 We are Chasing Days and this song is one we wrote called Lights Out. That was Lights Out by Chasing Days and I am Richard Lacombe and this is Arca Media Studio Sessions. Today we are here to talk about PDRG, Indie Rock Group from Los Angeles, California. It is going to be here for three nights and we have you guys opening up for them as well as the pre-show. You guys will meet Phillip and Greg in a little bit but they are going to be doing a duo before the show. This show is coming to Sweet Melissa's on October 15 and it starts at 8pm. Ticket sales has been really good. We have 12 tickets left as a matter of fact. They are also going to be in Burlington on the 16th at Sugar House and Moog's Place on the 17th. So basically I advise everyone to get out there and come on over and I will pass the mic over to you guys and I will let you introduce yourselves, tell us a little bit about Chasing Days as well as a little bit about your music. Yeah. I am Andrew. I am the singer and rhythm guitar player for Chasing Days. And I am Justin. I play lead guitar and I do some backup vocals here and there. And we have been together for about three years total now. We have been playing in Burlington around. We go all sorts of places. I think our most recent show that we have had, where did we go last? Not Higher Ground. That was a great show. But on tap in Essex Junction was our last show. But we have been together for about three years and I am from Burlington. Richard and Cody, our drummer and our bassist, actually aren't here today but Cody also lives in Burlington as well and Richard is from Heinsberg. We play a bunch of rock music and it is usually a lot louder than what we are used to. Yeah. It will be usually we are used to a big room with a bunch of amps and loud guitars but yeah, our music is basically, you know, we try to do most of the originals. That is kind of the goal and it is basically, you know, just good old rock and roll. There is not a lot of, seems like there is so many different genres now. It is just rock, you know. Who are your biggest influences out there in the music industry? That is tough. Justin and I, we like having music so. Yeah. The hard part is, is I am inspired by almost every artist I see to an extent. But if I had to pick a few, if to say like, oh yeah, I listen to this band more or listen to this band more, I would say I have a huge Mastodon fan and they are a huge metal band and as well as things along the lines of like King Crimson, love old school Led Zeppelin, love Led Zeppelin. All sorts of classic rock. I could go on and on about. So basically you just like music in general because it is an art to you. Yeah. Basically that is what you are saying. Yeah, because you can take a little bit of everything from different types of music. For example, we do a cover of the song Superstition. One of my favorites. So you would think, which is by Stevie Wonder, and taking those awesome keys, transposing them onto guitar, you are not expecting heavy distortion, heavy leads and what not on it. But it just works, you know, as well as like a few singer-songwriter kind of riffs too. Like sometimes you just need a different element to be in to get inspiration from something. Yeah. We really like to make it like if we do a cover we want it to be something that no one is going to expect. Like we do Staying Alive also and we started out like really mellow and people are always kind of like, okay, what's this? And then I started seeing that first line and a lot of people are kind of like really it's just going to happen. Then everyone jumps in and it's like, okay, this is awesome. So if there was one thing you could say to aspiring musicians out there who are wanting to learn how to play music or who may be very talented musicians and basically they're just aspiring musicians, what would you say to them? Play? Play a lot? Find some guys to play with? That's the biggest thing. You can play in your room by yourself but if you, you can become a great player. I think the best way to become a great player is playing with other guys. Like playing, not just learning a bunch of different covers and all these songs because there's a lot of people that can play technical music, they can play along with some famous band but then you get them with the drummer and want to create something. Like that's something, I think that's really what you've got to do. If you could pick one show that was your all-time favorite show. We already know. What would it be? That's a no-brainer. Higher ground last summer. Yeah. It was just perfect. Everything you want to have had happened. The place was packed, people responded to like everything we did. Every time you yell something, people would react, it was just totally awesome. Even the other bands were excellent as well. Everything to me, all the new talent as well as seeing what they're doing for music is just, it's great when you're with a group of other bands that are just there because they want to have fun because that's the whole point is to play music and just have fun. You have all of your friends here in this big stage and everyone's just cheering. Everyone's just having a great time. It's just playing with other bands as well with the same mentality is excellent. You guys met PDRG last year, I think it was 2015 over at Radio Bean. This was before anybody really knew who they were and before their 25 city tour with Seattle Rock Band Candle Box, which actually they have a few members, actually current members of Candle Box in PDRG as well as the farmer drummer of Pearl Jam, the original farmer drummer of Pearl Jam. He was on the album 10, Mr. Dave Krusen, give a shout out to Dave Krusen. These guys back this amazing, talented musician, producer, guitarist, vocalist. Tell us a little bit about your first experience meeting them at Radio Bean and what you thought of them as musicians as a whole. Good front man. Pete's a good front man. Pete's like, you know, when we first saw him, you're always, it's always this thing with being a front man where like you're playing some little bar, like you're not going to go out there and be like, how's, you're not going to be like, Burlington, how's it going? Like, you're not, it's just stupid. But Pete is just like, you're, you're watching him the whole time. Like when I first saw him, I was