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(Winter 2005) by George Dionne
Line of Fire is a melodic rock band out of Jamestown, North Carolina. They
have been compared to such eighties mainstays as Journey and Boston. Earlier
this year, the group released their debut album via Tribunal Records (read
CD review). Although Line of Fire may not be a household name,
they have firmly planted their seed in the melodic rock underground, as their
(very)
independent
release
has sold through its first pressing. I'm all about giving the little guy
a chance to speak, so I caught up with Shawn Pelata at the Las Vegas Hilton
Hotel
while
Line of Fire prepared for the first show of their sold-out World tour. Okay,
we were both at home on the phone after a hard day of work at our 'day jobs.'
RIL: If I knew absolutely nothing about Line of Fire, how would
you describe the band’s music to me?
SB: Lets see, it’s really melodic, it takes a lot from the late eighties/early
nineties melodic hard rock vibe. There are elements of bands like Def Leppard
and Journey. If you like the big layered melodic choruses and good guitars
solos and things like that….that’s kind of where we go.
RIL: How the hell did you make the transition from a metalcore vocalist
in KILLWHITENYDEAD to melodic vocalist in Line of Fire?
SB: I was never actually in KILLWHITNEYDEAD. I was
a guest vocalist on one song, on two of their albums. Matt [Rudzinski], who
runs Tribunal Records,
had heard some of the other metal based bands I was in and asked me if I
would be interested in doing a line or two on a couple of the KILLWHITENYDEAD
albums. We did the first one, and several months later we did the second
one. I think I was in the studio for both of them for a grand total of a
half an hour. That was basically my involvement. When [Line of Fire] signed
to the same label that WHITNEY was on, that was one of the promotional angles
they wanted to play; ‘This is the guy that sings on [KILLWHITNEYDEAD].’ It’s
worked out quite well because that’s one of the questions that always
come up.
RIL: When did Line of Fire form?
SB: Line of Fire formed mid to late 2003. I was doing
vocals on some session work that Ed [Darst], one of our guitarists, was doing
at the time. They
put an ad for a singer, and I wasn’t doing anything at the time.
As we were doing the sessions over the course of a few months, Ed and I
would talk. We discovered that we had a lot in common musically, and we
got along real well as friends. We were really into a lot of the old melodic
bands; Journey, Toto, Kansas, Foreigner, and stuff like that. The music
that we were doing at that time wasn’t anything like that. When we
got finished with that project we thought, why don’t we do something
that? We really have the heart for it. It was something we haven’t
done before, so we decided to do what became Line of Fire. Nikki [Dimage]
and I were in a band together in 1998, and we have been best friends since
then. I knew that Nikki’s song writing would do nothing but enhance
what Ed and I were after. We played him a couple of the ideas that we had
at the time and asked him if he would be interested in coming on. He jumped
in, and the three of us just wrote a record.
RIL: How long was it before the album was completed?
SB: We actually tracked as we wrote it. Some of the
stuff on the record were songs that Nikki had already written. The ones that
were written by Nikki
and I were pretty much the ones that Nikki had the music done for, but
had no lyrics. That’s where I came in. The ones that Ed did were
off-the-cuff and pretty much new for the record. So there’s a mixture
of some catalog material and some new material on there. We started with
the stuff that was already finished, and as we completed songs, we just
tracked them. It took probably a little over a year to get all the tracking
done. Ed lives about an hour from Nikki and I, so when you’re doing
stuff like that…and all three of us are married, we all have jobs,
and the whole nine yards…we can only get together maybe once or twice
a week. The studio that we recorded in was at Ed’s house. He turned
the lower level of his house into a full blown studio, so even if Nicky
and I couldn’t be there, Ed could still go down there and chip away
at it.
RIL: Where did the bands name come from?
