Singer • Adam
Lazarra from Taking Back Sunday rocked
out April 6 at the House of Blues on
the Sunset Strip. Matthew Wilkinson
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Taking
Back Sunday overcomes obstacles for
new album
By Matthew Wilkinson
Online Forty-Niner
Contributing Writer
The 2004 Vans Warped Tour launched with a kick-off party at House of Blues, Sunset
Strip in Hollywood April 6. Headlining was a bruised and battered Taking Back
Sunday, who, with a patched line-up, was trying to make its way back to the music
scene. Two years later, the band has come full circle to HOB Sunset, but this
time was armed with a new label, a new album and new motivation to prove its
here to stay.
Vocalist/guitarist Fred Mascherino is backstage in Portland, Ore., getting ready
for the 4th show on the band’s Louder Now tour.
“
It’s been great. The kids have been insane. The idea with this tour was
we’re playing a lot of scaled down rooms. We’re going back to ‘size
places’ that we used to play a couple years ago. We thought it would be
a good way to get to play the new songs and get people to hear them and also
get the word out of the record coming.”
His enthusiasm is contagious. With the sense of knowledge and pride he has in
the band, it’s hard to believe he isn’t one of its founding members.
He almost wasn’t a member at all.
Things moved quickly for Taking Back Sunday in 2002. The band’s debut album “Tell
All Your Friends” was released on Victory Records and they had opening
slots on some of the biggest punk rock tours and a growing fan base that almost
had cult status. However just as emotions ran high in the bands lyrics, emotions
ran high backstage too. Conflicts between band members became unbearable, and
when guitarist/vocalist John Nolan and bassist Shaun Cooper left the band in
2003, it left Taking Back Sunday with very few friends to tell.
But vocalist Adam Lazzara, guitarist Eddie Reyes and drummer Mark O’Connell
weren’t ready to stop playing music. They called in long time friend Fred
Mascherino to fill in on vocals/guitar, and one practice later got Matt Rubano
to fill in on bass. The new line-up was set and after a lot of practice they
picked up a couple 2003 Warped Tour dates and started working on a sophomore
release.
“
Eddie, Mark and Adam didn’t ask for these changes, they just happened,” Mas-cherino
said, “so we all just had to just make the best of it. And we’ve
become a lot better because everybody in the band has pushed themselves to play
better and to write better because they know they almost lost it all.”
So with the new members in place, Taking Back Sunday fought to prove it could
overcome the obstacles. They started with an opening spot on the Blink 182 spring
tour. Then it landed a headlining spot on the 2004 Warped Tour.
While on the Warped Tour, its sophomore release “Where You Want To Be” debuted
at No. 3 on the Billboard charts. That landed the group a headlining fall tour
with Fall Out Boy and Matchbook Romance. That tour went on to sell out every
single date.
The band proved itself royally, and all the publicity and touring was enough
to capture the eyes of Warner Brothers Records’ executives. Even though
the name Taking Back Sunday had long been synonymous with Chicago-based indie
label Victory Records, the time had come for a change.
“
We wanted to help put Warner Brothers on the map,” Mascherino said and
then chuckled to himself.
“
No…truthfully we have been very lucky with the things that have happened
to us in the last few years, but we have a lot of goals for ourselves. One of
those goals is to become more international. Victory is mainly an American label.
We want to get our music out to as many
people as we possibly can.”
“
We spent almost all of 2005 writing this record. By the time we went in the fall
of 2005 to record it we had already demoed all the songs twice. That was a really
good thing because when it came time to do the actual recording with Eric [Valentine]
we had decided how all the songs were going to go down to the drum pulls themselves,
and the lyrics and all the transitions were decided so all we had to think about
was how do we want it to sound so that allowed us to do some more creative things
with the sound because it was already in stone
what the song was.”
The result is “Louder Now,” an 11-song album Warner Bros., will release
April 25.
“
It’s full on rock,” Mas-cherino said. “The title we thought
was pretty appropriate because the first three quarters of the record is a very
intense listen, and we did that intentionally because as we were writing the
record we wrote about 20 songs and from that we were picking the best ones and
we were realizing they were mostly all rock songs which is great because a lot
of bands mellow out after the first two records and we didn’t really want
to do that.”
Choosing to play smaller venues was a wise choice. The band took the stage at
HOB Sunset to the chant “TBS…TBS…TBS.” Huge old-fashioned
movie light-bulbs spelled out the name of the band and the big marquee below
it displays “Louder Now.”
They kicked off with “A Decade Under the Influence” as Lazzarra swang
his microphone high in the air and wraped the cord around his neck. They continued
into “Bonus Mosh Pt. 2” and “The Union” before stopping
to address the crowd.
The set completely ignored the band’s softer side, making all 16 songs
intense and fast. The crowd received no break, as the band blazed through old
favorites “Cute Without the E,” “Timberwolves at New Jersey,” “You’re
So Last Summer” and mixed in new singles like “Make Damn Sure” and “Error
Operator.”
The crowd was often louder than Lazzarra, which made him smile. This was the
bands first tour since last May and it was obivious the guys had missed it. For
the encore they did a new version of “You Know How I Do” with Mascherino
doing distorted guitar solos and Lazzarra singing softly underneath them. That
didn’t last long, and the crowd was screaming and jumping again as soon
as the normal version started. They ended with “One-Eighty By Summer.”
“
We always say that we are the luckiest guys in the world,” Macherino
said, “and that we tend to work really hard to stay lucky.”
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