By snoadmin
Ska is still alive and well, according to the Orange County-based ska band, Half Past Two. The band recently released its newest EP, “Songs with Friends,” on Jan. 17, and made it available online as a free download.
Lindsey Smith (vocals), a Cal State Long Beach English Education major, and Tyler Moore (guitar) sat down to discuss their love for music, the strong bond they have with their fan-base, and the role of social media in the music industry.
Daily 49er: How long has Half Past Two been working on “Songs with Friends,” starting from the creative writing process to the recording process?
Lindsey Smith: One of the songs on the EP, “Wake up,” which we use to lovingly call banana-phone…
Tyler Moore: You see everything starts with some kind of weird pet-title, because its easy to reference, and then we eventually give it a real name.
Daily 49er: Have there been any songs where you leave the initial pet-title?
Moore: Yes, “Sassy Feel Good Redux.”
Smith: Anyway, I started with the band about two years ago, and shorty after we started playing [“Wake Up”]. So, that’s sort of when we started thinking about creating a new EP. Usually the way it works is we just have ideas and we bounce them around to see what sticks. But once we sat down and really got focused, it didn’t take us very long maybe about a year. We recorded the EP in two days at our bass player’s house in Lake Elsinore and had a little Half Past Two getaway.
Moore: In previous times, we’ve paid to go into a recording studio, have an engineer, and have producers give their insights. This time, it was a combination where we wanted to do it on the cheap, and we feel confident enough that I can engineer it and record it. We kind of self-released it in terms of producing. We had a house, and we figured it would be cool to just take it over. All the tracking was done in the garage, and we had cables running everywhere in the house. It was really neat because for this whole time we were all here and just focusing on these four songs.
Daily 49er: Where did you come up with the title name, “Songs with Friends”?
Smith: It was the night before our last show, and were all just joking around. Then as soon as we took a five-minute break, everyone took out their phone and started playing Words with Friends. Not even kidding! And then Jeff, our trombone player was like, ‘We should name it ‘Songs with Friends’.’
Daily 49er: What makes this EP stand out from your past albums?
Moore: I play guitar, so that’s how I think of things… Before I would force a guitar solo into a song, but on this EP I realized that if I take a step back, that could improve a song. So instead of thinking to myself, ‘What can I add to the song?’ it was more like ‘How can I support this song?’ Instead of me sprinkling Tyler flakes all over it, it was more about being an ingredient in the bread. A lot more maturity went into it because we all realized we want more interesting songs, not just interesting parts.
Daily 49er: Aside from Lindsey attending Cal State Long Beach, I know several of the band members are either still in school or have already graduated college. How do you find a balance between studying in school, going to work, being a rock-star and co-existing with each other?
Smith: I’ve woken up so many times and thought, ‘I don’t want to go to school. I want to drive to the Midwest and play in a random bar.’ It’s this weird itching crave that doesn’t easily go away. Luckily, I have Half Past Two to kind of satisfy that. Of course, as I’ve grown up, I’ve realized that the likelihood of having a career in music is probably slim to none, and it’s not really that stable. Plus, I love words, and I’m a huge nerd when it comes to literature, and so I decided that I want to teach it.
Daily 49er: How did Half Past Two get involved with producer and ska-veteran Aaron Barrett from Reel Big Fish in 2008?
Moore: Well, one day, the stars were aligned, and our trombone player bumped into Aaron Barrett at Volcano Burger, just across the street from our high school, Los Alamitos High. He tells him, ‘Hey I have a band. If you wouldn’t mind checking them out that would be awesome.’ And everything just kind of tied itself up after that point, and we end up recording with Aaron. There are all sorts of flavors of producing, and [Barrett] was more like the friendly hand of confidence to carry us along.
Daily 49er: How close are you with your fans?
Smith: It depends. There are some fans that just want to interact with you all the time. There is this one guy, and I call him ‘my super-fan.’ But he talks to me like everyday on Facebook, and that’s cool. I say shoot, why not? Let’s chat?
Moore:
There are a lot of people who are technically fans, but I’ve known them for so long, and I’ve seen them at so many shows for so many years it doesn’t seem like they’re fans. But when they talk to me on Facebook, I think, ‘Oh, this is my friend talking to me.’
Smith: They’re just people, like us. There are musicians that I look up to that I wish I could talk to, and be like, ‘That was a rad song,’ and then for them to be like, ‘Cool, thanks.’
Daily 49er: What prompted you to give away free band T-shirts at the Second Annual Ska Luau?
Smith: I wish we had more shirts to give away for free.
Moore: We had all these extra shirts, and I just thought, ‘If I give them to [the fans], you might wear them, and you might get a kick out of it.’ It’s worth a lot more to someone, and it gets them stoked for that night, just because of the fact that they have it. I would actually rather have people be really into our music, and show up to see us play, than buy our merchandise.
Daily 49er: Just this weekend, Half Past Two’s page hit 700 likes on Facebook. Do you think social media plays an important role in the band’s success?
Smith: Definitely. I think that is where the main communication comes from these days, and that’s how we promote. It also allows a forum for all the fans who maybe don’t know each other to communicate. It’s like a community, but also where they can get indirect contact with us, which is really convenient.
Moore: We really do talk to our fran I mean friends.
Lindsey: Frans! It’s a friend-fan!
Moore: Anyway, I think it is really cool, because what would you do in the mid-90s if you recorded a ukulele version of a song and you wanted to send it to people? Would you make a bunch of VHS copies? You didn’t have that ability to make a video go viral. Now, the fact that you can do that, it inspires us to try and do it.
Daily 49er: Why did you decide to make your new EP available online as a free download?
Moore: Before when we’ve sold our music, we would have to raise money for things like rehearsal time or posters or whatever. This time, the thought was just, ‘Well we’ve taken the time to record these songs, so why not just give them to everyone?’ That’s what we’d rather have than a little bit more money in our pocket.
Half Past Two will perform at Chain Reaction in Anaheim tomorrow night. Tickets are $10 and are available on allages.com or at the box office.
