Last summer, I selected the song “Pick Your Poison” by The Soapbox Revolution for my most exciting 3 songs at the time. The sound was so fresh and complete. I remember that I said to myself, hmmm these guys know how to write a song.  Since then, they commented a few times that we should have been prepared for the next.
I used to listen to the song on SoundCloud. Sometime later, I found the hilarious music video for this song. The link is below on this page. I hope you watch and enjoy it!

Exactly a month ago, The Soapbox Revolution  released a new single “Send My Love”. It is the song which they were working on last summer. I was totally sure it wouldn’t disappoint me, of course it didn’t.  I selected “Send My Love” for my most exciting songs January 2015. Also you can find the link to this music video below.

Recently The Soapbox Revolution kindly spent a time to answer what I wanted to know about them while they were busy rehearsing.

MM: Hello, The Soapbox Revolution!
Can I ask you to introduce yourselves? Your names, your parts in the band, your interests and hobbies?

Blake Rizzo: I sing and play guitar for Soapbox. I am sort of a techie and I like messing with all sorts of technology. There’s a lot of technical things we do behind the scenes for our live performance and I like to figure out how to make them happen.

Sean Conroy: I play drums for The Soapbox Revolution. My hobbies are playing music and watching sports.

Ben Coons: I play guitar and back up vocals for The Soapbox Revolution. My interests and hobbies include making great music to inspire people’s lives in a positive manner.

Joe Canon: I play keyboards and synth for The Soapbox Revolution. My interest and hobbies include collecting vintage synthesizer until I have no more room in my studio.

Krumb Cornwell: I play bass and back up vocals for The Soapbox Revolution. As far as my hobbies and interests goes music is my life. Every one has their way of getting that monkey off their back. Music just happens to be mine.

MM: Okay. Thank you. I think The Soapbox Revolution sounds rather unusual for a band name. You won’t forget once you heard it! Could you tell me how this name has come up for the band?

Blake: Glad you dig the name! A band name is important and we spent a lot of time figuring the name out. We did these big brainstorming sessions and all sorts of lists. We even bought a mythology dictionary for obscure words and ideas (it didn’t work). We really needed it say something. To be a statement. Early on in the process, I had the concept of a Soapbox in mind, as the band is sort of a platform to deliver a message. One of Ben’s suggestions during the brainstorming sessions was combinations with the word revolution. The name we created was The Soapbox Revolution. It represents a platform to express ourselves and it’s meant to inspire the masses to be empowered and to stand up and say what they think, hints the “Revolution” part. My lyrics are generally pretty personal and the Soapbox theme puts me on the spot to not be afraid to tell people who I am, right or wrong.

MM: It’s very positive!
How did you all meet up and become as The Soapbox Revolution?

Blake: I had written songs over the years and never really did anything with them. I used to play music a lot, but never shows or anything like that. I was a living room songwriter. I ended up in a cover band for a bit and realized that I needed to play these songs with a group. I started the search and was plugged in with Joe via his girlfriend Gabby. Joe was a drummer and we jammed a couple times and that was that. Joe was on drums, my brother Nick was on guitar, I was on guitar and vocals, though my ultimate goal was to just be a singer. Shortly after we recruited a bass player named Justin and had a full crew. Ben was a friend of a friend that was looking for a band to play with. Ben came to 2 rehearsals and was sold. We now had a full group with me off of the guitar. Justin was a great dude and a great bass player, but for personal reasons, he left the band. We were determined to have a finished disc of music present for our very first show. We wanted to be a full fledged band, but we just lost our bass player. We all started recording and getting a 4 song EP put together with Ben and I playing bass parts. Nick was not able to commit the amount of time needed once the recording process started and he left the group as well. He is now our engineer so he makes us sound great lie!! As we finished the EP, I ran across Krumb through his brother, Brooke. As it turns out, I had known Krumb since 7th grade, but I had not seen him in over a decade. He came out to play and hated us. He said we were too screamy. After a couple more practices though, we chad convoked him. Soapbox rocked for a while and Joe decided he wanted off the drums because of the energy level we were playing with. Joe, who has always made electronic and synth music, naturally switched over to play synth for us. We met Sean through a Craigslist ad and brought him aboard to fill Joe’s spot on drums. That’s the story of Soapbox.

   

MM: It wasn’t an easy start for you then. But I’m glad for Soapbox is now all set and ready for more.
Today you are all in the studio. How often do you get together?

Blake: We meet at least twice a week for rehearsals or recording, but we usually have another day in there somewhere for writing or other band functions. We operate in cycles where we write/record, then rehearse and prepare for shows. We have a setup to record at our own place, so we don’t have time restrictions and we can write in the actual studio. It gives us a lot of flexibility in the creative process.

MM: I’m impressed!
Do you all live in Houston?

