Steve Palmer Band

Singer/songwriter/ guitarist Steve Palmer worked for his Blackbird session with Bryan Ewald on lead guitar, Anthony Setola with bass(who is now replaced by Mario Sangermano), Tony Morra provides drums, Larry Hall offers up keyboards and Hammond B3 organ, and Vicki Hampton can be heard on background vocals. The band can be found touring with Blues Traveler and has opened for Sister Hazel and Bob Schneider. With Palmer also playing solo shows. He can be found where he now resides in Nashville, TN where his latest album Apparition was recorded.

Maximum Ink: Since there isn’t much out there on you yet, can you tell our readers a little about where you are from? How has your background influenced your musical stylings? How have you changed most since your early days?
Steve Palmer: The early days are real easy for me to describe. I started playing in Connecticut – I’d pick up a guitar and a pick, open my song book of the sixties and seventies (compiled by the New York Times) – and I played and sang. I sang a lot of different stuff from John Denver, Peter Frampton, Harry Chapin, Rolling Stones to James Taylor. And I listened to Jazz, Oscar Peterson, Joe Sample, Weather Report and John Coltrane. I think that’s where everything starts-the theory and feel of music and minor and major keys.  Jazz is a huge influence for me but so are the greats including Bruce Springsteen, Doobie Brothers, Bob Dylan, Cat Stevens who I played till the book wore out. Classical also opened up my musical mind.

Then after a year of that, I started performing in sixth grade and whenever anyone wanted to hear a tune. I played at talent shows, did some musicals, played at a few bars and restaurants but nothing with a band. My first song went something like, “Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue and . . .”  Now you know that’s probably a fifties jazz number.  Later, I spent a year in England my senior year in High School and started recording. First, it was with a good friend, Paul Hussell, on piano, guitar or even cello and then I came back and went into full-fledged recording sessions with first call New York City musicians at age eighteen. I played with some awesome guys but I never could find anyone who wanted to help me make a contact or sign me. So I just kept writing and writing even in college where I did two more recording projects. 

In 2004-5, I recorded four records with a producer in Virginia but things got finally rolling with my current group when I went down to Nashville and I went on the road. I had a lot of problems with studios and engineers and quality but I am happy with “Apparition” now. It just was very difficult to get to this point. I had to take “do it yourself” to the extreme. So that is how “Apparition” came into being. Out of Virginia and Nashville with some great studio musicians.

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The Scarring Party

I met Isa Carini at a roller derby tournament. I immediately recognized her as the dress-wearing, tuba and trumpet and whatever else playing femme fatal of the Scarring Party. I tried to be coy. She was selling cigars, jewelry and PBR tallboys. I bought several pieces of jewelry. I asked her if I could watch the band rehearse sometime, she said No. She said though, that the band was looking to replace someone who’d just left, if I played. As it turns out, I didn’t.

This was a little after the Scarring Party had released Come Away From the Light, the follow up to their debut, A Concise Introduction. Their music is definitive, iconic and creepy - sounding like nothing except things that are scary. The sound is exclusively acoustic, arrangements consisting of banjo, guitar, bass, tuba, accordion, typewriter, xylophone and any number of odd things the band manages to scrape together. This is not for the sake of novelty - a band after anything so cheap would’ve bowed out by now.

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Zoe Scott

London born singer/songwriter Zoe Scott has been playing guitar and composing songs since the age of 9 and was trained in theatre at a palace in Rome at the Piazza Venezia. She acted briefly is several horror films and during her earlier years she lived in a tent with her sister Victoria.

Zoe’s fans may recognize her voice from the commercial for Gillette Venus Razors and her latest album Woman on Top features the work of The Wax Team (Rhianna, Nora Jones), and master mixers Jim Scott (Red Hot Chili Peppers) and Mike Shipley (Aerosmith, Shania Twain).

