There is nothing better than some good rock. You love it, I love it, they love it, he loves it, she loves it…and that is why we are all here…because WE JUST CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF IT. We at RockRevolt have found one of the best young indie bands that is just bursting at the seams to get you what you want and what you need. Galvanized Souls have that exuberant sound that only comes from youth, passion, and innate talent that surpasses time and space. This band is definitely a band to keep on your radar, because they are on their way to becoming a household name.
Straight out of Southern California, these guys are bringing a melodic alternative rock sound that is making its way across America. We are ecstatic to introduce Galvanized Souls, our RockRevolt INDIE BAND OF THE WEEK!
You all are a relatively young band, and I mean that in every way. You all have only been around for a few years, but yet you are creating a global stir. Why do you think that is?
Social media and being online are big these days. We try to post something everyday about what we are up to, but not too much that we annoy anyone. We think about what we like to see from a band’s online info ourselves and try to do the same thing for our band. We also love to get to know our fans and a lot of the music we create and our social media postings are from getting to know our fans. Being able to have the tools to connect with an audience like we have in this day and age is a game changer but you really have to know what you are doing. We watch YouTube videos when we listen to new music and for any band nowadays they need to have a ton of videos about their music.
How did Galvanized Souls come to be? What cosmic forces put you all together?
Zakk and Matt were in rock band camps at their local music school/venue in Camarillo, CA called Rock City Studios together when they were around 11 and 12. Later, Chris moved down to our town with his family from Hailey, Idaho when he was 14 and we met Chris through friends of his family. So when Chris, Zakk and Matt were between 13 and 16 they jammed together in their first band with another drummer playing covers around town and a couple of originals. Then in December of 2012, we decided that we wanted to become more serious about music and we wanted to record our original songs, start writing more songs, and play a lot more shows out of our area. So, we formed Galvanized Souls and searched for a new drummer until we found Kevin and he joined the band in May of 2013.
I will ask the tritest question known to the history of music…where did the name “Galvanized Souls” come from?
One of the hardest things was coming up with a band name that we could all agree. One of our friends in a band said that many bands name their bands by blending hard and soft imagery together like Guns N Roses, Velvet Revolver and such and we thought a 2 word band name would be good and easier to make unique. All of us except Kevin went to an architecture, construction and engineering school in Camarillo. In our construction class we were learning about galvanized nails and such and we thought that galvanized was a cool sounding word. So, we thought the soft word to go with “galvanized” would be “souls”. We liked the initials “GS” and we also liked the fact that the website name was available which is something bands need to consider. We also like that fact that the word galvanized means a hard protective coating and we think that having that on your soul is cool especially when it comes to the music business!
Zakk – Lead Vocals and Guitar, Chris – Lead Guitar, Matt – Bass, Kevin – DrumsI read that you’ve won several accolades, including, but not limited to a spot on Warped Tour. Tell us about your feelings on that.
We were in a battle of the bands when we first started the band. It was for a fundraiser and was a goal to get the band ready to perform live. We did not even place but we used that as incentive to get better and better at our live show. In between practicing, we attended a lot of live shows around town and we watch a plethora of live music videos for research and we knew that we needed a strong practice schedule. We practice everyday we can and put in a lot of hours per week. When someone in our band is sick, many times they put on an face mask and still come to practice. Putting on a great show for our audience is a number one priority and this must translate to the judges.
You are going to be kicking off a small tour here shortly, by playing with LA. Guns. They are amazing. How do you feel your music will compliment theirs?
LA Guns is an amazing legendary hard rock glam metal band. Our music is influenced by decades of music since we are fans of rock music all from the beginnings of rock. Many of our original songs feature guitar solos like music from bands from the 80’s and our music has been described as a “wall of sound” live. However, we throw a lot of current sounds into our music which you will see more of in the future. We have performed with many legendary 1980’s era rock bands, however, we consider our sound more melodic alternative rock and not heavy power rock. From past experience, the shows that we have performed with legendary 80’s bands have received a warm reception from the audience. For the most part, our sounds are influenced by bands from the 90’s. We are looking forward to performing in Texas this January.
What bands have you played with that you learned something useful from, either musically, business related, or just imparted a nugget of wisdom on you?