Blake: We all live in Houston, but Houston is a big place. We don’t all live near each other. From my place to Krumb’s is probably a 30-40 minute drive. Sean’s house is even further.

MM: I see. You really need to be committed.
I know more than several great bands including yourselves in Houston. It seems to be an awesome place for music.
How is the music scene like in Houston?

Blake: Houston is a fantastically creative scene. There are incredible bands and songwriters around town of all different styles from pop to folk to soul to rap and hip-hop. The trick to catching the good new bands in Houston is to be plugged into the scene. It’s a big place and you have to make a pretty big splash to be noticed. The city is so big and the venues are so spread out, that you need to know people in different parts of town to plug you in with the new local artists in the city.

MM: Sounds great! I suppose if you are involved in music, your network will grow. I’d love to be in Houston.

Blake: The Houston crowds are generally an earlier crew. The hot spot times to play are between 9:30-11:30 for local shows.

MM: It’s late enough in England!
Well, could you tell me how you go about writing your songs?

Blake: In the early days, we started with songwriter ideas or we would just jam the hell out our practice space until cool stuff started happening. These days we take a much different approach. We get to write in our studio, which lets us sort of “design” a song with details leading the charge instead of banging around in a loud, incoherent jam room environment. The jam room is obviously important in our process, but we typically build an idea in our recording room and then make it “feel right” in the jam room as a live band.

MM: Regarding your new single “Send My Love”, how long did you take to write and complete the tune?

Blake: Send My Love is an interesting story from beginning to end. It’s actually a fairly old song as far as us playing it live. We took a while to transition to our new drummer Sean and the recording process was slowed down a lot. Once we started playing shows with Sean behind the kit, we slammed out a whole string of them to sorta get settled in. We had drum tracks and basic scratch tracks for Pick your Poison, Send My Love and a song called Save the World. There were some audio problems with the original tracks for Save The World and it just wasn’t feeling like the song was at the level we wanted, so it’s been shelved for now. Our new task was then to get our recording process down and finish Pick Your Poison. We gigged a lot after its release and then finally went back to kicking Send My Love around in the studio. We were and still are learning our process in the studio so Send My Love took a good while to complete. We started it, stopped it for a good 7-8 months, then started back at it. In actual recording time, we probably spent a month and a half getting it tracked, then it’s off to Mike Thompson for mixing and mastering. We are working on more music all the time and we’re getting better at our process.

MM: That’s very interesting to know.
You have told to me before what The Soapbox Revolution were trying to do with lyrics. Do you have any particular agenda with “Send My Love”?

Blake: Send My Love is sort of a confusing story of words, but I love how it comes together. Overall, Send My Love is about throwing your hands up and saying I don’t care what expectations you put on me. The verses are from the perspective of someone speaking to me and the choruses are from my perspective speaking out, if that clears it up a bit. The words saying “I will let you down” is telling people that if they put too high of an expectation on me (or if I put them on myself) I may not meet those expectations. It’s about being ok with that.

MM: To be honest, I understood the lyrics differently. I didn’t have slightest idea about expectation.
Are you planning to release an EP or album in near future?

Blake: We are working on some new music, but we can’t say how we are going to release it just yet. We’ve had a few singles lined up so we have new music coming out slow and steadily. We have a couple more singles on the way, but that strategy won’t be forever! In our current place, we need to keep writing and releasing new content and building an audience to come to shows. Our live show is something we put a lot of time into developing into an experience that people will remember.

MM: Do you have live performance often?

Blake: We definitely play a fair bit, but we will usually wait a few months between shows. If you play every weekend, your audience will stop coming out to see you and you wear out your impact pretty quick. We play in Austin and in different parts of Houston, so we can space things out fairly well.

MM: OK.  Do you tour at all?

Blake: We have not been on tour yet, but we just might have some surprises this year (smile)

MM: Oh, America, stay tuned!!
If you have a plan for live performance near future, where can we find you?

Blake: As of yet, you can catch Soapbox in Texas, but we are gathering fans nationally and even internationally which is a pretty special feeling. I get the feeling we’ll have broader horizons in the near future!

MM: What you are telling me is really exciting!
Thank you very much for taking your time to answer my questions.
I hope that I am able to come to one of your gigs one day soon.

SEND MY LOVE

PICK YOUR POISON

You can check the post “Most Exciting Songs – January 2015” with using this link; http://musicmattersgb.net/2015/01/19/most-exciting-songs-january-2015/

 

If you want to know more about The Soapbox Revolution, you can click the links below;

Twitter –  @SoapboxRevo   https://twitter.com/SoapboxRevo
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/TheSoapboxRevolution
Website – http://www.thesoapboxrevolution.com/#about
SoundCloud –  https://soundcloud.com/thesoapboxrevolution
ReverbNation – http://www.reverbnation.com/thesoapboxrevolution

* All photos used are from The Soapbox Revolution Facebook page.