LAUREN
SiX vocalist
ex-Drown vocalist
www.sixmusic.com

(Summer 2004) by George Dionne

Formed in the summer of 2001, this Orange County, California group found themselves bored of all the music they were hearing around them, so they hit the studio to do their own thing. After selling over 5000 of their self-released (under the 1605 label) EP, SiX went back to work on their first full-length release. The result is 2004's The Price of Faith (read CD review); a hard-hitting, pull no punches, metal assault. To promote their latest release, frontman Lauren was more then happy to let me in on everything SiX.

RIL: Why did you decide on the name SiX?
L: We come from this underground musical community called 1605. We sort of made a joke one time that we should start a band called 1605, because it connected to so many different people. It would be like a weird little supergroup in the underground. Of course, that name would have been way too long and it would have been kind of silly. So, when we were working on material the band started off with two people, and shortly we added a third. He was a bass player that also played guitar, my guitar player was also a programmer, and I was a singer as well as a writer. We realized that each one of us had two jobs. I made a joke that the three of us were like six people in the band. As we were coming up with names SiX just seemed to fit. It's also one of the evilest numbers. So we toasted with six shots of patrone and called it a name.

RIL: So what's this "1605" thing all about?
L: I was in a band years ago called Drown, and Drown was notorious in Orange County for throwing these ridiculous after show parties. The house that we did that at was addressed 1605. Throughout our whole underground circle of friends, they always referred to our house as Club 1605. The parties starting getting so big that I had to start a weekly event at an actual club, and calling it Club 1605. The Corporate Avenger did his first performances at our club, Drown did a record release party at the club, and it just turned into this unreal thing that we had going. As we got bigger in our community of friends, like Orgy, Kottonmouth Kings, Hed PE, we started a studio in our house. On the first couple of Kottonmouth Kings releases they talk about 1605. Eventually it got so big that I started to put out 1605 merchandise. Today it's turned into this little underground network of bands and fans pushing cool music out there, rather than accepting what MTV and mainstream radio was putting out there. In 2001 when we started SiX, we also started 1605 as a label. We launched an EP and I signed this rap band called Looney Bin whose CD I put out. It just grew into our own little world.

RIL: Your new album is entitled The Price of Faith, could you describe a little bit about the following songs: "Something's Gotta Give"...
L: The way society is. Its how everyone is so concerned with what they want and what they want to get, and how it fucks up our relationships with people. I just get to a certain point where I want to tell the World to fuck off, like I'm sure everyone does. Obviously what were doing as a society isn't working. Poor people are still poor and rich people still don't care about the people who are poor. People still can't eat or find a place to live, but we're the richest country in the World.

RIL: How about "Everything"?
L: It's says get off your ass and make something happen. Even as a young teenager I took on a lot of projects. To this day, anything that I'm motivated about, I give it my all. No matter how I might feel that day. I just want to do my best to make my dreams a reality, and I hope that people would want to do the same.

RIL: How about "Stranger, Killer, King"?
L: A rough version of that songs was an old Drown demo from '96. The song was originally written about a night I was a little intoxicated and walking home in Huntington Beach.

RIL: That would explain why you argue with the pavement in the song.
L: Yeah. I just started looking at the city and thought that at anytime there could be some maniac walking around outside your house. I sort of grew up in the streets and my family didn't really have any money, so I was kind of raised in the neighborhood I grew up in. I tied that lifestyle with, at any given time there could be someone outside your door who might not be the sanest person in the world.

RIL: How about the song "Leave me Dry"?
L: That goes back to the way SiX was built. My guitar player Alfunction had a band called Malfunction and they had a song called "Leave Me Dry" which he wrote. The singer of his band was a guy named Frankie Perez, now he's a solo artist on Atlantic and put out this incredible solo album. He's doing more of a Bruce Springsteen/Tom Petty kind of writing. Every time Malfunction would do that song, I would go on stage and perform it with them. That was kind of the song that connected us. When Al and I started SiX, we decided that we were going to do one Drown song and one Malfunction song just to give respect to the bands we came from. I re-wrote the lyrics a little bit to adapt it to my style. "Leave Me Dry" is about the emptiness that people can leave you with if you’re not made of your own beliefs and self.

