To hear Steve Choi of RX Bandits tell it, there was never a proper sit-down about changing the sound of the SoCal third-wave ska group formed in 1995. There was no mission statement, no formal realization, no heady, late-night conversation over a bowl and brews.

“It was just this unspoken thing where it wasn’t about ska anymore,” the RX guitarist said in a phone interview just a few days before heading out on tour. “It was about deliberately pledging dis-allegiance to any genre and playing whatever the hell we wanted to.”

The change wasn’t so apparent on 2001’s Progress, but just the title of 2003’s The Resignation signified that the band was aiming for a paradigm shift, as if surrendering themselves to their latest inclinations, even if doing so might shake up their foundations. They were listening to Joan of Arc, Refused, At the Drive-In, and “always-and-forever for us, Fugazi,” Choi said.

The Resignation’s cover art doesn’t even bear the cartoony, nostalgic early 1960s imagery often seen on late ’90s ska and swing records. It looks like a Tool album. Lyrically, the record opens considering the insanity induced by a beauty-obsessed media culture (“Sell You Beautiful”) and closes with raging punk heartache chronicled in a harmonic minor scale (“Decrescendo”).

“That’s a song I wrote modeled after a flamenco concerto by Federico Mompou,” Choi said.

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RX Bandits recorded a Daytrotter Session while in Austin. Stay tuned for when it will go live. 

Matthew Embree, RX Bandits

The RX Bandits sound fuses elements of rock, reggae, ska, and jazz.  Their multi-dimensional approach should come as no surprise, though, once you understand the creative process of songwriter Matt Embree. He writes all the time, and not just songs: Embree is an avid poet. And like any good poet, he finds inspiration everywhere.  He doesn’t necessarily seek out inspiration, but he puts himself in situations where it comes easily: he’s gone on a 2,000 mile motorcycle ride, and he’s hitchhiked all throughout Central America. When you engage with your environment as much as Embree does - whether it’s the physical environment of the wilderness or the people in a small village in Costa Rica - inspiration is easy to come by. And the songs that are the product of that creative process are rich in their influences.

RX Bandits are now on their farewell summer tour, though according to band member Steve Choi, they aren’t breaking up.  Rather, they are just doing their last tour.  So have no fear, RX Bandits fans, they will not disappear. Read my interview with Matt Embree after the video.

   What other creative outlets do you have besides songwriting?

I do a lot of writing. I write poetry and short stories and just a lot of stream of consciousness stuff.  I’ve written a bunch of books of poetry that I mainly read to friends or women I’m in love with who will appreciate it.  But most of it is just for me.  I’ve been approached to have one of the books published, and a few of my poems have been published in compilations.  

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RX Bandits will be heading all Summer on tour bringing along some great friends and great bands. Maps & Atlases, Zechs Marquise and on a few dates Fang Island , Happy Body Slow Brain and The Hot Toddies. Make sure to get tickets in advance if you can. SHOW DETAILS

RX BANDITS SUMMER 2011 
Jun 26 - Tempe, AZ @ Marquee * @
Jun 28 - Dallas, TX @ Granada Theater * ^ @
Jun 29 - Austin, TX @ Emo’s * ^ @
Jun 30 - San Antonio, TX @ White Rabbit * ^ @ 
July 01 - Houston, TX @ Fitzgerald’s * ^ @
July 03 - New Orleans, LA @ Howlin’ Wolf * ^
July 05 - Orlando, FL @ The Social * ^
July 06 - Orland, FL @ The Social * ^ 
July 07 - Ft. Lauderdale, FL @ Culture Room * ^
July 08 - Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade * ^
July 09 - Washington DC @ 9:30 Club * ^ 
July 10-  Philadelphia, PA @ Theater of Living Arts TLA * ^ 
July 12 - New York, NY @ Irving Plaza * ^ SOLD OUT 
July 13 - New York, NY @ Irving Plaza * ^ 
July 14 - Cambridge, MA @ The Middle East * ^
July 15- Cambridge, MA @ The Middle East  !! ^
July 16 - Portland, ME @ Port City Music Hall  !! ^
July 17 - Montreal, Quebec, Canada @ Cafe Campus * ^
July 18 - Toronto, Ontario, Canada @ Mod Club * ^ 
July 20 - Detroit, MI @ Magic Stick * ^
July 21- Chicago, IL @ Bottom Lounge ^  w/ Cast Spells
July 22 - Milwaukee, WI @ Turner Hall * ^
July 23 - Lawrence, KS @ The Bottleneck * ^ 
July 24 - Denver, CO @ The Summit * ^ 
July 25 - Salt Lake City, UT @ Complex * ^
July 27 - Seattle, WA @ El Corazon * ^
July 28 - Portland, OR @ The Hawthorne * ^
July 30 - Santa Cruz, CA @ Catalyst * ^
July 31 - Sacramento, CA @ Ace Of Spades * ^ 
Aug 03 - Long Beach, CA @ Long Beach Arts Theater ^#
Aug 04 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Mayan ^ #
Aug 06 - Pomona, CA @ Glasshouse  ^ #
Aug 07 - San Francisco, CA @ Regency Ballroom ^ #