SB: The real easy answer is a Journey song. Journey
had a song called “Line
of Fire.” When we were looking around for names…and there are
so many names and bands out there…the internet changed the game of
music immensely. Bands are using six word phrases as there name now. It’s
just so hard to find a name. I was just listening to Journey and I heard
Line of Fire and I thought, ‘that’s kind of cool.’ I Googled
it to see if there were any other bands with that name. I found one that
was a Journey tribute band in California. I emailed them and it turned out
to be the bass player for that tribute band. I asked him if it would be ok
if we used that name because we’re out here in North Carolina. He emailed
back and said, ‘Take it; we broke up a year ago.’ We have heard
of a band or two here and there with that name, but to our knowledge they
don’t have anything out, so we just went with it. We haven’t
had any problems so far.
RIL: Did you send demos to any major labels or had you already decided to
go with Tribunal?
SB: Tribunal came by accident, but first off, no we
didn’t shop it
to any major labels. With the kind of music we do, we really didn’t
see the point. A lot of the majors are interested in kids they can put in
a van and give them free pizza for six months so they can go tour. Everything
is so trend driven. We knew there was no way…the most we would get
would be, ‘You guys are real good, but it’s not what we’re
looking for.’ Tribunal came by accident. We were making the record…there
were a couple of labels in Europe that go for the kind of music we do, and
I had talked to them briefly, and I mean briefly. Two or three of them said, ‘Send
us your stuff when you’re ready.’ So we just kept working on
the record.
We ran it by Matt at Tribunal because he was a friend.
I had no remote inkling about signing with Tribunal, because that wasn’t
the kind of label they are. He loved it, he absolutely loved it. What a lot
of people don’t realize is that Tribunal does a lot of hardcore bands
and metalcore bands. Matt however is a huge fan of melodic rock. He just
loves it. In the last two years he’s gone to a dozen Journey shows
all up and down the East Coast. Matt said I have to put this out! I laughed,
because I thought he was kidding. He said he was absolutely serious. I told
him I thought we would stick out like a sore thumb on his label. He has a
good national distribution, and other labels that we could have gone with
didn’t. They wouldn’t have been able to get us on Bestbuy.com,
VH1.com, and Amazon. We’re on all the standard melodic rock outlets
too. Also, the label is close to home. RIL: Has the album been selling well?
SB: It’s actually doing better than we thought. We were expecting to
move through the first pressing in about a year, which would make us happy
because that means 1000 people liked our record. We pretty much moved through
the first pressing already. That’s almost 1000 CD’s and it’s
only been out for four weeks. It did a lot better than we thought, and were
getting a lot more attention than we expected to get. I was expecting 100
units over the first two to three months. We’re getting a lot of great
reviews, good response, and a lot of attention from the website. The three
finished songs up at the site have only been up there for two months, and
we’ve had 3000 listens. It’s blowing our minds! I keep telling
people we’re in no danger of selling 100,000 albums, but we’re
getting enough attention. I’m getting e-mails and messages all the
time saying, ‘I just got my CD in the mail and I love it.’
RIL: A reviewer at Blabbermouth.net had written a harsh review for
your new album, which I thought was unfair because I don’t think they factored
in that you’re a new band, your album was cut on a low budget, and
they really based their dislike for the album on the fact that the sound
was dated and it was too different from the hardcore metal stuff they normally
review. Do reviews like that bother you?
SB: They really don’t (bother me) because when it gets right down to
it, a review is a single persons opinion. I use to write reviews. It’s
simply that one reviewer’s opinion of that one record, and if he doesn’t
like it, thinks it sounds dated, or he thinks the productions bad or whatever…that’s
what he thinks, you can’t fault him for it.
RIL: I’ve seen more good reviews than bad for your new album, that’s
why that one kind of stuck out.
SB: Right. I didn’t even know Blabbermouth did one. I don’t even
bother looking at some of those outlets. I knew a review copy went there,
but a lot of times I don’t get a contact saying that a review was done.
I hand picked a few places that I wanted it to go, but other than that, it
basically went out on Tribunal’s mailing list. Needless to say, their
mailing list is all hardcore stuff.
RIL: You compare yourself to bands like Journey and Boston, have you ever
met any of them?
SB: I hate to compare because I’m definitely
not in the same league as Journey and Boston. A lot of that is marketing.
