One of the goals of the Cherry Bomb Promo website is to give our readers an inside look at the indie/unsigned music industry by featuring interviews with not only bands but also promoters, DJs, venues, and others who support the bands.
Our first interview here is with the guitarist, Jsin Chase, from one of Cherry Bomb’s clients, SIN. SIN is a hard rock act based in Omaha, Nebraska.
CB: First of all, tell me a bit about SIN…how you got started, how long you’ve been together, and how you would describe your music.
Jsin: Our current lineup has been together since 2008 but S I N actually evolved from another band called Ox 45 which eventually became SIN in 2004. As far as our music, it’s good ol’ angry American rock n roll.
CB: And who is in SIN’s current lineup?
Jsin: Jzun is our singer and we’ve got Spike on bass, Zombilly on guitar, then Brian on drums, and then there’s me on guitar.
CB: Now obviously those aren’t your given names except maybe in Brian’s case. So is there a reason behind the pseudonyms?
Jsin: We can’t really use our real names just in case any law enforcement officers should happen to be at one of our shows. *laughs*
CB: Gotcha. I’ll take that as my cue to change the subject. Let’s talk about your latest CD, Killing Floor Vol 1. The title implies that there will be a Vol 2, right?
Jsin: We released Killing Floor Vol 1 in February 2009 and the plan is to release 4 volumes in all. Vol 2 should be out by December 2009. Each volume will contain 3 songs so we’ll have a total of 12 songs by the time we’re done. We’re also only going to be releasing 300 copies of each volume and each CD will be signed by a member of the band. So in other words, Vol 1 featured 60 copies signed by me, 60 copies signed by Jzun and so on… make sense?
CB: Right. And you’ll do the same with Vol 2, Vol 3…?
Jsin: Exactly. Then once the series is complete, we’ll release a full CD containing all 4 volumes with an unlimited nationwide release.
CB: That’s an interesting approach to distribution. What’s the reasoning behind that?
Jsin: When fans come to our shows, they want to hear new music so rather than make them wait for an entire full-length CD to be released which takes a lot of time, they can come to the shows and get these autographed copies.
CB: So it’s basically like selling Killing Floor in bite-size pieces? What about fans who aren’t in the Omaha area and can’t make it to see SIN in person?
Jsin: Each of the volumes are or will be available for digital download on iTunes, Rhapsody and Amazon
CB: Seriously?
Jsin: Sure, why not! But they have to prove it’s their own. It can’t be like a scanned picture from this month’s Playboy or something they downloaded from the Internet.
CB: *laughs* Ok then…back to Killing Floor. Obviously part of the decision to put out these 3-song volumes was influenced by the direction in which the music industry is going as far as digital downloads, right?
Jsin: Right, but if you think about it, it’s actually more like going back to the 50s when bands just released singles and B-sides. Like it is today, the bands would all have to tour with like 6 or 8 bands because they just didn’t have enough material to carry a whole show and that’s how things are going now. It just makes more sense to release a few songs at a time not just for the bands but for the fans as well.
CB: How else has the whole Internet thing changed the way SIN is doing things?
Jsin: It really didn’t until we met this absolutely amazing chick named April Jones. We’re musicians, not computer guys. Our passion is music and in order to put out the best music we can, we can’t spend all day online updating websites and posting stuff on Twitter and Facebook. There’s just too much out there for us to stay up on plus we’re busy with practicing, writing, playing shows and all that so its just not possible for us to throw all of the computer stuff in there on top of it, especially on an almost daily basis. So that’s why we need smart people such as yourself to help us out. We’re just rehearsal room shut-ins who hardly ever get to venture out into the real world. Like I just found out yesterday that Michael Jackson died. So, yeah, it helps to have someone managing those other avenues to help us reach our fans outside of the shows.
CB: So how were you promoting your shows before you started working with Cherry Bomb?
Jsin: We rode around on our dinosaurs, handing out flyers and we did a few radio ads. Those hardly ever work, by the way. I can’t recall anyone ever saying “Hey I saw your flyer and decided to come to the show tonight!” But doing it this way, using this social media stuff, it has more of a personal touch. The thing that sucks is the bands that are good with that kind of stuff, promoting, getting people to shows, their music suffers because they spend all that time worrying about promoting the band instead of focusing on creating the music. Can you imagine trying to do what you do on top of having a full time job and working on writing new music? The Beatles never would’ve had their own video game if they’d had to spend every 10 minutes on the computer updating their Twitter account.
CB: Exactly. Which is why I do what I do and let you guys worry about doing what you do because, honestly, I have absolutely no musical talent whatsoever.
Jsin: And we have absolutely no computer talent whatsoever.
CB: See how well that works?
Jsin: Definitely. Surrounding yourself with people that are good at what they do and letting go of control of those things and trusting those people with all of that makes it a lot less stressful and lets us worry about the most important thing to being in a band which is the music. There are millions of great songs being released every year that only like .0001 percent of the population of music fans will ever hear because they don’t have the right people helping them put it out there.
Like Nickelback, for example. They don’t have the greatest musicians or the greatest songs, they’ve just got all the right people behind them promoting their music so they’re selling millions. If it was based on talent and hard work, bands like Dream Theater would be multimillionaires and Creed would be broke.
CB: Don’t even get me started on Nickelback. Well, Jsin, thanks for taking time away from all of that hard work to sit and b.s. with me. Its definitely been entertaining!
Jsin: No problem!
Be sure to add SIN on MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. And you can sign up for their mailing list at http://sintheband.fanbridge.com/
