Saturday night at the Showbox SoDo: Lots of girls, lots of alcohol and lots of music, not necessarily in that order.
Local radio station KISW held their “2010 Rock Girls” selections finals and Theory of A Deadman headlined. This would mark the second year in a row for Theory at this gig, so hopefully they will consider it a tradition.
Adelito’s Way opened and as I drove in trying to find parking within walking distance I noticed they were loading out already, so I missed their act. Judging by the sound of the crowd inside, I guessed that the group had been pretty well received, or maybe the girls were coming out on stage.
The audience had a chance to review all the scantily-clad contestants, and then there may have been some sort of voting. Maybe they drew names out of a hat, but at the end of the night there were twenty or so new ambassadors of rock for the Puget Sound.
Anyway, I’m glad I didn’t miss the next band, Halestorm. It’s a 4-member band named for the brother and sister who play drums and guitar/vocals respectively. Lzzy Hale’s style is a lot of Pat Benatar and a little Metallica all rolled up into one dynamite 5’5” package. The best part of the show had to be drummer Arejay’s solo in which he used oversized drumsticks, garbage can lids and various other props held up by stagehands to pound on. When the hands brought out four metal garbage cans, the whole band grabbed sticks and went all rhythmic for about 6 minutes. Antics aside, Halestorm is a rockin’ band and Lzzy plays to her audience in great diva style. The tour continues in the US while Theory rests up, then they both run across the pond to finish up in Europe. If they are coming to your town, they would be worth seeing all by themselves.
Theory of A Deadman is touring (make that still touring) in support of their 2008 Scars and Souvenirs release. Dave Brenner was kind enough to talk with me for a few moments before the show.
melophobe: So, Scars & Souvenirs is doing well, recently certified gold.
Dave: It was, as we are looking forward to platinum. S&S is at about 820,000 copies sold now.
melophobe: And there’s a special edition of S&S.
Dave: Yeah, it’s really cool. It’s got a lot of new stuff, songs that we couldn’t fit on the original release like some soundtracks and acoustical arrangements. We cover some Alice in Chains, my favorite band of all time, Allman Brothers, some Lynyrd Skynyrd. Then there are all of our music videos, “The Making of” footage from some of them, Tyler being silly, that kind of stuff.
melophobe: Speaking of the videos, how do you decide on what they will look like? What kind of input does Theory have?
Dave: Usually we get treatments filtered down to us. For example, on the “I Hate My Life” video, we looked at a lot of ideas before we decided on the final design. It always depends on the budget and other factors of course, but we do like to have a hand in everything we put out.
melophobe: Do you have a favorite?
Dave: When we first started, it seemed like we were making a music video about every 6 weeks, but I really enjoyed “Bad Girlfriend” because it was so laid back and relaxed.
melophobe: Theory played in the Victory Concert Series at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, so you were playing to a hometown crowd.
Dave: It was so cool. We had a day to walk around before the concert and the atmospheres was just…I’ve never seen a city so energized like that. There was a guy with a boombox on the street and about 10 people standing around bouncing and then on the main drag, Granville Street, there was a street hockey game with a semicircle of people watching and kicking the ball. The whole thing was awesome. We got to wear our Team Canada jerseys. Of course getting to do the show was great, BC Place is huge..
melophobe:..and it was streamed over the internet..
Dave: Yes, and a bunch of Canadian stations played it live.
melophobe: How about the rest of the tour?
Dave: Seattle is the last American stop and then we are off for a couple of weeks before we fly to Europe. After that we’ll do mainly some fly-in festivals and single dates. Europe is a ton of fun but it’s a lot of work. We do a lot of press there because we haven’t toured extensively outside of North America.
melophobe: What kind of venues are you booked for? Arenas?
Dave: I don’t think we’ll be doing large arenas, it’s going to be more like the Showbox here. We want to get in front of the European fans because for years we primarily toured in America to really get the band out there. We think the European fans appreciate North American bands that make the effort to tour and we don’t want to ignore them.
melophobe: Any new countries scheduled?
