“A modern rock band displaying monster riffs and powerful lyrical hooks. Featuring guitarist and vocalist Justin, guitarist Luke, bassist Johnathan and Alex on drums, Adage is engaging the music scene with full force. Recently signed with Pavement Entertainment and currently playing shows across the southeast, Adage is setting their sights to hit stages across the U.S.! Look for the EP “Defined” to drop August 2014 .”
Interview with guitarist, Luke Petree:
Interview by: Laura DeSantis-Olsson
1. What is the history of your band coming together?
“I think really we’ve know each other, the way this band’s put together, just over a year actually. I think 2012 was when me and John joined and formed the current foundation. ADAGE had been playing together for several years, but I didn’t even touch my guitar. It just sort of came about. Some friends contacted me, some of my old buddies, and wanted to get together. Really fast, this turned into a project together. Then, a year ago, is when me and Jonathan, the bass player, met Justin and kind of went from there. It was this year, 2014, either January or February, we met Alex. Alex took the spot of a former band member who was on drums.”
2. When do you think you made your most advancements and progress together as a band? When did it pick up it’s momentum?
“Well, lets see. I think when we knew we had something initially from the time we met and started practicing. When we got together and the chemistry worked for the most part. Musically we were all on the same page, we were “like-minded”. The material Justin already had was a huge advantage because he had some songs and ideas already in place. Some of us also had a recording down. So when we put our ideas and our own little twist on it, while jamming these songs, we all started getting down with our own little style. It’s like we can sit back here and go, “wow, this is good stuff, this is catchy,” it’s got the heaviness, and it’s got the melodies.
From there, I think three months later, we did our first real show. We actually opened up for, and did a pre-party here locally in North Carolina, for a Sevendust show. So that was crazy, for like our first real show to open up for someone like Sevendust was kind of like, “WHAT?!” That was the first time we felt like we have a chance at this. We just have to play our cards right, put in the time, and get things rollin.
I think as far as advancing, it seems like every show we do, we learn something for the most part. You know, maybe how to change stage presence, maybe how to do the line up for the songs to make it more of an actual show for the people. However, it is also sort of a work in progress. It is happening in such a short time, and things are happening so fast, we certainly don’t have time to work all the kinks worked out, so I would say it’s definitely a work in progress. I think when you try to take something away from every practice and every show you start to advance. You know, we try and do the best we can. We don’t want to just say, “well, we got things rollin that’s good enough.” All around we want to make things better and push this, and not let up.”
3. As the momentum has increased for ADAGE, how much time do you guys devote to the band vs. your personal or working lives?
“Um, pretty much every weekend for sure. Unless something comes up, every weekend, and sometimes a practice during the week. We’re certainly trying to get the set list we have down now, for playing out, and we’re also trying to write new material. So, I would say two days a week. That’s the equivalent of eight hours a week, something like that maybe. That’s the actual practice and stuff. Now that things are picking up, as far as physical interviews, online interviews, and call-in interviews, if you want to do the collective time for all that, it’s definitely picked up. Trying to deal with the social media and keep things updated and respond to people. However, as far as practice goes, the project itself musically, I would say eight hours a week, two days a week. Maybe even ten hours.”
4. What personal sacrifices do you feel you make to have your band the way it is? What do you feel you set aside sometimes?
“Well certainly like family time. For now we are on weekend warrior schedule for band stuff because we’re not on tour. In our normal life, we try and have norman civilian jobs to keep things rollin. Certainly the sacrifice would be the time with my immediate family. Money’s a sacrifice because you don’t make money at every show and it takes money for the equipment. So for anybody whose struggling or had the idea that they have something going, “what’s it going to take?” it takes a lot of heart, it takes a lot of positivity cause you gonna have your bubble busted a lot from critics or maybe a crowd doesn’t show up. You know, you promote your act and nobody shows up, maybe you get like half the people, just people that you know, or just friends of the band, that can be heart breaking.
The sacrifices are money for good equipment, I’m more on the technical side of things so equipment is super huge for me. I want everything to be good quality and road worthy. I don’t want chords going out or batteries going dead on the road, so I’m definitely a stickler for that. I think with anything in life, time and money is probably one of the biggest sacrifices we’ve had to make. That’s the nature of the beast, but outside of that I don’t know that we made any sacrifices. I haven’t sold my soul yet.”
