Straight Line Stitch

The rock band Straight Line Stitch has come a long way from their homes in Knoxville, Tennessee. Recently touring with Hatebreed, they will also be taking the road with 36 Crazyfists and Taking Dawn. Following that tour, they will be opening for Soulfly and Incite. The members include Alexis Brown for vocals, Seth Thacker and Pat Pattison on guitar, Jason White on bass, and Kanky Lora on drums. Their latest album is now available, from E1/Raging Nation Records and is named The Fight of Our Lives .

Maximum Ink : Knoxville, TN isn’t far from where I am located. Do you all still reside there? There doesn’t seem to be much of a music scene in East TN. Do you ever play Knoxville? What is it like to come from there and end up touring all over the U.S and Canada?
Alexis Brown : We all hail from different places but TN is the band’s home base. Only our guitarist Seth and I actually live in Knoxville. My drummer Kanky stays in Chicago and our bassist Jason lives in Georgia. But Knoxville has definitely become home to me. It has grown on me that’s for sure. As for the music scene there, it’s actually not too shabby. There have been really big bands that have come out of East TN such as 10 Years, Whitechapel, and The Showdown. We try to play our hometown as much as possible, but our routing never seems to take us there. To travel all over and then come home is a blessing because it makes you appreciate everything, especially friends, family, and loved ones.

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Stratospheerius

The band Stratospheerius features Joe Deninzon (vocals, violin, mandolin), Jamie Bishop (bass), Aurelien Budynek (guitars), and Lucianna Padmore (drums). The sound is hard to classify in a genre.It combines modern and classic music in a way that is hard to find. The new album Headspace showcases the style nicely.

Maximum Ink: Who are some of your earliest influences and why?
Joe Deninzon: My influences have a very wide range. In classical music it would be Beethoven, Stravinsky, and Mahler. In jazz, Miles Davis and John Coltrane. In rock, Led Zeppelin, Queen, Hendrix, Kiss, Frank Zappa, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Yes, The Police, Steely Dan, Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, the Beatles, to name a few. I like musicians who take chances and blaze new trails. I also love performers with a great stage presence who take their audience on a transcendental journey, which is what I strive to do. I also am fascinated by music that can connect with as many people as possible on a primal level, but can also be analyzed on a deeper level. Music that is seemingly simple yet has many layers of complexity underneath. That is something I’ve been trying to create for years, and I feel I’m getting closer.

MI: What was it like to move from Russia to Cleveland as a child? Do you ever miss Russia?
JD: I don’t have vivid enough memories of Russia to miss it. I grew up in the midwest around American culture. I was only four years old when we
emigrated. I do remember that it wa very tough at first going to school in the US not knowing the language, and it took me a few years to adjust. Russia is a beautiful country and I particularly love my birthplace of St. Petersburg, but i don’t think I would want to live there.

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Subatomic

We listen to music to feel something, to relate to something or to just plain have fun. And it’s becoming harder and harder to find a local band that you can listen to and just plain enjoy yourself. No corporate puppetry or influence laced through what could be and should be killer music. That’s why when we came across Subatomic it was something extremely refreshing. Their jam-oriented sound with catchy riffs and groovy basslines is just plain good music. Maximum Ink caught up with the hard rock groove trio to talk about their music and how they got their start.

Maximum Ink: Tell me about the history of the band. Where did you get started? When did you all start playing and writing music?
Bryan Moll (Guitarist/Vocals): Jim and I have been playing together since grade school and about 15 years ago, we got to know Sparko (Mark Dvorak-Drums).  So over the years the three of us have worked together on different projects, with different folks in a variety of bands, but the true version of subatomic came into being in 2006, when we began writing music together.

MI: Describe your music to someone who has never seen/hear it before.
Jim Roof (Bass): It’s our motto: Hard rock groove jams!