Dave: Yeah, we’ve never been to Switzerland [March 17-18]. We’ll hit Germany and Amsterdam [March 28-29 and March 31] and I’m excited to go back there.
melophobe: Your music can stand alone and yet appeal to a wide audience. In the course of one show you have elements of alt/indie, rock, edgy pop and metal.
Dave: On S&S we wanted to do music that was natural for us and we definitely hit some harder themes, but then had some ballady tunes too. It’s refreshing when your record label [Roadrunner Records] will allow you to do that. We’ve changed over the years, you know, we were finding our way and our taste in music changed too. But the fans went along with us and allowed us to grow. Especially for this record, the American fans have been amazing to us.
We’ve played with so many types of bands, which was great because it put us in front of a large rock and pop audiences and hopefully we made some new fans. That’s our goal; to get our music to as many people as possible.
melophobe: S&S is still releasing singles.
Dave: Yes, "Lil Smirk" on rock stations and "All or Nothing" on pop stations. We thought we would take a break and write for the next album after this tour, but you never know, if they start doing really well, we might go back out and support them. We have a lot of options.
melophobe: The Interview With The Band segment that you did recently: can fans look forward to maybe having more chances like that to personally interact with Theory?
Dave: I thought that was pretty good. It’s cool for us to get a fan’s perspective, because maybe other fans want to know the same stuff. We try to stay in touch with the people who buy our music
via MySpace, Facebook and the like, and events like the interview gives us an opportunity to meet them too. That’s important.
melophobe: This has been a long tour. Do your family members join you occasionally?
Dave: Not on this tour, no. There are 10 people on that bus and one or two more would really impact everyone. My dad joined me in Germany for 3 days last year and I was excited for him, but it’s a hard life on the road. But it’s tough to not see family for extended periods of time too.
melophobe: Well I’m glad you could end up here, so close to home.
Dave: My dad and I are actually gong to drive home tonight after the show. I’ll be able to see scenery and take all the stuff home from two years of touring that I had stashed on the bus.
melophobe: About the next album...any thoughts?
Dave: It really depends on after the end of the tour where our heads are at, after we get home and decompress and rest. The way we wrote S&S really worked for us and so the next record will probably be somewhat similar to S&S, but I don’t know exactly what to expect.
After one more look at the girls, Theory of A Deadman took the stage.
The set started out with "So Happy" and with Theory playing so frequently at gigs for so long, they have the show nailed down. Tyler Connolly is ultra-confident and talks to his crowd between songs. I’ve been to enough shows to know when the artist has no idea where they are on a given night and screws that up but Connolly frequently reminded the audience that he knew exactly where he was and that he and the band had been there last year for the 2009 Rock Girl Gala. That kind of familiarity is great PR for a busy and popular band.
Joey Dandeneau’s drumwork is second to none, filling the place with wall-to-wall percussion while Dave Brenner and Dean Back rendered studio-perfect licks on guitar and bass.
One thing that wasn’t perfect was the wear that showed in Connolly’s voice. It wasn’t a raw sound and as long as he was talking or crooning at a lower pitch, he did just fine, but he wasn’t able to put any power into the higher notes on songs like "Nothing Could Come Between Us" and "Bad Girlfriend." The audience filled in when it seemed like the right thing to do, but mostly Connolly just cruised on and didn’t need ask for any help.
Theory ran down the set list in a quick 55 minutes, cutting about 10 minutes off their previous shows. They got in "I Hate My Life," a crowd fave, and "Got It Made," a great fast-paced rocker, but no encores.
It’s probably a good thing that there is a two-week rest before they head off to Europe . . . hopefully Connolly won’t say a word during that time. It’s a credit to the dedication they have to their fans that they didn’t cancel the last few shows and I hope they swing back by if they still have touring in them after next summer.
After all, they are right up the coast.