6. What do you feel it means to “make-it” int the industry? What is your idea of success?
“Well I guess they both go hand in hand. I mean obviously if you want to do this for a living there needs to be a certain amount of income you can sustain off of, not just relying on the day-to-day. For us, initially, I mean we want to make money, I think everybody does, you sort of have to in order to keep it going. But, I think for us, now we have an EP on the market. It’s been gradual steps for us, including doing the EP, getting the contract signed at Pavements, and now we’re getting some radio play. We’re doing the interviews and each little bit is like another step toward success. We say, “well we’ve made it this far, and we’ve made it this far.” We just try and keep up with it.”
August 19th our EP’s going to be on the market. I think that’s a huge step of success for us, that we have a product on the market we’re not just selling our stuff at shows. It’s being distributed. We soon hope to get to the point where we’re doing a full tour. I guess depending on how the EP goes, how the single takes off, we’re going to try and get more radio play, and build a bigger fan base. There’s a lot of things that I think will make us feel successful. But I think, at least for me personally, having an EP and then doing this tour will be a step. Once we start to get on tour, it’s kind of like your job, you can call yourself a musician. I think that’s success in itself.
I guess there can be different levels of success. That’s one step of it, and then at some point you want to do the full album so it’s like we have a full album on the market. Do bigger tours. Then headline the tours, and bands will want to play with us. I think when you get to the point where you have these sell out shows and your making some money, and people are wanting to play for you, to me that would feel like success.”
7. What message do you want people to take away after hearing your music?
“Justin wrote all the lyrics, so they’re performed from his standpoint. But, like I said, you can’t take them too specifically toward one person or one situation. You can sort of open them up to a broad situation for the most part. I think the overall “perseverance” and “sort of suck it up and push on in life,” message is there. It’s kind of like a positive message. It’s certainly not like a dark message where you leave bummed out, it designates a positive message. It’s up lifting. We’ve got a lot of energy, we also have a lot of songs that will pull on your heart strings. Overall the mix for the EP itself is positive, I think you can leave it feeling good for sure. We try to put on as much energy as we can onstage and play the best we can.
We definitely try to send out a positive message. I guess through perseverance and whatever happens in your life, just pick up the pieces and keep movin.”
8. What do you think gives a songs it’s essence? Where does it begin to transcend in meaning to become a lesson or message? How does the band know when you’ve made a song that means something?
“Well, for my part as a guitarist it sort of grabs me from a musical standpoint, you know, the way the rhythm of the song goes. Lyrically the way Justin writes, he’s our frontman, he draws from past experience. He doesn’t write so much in detail, you can’t fit it into one little category, but its a broad range. He feeds off his emotions and what’s going on in day to day life, but he tries to keep it broad enough that it can be understood on different levels. Different people can relate to it. You can understand it if your in a relationship, or just gotten into a relationship, or maybe something related to the relationship with one’s parents or friend. So, it’s not too specific from a writing standpoint.
Justin mainly writes all the lyrics. Musically, on the EP, at this point we are all writing collectively. We usually come up with a riff and then the drum beat, and we just sort of go from there. I mean, we always just feed off of it. I think initially it starts out with what it sounds like to us, something that catches us from a musical standpoint. From there, Justin’s really about putting these melodies over it, that really sort of harmonize a little. It has a, “you just want to sing along to it,” type sound. We sort of combine the “heaviness” while keeping good melodies so you have sort of a combination.
9. Out of all your songs, which one do you like the most? Which one do you feel most connected to?
“Like I said, musically I love all of them in their own way. Some of them are more fun to play than others. One of my more favorite songs, for me, is one we are in the process of writing right now. It’s not even on the EP, we’ve never even played it live. I had a lot of part in playing this song so it’s more personal to me, to feel like I contributed a whole lot now that we pushing when writing our own material. We don’t have a name for it yet, or any kind of lyrics. We have some of the melodies. That’s probably going to be where I’m biased with that one.
