by Ari Roth
Our second ReverbNation unsigned band pick for June is Chasing Carmen, a young band based in New York City that have been building up steam and gaining a following with their grungy brand of hard rock. I spoke with the band earlier this month to discuss their ambitious new album, playing shows with superstar rockers, and the challenges of working as an independent and unsigned band.
Chasing Carmen originally formed in 2010, and since then, the band has undergone a number of lineup changes, retaining three of their original members, changing drummers and adding on two additional lead guitarists to bolster their sound. Befitting their size, the members also sport diverse influences, drawing from grunge, funk, jazz, prog and punk to create a sound that, as guitarist and co-songwriter Zakk Rogg-Meltzer tells me, has “completely evolved on its own. It’s all over the place, and it somehow melds into something that doesn’t sound awful.”
The band is currently supporting its most recent album, last year’s Perfect Kind of Misery, which Zakk Rogg-Meltzer describes as “kind of a concept album.” Vocalist Evan D’Abrosca, who, along with Rogg-Meltzer and drummer Pete Sinéad, contributed lyrics to the album, further explains the themes on the record: “It kinda started off as just a bunch of songs that we really liked to play together, and then, as it went on we found a link between them all, so it turned into a ‘success story gone wrong,’ coming from a small town, getting into this giant world of Hollywood. We started there, and it grew into the drugs and alcohol, and the fame and vanity of Hollywood, and then it brought him down, but it ends on almost a questionable note, because you don’t know whether he’s going to stay alive in the city, or if he’s just going to fade away.”
To match this considerable step up in thematic scale, the band also chose to expand their recording process. They recorded their first album, 2012’s Angels & Devils, in “a local studio in Connecticut,” on a low budget in a very short amount of time, ultimately “cutting a few corners” that the band now regrets. Rogg-Meltzer tells me that “after that process we said, alright, well we actually have these really good songs that we’ve written, and it would be a shame to not do them the justice of actually going to a proper studio with a well-known producer and doing this the right way.”
And that is exactly what they did, working in a much larger studio with high-level producers and engineers, including producers who have worked with The Pixies, Muse, Story Of The Year, and many other well-known bands. They also worked further on the songs that they had while in the studio, developing the arrangements into a more polished final product. The result is a marked improvement from their debut, the sound of a young band coming into its own.
In addition to working with the producers for more well-known acts, Chasing Carmen have also shared the stage with some of rock’s most famous bands, an opportunity which Rogg-Meltzer says was “an awesome experience.” He explains that “we’ve played a lot of one-off shows with a lot of bigger bands over the years, and we were actually lucky enough to play on the Rockstar Uproar Tour. We got to open for Alice In Chains and Jane’s Addiction, which was so crazy for us, to think that Alice In Chains is going to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame someday and we were part of the same show as them.” This also has allowed the band to develop their fanbase, and playing for the fans of their biggest influences has exposed their sound to a wider audience than ever before.
Many of Chasing Carmen’s breakthrough moments have happened onstage when playing with other, more established acts. Rogg-Meltzer recalls one in particular, in which the band finally resonated with an audience in a massive way. He tells me that “there was a one show gap where our old drummer left before our new drummer came aboard, and we opened for Hinder and Saving Abel, in Hartford, Connecticut. We had gotten this new drummer just to fill in for the show, and we had probably practiced with him a total of seven or eight hours in entirety before the show, and there was a much bigger crowd than we thought there would be at the time we were playing. I remember Evan singing choruses, and by the middle of the song people who had never heard our music before were singing along really boisterously and enthusiastically and going nuts. I remember looking at Evan and thinking, ‘this is ridiculous.’”
Since then, the band’s progress has been filled with such moments, like their wildly successful album release show at The Studio at Webster Hall in New York City, and even playing South By Southwest in Austin, Texas for the first time. Despite all of their successes alongside more or less mainstream bands, what stands out about Chasing Carmen is that they remain entirely independent and self-sufficient. Rogg-Meltzer says that this is not necessarily a matter of principle, but simply that no label has approached them that would be helpful in furthering “what we’re looking to be and where we’re looking to get” as a band.
Despite having a label, Chasing Carmen works astonishingly well as a functional unit, handling the day to day financial and organizational aspects of the band without the need of a manager, although D’Abrosca says that “Zakk does an absolutely phenomenal job keeping us all in the loop, keeping us all in check.”
Rogg-Meltzer tells me that taking on this additional (and often more taxing) role of band managing has been a challenge, and that “I always used to think about being in a band, being a musician, and it never occurred to me how much stuff there is to do that is not related to playing music at all. That was the biggest shock to me. In terms of booking the shows, in terms of promoting the shows, in terms of managing the band, managing the finances, in terms of getting from venue to venue, in terms of the social media aspect, getting press, releasing the album, booking the studio. There’s endless amounts of things.”
As D’Abrosca interjects, “at the end of the day, it’s a business.” Despite all this, the band is also still open to the possibility of “the support of a label from a marketing or touring perspective,” if the right one was to come along.
In addition to the struggle to maintain an independent band on a financial level, there have been a number of other hurdles and challenges for the band. Almost every member stage-whispers “distance!” as I ask this question, and indeed, the members are somewhat spread out geographically, with New York City acting as more of a “middle point” or hub onto which the band converges. They are also working to “expand beyond our current location and fanbase,” in order to grow into a nationally-known band. To this end, they have big plans for the future, including debuting a new song live, the first written with their current lineup, at an upcoming sold-out show at the Grand Ballroom at Webster Hall. It will also be the biggest concert ever given consisting entirely of bands who are unsigned to any label in the history of New York City.
Chasing Carmen will continue to tour in August, and then return to the studio in the fall to unleash a new EP, which is certainly a tantalizing prospect. With all this to look forward to, it is safe to say that it will be the biggest year yet for Chasing Carmen. This is a determined, exciting band who are committed to their music, and who shows no sign of slowing down.
