Stone River Interview
Toronto has a lot of talent that tends be unseen but that does not stop the band Stone River. As the members of this rock band say, “being as the life of a rock and roller can be a hard and difficult road,” but aside from the difficulty of living on the road, Stone River’s drive to succeed is endless. The band itself has been around for 5 years and counting and although they have had many a listening ear and even the opportunity to play with the well known band, the Black Crowes, many people have never even heard of them, until now.Consisting of 5 members including talented Renan on Lead Vocals, outspoken Darren Flower on guitar and vocals, Jeff Desilets on guitar, Jay
Macedo on bass and vocals and of course Tommy Brown on drums. And they like many other bands struggle on a day to day basis. These keen rockers don’t give up, they manage keep their voice to the microphone and their fingers on the guitar because it is the music that drives them to live their dream.LF: How long has Stone River been together officially as a band?
Stone River is a band that has been around for 5 years but Jeff (the other guitar player) and I met in Grade 9 and have been jamming since grade 10, about 12 years now. In high school we were in 3 bands together with our most promising act disbanding in 2002. We took time to find the right people.... or so we thought. The original bass player was another high school chum and the original drummer was someone that Jeff met in a music school in 2003. We auditioned quite a few people who were “singers” and we were going nowhere and heading there fast until we found someone with a unique voice, and a great “front man look”. Renan joined our band in 2004 and soon after we played our first show on July 2, 2004.
LF: Has there been any changes in members over the years?
After playing many shows in the GTA for the next few months we played a great show in Hamilton. Little did we know that producer Tom Treaumuth (Helix), Honeymoon Suite, Big Sugar) was in attendance and showed interest in working with the band. We were originally supposed to start recording our album in 2005 when we let the original bass player go due to personal problems. For the next 8 months we work hard on arranging are songs to our liking and we found our new bass player named Jay. In June 2006 we started recording our debut album “The Valley of the Butterflies” and finished tracking in May 2007. In that time we lost our original drummer Scott due to him being very frustrated at how long things were taking. In 2007 we were inactive because we had an incomplete line up. Thankfully we found a great drummer in November 2007 named Tommy.
LF: What do you all like about being in a band?
We played our first show with the new line up in January 2008 to great reviews. We kept on booking shows and in April we had our CD ready for the world to listen to.
Being in a good band can be both rewarding and frustrating. It is very hard to listen to the radio and watch Much Music and seeing the “cookie cutter” bands out there that all sound the same, lacks originality/creativity, lacks the musicianship, but sells records to naive little kids.
But it is rewarding to meet people after shows who are really feeling the music that we play.
LF: Do you find the Canadian music industry difficult to deal with or be a part
of? Why or why not?
The only thing that is not so good about being in the Canadian Music Industry is that it is not as profitable to be a “Canadian Celebrity” as it is to be an “American Celebrity”. To go Platinum in Canada means you have sold 100,000 units, where as in the States the amount of units you have to sell is 1,000,000 . That is literally 10 times the amount of copies, which means 10 times the money and fame/notoriety.
LF: Explain the album. What were your inspirations for the songs or the album in general?
The songs on this album was inspired by the struggles we had to overcome. The music is very real, honest rock n roll. Some of the lyrics touch on topics like change, friendship, love, and of course rock n roll.
LF: Do any of the songs stand out in particular?
The songs that really stick out are what we believe are the singles (Southern Feeling, Can’t Help Loving Her, Cold, Black River) but Come On has really great energy and “On These Turning Tides” and “The Valley of the Butterflies” sticks out because they are the slow building rock songs that have different textures in it.
LF: How was playing with the Black Crows?
In May 2008 we applied for this yearly festival in Sarnia, Ontario called Bayfest and we beat out almost 400 bands for the chance to open up for our heroes the Black Crowes. It was a very memorable show which gave us a little taste of what may be in store for us in the future. We never played to so many people but we got up there and did our thing and people really enjoyed it. Some people even enjoyed it more than the Black Crowes!
LF: Did you get to know them or did you just open up for them?
We thought we were going to meet them, party with them, get autographs, and swap stories but it never happened. They came to Sarnia an hour before their set and left immediately after they finished. They didn’t even do an encore!
LF: You would think they would at least come out and meet the winning band. That must not have put a good impression on the band.
Shortly after the show we found out that our bass player was leaving the band out of frustration. Within a month we found a new bass player, who had a wife and a newborn on the way. We did a couple shows with him but he left in January 2009 because he was getting in hot water with his wife about being in a band that was eating up so much of his time. The next bass player we called in was the previous bass player Jay. After taking a couple months off to “recharge his batteries” he came back with full force.
Soon after he played his first show in 5 months we found out that 97.7 hitz fm were going to play our single “Southern Feeling.” We are very happy that they took a chance with us.
Stone River can be found on myspace at www.myspace.com/stoneriver. They also have upcoming shows in April and May of this year in Waterloo, Toronto, London and Owen Sound, see their myspace for listings.
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