A new band from Cleveland, Ohio, This Is A Shakedown! has a creative sound of its own. The band’s debut CD, “Love Kills” came out this year and has become its own with a different style of rock. Electronic beats and synthesized vocals make this band a must hear. The first single, “Circles,” has a catchy rhythm and crazy vocals that add to the layering of a rock, pop, electro vibe that you can both sing along to, and dance to. I talked to lead vocalist, Brandon Zano, to find out the inside ideas that got this new-age band to rise against the rest of the Cleveland scene. Take a look to see what this band is all about.
Jade: First, I would like to congratulate you on your debut CD, “Love Kills.” Are you planning a tour in support of it?
Brandon: Thank you. We are in the process of trying to get something going as far as the tour is concerned, but it’s a brand new label and it’s a pretty brand new band, so right now we’re working on a lot of our post production. We spent a lot of money on getting a light rig. So we are working on that and we are playing some live shows in certain places, but we’re still looking for a booking agent to be able to get us out where we need to go. So, we are planning on going on tour as soon as we can. We’re just kind of doing some showcasing and things like that as far as getting a booking agent locked down that we feel comfortable with.
Jade: As a new band, what are some of your goals with your music?
Brandon: I guess it would be the same kind of goals as anyone else, really. We just want to be successful and be able to write and play music, and not starve, I guess! To be able to see the world and being able to make people dance and have fun, and to do it for as long as possible, really. We just want to make music and not starve, basically.
Jade: What is the music scene like in Cleveland?
Brandon: There’s a lot of really great bands in Cleveland, there’s a lot of really great DJ’s as well. We all came from rock bands before, and started to get into the DJ scene here as well as outside of the U.S. We fell into that whole thing, like different DJ’s turned up and the things they were doing. But basically, the music scene is really good here, it’s just kind of a small ‘big city’ so everybody knows everybody and we’re just trying to get out as much as possible like everybody else. I think that it’s kind of tough, as far as being from Cleveland. It’s been a while since anyone has really broken out of this city and been able to take it to the next level. It’s a little tough as that’s concerned, but I think everybody’s just working on getting out and being able to break the city. I mean, the music scene is great here, there’s a lot of great bands, it’s just a matter of getting out there so we can all be heard.
Jade: Speaking of you all being in different bands beforehand, how did you all meet?
Brandon: Me, the bass player, and the drummer have all been playing together for eight years. Before this we were in a band called Dozen Dead Roses. That band was a heavier, fast, kind of punk rock band. There’s a lot of that in Cleveland as far as type of bands that are here. A lot of angry metal and angry punk. Not a lot of electro-rock bands here. We were all in a band doing that for a while, and before that, we were in a band called Leo who had signed a demo deal to Island Records. We did that for four years, and parts of that band moved off to Saint Louis and now I guess they’re still doing stuff there. But yeah, I knew Justin from being on the scene, and when the last band broke up we needed to find someone who was able to program electronic stuff and he was one of the guys I knew that was doing it and was doing a real good job at it. So we called him in to do it and everything just kind of worked out. Basically, to make a long story short, the three of us have been playing for eight years and when we started this band we found him through another band and joined forces.
Jade: Since you said Cleveland has a lot of punk rock, and you guys have such a different, creative sound, what is that like in the writing and recording process? Do you have any creative differences because of your previous tastes?
Brandon: I think every band has their creative differences to an extent. I think when you first start a band, there’s always creative differences at first because you’re trying to find the sound you’re going for. Everyone’s like, ‘Well, I kind of want to do this,’and other people want to do something else. But when we started this band, we knew that we wanted to make music that people would want to dance to. That was the main thing we knew right off the bat. It was just trying to find every ones influences and meld them all together so that everyone’s happy. And thank God we were able to do that. We had a little bit of help from our producer, Michael Seifert. He did a lot with us as far as helping us polish off the sound of what we were going for. We had our songs written before we came into the recording process, but he helped out a lot as far as being able to smooth everything over to make it the finishing touch.
Jade: To do with songs, do you think of melodies or lyrics first?
