Candlelight Red, a hard rock quartet straight out of rural Pennsylvania, has taken the world by storm! With their single “Demons” hitting #30 on the rock charts last summer, Candlelight Red has literally exploded onto the scene, and we at RockRevolt are immensely grateful that they have!
With their newest release Reclamation coming out this summer, the band is touring massively to bring this to your senses, and to move you with their mixture of hard hitting riffs mixed with melodic songs and heartfelt lyrical content. RockRevolt was honored by receiving the opportunity to sit down with guitarist Jeremy Edge to talk about the history of the band and their music.
Back in 2010, you all beat out over 10,000 bands to win the Guitar Center Onstage contest, which landed you an opening slot for KISS. Do you feel that this was the moment in which you broke out into the scene, or was there a defining moment prior to this that you would attribute to your rise to the limelight?
We got a little bit of radio shows on a few local stations. I think when we actually got our record deal, and actually recorded an album is when things started to take-off.
Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley gave you many accolades. What was it like to receive such recognition from such legendary artists?
That was pretty awesome! It was a great honor to get to play with them and it was cool to win the whole contest, and how Paul picked the band out of 22. It was really cool. The band has gone on to do a lot of extensive touring and a lot live shows since. It was our “first taste”, I guess you could say.
That was all only three years ago. How do you feel that you have changed artistically throughout this short timeframe?
A lot of things have changed. I think we took that time to find ourselves as a band. The bassist and drummer that were playing with us at the time, when we first started, once we got a deal and we started touring they both decided that it was amicable and euphoric, but it was not for them. That’s a difficult thing: being gone all the time and be away from family and friends. It’s not a lifestyle that you know that you want until you actually experience it. Jamie is back on board and it feels like we are a full piece/unit, you know?
Absolutely. Now, you all are from Pennsylvania, rural Pennsylvania at that. How did you all of decide one day that you wanted to be a band?
A number of factors. I mean, Jamie and I had played together in bands before, and those bands kind of broke up. He got out of it for a while, and I kept on and ended up starting a new band that became Candlelight Red. I recruited Ryan, because a mutual friend said that he was looking for a band. I had seen Ryan play in other bands that had opened up for the band that Jamie and I were in. So, we already knew about Ryan, and once we started working together he had come a long way as a vocalist, and we had quite a chemistry writing together. Brian came into our midst by us not having a fulltime drummer (we had some part-time drummers fill in for us). He actually opened for us with his band about a year and a half ago. After that show we saw him and said, “Hey man! You were great. If you want, come try out for our band.” He did, and the rest is history. (laughs)
Exactly. Your single “Demons” hit #30 on the rock charts last summer. I’m surprised that it wasn’t higher, because of how often I listened to it. Tell us about this song and the EP from which it came.
“Demons” kind of came about because we had been touring the record and we had a busy touring schedule last year, but we managed to get a week free to go into the studio and record something that could be a new single. That is where we enlisted Morgan Rose, and talked to him. Obviously we didn’t have the timeframe to fly to LA and get with some big time producer. He was assured us that we didn’t need to do that. “I’ve got the perfect studio. It’s in New Jersey and not far away from you guys.” We came in and what started out being a possibility of a recording session to get a single, and perhaps a B-side, wound up being four songs. Naturally, we wanted to go back and finish the whole album with him, which we did this past November/December.
Watch “Demons”
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How did you and Morgan Rose meet?
We did a tour together about a year and a half ago. That was with Eye Empire and Seven Day Sonnet, and Jamie and I had run across Morgan a few years before. We had met him a few times. He remembered us, and he checked out our band while we were on tour, and really liked us. So, we gave him a call and said, “Hey! We are ready for someone to produce.” He was all over it.
How do you feel that he guided you all through during the production process?
He did a great job. He’s been around so many different producers over the years. He kind of became a fifth band member in there. In a lot of ways it feels like he’s one of us. At the same time, he has the experience and he has the ball. He really guided us in really good directions. At times we would fight him and were like, “Man! I don’t know about this!” He would say, “Trust me! Trust me!” A day later we would like it. (laughs) It’s cool.
Feedback is a gift. What did you learn about your music through working with him that you didn’t know before?
