that is Sub-Radio. Now, tell us how did the band get together. Talk about that story?

Michael:   That's an old one. Matt, you should probably take this one.

Matt:   We go together in high school, actually, so it's been you know, what like 15 years now? It's been a while.

Adam:   It literally has been a decade since we were in high school.

Matt:   We all kind of met up early on and just kind of started jamming out together. Then we realized we should be in a band together in high school, because it was fun.

Brian:   Awesome.

Matt:   We kept playing music together, and here we are 10 years later almost and now we're going to be doing really cool stuff this summer.

Brian:   I applaud you guys for still being together because staying together for that long is an achievement. Congrats on that one guys. Now, the name, Sub-Radio. Where did that come from?

Adam:   The name evolved from an older band name that I won't mention for SEO purposes on the air.

Brian:   You're so politically correct. Thank you sir. I really appreciate it.

Adam:   We had a band name in high school that we weren't really happy with so we reworked it, but essentially where this name came from is the early members of the band choosing random words out of a Best Buy catalog.

Brian:   For real?

Matt:   Oh yeah.

Brian:   A Best Buy catalog?

Matt:   It's real.

Adam:   That's going to be a historic anecdote in like five years when there are no Best Buys left. We'll explain during the story.

Matt:   It could have been Circuit City man.

Brian:   Yeah. Oh man, well all right. Well Best Buy catalog. That's amazing. All right. Now, I was asking you earlier during the break for the listeners, what's the song writing process for you guys? How does it go? Does one person bring a riff? Does somebody write the whole thing? How does that work for you guys?

Michael:   Kind of bounces around from song to song, but generally we'll start with a riff. Matt is often times the riff generator. He's got such a knack for it. Yeah, he's got such good head for it. He'll come to the band with a riff and we'll jam on it. We'll just all improv stuff and Adam will sing a melody. No lyrics yet, but he'll kind of hobble something together and then we'll develop the lyrics later. That's how we've been doing things lately. Or, alternatively Bradley will come to us with chords and lyrics already written and then we'll write the music to it. It's the same kind of process where we jam out, so everyone writes their own parts, which is pretty neat.

Brian:   That's cool. Now, when you're away from the music, talk about you three personally. What do you do outside of music and the band?

Matt:   Personally, I do a lot of other music. It's just kind of all music for me right now. I'm about to graduate college and I'm studying music in college at James Madison University.

Brian:   Shout out to JMU.

Matt:   Yeah.

Brian:   All right cool.

Matt:   Yeah. Outside of the band, I'm just kind of always focused on music stuff. I really like soccer too so I'm a big DC United fan and in the EPL, [inaudible 00:04:48] is my other team. Other than that, yeah it's just all about music.

Brian:   Nice. How about you Adam?

Adam:   Oh the important stuff. Got to get the soccer team shout outs.

Brian:   DC United, yes. You're allowed to shout out to them on this show. Absolutely.

Adam:   I am a distance runner outside of the band. Between the band and between the running, that's about 90% of my waking hours. I've done the Marine Corp Marathon in DC a couple times.

Brian:   Good gracious man. Serious distance running.

Adam:   Distance, emphasis on the distance. Yeah.

Brian:   Got it.

Adam:   I live up in Silver Spring. I'm in an acapella group in DC. I try to, not to be too on the nose, with your show, but I try to get to as many local shows as I can during the week when I'm not playing my own.

Brian:   Awesome. You are allowed those [inaudible 00:05:37], sir. Those are awesome brownie points to have. Yes, local shows. I love it. What about you Michael? What's your thing?

Michael:   By day I am a mechanical engineer so I do design and manufacturing work for a telecommunications company. I do a lot of CNC machining, a lot of laser cutting, water jack kind of stuff. Yeah. That's me during the day.

Brian:   Got it.

Adam:   Peels it off so casually.

Brian:   Then he comes to be a rockstar afterwords.

Michael:   Yeah. I studied physics in school so that's my background.

Brian:   Got it.

Adam:   We're missing the other three STEM majors in the band. They're all out at the office but it's a science heavy group.

Brian:   Yet I love the combination with art. Sometimes scientists and artists, they become both. The people bridge that gap. There's a lot of really smart folks that do music on the side in DC and as a result you get things like Sub-Radio and so many other cool groups that I've got profiles for, just amazing. The technical smarts that also translate into amazing musical, artistic skills.

Adam:   Michael brings all kinds of that stuff into the band. I mean, between rhythmic things and like literally making stuff for the band.