Interesting question. We study a lot of bands. Most of the advice we get is from musicians that are our mentors that have been in well known bands that were big at one time and they let us know what mistakes were made, what to expect on tour, and what one needs to do to be successful. When we watch a band perform live we get to see what is good to model after, and things to never do live, and good ways to react to technical difficulties which are frequent in live music. Actually the advice that we had early on was from a club owner who booked one of our earliest gigs even before we were Galvanized Souls. He said that he has seen a lot of unbelievable talent come across his stage, but they go no where, you must make it a priority to promote your band and your music or else no one is going to listen.
Your videos have been getting great recognition. I see you work with Jared Sagal (Rockerrazzi Filmz) quite frequently. What is it about him or his work that makes you keep coming back?
Jared Sagal is a musician as well as a great videographer and a graduate of art history. He is a fan of our genre of music as well. By being a musician himself he has the ability to create a music video that intensely goes with the flow of the music. He also lets us help with the production of the music video. We really love working with him and he is a part of our team. Matt’s sister, Erika DeMartini, works for Jared too and shoots a lot of our footage as well as other Rockerrazzi Filmz projects.
I did see that at least one of you has an alarming relationship with a cat, and that you drool excessively in the video for “Behind Green Eyes”. Tell is about the concept behind that video and how it was like to shoot.
The “Behind Green Eyes” music video is the very first music video we ever made as Galvanized Souls. The song is about a girl but we decided that we should try to make an absurd video about an obsession with a cat to throw people off. Comedy is pretty challenging and we like challenges. The black cat is Matt’s cat who is really easy going so that was a big factor in our decision to make this video. He also had another black cat that is more skittish that we used as a stand in for one of the scenes because the other cat got a bit fed up with retakes the next day of shooting. The way we shoot video scenes are sometimes very on the spot decisions which are very exciting. The fight with the mariachi band member was not planned for instance. The mariachi band was a totally authentic band and they had no idea what they were expected to do until they got there that day. We thought they were really good sports about it.
You also licked poop…eww…
Jared Sagal likes the audience to really react to the visuals and this was one of those moments. Zakk says “Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do”.
Let’s move on. The last video you posted was for “Carry On”. The video was amazing and the song was moving. How did you become involved with Colin’s story?
We wrote “Carry On” directly to our fans that we saw going through hard times and involved with struggles in their life and doing self harm. People are always going to face struggles and we wanted to write an anthem that would help them stay strong in a struggle. The song was finished before we knew anything about Colin. We were trying to come up with a concept for the video with Jared. We found out about about Colin from Facebook about “Colin’s Friends” and after looking more into his story, we discovered that this is a kid that carries on in life during a struggle and we thought his story fit the idea of the song. Jared messaged his mom Jennifer to see if they were interested in the project. Jennifer really checked us out first and Colin loved the song. Colin tells people it is his favorite song which is really cool. We flew Colin’s whole family out to shoot the video in 2 days. They worked super hard during a horrible heat wave and turned down several awesome offers from other people while they were in town so they could complete the video. We got to know them really well and consider them our Michigan family. We are totally going to go out his way to see the family again and probably do some shows in the area this year sometime. We were blown away at how many people cried after watching that video. Jared Sagal’s treatment was to tell the story of Colin using his really family. All of the photos on the wall in fact were individual photos of actual Colin Friends who sent in their photos via email. We printed out over 2,200 photos and the whole band attached each photo using glue dots one by one. We posted a rock-umentary about the story behind the Carry On video where you can see some behind the scenes. This shows how we are the ones that build the sets, and do all the work along with our families and friends behind the scenes.
Galvanized Souls – Carry On [Official Music Video]
[embedplusvideo height=”350″ width=”600″ editlink=”http://bit.ly/1sNbvML” standard=”http://www.youtube.com/v/vTQ3goTGjb8?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=vTQ3goTGjb8&width=600&height=350&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=¬es=” id=”ep5518″ /]
As a band, you seem to have a philanthropic vein. You will also be playing a Rock Against MS next month. How do you decide which cause to support?