* w/ Maps & Atlases
^ w/ Zechs Marquise 
@ w/ Happy Body Slow Brain
!! w/ Fang Island
# w/ The Hot Toddies 

For over a decade, the iconic and metamorphic rock group RX Bandits have been blessing the music scene with their innovative and visionary sound. Fusing multiple styles such as reggae, rock, soul, jazz and ska has allowed RX Bandits to create a new form of music and inventive writing that is comparable to other infamous acts such as The Police and The Band in the sense of having an uncanny musical ability to create melodic melting pots. Ever since their second major release, Progress, RX Bandits have continuously pushed the envelope of modern rock music and turned the scene on its ear so as to hear them better. With such songs as “Sell You Beautiful”, “Overcome (The Recapitulation)” and “To Our Unborn Daughters”, RX Bandits have chosen their music to be a vessel of not just social commentary but of intimate rehabilitation. Songs like “Never Slept So Soundly”, “Only For The Night” and “In Her Drawer” write as if they were of eluded adorations and past loves that have been succumbed to dissolution but if one pays more attention to the personal struggle within the artistically-crafted songwriting, it is difficult to ignore that there is a much more personal conflict trying to be conveyed.
 

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RX Bandits will be playing their last Tour this Summer. We are very happy to announce that Maps & Atlases will be joining them on the majority of the dates as well as Zechs Marquise on all dates (excluding the first in AZ). Also on the first leg will be Happy Body Slow Brain and Fang Island will fill in for 2 shows as well.  Stay tuned for other announcements about some other friends joining up with them on the West Coast. Tickets are selling well so make sure you buy in advance all the venue sites have ticket links. We look forward to seeing you all!

RX BANDITS SUMMER TOUR 2011 
Jun 26 - Tempe, AZ @ Marquee * @
Jun 28 - Dallas, TX @ Granada Theater * ^ @
Jun 29 - Austin, TX @ Emo’s * ^ @
Jun 30 - San Antonio, TX @ White Rabbit * ^ @ 
July 01 - Houston, TX @ Fitzgerald’s * ^ @
July 03 - New Orleans, LA @ Howlin’ Wolf * ^
July 05 - Orlando, FL @ The Social * ^
July 06 - Orland, FL @ The Social * ^ 
July 07 - Ft. Lauderdale, FL @ Culture Room * ^
July 08 - Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade * ^
July 09 - Washington DC @ 9:30 Club * ^ 
July 10-  Philadelphia, PA @ Theater of Living Arts TLA * ^ 
July 12 - New York, NY @ Irving Plaza * ^ SOLD OUT 
July 13 - New York, NY @ Irving Plaza * ^ 
July 14 - Cambridge, MA @ The Middle East * ^
July 15- Cambridge, MA @ The Middle East  !! ^
July 16 - Portland, ME @ Port City Music Hall  !! ^
July 17 - Montreal, Quebec, Canada @ Cafe Campus * ^
July 18 - Toronto, Ontario, Canada @ Mod Club * ^ 
July 20 - Detroit, MI @ Magic Stick * ^
July 21- Chicago, IL @ Bottom Lounge ^
July 22 - Milwaukee, WI @ Turner Hall * ^
July 23 - Lawrence, KS @ The Bottleneck * ^ 
July 24 - Denver, CO @ The Summit * ^ 
July 25 - Salt Lake City, UT @ Complex * ^
July 27 - Seattle, WA @ El Corazon * ^
July 28 - Portland, OR @ The Hawthorne * ^
July 30 - Santa Cruz, CA @ Catalyst * ^
July 31 - Sacramento, CA @ Ace Of Spades * ^ 
Aug 03 - Long Beach, CA @ Long Beach Arts Theater ^
Aug 04 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Mayan ^
Aug 06 - Pomona, CA @ Glasshouse  ^
Aug 07 - San Francisco, CA @ Regency Ballroom ^
* w/ Maps & Atlases
^ w/ Zechs Marquise 
@ w/ Happy Body Slow Brain
!! w/ Fang Island  

(Source: artistdata.sonicbids.com)

To download or view in full size go to Cliq Magazine - Pages 8, 9 & 10

More with RX Bandits’ remarkable sticksman—profiled in April’s Gearing Up column—who smoothly covers the broad ground between So-Cal ska and blazing prog rock. - by Corrado Rizzi

It’s safe to say that you will never see RX Bandits drummer Chris Tsagakis play a song live the same way twice. Some of his parts certainly remain constant—his integral grooves, his cues to shift into a different section of a song. But, as Tsagakis tells MD, “I could be in the middle of the tour and hear a drummer or record that I’ve never heard before, and it will influence me to try something new. I kind of leave it open, so that as I grow as a drummer I just change up the fills. Whatever feels good at the moment, you know?”