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Kasim Sulton

Kasim Sulton has had quite a career.  He’s played bass with Todd Rundgren (both solo and with Utopia) for over a decade, recorded on Meatloaf’s “Bat Out of Hell” and on the critically acclaimed 1976 album release by Steve Hillage “L”, which is a favorite with English ravers 25 years after it’s release. A multi-instrumentalist, Sulton has also recorded or performed with The Tom Robinson Band, Rick Derringer, Frankie Eldorado, Shaun Cassidy, Joan Jett, Patti Smith, Akiko Yano, The Ricky Byrd Trio,  Blue Oyster Cult, Jackie DeShannon, Eileen Ivers, Celine Dion, The Indigo Girls, Steve Stevens, Mick Jagger, Jim Steinman and Daryl Hall and John Oates. To make a long discography short, Sulton has played on 102 albums. 

Kasim also has 3 Solo albums, “Kasim,” “The Bassment Tapes” and “Lights On” with Thommy Price. I interviewed Kasim on July 30th, 2001.

Maximum Ink: How did you start playing music?
Kasim Sulton: Staten Island, NY…. first band was Kastle. My fate was decided when I saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan in 1964.

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Sunshine For The Blind

As the creative outlet for one-half of DNA Studios’ production masterminds, Brian Daly, SUNSHINE FOR THE BLIND, has been performing guitar rock with pop inflections in the Madison area for the better part of the last decade. Their latest album, Second Self, is an absolutely sonically masterful collection of straight-up classic alternative rock songs. There’s plenty of excellent guitar work, big chorus hooks, and a solid (and wonderfully complex) rhythm section provided by bassist Ken Stevenson and drummer Andrew Rohn.

As the guitarist and vocalist for SUNSHINE FOR THE BLIND as well as one of Madison’s most prolific audio engineers, Daly has been into music since he was a kid, “I have always experienced music that I like as transporting,” he says, “as an entry to another world. A world that generally seemed better than the normal world..  Part of this experience was a desire to create music myself. This isn’t logical; it’s possible to love music and not want to make it. But I was infected with this viral aspect of music.“

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Sunspot

Wisconsin based Sunspot is made up of Ben Jaeger (Guitar & Vocals), Mike Huberty (Lead Vocals & Bass), and Wendy Lynn Staats(Drums & Vocals). The trio from Madison offer up singalong rock with a local flair. Their newest album Singularity was voted Madison’s Rock Album of the Year by the Madison Area Music Association, with the tracks, No Place Like Home being named Rock Song of the Year, and Sweet Relief, Video of the Year. They have opened for acts such as Death Cab for Cutie, The Flaming Lips, Sponge, SevenMaryThree, Hot Hot Heat, and Sick Puppies. Earlier this year they licensed the song “Go, Pack!” to FOX Sports for use during the NFC Playoffs and Super Bowl, events seen by tens of millions of people around the world.

Maximum Ink: Can you tell us a little about your background? How do you think coming from where you do has influenced your musical styling?
Ben Jaeger: We came from small towns surrounding a medium sized city -Milwaukee. We have spent a lot of time in big cities sharing our songs, but we very much enjoy returning to our roots. Madison has been our home for 15 years now and there are many things that we enjoy about it. It is small enough that people in the music community are accessible and supportive, but the city is large enough that there are plenty of people to interest in being fans. Our music is very real and honest and appeals to a variety of people from sci-fi geeks to jocks to musicians to avid readers.
     

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Sweet Cyanide

With songs titled “Suicide Love Machine,” “Certain Shadows on the Wall,” “Crash Theory,” and “Heartbreaker” these four New York rockers put a new spin on sex, drugs, and rock n roll. Sweet Cyanide is an electric collision of two respected New York bands, Crashbox and Moment Theory. The band consists of Sal Scoca and Angelo Fariello from Crashbox and Mike Bambrace and Joe Salvatore from Moment Theory. When the two bands were active Crashbox sold over 5,000 copies, and Moment Theory was recognized by Billboard’s independent songwriter’s contest.

Sweet Cyanide’s self-titled album drops July 7. Immediately following the release of their album they will be doing some regional touring through August. The first song on the album, “Crash Theory,” will also be the first single. Be listening for “Crash Theory” on the radio in early Sept. Currently, Sweet Cyanide is working out the kinks for opening slots in the fall with some big named bands.

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