We do a lot of shows that raise money for a lot of different causes. We have supported many causes usually for kids, awareness of diseases, veterans, the homeless and animal welfare. This is an important part of our band because we all like giving back when we have the opportunity to be able to. We indicated to the venue that is hosting Rock & Roll Pizza that we wanted our show scheduled there to be a fundraiser and the owner suggested Rock Against MS since he is a big supporter. We thought it was a great cause and we contacted the Rock Against MS organization and they were behind it for us to do this and will be attending the show as well. In the end, during our journey in music and as a band, being able to help people along the way makes the experience for us even more valuable.
Your EP is still viable and absolutely wonderful. Are you working on new material currently?
Thank you so much and we are in fact working on new material. We are heading to Dallas Texas in mid January to record some new material with a new producer at Valve Studios in Dallas. We are really excited to produce some new music and are adding a few new sounds to our new music and our live show. We are performing two new songs live now separate from the ones we are recording in Texas. Making new music is a big priority for us this year.
I was stalking your Facebook page, and I read that when you are not working on new music, you are building customized guitars and basses. How did you get into that kind of work? Did you have any special training?
Building our own instruments is a passion of ours. We are lucky enough to have a wood shop next to our rehearsal space so when we are finished rehearsing we go to the wood working shop in the garage and start making stuff. We learned a lot about working with wood from our high school, ACE Charter High School, that we talked about earlier. One of our music mentors, Doug Peyton, who builds guitars and basses, showed us how we could modify instruments to change the sound and he helped us out a lot with learning how to do this.
You are also going to be recording “Make A Sound” at Studio 606. I understand that the recording process is called the “Pizza Sessions”. Tell us about this project.
Rock & Roll Pizza is a pizza restaurant specializing in hand-tossed pizza and is a live music venue decorated in tons of rock memorabilia that is near where we live, in Moorpark, CA. This is the place where we are doing the Rock Against MS Fundraiser on Valentine’s Day 2-14-15. We found out that the Foo Fighters played a live top secret show at Rock & Roll Pizza on December 9, 2013 before heading out on tour and so were really excited to play there after that. We found out that they host an open mic night on Thursdays where you are allowed to show up and play 2 songs. They have a stage where a band can just bring their instruments, cables and sticks and plug in. We ended up doing this and crashing someone’s birthday party at the restaurant actually by showing up to play. The owner let us play 3 songs after we played the limit of 2 and then he said that we could host a show there on their next available date which was three months away because after the Foo’s played there everyone wanted to play there. We suppose he uses the open mic night as an audition for potential acts.
So we had our first show there a couple of months later. A couple of months later, the owner of Rock & Roll Pizza invited us to be a part of a compilation album of the bands that played at Rock & Roll pizza which was to be recorded at the Foo Fighter’s Studio 606. The song had to be a new unreleased original. We were beyond excited about this since we are big Foo Fighters fans. So, we created “Make A Sound” which was called “Idea 606” in the beginning. In November, we were able to record the song with the Foo Fighter’s engineer “Lou” at the legendary Studio 606 on the famous Sound City console. The recording process was really super fast but we were able to stream through it because we were performing the song live over and over again at every live show during the summer and we had already made a demo of the song. We felt really prepared to go into the session. The entire recording in at Studio 606 took only 2 hours and David “Veggie” Viera (Owner of Rock & Roll Pizza) called it “Pizza Sessions” since it is from the bands that played at Rock & Roll Pizza. We were the last band to record for the day. David brought his mobile pizza trailer and cooked hand tossed pizzas for all of the bands the entire day which was so awesome of him to do.
The plan is to release the “Pizza Sessions” on vinyl sometime soon and they may plan to make it an extremely limited special edition double album. In the meantime we are super excited that we are going to be releasing the full music video that goes along with the Studio 606 recording on this week on YouTube and Facebook.
Galvanized Souls™- Make A Sound @ Foo Fighters Studio 606
[embedplusvideo height=”350″ width=”600″ editlink=”http://bit.ly/1sNiSne” standard=”http://www.youtube.com/v/mGCnR0HdBjw?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=mGCnR0HdBjw&width=600&height=350&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=¬es=” id=”ep3186″ /]
Thank you so much for taking a moment to answer my questions!
Thank you so much for the interview we are very honored!
Connect with GALVANIZED SOULS! (click on the icons):