In the mid-’90s, Southern California was a breeding ground for ska and the bands that pushed the genre into the mainstream. Tsagakis and his band have moved far from their Orange County beginnings over the course of half a dozen full-length albums, including their latest masterwork,Mandala. “We were pretty ska at first,” Chris says, “and we played with a lot of ska bands when the ska scene was pretty big. As we grew we tried to get out of that; we wanted to move on and be something different—but at the same time we didn’t want to just leave all of our fans behind.”

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RX BANDITS SHOWS 
Dec 31 - Scottsdale, AZ @ Scottsdale Ultimate Block Party 
Jan 14 - Santa Barbara, CA @ The Hub at UCSB
Jan 20 - Flagstaff, AZ @ Orpheum Theatre  **
Jan 21 - Las Vegas, NV @ Hard Rock Cafe - Vegas Strip**
Jan 22 - Anaheim, CA  @ House of Blues  **
Jan 27 - San Luis Obispo, CA  @ SLO Brewing Company **
Jan 28 - San Francisco, CA @ Bottom Of The Hill **
Jan 29 - San Francisco, CA @ Bottom Of The Hill **

**= w/  Fake Problems & Native  

(Source: artistdata.sonicbids.com)

Chad Stokes & Friends Launch Charity Tour

Chad Stokes, Matt Embree w/ Lauren Coleman & Friends Tour Dates:
12/1/2010 – Chicago, IL – Lincoln Hall
12/3/2010 – Toronto, ON – The Rivoli
12/4/2010 – Buffalo, NY – Ninth Ward
12/5/2010 – Burlington, VT – Higher Ground
12/7/2010 – Vienna, VA – Jammin’ Java
12/8/2010 – Philadelphia, PA – World Café Live
12/10/2010 – Boston, MA – House of Blues 

Two years after launching Calling All Crows, a service organization dedicated to mobilizing musicians and their fans to empower women around the world, Chad Stokes has raised nearly $175,000 raised in support in Sudanese women. Fans have boasted over 8,000 hours of service to the cause.

Chad Stokes & Friends are set to launch their show December 1st in Chicago, IL at Lincoln Hall. All proceeds will benefit Calling All Crows. Fans are encouraged to bring pocket collected pocket change and bring it to the shows in support of Bringing Change to Women, a campaign aimed at closing the gap on their 2010 goal of raising $100,000 for Oxfam America to provide job training to Sudanese women.

Pre-show service projects focused on women’s empowerment, organized by Calling All Crows, will be announced for each city on the Chad Stokes & Friends Tour in the coming weeks. Matt Embree of Rx Bandits, Love You Moon,  Lauren Coleman of Pebaluna, The White Buffalo, and Bonnie Paine of Elephant Revival are among the lineup for the show.

A benefit show at the House of Blues on December 10th will serve as the tour’s finale and the centerpiece of Calling All Crow’s 3rd Annual Benefit Weekend in Boston, MA. A special Meet and Greet will be available for a $75 donation.

On November 19th at Saint Rocke in Hermosa Beach, CA. RXB will be playing another all acoustic show. Joining us will be our good friend Vinnie Caruana who will be performing his solo stuff. Make sure to get tickets in advance it’s a small intimate place and is 21+.

Rx BANDITS AT THE TROUBADOUR
9/24 Friday, 9/25 Saturday & 9/26 Sunday - ALL SOLD OUT
(Chris Martins)

“Those who’ve experienced them in person know that Seal Beach’s Rx Bandits are one of the most rip-roaring, fantastically furious live bands on the planet. Chalk it up to their early days as horn-blazing ska-punk revivalists, a phase they’ve grown through quite gracefully. Though they were once part of the Drive-Thru Records stable, RxB always displayed an ear for the avant-garde, and time has proven them to be as prog(ressive) as the Mars Volta, though well grounded in deep dub riddims and punk-pop emotiveness (the latter needed to effectively deliver singer Matt Embree’s political treatises). The band’s last three albums — The Resignation (2003), And the Battle Begun (2006) and Mandala (2009) — show a veteran live act finally realizing its on-record potential, even as its membership dropped from six to a hornless four. Now, over the course of three evenings, the band completes the circle by performing each album in its entirety (on respective nights). Three-night passes sold out almost immediately — a testament to what’s in store for those yet to be baptized by the Bandits. “

A Weekend of RX Bandits: Preview

Andrew Phan (Pharmacy)

This weekend the RX Bandits will invade West Hollywood, selling out 3 straight nights at the famous Troubadour on Santa Monica Boulevard. Each night, the Bandits will be performing one of their three most recent albums in its entirety.

