Risin'

On October 16th, Syracuse area band Soul Risin' will release their third studio album titled Rise & Fall.  Soul Risin' is a five piece band fronted by singer and guitarist Bryan Weinsztok and backed by John Capozzolo on drums, Adam Fisher on bass, Mike D'Ambrosio on keys and Jim Dunham on percussion.

To celebrate the release, the band is hosting a CD release party at the Westcott Theatre on Saturday October 20th, and will be joined by Syracuse locals Boots n' Shorts and Brooklyn's Brother Joscephus and the Love Revival Revolution Orchestra.  As a tribute to the spirit of the album and in honor of Bryan's father, Alex  Weinsztok, the band will be donating some of the proceeds from the show to a local family dealing with the hardship of caring for a family member with cancer.

I got a chance to sit down with Bryan and ask him a few questions about the new album.  Give a listen via the link below and check out a really fun interview.

Plus, enter to win free tickets to the show along with a CD and signed vinyl copy of the new record by commenting on this post!  

Rules As Follows: 
1.  Enter a comment, any comment, at the end of the blog post. 
     * You MUST "Comment as:  Name/URL" (See the drop down under the comment box).
2.  Enter your name and the URL to your Facebook profile page.  
     * This is how we'll get in touch with you if you're selected as the winner.

3.  We'll contact a winner via Facebook by this Friday, October 19th.

The first thing that stood out to me on the new record was the production.  The addition of the horns and the vocal harmonies really stand out.  What made you want to add those elements to this album?  

I think I just wanted this, and had the drive for this, to be my best work yet.  I knew I wanted it to be way better than the other ones.  I wanted it to have everything that the first two albums didn't have, which was, time and some knowledge put into them and some true thought and a lot of rehearsal beforehand.  The last album only has a couple of harmonies because we ran out of time and money.  All that extra stuff takes time.   This time I just made sure that I was gonna get the product in the end that I wanted.  I just wanted to spend the time, so I did and got all the harmonies.  Andrew Greacen, the second engineer, coached me through a lot of them and he was great helping me with that.

Right, cause a lot of background vocal were you?   

Yea, it's mostly just a lot of Bryan Weinsztok vocal.

And then the horns, I knew I just wanted to get some horns on there.  I didn't want it to be a horn album, cause I didn't want people to think they're going to come to our shows and expect horns, so I just wanted it on a couple of songs.  And Jeff Stockham, from the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra, who plays trumpet and french horn and all sorts of weird brass instruments as well, he came in and just laid it down.  His parts are so crisp they almost sound fake, [laughs] but it really is someone playing.

Do you plan to try and bring that [the horns] to your live show?  

On the release show, if Jeff's available to come sit in, we will. We just don't have a horn section who comes out to rehearse with us.  So I'd hate to throw it out there and have it flop.  Who knows - we'll see what happens.  If these guys are available to come play horns, then we'll have horns.

Overall, it really feels like you guys made a conscious effort on Rise & Fall to better use the studio as a tool.  

Yea a lot of it has been learning from experience.  The first time we went into the studio it was totally blind, we had no idea what we were doing and we we spent way too much time putting out not as good of a product as we could have put out.  And that was strictly our inexperience.  That's why I feel like our first album is more of a glorified demo.  The second album we did it a little better.  And then this album I just said this one's gotta be really good.  I don't wanna hear mistakes.  I think it was our best work and a lot of it was really learning from experience.  

Even with those additions you didn't lose your core sound - "Tidal Waves", "Worcester", the end of "Punk", for example, all have some extended sections of jamming where you guys stretched it out.  Is that stuff you guys rehearsed beforehand or did that happen in the studio?   

The base of it was rehearsed and we knew [beforehand] we wanted to make a well produced album that was structured, especially from the arrangement side.  So all of the songs are decent length, not overly long, but we knew on a couple songs we wanted to include the jam aspect so we didn't totally lose that and so that people know they're going to get this and more in a live show.  And we found a couple spots, on "Worcester" and "Punk", where we were able to have a jam within the song and at the end as well.  The first couple notes to get it started would be rehearsed, but then the guitar solos and what happened from there was a result of what happened in the studio.