Michael:   Yeah. I've built a few things for the band and I'm going to be building a few like custom things for the band to come. Yeah, I feel like if you're sciency or mathy for some reason that pattern practice from science and math will help you in music, especially as a drummer. A rhythm heavy, I like to focus on rhythms a lot and so it's kind of mathematical.

Brian:   Talk about the biggest success moment that comes to mind for Sub-Radio thus far. What comes to mind on that?

Adam:   Wow. That's got to be pretty recent. I mean, we had a chance back in December at JMU to play with a band called Small Pools.

Brian:   Small Pools?

Adam:   It's a band from California but they are sort of a model that we look to right now. They're playing our genre. They're getting a good deal of success with it. We got to open a show for them on campus, and played to a crowd with, to our surprise, to my surprise anyway, I don't know about you guys, that knew some of our lyrics and was there to see. We played the show with like our idols, this pop rock band that's like making it and touring with cool bands and everything and after the show, the JMU school newspaper writes an article about the show, about the student union board that organized this show. They wrote an article about it. The article is like about how nobody expected the opener to be so good.

Brian:   It's the little things in life, the surprise that the successful moment is when they write how good the opener was.

Adam:   The picture accompanying the Small Pool article is a picture of us playing. It was a cool moment. That was a win-win.

Brian:   That's amazing. I love it. Now, what about your earliest memories with music. Where does music come from for you guys?

Michael:   Oh, that's a very, very good question. I come from a family that with no background in music whatsoever. I'm the only musician of even including all of my extended family. I have a pretty large family and I'm the only dedicated musician. One of the few that plays any instrument at all. I would sit by the radio and listen when I was young. I never had any training but I would listen constantly. I would just sit there and listen. That's kind of my first experience with music.

Brian:   Wow. You guys? What do you got for first experience with music? What comes to mind?

Adam:   In contrast, my dad was in a band in college. Didn't really go anywhere but he was in a band in college. He had like a recording studio in our living room when I was a baby and he was still putting a lot of tracks down and he hid them all from me on our iTunes, our shared iTunes account for years. He didn't want me to find them. There are pictures of me at three years old with the big headphones on in front of a mic. He wanted his son's voice on the track. That and my dad raised me on the standard white guy fare of dad music. Zeppelin and The Who and all that stuff, which was good intro.

Brian:   Yeah. Matt, what about you?

Matt:   Similar to Mike, no one ever in my family at all has ever touched a musical instrument. It was kind of up to me to figure that out by myself. I wasn't really interested at all in music to be honest, until I picked up a guitar around like I want to say middle school. Sixth grade I think I touched my first guitar. Then after that I was just like, I like this.

Brian:   It started with guitar.

Matt:   Then it just went on from there. I started writing songs pretty early and that's what got me into the whole wanting to be in a band thing. That's when I met these guys and just kind of snowballed from there.

Brian:   That's awesome. I got one more question that I always love to ask, and that's to any of you who wants to answer which is, if you could offer one piece of advice, what would it be?

Adam:   Who are we advising?

Brian:   That part's up to you.

Adam:   Future musicians?

Brian:   If you want to, sure.

Adam:   Just one piece of advice, generally.

Michael:   At that Small Pool show, we got the privilege of actually hanging out with the Small Pools guys afterwards. I will pass on a piece of advice that was given to me from their drummer, and their singer, kind of both of them. I heard it from the drummer first. Don't be a jerk. Don't ever in life. You can extend that anywhere but be easy to work with. Don't be a jerk. Just be nice and everyone will have a good time for it.

Adam:   That's kind of the guiding principle of Sub-Radio to this point I think as well.

Brian:   Don't be a jerk.

Michael:   Yeah don't do it. There's no reason.

Brian:   It sounds like a really successful t-shirt campaign too. Don't be a jerk, hashtag. There you go.

Adam:   Oh man. You might have just given us something there.

Brian:   Possible band radio shirt. There you go. Make sure you get the hashtag in there so you can find all the people with the photos, right? Now for those listeners who we're going to jump into some music. For those listeners who are interested, who want to find out more about you guys, where do they go to find out more about Sub-Radio?

Adam:   We have a website. It's sub-radio.com. Obviously, we're on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram all those other apps.

Matt:   You can get our music on Spotify, Sound Cloud. It's up most places you would find music, even on the weird ones like Google Play.

Michael:   CD baby.

Brian:   All the places.

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