Photo by HappyHaha at Wah Studio
After releasing their debut album, Something New to Burn, in 2013, indie rock quintet Drunken Logic has blazed trails with their sound and lyrics, which range from melancholy ruminations to finger-pointing at greedy, corporate bastards. The band was chosen to play at Alive@Five this past July and will be appearing at Berklee College of Music's CMJ Showcase on October 24. With a new album on the horizon, we spoke to vocalist and keyboardist Jake Cassman about how the band manages their time, what sets their Sonicbids profile apart, and advice he has for other Sonicbids artists when it comes to booking shows and managing groups.
You all met through Berklee. What were/are you studying?
The five of us were each taking some combination of songwriting, music business, and performance classes. I met [guitarist/keyboardist] Ryan [Jordan] in a lyric writing class, sang in an a cappella group with [drummer Alex] McGillivray, and played ultimate frisbee with [guitarist] Austin [Wells]; [bassist Alex] Trevino was introduced by a mutual friend. Only three of us are still at Berklee, but the Berklee community has been much tighter than I originally expected.
Who are your influences when it comes to your sound?
We take pride in being open to anything and everything, but we definitely have a few bands and artists that form the bedrock of our sound. I think the bands we all agree upon the most are Frightened Rabbit, Green Day, The Who, Stevie Wonder, and Queen, to name a few. But we're tinkerers and thieves; when we hear something that's different, regardless of genre, we try and take it and make it our own.
You start recording your second album this November. How does it differ from your first?
Our first album had a loose storyline, but I think this one is more conceptual. It’s about growing up and finding out that graduating from college didn’t get you nearly as far as you thought, and how times are still very tough for the "millennial" generation in this country. It was written in crappy apartments between crappy jobs, and it’s about coming to terms with the gap between your hopes and goals and your reality, on both a personal and socioeconomic level. I know that sounds dreary at first, but there's a liberation that comes from accepting that reality. And that's where we hope this album ends up.
As a self-managed band, things must get hectic. How do you manage your time?
All of us are in school, bands, and/or several other projects as well as Drunken Logic. It can be a headache just to find one day in each week when we can all get in a room together. But we always find a way, and to these guys' credit, we go out of our way to make it work somehow. As for booking, I just try to make myself available at all times to discuss shows and opportunities with people. I essentially take my office with me. At the dueling piano bar where I work, I've spent many 20-minute breaks just sitting on a dish rack in the kitchen, writing emails and making phone calls. You do what you have to do, whenever you have to do it.
What advice do you have for other independent bands on booking shows and managing themselves?
I've been looking for a smarter, more efficient way to book shows for a couple of years now, but I've yet to find it. There's no "smart bomb" that I know of, so I stick to carpet-bombing. We email everyone within five miles of the city we're targeting, and apply to every Sonicbids opportunity that we could possibly qualify for. We're getting to do a lot of cool new things as a band, several of them because of Sonicbids – but we're not at a point where we want to say no to anyone right off the bat either. We want to play as much as possible, and hopefully that shines through in our approach and performance.
What do you think sets your Sonicbids profile apart?
I'd like to think our professionalism and work ethic shines through in our profile. We update it constantly and try to provide as much information as possible about where we've played and what we do.
This past July you played at Alive@Five and will be playing Berklee’s CMJ Showcase at this year's festival, both through Sonicbids. What does it feel like to have doors like these opening for you guys?
Exhilarating! After years of trying as hard as we could just to get 10 people to come see us, it’s so fulfilling when someone you’ve never met decides to take a chance on you, and gives you the opportunity to perform for people who have never heard of you. When someone trusts you and believes in you like that, you do everything you can to play your best show yet and leave it all on the stage. That’s the type of show we love to play.
After your CMJ appearance, you’re heading out on your tour from Boston to DC. What are you most excited for?
We’ve been working on material for our second album for over a year now, and it’s ready to go. We plan on recording it all a few weeks after this tour, so we’re going to be playing all of it at our shows – much of it for the first time. We didn’t have an opportunity to hear how our stuff sounded onstage before we recorded the last album, and I think getting that opportunity will make this album all the more special.
Catch Drunken Logic and other fantastic Sonicbids acts at Boston and Beyond: Berklee's CMJ Music Marathon Showcase.
