Maxwell's Maxim with Scarlet Symphony
Maxwell's Maxim with Scarlet Symphony
The streets are dotted with energy. People milling about on their Friday night out create a buzz. It’s a nice enough walk to Bar Pink where I intend to meet Scarlet Symphony for conversation before catching their show later with a friend. Standing around in front of the bar for a bit pays off and I introduce myself to Gary and one of the twins in Scarlet Symphony, I’m 99% sure it was Josh. I then proceed to talk to Zach as if he’s Josh. Luckily, for me, Aaron is not a twin. We walk down the street and stand under the overhang of George’s Camera & Video Exchange. The entire band is dressed slickly. Besides the uncanny identical twinness of brothers Josh and Zach, is the towering height of our entire group, myself included. Busses pass in the background as the interview begins.
Maxwell: Your band is local to SoCal, what part of San Diego did you lads come of age in? Where do you all call home now?
Zach: Me and Josh grew up in La Mesa and we still live in La Mesa right now. Gary grew up in….
Gary: Allied Gardens and now I reside in Golden Hill.
Aaron: I grew up between Golden Hills and Encinitas, back and forth. I currently reside in Carlsbad.
Maxwell: In the Song. “Your Blood is Mine”, you sing, “Apple don’t fall that far from the tree.” This song presents as a difficult relationship between father and son, is it auto-biographical at all?
Gary: It’s actually a murder mystery song that we created. It’s semi-autobiographical, slightly but definitely written in a more fictional essence also.
Maxwell: The song Foundation has a Guns and Roses vibe to it, who in the band is the closet metal fan?
Josh: I’d say me and Zach, old Metallica? Fuck yeah! Guns and Roses? Yeah, sure. I think we all are, Aaron is too….
Aaron: Well, speaking for myself, I’d say yes, I am definitely a metal fan, I’m not a closet metal fan, I’m a metal fan.
Maxwell: Ghosts and Shadows sounded a bit like the band Faith No More, have you ever been compared to Mike Patton before and are you fans of him and his many bands?
Josh: I’m definitely a huge fan of Mike Patton. I love everything he does.
Zach: Me too, absolutely.
Gary: Everything, even the vocal collage crap that he puts together.
Aaron: I like his noise records.
Maxwell: Yeah, I’ve heard some of that.
Zach: Did you know he did the voices of the zombies from the movie, I am Legend? It didn’t surprise me when I heard that.
Josh: Yeah, Mike Patton’s a fucking genius.
Gary: Yeah, yeah, yeah, he’s one of my favorite people alive.
Maxwell: Of your three CDs, which one holds the most meaning for the band as a whole?
Aaron: In my opinion, I would say Foundation just because it’s like a step forward after not taking a few steps for a little bit.
Gary: Possibly the next record, which isn’t even out yet. That’s probably going to hold the most meaning. Maxwell snickers at Gary’s dry sense of humor.
Zach: Yeah, likewise, I’m looking forward to our new songs and it is probably going to be the most meaningful for me as well. But, its all meaningful, of course.
Gary: (Looking up from the keypad of his phone) It’s all very meaningful to me.
Maxwell: When reading the fine print of your most recent CD, Foundation, I noticed that guitarist Aaron Swanton is responsible for both the CD artwork and for producing and recording it? Is Aaron a jack of all trades, suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder or just extremely talented and energetic?
Aaron: No comment.
Gary: OCD. Talented? I don’t know. OCD, very much.
Laughter from the group.
Aaron: Thanks guys.
Maxwell: The guitar on the song Ordinary Man has a South of the Border flavor to it, has Scarlet Symphony spent any time in Mexico?
Zach: I think we all have individually, yes we have, and we’ve played shows down there that are awesome. But I wouldn’t say that song was necessarily influenced by it…
Aaron: (interrupting) Actually, that song was kind of totally influenced by it. I think at one point in time Gary and I actually talked about translating all the lyrics into Spanish and re-recording and re-releasing a Spanish version of that song. That song, actually it’s pretty blatant what it’s about. The title to the lyrics, read the lyrics, it’s pretty clear I think, exactly what it’s about. That’s inspired by everything. We grew up in San Diego too and San Diego practically is Mexico, in fact it was probably Mexico longer than it was ever California. So it is hard not to be influenced by your surroundings. This being a border town, I would show up being half Irish and half Mexican.
Well, after re-reading the lyrics of Ordinary Man, I can’t agree with Aaron that the message is straight forward but I’d venture to say it runs along the lines of man struggling with that old rhetorical question, “What is the meaning of life?”
Josh: I would say that those are some of our funnest shows, playing in Tijuana, I don’t know about getting there these days but those are some good memories of playing Tijuana.
Zach: Definitely an ethnic vibe, it does have a Spanish tinge to it.
Maxwell: Your record label, Cat9 Records, is that exclusively Scarlet Symphony’s or do other bands fall under that umbrella?
Aaron: I would basically say that Cat9 Records is an umbrella for all of us to do what we want. I mean if any of us were to do any projects that we felt that we wanted to release as a group, it would all fall under Cat9. It’s basically a label to serve us putting out our own stuff by ourselves. And if we wanted to sign a band or release a band, I mean, I’m sure we could do that at some point. Basically, it’s existed to release our own projects in various forms.
Maxwell: Zachary and Joshua, being twins and in the same band, you obviously spend a lot of time together. Does that prove to be a challenging work environment or do the benefits of twindom out weigh each others’ annoying idiosyncrasies?