There's a couple of themes that come through to me on the album.  You've had a couple of significant life events that contrast each other with the death of your father coupled with the birth of your first child.  At the end of "Baby" you reflect upon that experience in total.  How did those experiences shape this record?  

A couple of the songs, like "Heaven's Done" - that song has been around, and was supposed to go on the last album and it didn't make it on.  Songs like "Leaving Train" and "Tidal Waves" were just good songs that fit on this album.  The opening song "Fool Like You" was written after everything else and was just a song we really liked so we found a way to get it in there.  It doesn't really fit with the theme although some people could think so.  The song "Rise & Fall" tells the overarching story of why the album is titled Rise & Fall.  And then you get into "Worcester" and that whole section is about my father, and my dealings with the year he was going through his battle with cancer and his passing, and they were just songs that came during that time.  I had little parts and I played that group of songs with the band in rehearsals but we saved them for the studio.  That's the first time we've ever done that where we had a handful of songs that were not going live until after we got out of the studio.  So there's "Worcester", "The Door", "Part Two / Open The Door", "The Greatest Advice" - those are all directly about my father.  And then "Baby" is kinda that wrap up of 'I dealt with all this stuff [with my father]' and now the resolution is there's this energy back in me.  And "Punk" is just a powerful way to end it.  And that section really is about him, it's inspired by him, and it really is the reason for recording the album.

So have you guys played those songs live now?  

Yea we did.  We ended up playing at Shifty's the week before we went into the studio and we kinda said "fuck it, let's play the album".  And the second set we did a song, and then played the whole album cover to cover.  Some of the songs had been played live before, but that was the first time slightly over half of them came out live.  So we played the whole thing cover to cover, went into the studio, recorded, and since then we've been playing them a lot leading up to the release.  Probably the bulk of our shows are the new songs now.

How has that been for you emotionally?  It's such a personal event, and then to go out and share that; is it therapeutic or difficult for you on stage?  

I think when I'm on stage I'm too preoccupied with trying not to screw up, trying to play clean, and trying to listen to what's going on around me, that's it's tough to get too into the emotional aspect of it because the second I get distracted the music will lose it.   I'm more preoccupied just making sure that the music is coming out right and that we're playing well.  But it does; certain songs like "The Door", the emotion crosses my mind.  The emotional aspect was in the studio.  We left it all out there.  Listening to the first playback of our initial track of "The Door" and "Baby" were very emotional for me and a couple of band members.  It was kinda that culmination of 'we know why this album is happening' and just something about the sound in that studio room.  Just sitting on the couch in the studio and listening to these songs that we'd been rehearsing finally played back to us.  That was the catharsis, I think, right there. That was the sorta the moment where I was like, 'Oh, ok, I did this for the right reasons, it's hitting the right note in me'.

Now was "The Door" always conceived as a two part piece or did it just end up that way?  Or did you have one and then the other and decided to bring them together?  

Technically it's three parts because it's "The Door" and then "Part Two", which we don't call "The Door Part Two", we just call it "Part Two" and then there's "Open The Door".  "Part Two" and "Open the Door" we decided to put them on the same track on the record so technically it is two songs.  I think that was one of those stream of consciousness playing things where I had these two things - I had the "Part Two / Open The Door" thing before I wrote the song "The Door" and then I incorporated those words into the song "The Door" to kinda make it flow.  I always had this notion that it would go "Worcester" into the slow song "The Door" and then into the others.  They flow from a tonal perspective as well so it was definitely planned to have all these songs flow together.  The whole concept of "The Door" is representative of my Dad's head and not being able to communicate with him, or him communicate with us, for months and months like we had know him.

Your voice is such a trademark of the Soul Risin' sound, but on this album, I felt like there were some more dynamics in the vocals that you showed.  Was that on purpose?  

I guess there's two ways I can answer that.  

One, sorta yes, in the sense that, we don't have a day a song, or a week a song, like people spending a lot of money might have to spend [on a song].  So I knew on my vocal days that I had a day or two to do my vocals but that I also needed to preserve my voice.  So I couldn't go out there and overdo it.  In one aspect it was like 'save yourself', and I tried to make everything just sound good and clean.  I didn't want it to be a yell-y record.  Our live shows are a bit more high energy like that, and I wanted people to be able to understand what I was saying.  