In October, 2006 (my first semester in college) RX Bandits released …And The Battle Begun. To be honest, up until then I had only known them as ‘that ska/punk band from the Drive Thru samplers with the song about analog boys in a digital word’. What I heard blew that reputation out of the water. I was so incredibly wrong to think that Finch was the best thing Drive Thru had to offer when I was in high school. These guys weren’t stereotypical SoCal chill, mixing in wah-guitar upstrokes between horn and bass riffs. This was a band with raw energy and real messages channeling through their sounds. I needed more. The only way was to rediscover their back catalog. A certain former president of Tastemakers recommended that I start with the closing track on the band’s final release on Drive Thru, The Resignation. “Decrescendo” is anything but what the title suggests; it’s a supercharged opus that revolves around the sole lyrical refrain to transition from syncopated horn and guitar solos, hard-driving choruses, and an epic gang drum finale.

“Did you get what you wanted?”

Guitarist, Steve Choi looks back on the growth both he and the band have experienced since The Resignation was released in 2003.

“I’m living life as an artist. I’m living life as a musician. If I’m not refining and progressing and getting better, what am I? I’m dead.

“Each (album) is its own life achievement as itself. We all can distinctly remember the struggle and all the work. Each album is kind of its own scrapbook or yearbook. Pretty much every song has its own specific set of memories. I remember specifically the place I first wrote “Decrescendo” in the back of our tour bus in Brighton, England. We had the day off and we were right across from the beach and we were just sitting around and it was the end of a really long European tour…

“A lot of (singer) Matt (Embree)’s lyrics deal with social and political issues the past few years. Really where that comes from first is expressing ourselves more than it is trying to put out some sort of manifesto or what we think people should be doing. The only reason people may think that is because we say it with a voice more resolute and we say it in a way that can be interpreted as being preachy. But really that’s not where we’re coming from. I think part of what makes us US and part of what makes us progress naturally is focusing on who we are and where we are at the time.”

Drummer, Chris Tsagakis weighs in on the evolution of the band’s sound.

“We don’t necessarily have an idea of what the album is going to be or what we want it to be beforehand. We just do what we feel like doing at the moment and it turns out how it turns out.

“The writing and recording process was pretty much the same for all the albums. We try to write pretty much the same way every time we write the songs all together and we record live as much as we can. That’s the same for all the albums.

“A lot of our fans like our music because it is just what it is. It’s just a creative expression rather than a product. Since we’ve kept consistent with that, our fans seem to be consistently happy with each release as its own piece of artwork.

The band has previously played full album shows in New York and Boston.

“It’s fun to concentrate on just one album as a whole as the way we wrote it, playing it to be heard,” Tsagakis explains.

“If anything it really makes us feel really good,” Choi admits. “It really amplifies what amazing fans we have. Not to sound too cheesy or anything, but it’s true. The overwhelming response we get for the albums and how much support and excitement revolves around doing these performances. As flattering and exciting as that is, it’s really nerve racking…”

With fans coming from as far as Israel, Thailand, or Venezuela to see these shows, the anticipation has certainly mounted. Luckily, the band has been able to prepare for the weekend from the comfort of their own homes in Los Angeles.

“The last week and a half we’ve been practicing every day,” says Tsagakis. “Two days ago we started practicing with the horn players for The Resignation and ‘Battle.’ They knew the music but we had them come in a few days before the shows to get tight as a 6 member band again.”

Choi admits that he’s had some anxiety preparing for this weekend’s shows.

“Being holed up in our tour bus is definitely not as good for our health, but being on tour and playing shows every night really does help your conditioning and stamina for when you do these full album shows. They really do take a lot more stamina than a set that you put together.

“When you have that many people that stoked on you and you have that much energy being projected at you and they’re participating with you and you’re sharing this moment. You’d have to be really dead to not be really moved by that. It’s one of the most moving things I’ve ever experienced in my life and I think it’s one of the more moving things anyone can experience from the audience or from the stage.

“Just seeing all these stoked faces, seeing all these people that are so excited and sharing this with you, knowing that they appreciate something that you made so much, it’s so flattering and it’s such an honor. I won’t lie about it; it makes me feel really damn good. That’s definitely something I can say, on behalf of the band that we’re all looking forward to. We’re looking forward to…or attempting to put on the most stellar show that we can.”

I’ll be keeping you updated on tastemakersmag.com all weekend with a running diary of the all the happenings at the Troubadour.