He took the reigns as far as what we can and can’t do. I think there were a lot of big things that we put on the record dynamically, melodically, and the complexity of it. He gave us confidence. “You guys CAN do something like this. You can take it there and pull it off.” We totally did. We actually surprised ourselves working with him.
Tell us about Reclamation. I heard it was coming out early this summer. How do you feel it will be received by your fans?
Pretty well. It kind of continued where the Demons EP left off. It also has a lot of contrast in it. In other words, a lot of the album is very explosive and heavy and dark. There are moments on the album where it’s really melodic and almost pretty. Sometimes it happens within a song, where it will have a brutal section, and a really lush melodic session. The song we released first is called “Feel the Same”. It is kind of a departure for us. It’s the one song on the record that doesn’t have a somber mood to it. It is more of an uplifting mood, which is befitting to put on the album, because our first album was called The Wreckage. This one is called Reclamation. If you look at the artwork, it’s almost like a dystopian-like future. Out of all of the ashes and rubble, there is one tree growing. I think that is the message of the record. It is about a bunch of down-to-earth things and topics that people deal with every day, and this world isn’t such a great place as it once was, but at the end of the day you are still optimistic and you want something very positive to come out of it.
Watch “Feel the Same”
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At the core, do you feel that the message is “Hope”?
Yeah. I think so, in a weird way. Amidst all the bombast of it, I think there is a little bit of that.
What was it about “Feel the Same” that made it a flagship for the album?
I don’t think it was our first choice. We wanted to go with a heavier song, but we let all the radio professionals and some of the industry people hear the album. It really stood out to them, and they said that they felt there was something special about that song, and that we should blast it out there and see how people take to it. It will be interesting to see the reaction. The people that are fans of us and know us as a heavier band, they are going to look at it and go, “Wow. This is different.” At the same time, there will be a lot of people who may have not listened to us because we are a heavier band, and then take a listen to it. Then they will buy the album and get a diverse mix of music that we actually do. It will be interesting. (laughs)
You just wrapped up a tour with Sevendust, Coal Chamber, and Lacuna Coil.
Yeah. It was absolutely amazing. It was cool to go out with Sevendust
again. We love those guys. They’ve been a big help to us. Coal Chamber, of course, it’s their big comeback tour. It’s cool to be a part of that history. We’ve toured with Lacuna Coil before. They’ve become great friends and we’ve become friends. We’ve kept in touch. It’s been a lot of fun; a lot of camaraderie. There were some really big shows, and we got to see a big cross-section of the country in a short amount of time.
When can we expect to see Candlelight Red headlining?
Actually, we are booking some festivals and some other dates that are supporting Pop Evil. We are doing some dates supporting Trapt around the country, and we are also doing what I think is going to shape up to be dates that we will be headlining. So, we are real excited about that. The feedback about us coming out and doing that thing has been great. We are looking forward to it, and we are really excited.
That is almost my last questions. Before I let you go, do you have any message for your fans?
We just want to thank all the fans for being so strong and supportive of us, and help us get off the ground so quickly. If it weren’t for all the people that come out to the shows, repeatedly, and they buy our merch, and they come hang with us, we wouldn’t have a job, at all. It is hard to support music on the road, and they have been fantastic about supporting the band and calling in and requesting our songs. We couldn’t be more grateful.
Thank you for putting such great music out. Here’s my last question: As an artist what have you learned that keeps you going, and to balance it out, tell us something that you learned that you will never do again.
That’s a tough one. I think there are lot of things we’ve learned. There are things that we learn every day just by playing with other bands that may have been around longer. You take notes, even if it’s little things about how to integrate your intros or how you address the crowd in a certain scenario. Then there are things that we’ve learned what not to do, like you do not NOT service your vehicle before taking it out; things like that. Occasionally that you will see bands that have been around for a long time that might do something that may not necessarily be a bad thing, like going on stage without an intro, or they talked between three or four songs. It might not be a bad thing for them, but we will look at it and we may not like the way that looks, and we won’t incorporate that into our show. We want to do something different. It’s cool. Sometimes you pick up a lot of things that you incorporate and sometimes we will see things and decide, “How can we set ourselves apart? What can we do differently?”
Sounds like you had car trouble at some point.
Over the years, many many breakdowns. (laughs)
Oh no!
There is a story like that out there with most touring musicians. There are lots of those stories around.
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