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!
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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.