Maximum Ink: Your parents where artists.Do you think it was helpful to your musical aspirations to have the support of such creative people?
Zoe Scott: My upbringing was highly creative and it has very much influenced my ability to sit for periods of time in a house, cave or van, and focus on writing songs. I think my parents are very inspired people who have a great sense of joy de verve. You have to have quite a lot of mojo to want to move to the other side of the world and make rock and roll. My dad introduced me to rock and roll with his music collection and beat writers like Jack Kerouac. The artists were very much talked and discussed and idealized in my household. My dad describes himself as a boho, sort for bohemian. My parents were beautiful and talented in the 60’s. I think there was some kind of ideal growing up, which was artists contribute a great deal to the spirit of the world and it’s a cool thing to be a free thinker and observe the world through artists eyes. They were, however, incredibly shocked when I said I wanted to go into rock and roll and move to Los Angeles!

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D.A. Sebasstian

It has been a long road for D.A. Sebasstian. Starting in the early 80’s with the Southern California punk band, XIJIX to the Latin tinged avant-garde Freaks Amor, to the wildly successful industrial band, Kill Switch…Klick, Sebasstian has never let up on his artistic vision, no matter how many times it bites him on the ass.

Sebasstian first tasted success when Kill Switch…Klick, was signed to Cleopatra Records, releasing the classics “Beat It To Fit, Paint It To Match,” and “Degenerate.” They also appeared on 19 compilation CD’s.

Two short years after becoming a cult rock star, Sebasstian found himself without a drummer and in debt. “I owed Cleopatra (records) all kinds of money,” explained Sebasstian. He decided to start a record company, first calling it “Irregular,” and then changing the name to “Go-Kustom” after hearing of another “Irregular” label. He then proceeded to release titles from artists Kill Switch…Klick, D.A. Sebasstian, The Penningtones, Circle Of Fifths, Bill Wolford’s Head, Exposure To Living and Drag Strip Riot.

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The Selfish Gene

Taking their name from famous evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkin’s 1976 book, Madison’s THE SELFISH GENE has been one of the city’s most ambitious bands since their inception in 2004. Now a three-piece rock/indie-pop unit consisting of Matt Allen on guitar and vocals, Eric Andraska on bass, and Rob Young on drums, their 2007 release, “The Grand Masquerade” garnered them national press attention as well as opening slots for bands as acclaimed and diverse as The Von Bondies and Bon Iver to Blue Oyster Cult and The Kings of Leon. In June, they released a new EP that moves their style into an acoustic direction called What It Sees, Where It Sleeps.

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Serianna

Maximum Ink: Describe your music to me as if I’m someone who has never seen or heard you perform before.
Chris Ferraro (Drums): I would say it’s honest, intense, hard-hitting metal-core.
Kris Meyer-Ruef (Guitar): Riffs, breakdowns, Sing-alongs, everything we love about metal!

MI: Is there a message that you’re trying to portray with your music?
Chris Ferraro: Our lyrics strive to push people to challenge themselves and their surroundings. From our experiences in life, nothing comes easy, and that’s what makes life worth it.
James Milbrandt (Guitar): Everything we write is as a whole, each of us constantly challenging each other to play/write to the best of our abilities.
Kris Meyer-Ruef: There’s so much negativity in the music scene these days, I guess we hope to set an example with our music to stay positive, and look at live critically; spread tolerance and awareness.

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Sevendust

The rock scene isn’t something that is easy to break “big” into, and even when you do, there comes the constant struggle of staying relevant enough to continue successfully writing music and touring. Very few bands have figured out the precise formula to balance immense musical talent while pleasing the suits who sign the checks. Since 1997, when they released their self-titled debut album, Sevendust has done just that and much more. They’ve gone through lineup changes, financial troubles, and everything else that rock ‘n’ roll throws their way. Sevendust has continued to write, record, and produce music that transcends the struggles and has formed them into one of the most stoic forces in the hard rock music scene. Maximum Ink sat down with drummer Morgan Rose to discuss changes in the Sevendust family, what keeps them going, and what comes next.

Maximum Ink : What is it that keeps you going personally and wanting to continue to make music?
Morgan Rose : You know, there’s the cliché, “I do it for the music,” but it’s very therapeutic. Usually in every record there’s a story that went on in that past year or two, and it’s something that is a great outlook for us. We do actually call this a job, even though it’s kind of embarrassing to use that term. When you leave your kids, leave your family, and you do it for as long as we have, I think we’ve justified it by now. I think people can say, “Well yeah, this is a job.” Creating music and performing is what we do, and we were blessed enough to be in the right place at the right time. It’s something that’s very special to us.

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