RIL: As a fan more or less…
SB: I’ve met Journey at one of those after show meet-and-greets. It
was very quick though; move down the line, shake a hand, sign an autograph
kind of thing. I’ve met the guys in Kings X four or five times, they’re
a lot more accessible. There one of my top five bands ever I love. As far
as the other bands on my favorites list, I’ve never got to meet TNT,
Bon Jovi, or Def Leppard. Nikki has meet Brad Delp from Boston back when
he was with RTZ (Return to Zero). Nikki always gives me a hard time because
he knows how much I love Kings X. I me Journey on the ‘98 tour, and
you could really tell among the five of them, which guys in the band were
the veterans and which were the new guys. Deen Castranovo and Steve Augeri
were smiling, hand shaking, and talking, but Ross Valory, Jonathan Caine,
and Neal Schon were way to cool for pictures…you know what I mean?
They were gracious, but that was it.
RIL: What do you think of both of those bands (Journey and Boston) recent
releases, Generations and Corporate America?
SB: I’m the guy who likes it when bands kind
of moves around and changes, so I loved Generations. It reminded me of an updated version of the seventies
Journey. It sounded like they tried to make a record like Infinity or Evolution.
The songs were longer, they had more layers to them, and they spread the
vocals around. In all honesty, I could have done without Ross Valory’s
song. It’s a good song, but whether it belongs on a Journey record
is up for debate. I thought Deen's vocals were great. I thought Schon’s
were great too. “Out of Harms Way” was really good, and “Faith
in the Heartland” is just an amazing song.
I liked Corporate America.
Nikki bought it before I did and he was like, ‘I don’t know,
they got a girl singing on it, and it sounds like a country song.’ There
were elements of classic Boston in there, and there were elements of them
taking some chances. When you have that many guitar players and that many
song writers in a band, it’s almost criminal to not let them do something.
It’s no contender for album of the year, but I wasn’t one of
the scores of people going ‘booooo.’ RIL: Why doesn’t Line of Fire have an official website?
SB: Cause we’re all broke (laughs)! It’s one of the things that
we just haven’t done yet. We’re basically doing everything in
baby steps. We did the MySpace thing to showcase our demos. I put a couple
of demos up early on, and it was really no big deal. That’s taken on
a life of its own, and right now that’s our website. Even bands with
big websites still have Myspace pages because it’s really a great networking
thing. You can put your own website out there, but unless you have people
to tell, ‘hey our website is out there,’ then they’re not
going to know were it is.
RIL: Yeah we have a MySpace page too.
SB: See what I mean.
RIL: Just for the networking side of it…people find us other
ways in addition to MySpace.
SB: The networking is amazing. We have sold a lot
of CDs because of MySpace. It doesn’t cost anything, it’s easy to update, easy to run, and
we get phone request and messages everyday. To me it’s like a built
in mailing list and people who like your stuff can contact you directly through
it. I found out that just talking to people is really cool. Just staying
personable with them, and calling them by name, and saying thank you. An
official website is something we are looking at. After the first of the year
were looking at some merchandising options as well as website options.
RIL: How about a tour?
SB: I don’t know about actual touring. We will
definitely do some regional dates. We’re based out of North Carolina,
so were looking at South Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee to start. Of course,
when you put a record,
everybody in every state and every country goes, ‘when are you coming
here?’ I think we’re going to try and campaign to get on a festival
or two this summer. We’ll just have to wait and see how it goes. We
have had a lot of regional interest, and we are definitely ready to play.
We’re nailing down a couple of guys now for the bass player and drummer
slot. Were going to start rehearsing right after the holiday, so by the first
of March, we’ll be ready to do dates here and there. It’s going
to start out with just weekend dates.
There’s some bands around here
that they play every hole in the wall, every fifth mile down the road, three
times a week for months and months at a time. They wonder why nobody comes
to the show. It’s because people are sick of them. You can be the best
band in the world, but as awesome as KISS is, nobody wants to see them three
times a week for six months. So we’re going to try and be selective
and try and spread it out. There is no reason to kill ourselves trying to
make a name, because in all honesty, nobody in the band cares about being
rockstars
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SHAWN
PELATA