On the other side, there was the guys I was working with in the studio.  The engineers helped me out and coached me through some of the dynamics and suggested 'I can't understand you there' or 'try adding this range here' or 'try this harmony here'.  

So some of it was the outside influence and being coached and the other part was me not trying to over do it.  

The Soul Risin' sound is a mix of influences from the jamband, rock, and blues genres.  Anything new you've been listening to that influenced this record?  

I think this album was less that kind of raw blues-rocky style like the first two were.  It's definetley a lot cleaner.  Our bassist is doing all the guitar parts on this record and he has more of a jazz style to his guitar playing.  So some of the solos take on a more jammy feel.

While I was doing this I had this thought that I want this to have an old classic rock record type of feel. Some of these songs I just kept it simple.  A couple songs the arrangements get out there, but they're not  overly complex.  I can't really draw any outside influences on this one, it was just what was coming out at the time.

How does your normal songwriting process work and was there anything you did different for Rise & Fall?  

When I first started writing songs I would play and write and play and write and eventually I'd have a song.  Nowadays it's more I come and sit in this room in my house when everyone else is sleeping, and it's usually when I should be sleeping too, and I'll start playing guitar and I'll find some rhythms and melodies that I like, or I'll find a lyrical line stuck in my head and I'll put it to use.  For the most part, it's finding things on the guitar that I like, and if I remember them the next day great, if not, they weren't good enough to take any further.  But if it's something that I remember a day or two later than it stays in your muscle memory.  And then at a rehearsal where there's an opportunity for us to learn something new, I'll throw it out there.  I try to have somewhat of an arrangement thought of. And I'll make up words or maybe I'll have one or two lyrics or a chorus or the first line of a chorus or something that I know is going to stick.  And we'll get something tightened up with the band and a lot of times we'll take it live and it'll get interjected into a show; it may not even have a name yet. Sometimes, John, our drummer, after the show when he's doing set lists, he'll make up the name for it and that'll be the name of the song, and I'll kinda write around that name too and incorporate it with what I was doing.  Then it gets perfected and gets tightened up from an arrangement and a musical perspective.

Sometimes I'll sit down and I'll write lyrics and I'll finish a song.  But it's truly not until I know there's an end in sight like 'Hey, we're going into the studio in a few months, I better finish up these songs'. So I'll put pen to paper and just write.  It's sorta easy because the arrangements and the melodies are already so ingrained that I can just sit and sing and I know my timing very well.  And then I can sit at a computer and stream of consciousness, just sit and start writing, whatever is coming out of me will come out.

I've tried before to write lyrics and then put music to lyrics and it doesn't work for me.  It's very difficult for me to have something that really sounds good, that really flows and makes sense.  For me it's the other way,  get the music really solid cause that's what's gonna groove, and then find the lyrics and the story that goes along with it.

On Rise & Fall it seemed to me that you played with the cadence of your voice and the lyrics against the rhythm and meter of the band, rather than those two following each other.  Was that intentional?

That was probably by accident.  It's weird because in the studio you get your rhythm track set, and then, for me, acoustic guitar and vocals all get redone.  Some of that may have happened on accident because for me, I'm not used to just standing and singing without a guitar, and not having an arm creating that meter for you.

Definitely live, now that these songs are well rehearsed and we know them really well, I play with those cadences a little more and our drummer knows and he'll kinda follow it on the drums.

I look at songs from our first two albums to how we play them live now and they're just so different. I'm excited to hear how the songs on this record change in a couple of years.

Did you guys record the whole album as separate parts and then build it back up or did you record anything live as a single take?  

There's a couple songs that took some time, either cause we weren't hitting it from a timing perspective or something had to be redone once we heard playback, or something wasn't cutting it.

The first night, that first Saturday of tracking, we were all a little too excited early on and we may have gotten a couple of good takes out of half the songs we had run through.  It was late and we had to get some food, so we got something to eat and went back into the recording rooms and it must have been after midnight, close to 1 am in the morning.  And even John, our drummer was dead.  He was like 'I'm done.  I've been playing for like 12 hours today already'.  And our engineer was pushing us and he was like 'no you guys are gettin' there right now, you're just now settling in finally'.  And we did three songs, one of them was definitely "The Greatest Advice".  "The Greatest Advice" was definitely a one take song from a rhythm track perspective - drum and bass and overall arrangement.

