The Upset Victory has been working on perfecting their craft since 2006. They’ve hit a few bumps in the road along the way including personnel changes, which many bands go through, as they kept trying to find that right combination. The last two years have found the guys building major momentum with the release of their EP Wall Street and a work ethic that’s hard to top. They’ve solidified themselves in the Cincinnati music scene as a force to reckon with and for good reason. Guitarists Steven Campbell and Frank Hammonds joined me for a talk about where the band has been and where it’s headed.
Congrats to you guys on popping up on so many of the Breakout Bands of 2014 lists that I keep seeing.
Steven Campbell: 2014 has been a great year for us, as well as 2013. We put out an album in January of 2013 called Wall Street which was easily some of our best work, from a songwriting standpoint. Our singer may argue that we could have done some crazier production, but given the short amount of time that we had to write, record and put it out, I think it turned out amazing and, of course, our singer Jason loves it too. I think there was a sense of urgency with Wall Street and as a result, there was this sense of magic there and we brought that magic to Starlight Studios in Orlando, where even more magic happened. We were collaborating with the team that owns the studio, Brock BerryHill and Evan Coffman, who are also songwriters. It wasn’t like we had a studio engineer just hitting the record button; we had a third person objective point of view telling us that the songs were great, but what if we tried this or added this? We went in specifically with the mentality that we wanted to get out of our comfort zone and not rehash the same ideas and put out the same thing again. If something felt weird or bizarre, let’s just try it out and see what happens. The last two years have put us in a much better position, but we gained a lot of leverage from learning from our mistakes.
What can you tell us about working with Gas Can Music?
It’s a publishing and licensing company that we signed over Wall Street to in 2013. They were able to help us out and leverage some licensing opportunities for us on MTV, ESPN and other really cool places like that. That opened a lot of doors for us, at least from a fan’s standpoint, which is probably the coolest aspect than anything else.
Do you know which shows that your music appeared in?
I don’t really watch the stuff, but it was in MTV’s Real World Road Rule Challenge, on ESPN University, on the NFL AM Network. I think “Selling My Soul” was embedded under the intro to NFL AM. I don’t really watch a lot of television, but I have people tell me about it when they hear our music in one of those shows.
That’s some great exposure to get, well, that is if the viewer is paying attention (laughs).
Exactly, but luckily they do a lower third in the corner of the screen to indicate who the artist is. Another cool thing has been apps like Shazam where you can hold your phone up to the screen and it’ll tell you the artist.
The Upset Victory – Fake This Official Music Video
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Speaking of cool things, let’s talk a bit about the Bunbury Festival that you guys have played. Was this year your second time playing it?
Yes it was; that’s a really big music festival in Cincinnati that’s in its third year. It’s really exciting for our city and especially Bill Donabedian, the guy who started it, because he’s leveraged it into a music festival that was on a lot of people’s Top 10 Music Festivals to go to. We were definitely honored to be a part of it and it just keeps growing each year. It was really cool to play this year because we had been nominated for Best Rock Band in the city by City Beat, which is one of the biggest publications in the city. That was something that I only dreamed about when I was younger. I was cut from a punk cloth, although I do not mean that we’re a punk band by any stretch. There was a big scene like that and that’s what got me into playing music in the first place. City Beat was always out there covering the bands and they ended up blowing up into this massive publication around the city. We were nominated and we even played at the award show and we leveraged that into playing Bunbury this year. One of the reasons that I really liked this year was because there were quite a few cool bands that I had kind of grown up listening to like Andrew W.K. and Fall Out Boy.
(At this point in the discussion, guitarist Frank Hammonds joins us.)
When you have such diversity in your songs and your sound, has it ever presented a problem with promoters or bookers trying to package you with other bands to perform with?
Steven: That’s a good question, but it hasn’t really been a problem for us because we’ve played with everyone from Molly Hatchet to The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus to Bayside.
Yet, it baffles me that there is a market for bands that always sound the same and don’t stray from their formula.
