Written by Lauren Rosier
Brooklyn-based psychedelic punk-rocker, Lord Sonny the Unifier, shares his next single, “(All My Friends Live) Underground,” since the release of his debut full-length, Final Notice, in 2019.
The first of four singles to be released from his upcoming All New Information EP, “(All My Friends Live) Underground,” is an incredibly rousing track with lots of grit.
Lord Sonny explains, “‘(All My Friends Live) Underground’ is a song about iconoclasts and outsiders who find their group of freaks, or Tribe in the shadows and underbelly, outside the conventions of society. It’s a calling to join us and leave behind what society has embraced as the norms and the acceptable, the well-trod path above. Leave the trivialities being thrust upon us since birth and join our Tribe and rediscover there the truths that will enrich you and not those who suck your energy in order to enrich themselves.”
Brooklyn-based alternative-rock band, Lord Sonny The Unifier, is led by Gregory Jiritano. Jiritano began playing guitar when he was just 8-years-old, started a band at age 12, and began playing in NYC bars at 16. After he lost his recording studio in 2015, he had to either give up or regroup. He decided to re-group. Jiritano talked with friend Carmine Covelli to play the drums, then met friend Tyler Wood, “a keyboard-wizard-freak and sound guru,” then Wood swore by his good friend, Derek Nievergelt to play bass. Thus, Lord Sonny The Unifier was born.
“I began playing guitar at age 8, so I cannot remember life without a guitar in my hands or very nearby. It was a $20 acoustic guitar my mother brought me back from Mexico. After moving on to an electric guitar, I joined a band at age 12 and miraculously we got gigs at schools, local fairs, and church basements,” He began. “At 16, I began playing in bars in NYC and the surrounding boroughs. Two years later I began writing, and it was at this time I got very interested in the recording process and decided it would be best if I owned my own recording equipment in order to be a self-reliant musician and to begin sonic experiments without restrictions, either by studio cost and time restraints or record label handicaps. It was also then that I decided it would be best to concentrate solely on my own songs and projects and not be distracted by playing other people’s music in other bands no matter how lucrative or exciting the prospect might be.”
In the early years, Jiritano spent time working with John Schumann. They spent time isolated in the mountains of Massachusetts, wrote, and recorded only using “modified analog effects and stringed electric instruments aided by John’s electronic wizardry often overdubbing up to 40 guitars.” They worked for six years doing recording there on a 24-track, 2-inch tape machine.
“Unfortunately, none of this music was released and due to its extreme recording techniques, we never performed live and we then went our separate ways,” Jiritano explained. “I moved the studio back to Brooklyn and began a solo project playing all the instruments and limiting the guitar tracks to 12 or so. After three years, that recording was also complete.” Yet again, the building that he housed his second studio in caught fire and burnt to the ground. Everything he had purchased to record was gone. He had no money to promote, just the completed album, so that was abandoned.
Lord Sonny The Unifier‘s EP All The Information will be released on November 13, 2020.
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