From left to right: Dan Reardon, Rich Arcati and Karina McMahon
Hailing from Glen Cove, New York on Long Island, Soundside isn't just your every-day garage band rock & roll star wannabes. Soundside balances that old school rock & roll sound with melodic lyrics that satisfy both the ears of hard rock head bangers and pop rock princesses everywhere. Think Three Doors Down meets Pearl Jam, meets O.A.R, meets Blink 182...well, you get the idea. Front man Rich Arcati's hypnotizing voice and lyrics captivate listeners while Dan Reardon (lead guitar/vocals), Matt Fox (bass) and Karina McMahon (drums) lock up their air tight rhythms and unique sound. From opening gigs at Long Island's The Crazy Donkey to headlining NYC's Crash Mansion, Soundside is really making a mark in the music industry. Their Second Album, Seconds from Sunrise debuted in April 2008 and their first single, "Loss for words", hit the airwaves at college campus' and television networks like Fuse across the country. I caught up with Lead Vocalist Rich Arcati to hear, in his own words, what it's like being on the road to super-stardom.
Above: Soundside Press Release
"Graduating from college as a business major with absolutely no “in” to the music industry just a little over 4 years ago, I still find it interesting how the hell I’m the lead singer of a rock band who’s been on both national TV and radio. As much as I love New York, I have little doubt that this area is the most difficult place in the world to make it as an original rock band, so when you start to finally get a little headway in this industry here, I feel like there’s no better feeling. I can’t tell you how many wonderfully degrading NY moments I’ve been through upon the early years of this band, attempting to give away CDs to people, only to find the same CDs in the garbage or left on the floor or bar just a few moments later. The biggest difference that I find now is that I find random people coming up to me asking me about Soundside and where they can purchase our latest album.
From left to right: Karina McMahon(drums), Rich Arcati (lead vocals, piano), Dan Reardon (lead guitar, vocals)
The biggest thing that pisses me off about new artists today is that everything is so over-produced that a lot of bands can’t perform these great CD productions they have live anymore. We put a lot of “ear candy” in our new productions, but the difference is we can actually re-create the same sound in our live performances.I find it funny when girls come up to me after a show and scream like they’re actually surprised, “Omg, you sound just like the CD!!”. It’s like umm, yeah, that’s what we’re trying to go for.
Recording “Seconds From Sunrise”, with Atari’s producer/member, Angus Cooke, was one of the most memorable experiences we’ve had as a band. We basically locked ourselves in Santa Barbara, CA for a month and did nothing but make music. It sounds easy, but after 12 hours a day of listening to yourselves, you almost don’t even know what you recorded until the next day when you get a fresh listen. The fact that Angus was so down-to-earth made things flow way more smoothly then we could ever imagine. The guy has platinum and gold albums on his studio walls and couldn’t have been more artist-friendly. Whenever we all started getting stir-crazy in the studio, he’d be like, “ok, beach-break”, and we’d take 2 hours. Angus would go surfing while Dan and I watched the girls in bikinis play volleyball. By the time we got back to the studio, we were all pumped. I must say California girls in bikinis provide some great musical inspiration.
Above: Sounside's video shoot for "Loss for Words"
The new Spanish Billingual LP that we just recorded was something completely unreal and unexpected. My mother’s Mexican and religiously watches the Spanish networks on TV. She basically networked her way through her outgoing personality until we found ourselves recording with the “godfather of Latin Music”, Adrian Posse. Now Adrian has sold over 40 million albums that he’s produced, so we were all a little intimidated when we found out he wanted to work with us. He has an amazing and funny aura around him. The first time I met Adrian he kissed me on both cheeks and gave me a hug, so that early-intimidation kind of dissipated really quickly. He loved working with us so much that before the album was done, he contacted major label, EMI Records, and told them to get their asses to the studio immediately, literally. They came the very next day and before we knew it, EMI asked us to write a song for a big compilation album that they were releasing for kids all over the Latin World called “La Música De Los Valores.” We were the only American-born band on the entire album full of tons of famous Latin artists and they released 1 million copies, which gave us some sick exposure among Latinos. There have been tons of Latin artists that have come into the American music scene singing English, so we figured why not American artists singing in Spanish entering the Latin scene? It was a concept that has never truly been done before, especially via an American rock band, and Adrian Posse helped realize this on this new 14-track album we made. It’s a tricky situation to enter a completely new market so behind the scenes everything is being handled really carefully, but the album is going to be released sometime in 2009 and we’re expecting huge things."-Rich Arcati
Check out the video to Sounside's first single "Loss for Words" off their second album Seconds from Sunrise. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmUQu8e3GrQ and while you're at it, here is the band's myspace page http://www.myspace.com/soundside . You better believe their album is available on iTunes so buy it, it rocks. XOXO Cristina