Frank Hammonds: I’ve never really understood that either and a lot of bands sound the same song after song and it’s like they never really changed and it’s identical to the last song. I guess that’s fine, to an extent I guess, but we try to appease to all ages. If you’re into pop, we want to draw in pop listeners and if you’re into rock, then we want to draw in rock listeners. We’re trying to get everybody’s attention and not just a specific genre.
Steven: We definitely have a set goal in mind as far as what we want to do. It’s not like we go ‘hey, this is popular this week, so let’s write this song.’ I think whatever naturally comes out, comes out and at the end of the day, we’re just a rock band. Going back to what you said about a lot of fans not necessarily liking change, I think you’re right about that. Yet, at the same time, if you tell them to go back and look at their high school yearbook and then ask them ‘haven’t you changed since then?’ and see what they say (laughs).
What’s been your biggest obstacle that you’ve had to deal with so far?
Frank: I’d say the biggest obstacle would be not being able to tour a lot. The whole touring thing of just packing your bags and hopping in a van isn’t like it used to be.
Steven: The industry changing and the fact that you can get music anytime, anywhere essentially for free is awesome, but it’s also detrimental too. It’s one of those things where I don’t think anyone knows the best business model right now because everyone’s working through it; we’re all in the same thing. Who knows, maybe hitting the re-boot button on the music industry might be the very thing that saves it?
Frank: As far as a specific thing for a band, there have a couple of different members who have come and go. That’s always a process as far as auditioning a person for a certain position such as needing a drummer. Now that I think of it, I think that may have been our biggest obstacle. Steve can vouch for me on this; I think we tried out dozens of drummers until we found Aaron.
Steven: We’ve always put a high value on musicianship and personality and those are two hot commodities that not everybody has. We might find a great drummer, but he doesn’t mesh well with us or vice versa.
Frank: Steve and I are the only original members left from when the band started and we’ve had to endure a few lineup changes, but we’ve stuck through it and it’s obviously panned out for us in the end.
Can we tease the readers a little bit with what you guys are working on right now or have planned?
Steven: We’re going to be going down to Orlando again to work on some songs and write the next release. We’ve already been writing a lot at our singer Jason’s house and getting some ideas together, but we want to get out of our comfort zones. We’ve always written here in Cincinnati and then taken the ideas to other places, but this time we wanted to try something different.
Frank: Everything leading up to Wall Street had been self produced, but collaborating with Brock and Evan from Starlight Studio has made everything so much easier.
Steven: Also, we usually just strip everything down to one guitar or a vocal and that’s it when we demo something, but this time we’ll have a whole arsenal, a whole studio at our disposal. We’ll have all the bells and whistles and everything that we want, so we’ll have some really cool pre-production demos to stew on when we get home. The next thing will be to figure out some dates to record it.
What’s the strangest or most random thing in your iPod?
Frank: I’d say Randy Newman is the most obscure thing on my iPod, thanks to Steven.
Steven: Yeah, I guess I did throw some Randy Newman on there for you. As for mine, I guess it might be Phil Collins, although that’s not too obscure for me. I’m probably going to get made fun of for that one (laughs). As for the strangest, I guess it would be Wilson Phillips, that’s pretty strange.
What’s the strangest thing that you’ve autographed?
Steven: Wasn’t there a crazy lady with a horse or something Frank? I swear, she thought we had a horse in our trailer when we showed up for a show, but then again, I’m not really sure what she was actually yelling at us about. That wasn’t an autograph, but definitely a strange story.
Are you sure she wasn’t coming onto you or something? That almost sounds like a sexual metaphor or something (laughs).
Steven: (Laughs) Yeah, I don’t know what the hell was going on.
Frank: She asked if she could see the horse in the trailer; I’m sure that’s a common tale (laughs). I signed a girl’s forehead before, but we haven’t done any of the boobies signings yet.
Steven: That’s when you know you’ve made it.
By Johnny Price, Senior Lead RockRevolt Magazine Journalist
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