The CD release party is happening at the Westcott Theatre on Oct. 20th.  What do you guys have planned?  

Yea, Saturday October 20th.  There's two opening acts.  The first band on that night will be Boots n' Shorts, they're a bluegrass band from the area.  I think they were just voted Best Bluegrass Band in Syracuse New Times.  They'll go on first.  And then there's this band coming up from Brooklyn called Brother Joscephus and The Love Revival Revolution Orchestra.  They're a 12-piece, kinda New Orleans soul style band.  A bunch of backup singers, horn section.  They come in costume; they throw beads out doin' like the chorus line with umbrellas and stuff like that.  So it should be a really cool, high energy, very fun way to get the night going.

And then you guys will go on, and so I know from seeing you guys before that the live show is a big part of what you do, stretching out the songs and jamming.  You always have an eclectic mix of covers as well.  How do you guys choose the covers you play and do you have any new ones planned for the release party?  

Usually it's just songs that we love.  Most recently the covers added to the mix have been songs I've always wanted to play with a band and have either been too scared to try em' or just we never did them.  So lately we've been playing Paul Simon's "Graceland" and I don't know why I was so scared to do it.  The last couple shows we've been playing Led Zeppelin's "Fool In The Rain" and we've had a lot of fun with that.  I think from the cover side more recently we've been trying to pick covers that other bands [don't do].  In our area, there's a ton of cover bands in Syracuse.  I mean everyone's in a damn band in Syracuse.  So we try to pick covers so that if people see us they would be like 'Oh man, they're playing that song'.  I wanna play songs that cover bands won't touch and I wanna impress people by adding our own little spin to it cause I certainly don't want to be a jukebox.  We've already planned out our set for the release night and I think there's gonna be one fun new cover that we haven't played that will open up the night.

One thing I think that will be a treat for people who haven't seen you live is the whole conch thing.  Tell me the story about where that came from cause you've got it on the cover of Rise & Fall.  

You know, we did record some conch on this album.  There was some conch recorded at the very end of "Punk" so it was like the last little dissonant part of the album.  I don't know if it got worked into the mix or not.

So the way the conch started was - got married, went to St. Lucia for our honeymoon, so this was in May of 2009.  My wife had wanted to bring back a couple of big conch shells, and usually if you go to a store, even in Florida, you'll pay like $30 for a conch shell.  Well in St. Lucia, they sell these things to you for whatever you're willing to pay these people, like $5, $10, for these massive conch shells.

We were at a street fair, and there was this band playing and there was a dude just walking around playing a conch shell, a local guy.  And he was of course trying to sell the conch shells.  And I was like  'I can play that'.  And the guy challenged me and he was like 'You can't play this man.  You can't play this'.  He's like 'You know what, you play this, I'll give you the conch shell'.  So I'm like 'Alright, whatever', I played trombone when I was a little kid in middle school.   I can play trumpet.  So I did.  I just started playing it.  And he's like 'No, play along with the band'.  So I did, I just started playing along with the band.  And I think I kinda pissed him off.  He didn't give me the conch shell because I think he was just mad.

But we did bring a couple conch shells home from St. Lucia.  And we had a show, I think it was Tastes of Syracuse in June of 2009, and I'm like 'Fuck it, I'm bringing it'.  I started playing it, and I think I played it like every other song at that show.  And it was really annoying.  But then I realized that maybe there is a place for this in drum and bass jams and percussion jams - you can make trombone style sounds with it.  So we've started working it in and I've gotten better at it and I've been able to do little conch solos.  We did our last gig in Baldwinsville in the middle of September some time and I think that was the best conch solo I've ever done.  We didn't get that show on tape but even our bassist was like 'Wow, that was a good conch solo' [laughs].  So it's more of a novelty thing, but it generally makes an appearance once a show.  There's been a handful of shows where the crowd isn't deserving of it.  Hopefully it's that one thing that sticks in peoples head like 'That dude played a damn shell!'