As far as the EP goes, I think “Best Of” gets me the most emotionally. Probably one that gets me the best as far as playing, I think “Anymore”. As far as the EP goes I think “Anymore” is the most fun to play. It’s one of the heaviest songs on there. Then as far as playing live, in our set we actually have ten or eleven songs we play. There’s also a new one we have called, “Should I go”, and that’s probably the most fun for me to play live.
10. What is some of the feed back the band hears in regard to the music?
“It seems like so far the feedback’s been really great, from interviews like this to some of the radio stations playing our stuff. We get a lot of feedback on social media, sort of more on the Facebook side of it. Justin does more of the the twitter handling and Jonathan sort of handles instagram stuff a lot.
From a media standpoint, even today we got contacted by a girl in Poland about how she loves the music. I don’t even know how she heard it honestly. Maybe she heard it on Reverb Nation. However she was all excited to get the music over there. She was wondering if she could get a hard copy. The download is going to be available August 19th, our release date. But we have been getting nothing but positive feedback, you know.
It’s not for everybody, I guess, just people that like country music, or whatever, but they still will say from a musical standpoint that it sounds good. They will say the recordings sound good. It may not be their cup of tea, but still we’ve really got nothing but positive feedback. I’ve not heard anybody say anything bad about it and it has gotten all good reviews. So anywhere from our label contacting us, to social media, we’ve gotten a really good response, people are lovin the music.
11. Whose recording / producing your music now, and why did you choose to go with them?
“Muse Music Productions in Atlanta, Georgia. Andy Reiley, he was the main producer and sound engineer for us, for the EP. He’s worked with some big names like Bon Jovi, Iron Maiden, Andy Dickerson, I think BUSH was on his list, and I think maybe some work with Slayer. Andy’s from the U.K. and he’s been around for a while, so he’s got a lot of knowledge and a lot of connection.
Andy is a source we met though Justin. Justin is actually from the Atlanta area and he had met him down there, somewhere or another, I think through another band. We also went to him initially because he gave us a good deal on the recording prices. We also knew we were talking to a professional, so for the price we couldn’t beat it.
The EP was initially basically going to be like a demo. We didn’t want to cheat, we wanted something we could shoot around and get something going with that people would take seriously. First impressions are everthing and if the music sounds like it was recorded in your basement then no matter how good of a song maybe it is, it just doesn’t get the attention it deserves. So, we decided to go “all-out” and start out with a good recording. So we went down there (Atalanta) and it ended up being so phenomenal for us. We were like, “ wow, this is the real deal.” We were being professionally recorded by Andy and professionally mastered by Sing mastering. When they got it all back to us, we were like, “wow man, this is like radio stuff, this is the real deal.” From there, we just started shooting them out and Justin came across Pavement Entertainment, and contacted Mark, and it kind of went from there. Mark said we had something going on here and we worked the details out, and it’s like we went from making a really good demo, to having an EP on the market.
Things have gone really kind of fast. It’s just taking off and we are getting good feedback and everything. It sort of happened so fast it’s hard to take time to appreciate every little step, each little milestone. You know, our first interviews or our first radio play, performances with certain bands… it’s just kind of rollin so we’re just kind of rollin with it I guess.”
12. How does it feel when you see your music packaged up and being branded as it is?
“I mean, I think it’s it a crazy experience. I think for anyone whose dream it is to make music, or to just do anything, to see something you’ve created yourself being mass produced with your name on it is amazing. It’s your information, and stuff you put your heart into. Seeing it in this neat little package, with cellophane around it and barcodes, and you know it’s going to be around for the whole world to see… that’s awesome. I mean, I don’t how you put it into words really. It’s just awesome, it really is.
It’s like the innocence of a new band trying to take it all in for the first time.”
13. What other art forms are you involved with (i.e painting, cooking, etc)
“The four of us, we’re all just totally different. I think me and Jonathan, Jonathan’s the bass player, are more like country boys. I didn’t know him growing up, but he’s not too far from where I grew up. We like to hunt, fish, and go hiking, kayaking, you know, stuff like that. We’re more the outdoors people, you know. I’ve got a tractor, I do farm work around the house and stuff. We’re sort of one of the rough necks.
