RX BANDITS

Zechs Marquise are touring with Thursday, Maylene & The Sons of Disaster, and Native as well as headlining some dates in November / December. Unfortunately their own Matt Wilkson will have to miss the December shows. So our own  Steve Choi will be taking his place playing guitar on all the December dates below 12/1 - 12/10.

ZECHS MARQUISE LIVE
11/15  Houston, TX @ Fitzgerald’s - Upstairs
11/16  New Orleans, LA @ Howlin’ Wolf Den
11/18  Chapel Hill, NC @ Local 506
11/19  Greenville, NC @ Tipsy Teapot
11/20  Washington, DC @ DC9
11/21  Philadelphia, PA @ Kung Fu Necktie
11/22  Allston, MA @ O’Brien’s Pub
11/23  New York, NY @ Irving Plaza $
11/25  Toronto, ON @ The Opera House $
11/26  Pittsburgh, PA @ Altar Bar $
11/27  Milwaukee, WI @ The Pabst Theater $
11/28  Cleveland Heights, OH @ Grog Shop $
11/30  Atlanta, GA @ The Loft $
12/01  Cincinnati, OH @ 20th Century Theater $
12/02  Chicago, IL @ Bottom Lounge $
12/03  Pontiac, MI @ iLounge (at Clutch Cargos) $
12/04  Rochester, NY @ Montage Music Hall $
12/06  St Louis, MO @ The Firebird
12/07  Lawrence, KS @ Jackpot Music Hall
12/08  Dallas, TX @ Bryan Street Tavern
12/09  Austin, TX @ Antone’s Night Club
12/10  San Antonio, TX @ Studio 13

$ w/ Thursday, Maylene & The Sons of Disaster, Native
Bold dates w/ Steve Choi on Guitar for Matt Wilkson

(Source: artistdata.sonicbids.com)

RX Bandits Play July 25th at The Complex, Salt Lake City w/ Maps & Atlases and Zechs Marquise.

“Steve Choi gives interviews like he’s a politician. The RX Bandits’ guitarist/keyboardist doesn’t speak like a hypocritical scumbag of a politician, but rather a doggedly idealistic one—a guy with unwavering views and PR-friendly answers to any questions that come his way. Choi is so determined to convey a handful of certain ideas that, during a recent interview, it seemed like he was actively conducting a two-part campaign based around the image of his Long Beach, Calif.-based band.

The first part of his platform insists that RX Bandits have never made a conscious decision in altering their style. Instead, he insists, everything’s been a product of gradual evolution. “We always keep the mentality that it could go in any direction,” Choi says. “We didn’t have any views on the trajectory or where it was headed or how fast it would be heading there. It was kind of like, ‘Let it happen and keep doing it as long as it feels good and right.’ ”

Later, he makes another statement that runs along the same lines: “I feel like we were where we were supposed to be at each stage in our progression.” Try to ask him a question about how the band might hypothetically sound in the future, and he won’t rattle off anything from his imagination, instead vigilantly sticking to his POV that everything is up in the air until the whole group converges in the same room.

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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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Like it or not, death eventually gets a chance to wrap its bony little fingers around every living thing. Bands, however, are fortunate enough to have some wiggle room with their time of expiration. The current status of Rx Bandits exemplifies this idea. In April, the Seal Beach, California-based four-piece announced that it’d embark on its last tour this summer—but by all indicators, the group won’t actually be gone for good as much as it’ll exist in the blurry state of “indefinite hiatus.” 

Still, this move does close the chapter on some 15 years of heavy touring and intriguing twists. Starting out as a rather innocuous ska/punk band, the Bandits gradually morphed into an inventive batch of prog-rock/reggae players, reveling in increasingly abstract imagery and eventually shelving the horns entirely. The band’s last album, 2009’sMandala, took its name from a Sanskrit term representing the cycle of life—a choice emphasizing the band’s natural sonic progression. With the act on its way out (however temporarily), now’s the time to see Rx Bandits, as it stops at Emo’s tonight, June 29, with Maps & Atlases, Zechs Marquise, and Happy Body Slow Brain. Before the band heads into the murky unknown, The A.V. Club caught up with guitarist-keyboardist Steve Choi to discuss spontaneity, boulders, and the question he’s never been asked.

The A.V. Club: In the past, you’ve spoken repeatedly about how the band hasn’t made any conscious decisions about its direction, instead letting things happen gradually. Why does the idea of evolution appeal to you so much, as opposed to carrying out an idea that’s already been decided?

Steve Choi: I feel like we try to base a lot of our creative philosophy on the natural laws of the world. In this case, we all trust in each other’s abilities and what we bring to the table. As songwriters, Matt [Embree] and I have the capabilities to make complete songs and dictate what everyone plays and that sort of thing, but I really feel like that wouldn’t be maximizing our potential. While there are cases here and there [of things] Matt and I have done completely on our own, it would be not maximizing the sound to not have that sort of spontaneous collaboration—because once you get into that territory, you’re dealing with the subconscious. When you deal with jamming and improvisation, you’re dealing with a different part of your brain. The ideas that come out of that, more often than not, work out to be really great for us. Our approach is to write a framework and create sounds, but within the boundaries of the song, utilize all the free space we have, metaphorically speaking, [by] exercising these spontaneous ideas and even turning mistakes into parts that in that realm aren’t really mistakes.

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

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.

Fresh off the stage at Academy 3 in Manchester, progressive reggae-punk four stringer Steve Choi puts down his bass and kicks back to fill Skiddle in on all things Bandits…

Your sixth studio album is entitled Mandala, which isn’t a word you’d use everyday! Can you put its significance into context?
“Mandala” is one of the oldest words known to man, it’s an old sanskrit word which means two things; the circle of life, going right back to the beginning and also it’s a physical shape, sort of like a pentagram. So you can draw it out and it’s meant to be a quiet space for meditation. It’s a physical symbol with a bigger meaning. 

You’ve chosen to record with LA producer Chris Fudurich again, how do you decide on who to work with?We’ve worked with Chris on two records before, so we had a good working relationship with him. He understands our personalities and we trust him enough to shoot it real straight with us. He’ll tell us if something sucks! It was relaxed but also quite stressful - we’re chilled out guys but we do put a lot of pressure on ourselves to make things good. We’re perfectionists to a certain degree… obsessive freaks like any good artist!

Has your love of live music changed at all from the start of your career? Do you see performance in a different light?

The love of live music is definitely still there. After years of doing it, we’ve have changed but our main enthusiasm, well if that changed we’d probably just stop doing it because none of us are the kind of people who’ll do something we don’t enjoy.”

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Our own Steve Choi gives the rundown on the most influential and favorite albums with the #1 choice going to the one and only Fugazi of course.