RIL: Who would you consider your musical influences?
L: I worship everything from Bruce Springsteen to Pink Floyd to Motorhead to Rancid to Social Distortion. I guess I'm a product of West Coast punk rock and underground eighties metal. When I say eighties underground metal, I mean Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and stuff like that. I never got into the Bon Jovi kind of metal. I was a big fan of Twisted Sister when they put out Under the Blade. I love Venom and Armored Saint too. I grew up on underground metal and underground punk rock, and all that stuff had a profound effect on me.

RIL: Any horror stories from out on the road?
L: For the most part, SiX has been a smooth running machine. We have a lot of fun stories that we'd never tell, but no real horror stories.

RIL: Is SiX going to tour in support of The Price of Faith?
L: We're doing a West Coast tour for a few weeks with a hardcore band called By Death's Design. What I'd like to do is do a World-wide assault, because SiX is a live band first and foremost. We want to build fans the old fashioned way. We're not really into mainstream radio or MTV where we think if we look pretty on TV people will like us. We're not New Found Glory and we're not trying to be. We're going to tour as much as possible on this record. We've done almost 400 shows already since we formed the group, and we going to continue that track.

RIL: How come the drummer is the only one with a last name?
L: (Laughs) It just happened to be a weird coincidence. He has a nickname, we call him 'The Biv'. No one ever really has a real name around us. My real first name is Lauren, I just never really used my last name. Back when I was with Drown, no one could spell it right anyway.

RIL: So what happened to Drown anyway?
L: Well, we put out two records, an EP, did a bunch of cool tours, and made a bunch of cool fans all around the World. There was always weird stuff going on with our labels though. Our first album came out on Elektra Records, but then Elektra merged with East/West and all new acts on Elektra got dropped. Then we signed with Geffen for a year. They hired a new label head that wanted to put out all pop albums, so we got our record back and released it through an indie label called Slipdisc, which was distributed through Mercury. The owners of Slipdisc started embezzling money from their investors, so they had to disappear off the map and go bankrupt. It was just one behind-the-scenes saga after the next. I eventually formed another band without the pressures of a major label and realized that I like it better that way.

RIL: Based on your past problems with some of the major record labels, if SiX started to become more successful would you sign to one of them?
L: I've never been one of those indie critic guys that thinks because I'm on 1605 I'm cooler than someone that's on Elektra. What I have experienced now is that major labels watch what all the independent bands and labels are doing. Once those scenes get so big, the majors then hand-pick what they believe are major talent. If it doesn't fly, then you never hear from that band again. There's something bizarre about that. The seventies way of signing a rock band, because you believed in the rock band and you developed the albums and you built real fans, just doesn't exist anymore. If there was a company that believed in that way of working, we wouldn't have anything against it. I don't see that happening anytime soon with the way that the industry is.

RIL: Well, as soon as the industry crashes, I think you'll see a reconstruction similar to that. I've always thought that some of the best rock music today is on the smaller labels.
L: I think that's because the smaller labels are doing things with music because they love it. Major labels wonder why they keep losing money, it's because they keep signing crap.

RIL: I think that the biggest travesty is that fifteen, twenty years from now your favorite band isn't going to be releasing another album. I grew up with Van Halen, Judas Priest, Megadeth, and Metallica, and they're still going strong, but what about the kid that grew up on Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, and Korn? I mean Korn's already releasing a greatest hits album and they're only five albums in.
L: Right. Then again, Korn did originally sign to an indie label. Then again, once they got really big, a parent label picked them up and starts dumping crazy money into them. Those guys are friends of mine, and I have nothing but respect for what they're done. But you're right, because the way that the industry is, it clogs up what you’re trying to do as an artist. I mean look at Motorhead. They've been on fifty different labels, and yet they're still one of the most important bands in aggressive music toady, and they have been for over twenty five years. But yet, they can't stay consistently with one label. I had this discussion the other day with the guitar player of 33 Degree and he had a good point. He said that all that is really important is that we as artist create what we think is cool, because that's all great artist ever did. My point with that was, an artist’s job is to create that stuff, and find a way to put it out there. All that really matter is that we do something cool, and the fans really respond to it, then we've done our job. There's nothing I can do about the people that are on top of the major record labels.

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