Brandon: It kind of changes sometimes. First and foremost, the music always comes first. I don’t think, in my thirteen years of writing music, that I’ve ever written a melody and then written the music over it. It’s always the type of situation where you write the song, or at least the basics of the song, and then when you get the feeling of what the song is about, then you write the lyrics around that. Melodies have never been that much of a problem for me, but the lyrics, to me, are always a little tough because A). I’m a perfectionist, and B). The lyrics have to fit the vibe of what the music is saying. So, what we try to do is finish the song, get it to at least a feel of finished, and then I’ll literally just sit and listen to it over and over, record it in different ways on a mini-disc recorder so I can practice and get a vibe of what I want it to be or what I think it’s saying to me, and I’ll write the song around that. But the melodies usually come pretty easy to me for some reason. I don’t know why, they just kind of come naturally. As I’m writing a song, it almost speaks to me and shows me where the melody should be.
Jade: That shows great musicianship. So who introduced you to music? Where did your interest start?
Brandon: Thank you. That’s funny actually! That’s been coming up a lot lately in interviews. My father was a musician. He was also in the record industry for a long time. He worked for three of four of the major labels while I was growing up, so I was pretty much force-fed music my entire life. Not in a bad way. Obviously in a good way. It was definitely a cool thing, a good situation being brought up in that type of thing where everyday, you’re coming home and you’re hearing something new. I’d come home to my dad saying ‘Oh, I went golfing with Dave Matthews today,’or ‘I was hanging out with Dave Grohl on the tour bus in between sets.’It was always just something else growing up. So it was definitely an early-on type of thing. Plus, I was always drawn to music ever since I was a really little kid and I think I was reciting lyrics from songs right as I started talking. It kind of came naturally to me.
Jade: Being so musically driven, what bands and other musicians inspire you and your music?
Brandon: That’s a tough question. I kind of get inspired by different things all the time. Most of the bands we listen to, for the most part, as far as the electronic kind of style, are all from overseas like the U.K. and France and a lot of bands from Australia. Just a lot of electronic music from overseas. And then, a lot of the other band members like to listen to a lot of other stuff too. I still listen to a lot of punk rock. Some of us listen to heavy stuff. Like our drummer is really into Meshuggah and really brutal metal stuff. And then our bass player’s into a lot of R&B, like D’Angelo, just tons of different, real intense soul music, and gospel and stuff like that. We come from a bunch of different types of influences, but we’re always influenced by everything just in everyday life. It doesn’t even have to be music, it could be the weather, it could be just certain things going on in each of our lives. It just depends on what’s going on at the time.
Jade: I heard you worked with Sean Beaven, what was that like?
Brandon: It was awesome. He mixed the record. We had done the record with Mike Seifert, who owns the studio and owns the record (label) we’re on. But we were able to get Sean to come in to mix the record. It was a cool situation to have someone who’s worked with Marilyn Manson, Nine Inch Nails, System of a Down, No Doubt, Slayer, and Thrice. I mean, he’s worked with so many bands! To have someone like that come in is cool because he’s worked with other bands that are kind of similar to the aspects of what kind of music we play too. All lot of the stuff he’s worked with has a kind of electronic rooted situation, they’re all kind of close or similar to that kind of stuff. But yeah, it was really cool to have someone like that, with so much influence and with crazy experience in doing this, come in and try to give us his two cents and be able to mix it a certain way. It was awesome! The guy’s super intelligent. He’s done lots of big records and it was cool to watch him work. And when he wasn’t working, it was cool to hang out with him and hear his stories about all the crazy things he’s been through. It was amazing! He totally put his touch on the record and it definitely helped the shine of everything pop out.
Jade: Lastly, if you could have a dream line-up for a tour, what bands would you play with and why?
Brandon: Oh wow, that’s another tough one. There’s a few bands from the U.S. that we would love to tour with. We actually already played with a couple of bands that are our favorite bands. We played with The Faint, who are a big influence of ours. I would love to do some tours with them. Anthing that would fit with us, really. Obviously, any band that is doing well within our genre and would be the right crowd for us to play towards, that would be amazing. Our dream is to go overseas and tour in the U.K., and hopefully all over Europe and Asia. It would be really awesome to play with any of those big electronic bands over there, that are just blowing up right now, would be our target demographic. I hope we do well in the U.S., but I think we all have an idea of anything that we probably will do, will be a little bit better over in the European types of situations, because the type of music we play is just more popular over there. And all the bands we’re influenced by are from there. So, long story short, any band we’re influenced by from the U.K. would be totally rad (to play with).
Jade: Thank you for talking to backstageaxxess.com and good luck with your debut CD.
Brandon: Thank You!
We want to thank Carol Kaye of Kayos Productions for setting up the interview with Brandon. For more information on This Is a Shakedown, go to: www.myspace.com/thisisashakedown.