Alex, he’s the youngest member of the band. He’s more like of a gamer, I think him and Justin both. They’re sort of more like into games, you know. They don’t really do the outdoors, they don’t want to go fishing, they have their own thing going. They’re definitely more into the sort of gamer type thing. Outside of that maybe hanging with friends.
We try to hang out as much as we can, but basically we’re kind of spread out about an hour apart. So, we all have our own set of friends, our own places of work. We come together and we make it work is what we do.
Personality wise, we’re totally different. Alex is the real kind of quiet one, he’s sort of more laid back, watching everything and taking everything in. He’ll speak his mind, and he has good things to say, but he’ll be real quiet. He waits to take it all in before he responds, which is smart. Jonathan’s funny because he’s more sort of the comedian, you know. He likes to shoot pool, he’ll go out to bars and shoot pool, he’ll hustle you. And me, I got though these stages in my life where always something is always kind of changing. If I’m in to something at that moment something else moves on. Or I get stuck in that rut, like I do on a day-to-day basis, and then the band comes along and starts picking up. I think, If we’re going to do this for real, I have to step it up. I think all four of us have that mind set. We have our own thing going but we also know that when it’s time to be with the band, it’s time for the band. That’s our job, that’s our goal, and we know we can’t be half assed to make it work. We have to put in one hundred percent into it. It’s not always easy of course.
Without speaking for them too much that’s about the roughest diagram I can give.”
14. Is there anything I didn’t ask you that you kind of wanted to touch upon in regard to the band and the music? Is there any additional information you want to add?
“I guess I could throw out there, and we get asked this a lot, about how the name ADAGE came about.
Basically it was a bunch of us sitting around after we got together, and decided this is going to work, we are going to do something, “We’re playing music and we like it, let’s do this, we’re going to need a name.” So, I don’t remember who came up with the word ADAGE. It might have been one of the other members of the band that’s no longer with us anymore, who as been replace or whatever. But, we basically, through throwing the name around to those we knew at work, etc, would ask people, “How bout this name?” So we’re all just shooting out names and no body’s really agreeing with what the other person says. You know, they all have their ideas. You find out how different you really are when you think about a band name. You want it to be kick ass and stand out. We’re were all giving totally different ideas on the whole thing. Again, it wasn’t me, I don’t know who shot the word ADAGE out there. I don’t even think they knew how the say the word, I think they were pronouncing it different and thought it sounded cool. At some point I gave up and knew my cool name was not going to work so I just said, “Yeah that’s fine with me.” I think we all just sort of settled on it. I guess it was also short and to the point. We know ADAGE as, “Take the bull by the horns.”
Then what we did was put it together with the definition of the word ADAGE from the dictionary:
ad•age \ˈa-dij\ noun
1. a traditional saying expressing a common experience or observation.
2. an up and coming 4-piece Modern Rock Band from North Carolina that has fans filling the music scene for a chance to experience them live.
That’s kind of where the design came in part for the EP. People whant to know, “What is ADAGE, what does it mean?”
We’re taking the EP and we’re saying, “This is ADAGE, we’re defining it with our music.” This is who we are… trying to sort of send that in a hidden message.
Once the music gets going you don’t think about what the name is anymore. You just hear ADAGE and you think – one of our songs. It’s just like you hear Five Finger Death Punch… you don’t actually think about punching somebody. When you first hear it you think, “Wow what a crazy name.” The more you hear it, you just think, “Oh man, they got awesome ass songs!” I hope that’s what it turns into for us.
15. What’s the very next thing coming up for the band that’s sort of a milestone?
“I guess sort of in a quick order:
- We’ve been recording along the way for our first release “Hold On”.
- We are going to try and do an official video for “Hold On”. We’re doing this all on our own with help from a guy named Ryan Lawton. He’s one of our buddies, so he’s dong all the editing and the film work for us. It won’t be ready when the EP drops August 19th, but that’s going to be our first official video that we put up on YouTube, and we are going to promote that as our first official video. So that’s a big milestone, that’s kind of huge. This will be our first official video, that’s a big deal.
- Our EP drops August, 19th, so that’s a big milestone
- September 20th, we’re going to be playing with Soil and Tantric, two national bands, that’s going to kick ass. That’s going to be in Virginia.