Aaron: That’s a hard hitting question. (He smiles)
Josh: You’re going to make us cry. I don’t think I would…I think my experience with Scarlet Symphony would be much different if there were a different bass player. It would be a totally different story. Absolutely. That’s one of the biggest highlights of this band for me.
Zach: Yes, it certainly does, we have a bond that goes beyond beyond… yeah you know. That’s a tough question because it’s hard to see from the outside.
Maxwell: After reading an on-line article in CityBeat magazine, my curiosity was piqued by the mystery surrounding your band’s initial break-up. Without name calling or revealing dirty details, can you describe what happened and eventually what brought you all back together?
Aaron: No comment.
A few seconds pass by and we’re all quiet. I don’t get the feeling that they’re mad that I asked though, just past it.
Zach: It’s a love of playing music and we all missed it, you know. It’s hard to pass on something that you love in your life.
Maxwell: Do you see a musical revolution happening here in San Diego?
Gary: I’ve seen it three or four times.
Maxwell: When is it going to happen?
Aaron: It comes in waves, there’s waves of bands and what happens, what’s happening right now is kind of interesting, I think, is that there are so many bands and it’s easier for bands to put out their own records. It’s easy for bands to do records by themselves if they have the ambition or the drive to do that. You can go record your own record; you can release your own record. The truth is, even if you’re not making tons and tons and tons of money because not even big record labels are doing that, you can get your music to the people that want to hear it. And even if you’re giving your record away for free on myspace or whatever you’re doing, the opportunity for that to happen is huge. This is a subject that I can go on and on and on about; I have my opinions on it. This happens in San Diego or in any town where bands start playing, a bunch of bands start playing and right now there happens to be a lot of bands and a lot of bands that are good. So, I’ve heard that this is like the little renaissance of San Diego, it sounds like I’m dating myself but it happens. The other thing is, not only are there a lot of bands, there are a lot of bands doing things. Bands that are making records, bands that are going on tour. There’s buzz bands and there’s bands that stick around, it’s an interesting time, there’s a lot going on. I’m sure when we’re old and gray, we’ll all remember this pretty fondly.
Maxwell: How do you guys feel about the music awards?
Zach: I think it’s really cool that they do that, it’s really good for the bands just to be recognized, to get together…
Maxwell: Did you like the pig heads?
Gary: Oh, I loved the pig heads! That was The Burning of Rome.
Aaron: I’d say the music awards are really cool, I think the best part about it is that it raises money. It offers all sorts of things for the musicians. Like especially for the bands that get to play that, it’s like you get to play in front of your community as a whole, whoever is there and that’s all cool, to recognize people for what they’re doing. The coolest part about it is that all money winds up going to charity for music programs for schools and stuff like that. Because that kind of stuff is evaporating and I never…I was in band in junior high but I was on percussion because I wasn’t a saxophone player or something like that but that made a difference in my excitement about music and I hope that, live music is one of those things that has the ability to do all sorts of cool things in the world. That’s encouraging, kids growing up to be involved in that, that’s pretty bad ass. The fact they (SDMA) do that is awesome, our government can’t seem to do that right now. It’s cool that somebody is taking the initiative to do that in their community.
Maxwell: What is your view on the current global situation?
Aaron: You wanna talk for three hours? You just picked on my favorite subject. The only thing I can say is that I hope that the US government or if not, world governments realize that the next economic revolution is an energy revolution. They can utilize the corporations’ greed and turn it into something positive. These corporations are the powers of the world and they control global economies, and that is bigger than government, so I just hope that they can realize, that they can still win, and they can still put the bucks in their pocket, but they might be able to actually do something positive while doing that. Because then, it’s a win win situation, you aren’t cannibalizing the consumer or the citizen, then you aren’t really doing anything wrong even if you are trying to stay on the top of the pile.
Josh: About the music awards, I think it is cool whoever chooses whatever bands for whatever awards but there a lot of bands in San Diego that aren’t recognized at all by that, and I would say some are even more bad ass than some of the bands that were recognized. I would say The Vaginals or Batwings or a whole host of bands. It’s not that big of a deal but it is cool to be honored by people that are around us.
Aaron: I hope next year that they widen their spectrum of music. There’s a lot more going on in San Diego than just the bands that play in North Park. There’s a huge thriving hip hop community that gets a little ignored. I hope to see more of that going on, especially in CityBeat or at the Music awards getting represented a little more. There’s great world music, there’s all sorts of things. The San Diego music community is not small but it is small enough that everybody knows everybody else. Scarlet
Symphony is an uncommon mix, Aaron’s calm demeanor and eloquent speech contrast with the bouncy energy of the Wheeler twins. Lead singer, Gary was most likely saving his energy for their performance later that evening. Whatever the formula is for Scarlet Symphony, it works. At first glance, they appear statuesque and stoic but from the instant the first note is struck, they’re electrifying. Their sound is frenetic like early Clash yet their music and lyrics are better groomed, more polished. My conversation with Scarlet Symphony was pleasant and I honestly believe that I could probably talk to Aaron for hours about politics, conspiracy theories and the like. I get the feeling though that Scarlet Symphony didn’t wholly let their guard down in my presence. Maybe it was the noisy outdoor setting or the steady parade of scantily clad bodacious women headed towards the trendy hot spot True North that kept the interview from getting intimate. Whatever the cause, the result is that I, Maxwell have finally found a band that intrigues me and I intend to further both my study of and my relationship with the fine gentlemen of the up and coming band, Scarlet Symphony.