like, man, it's really, this guy's like really going for it. Yeah. But at the same time, it's like I watched him that whole set, like everyone was watching him because he was really interactive. That was definitely, like I left that show and I was like, all right, like I should probably do more of that. We are Chasing Days and this is an original song we wrote called Memories. Welcome back to ARCA Media Studio Sessions. We just heard from Chasing Days. We had the song Lights Out and Memories that they just performed here live in the studio. And we are now here with two of my buddies, Greg Nuovo and Philip Benoit. And they are duo out of St. Albans, right? Yes. And they are going to be opening up for the pre-show at Sweet Melissa's on October 15th for Peter G. Chasing Days, I forgot to mention again. I'm going to mention it several times throughout this interview. But Peter G is a indie rock group from Los Angeles, California. And they will be on tour as part of their Tender Souls tour. We're here talking about the Sweet Melissa's show in Montpelier. We've mentioned the Sugar House show on the 16th and the Moogs place show in Morrisville on the 17th. So like I said, we're here with Greg and Philip. And we'll do an interview with them real quick and get a little bit of information about the music and how they came to be a duo. As well as a little of music from you guys, right? You brought your guitar here in the studio. Sure did. Sweet. So we'll start off by tell us a little bit, Greg, how you and Philip came about as a duo and what are some of the things that you guys have done like performance-wise? Well, it actually was a karaoke venue that we frequent. And he came in one night and I was talking to the guy that was running the karaoke at the time. And he's, oh, this guy's the singer of a band. And I was like, oh, that's cool. And I heard him sing a couple of songs. And I was like, wow, this guy's pretty good. So I went up and I said, do you want to maybe sing a song together just doing this karaoke thing? And I think it was like, I think we were singing a Green Day song. Basket case. And we just kind of looked at each other in the middle of the song. We're like, yeah. It was meant to be. This is going to happen. So we started kind of jamming together and doing just these acoustic things that we've been doing and getting a feel for what the other knew and built it off of that. We've played a few local shows in the St. Albans area. I've done some of the Moose Lodge and some at the caribbean St. Albans. So different places that we've been playing around there and just kind of doing our thing. So you guys do mostly cover songs, right? Yeah, at the moment we're doing covers. Is there any chance that we may get some originals at some point from you two? Oh, it's coming. That's definitely coming. Definitely going to be originals already in the works. Nice. Greg, who are some of your biggest influences out there in the music scene? It's hard to name a single one or two bands. Music as a whole is kind of influential. I mean, obviously any musician is going to tell you that. But the 90s rock genre was kind of the big chunk of my musical influences. But it's really eclectic. It's everything. I couldn't put a finger on any single band or artist or anything that has influenced me. I think it's been that collecting little bits and pieces of everything that really kind of inspired me to, hey, let's find my place in this and our place in this. Philip, what's your musical influences, buddy? I'd have to say I mean, I don't think I could have said any better, honestly. Music as a whole. But I'd just add that it's all genres. I mean, every genre has a specific era, I guess, that has got to me personally. But as anybody who comes to the show on Saturday will see, I mean, we play everything from Elvis Presley to Toby Keith to 90s pop, it's everything. That's what I hear a lot from artists these days is how amazing that it's just not one genre. It's a love for music. And yeah, that's the thing. Yeah, it is music. Exactly. It's an art. And it's just amazing to just be a part of this artwork that these artists put together. And to do these cover songs, I'm sure you guys have worked really hard practicing these things. And speaking of practice, what would you guys say to someone who is looking to get into music, to start there on band maybe, maybe do some solo work? What would you tell them if they asked you, if they came up to the stage and said, you know, I'm really inspired by you guys and I want to start my own band now because of you and can you give me a little advice? What would you tell those people? To borrow from you, practice was the operative word because that's the key is there's just practice, practice, practice with not to sound cliched. But that's just like anything. You don't learn how to drive a car until you practice that. It's like any art, like any skill. You need to refine it. You need to hone it. It's going to sound, you know, standing in the bathroom, sing to your mirror. And when your voice goes, yeah, and it cracks, there's nobody around. You just keep going until it sounds good. And just practice, practice, practice. The shower. Or the shower. The shower is the best one. Or at neighbors, sometimes, sorry, Bakersfield. I don't know if anybody wants to imagine fill in the shower. The other thing I would recommend. So some of my do my, some of my best work. Some of my greatest ideas actually come out of it. And networking is really important. It's, you know, you got to make sure that you're making those connections and building those connections because the relationships between other artists, between the venues, that's the real key when you want to get into doing music. It's all about practice and networking. I agree with that. That's what I was going to add to the practice. I think networking is one of the biggest things. Sorry, I stole his line. I think networking is one of the biggest things, to getting out there anyways, to being successful in music. If you want to have any type of a career in music, I think networking with other bands, musicians, everything. And the key word to all this is fun. You've got to have fun in writing. It should never be, it should never feel like work. It should always be something you love and just a passion. Unless you're making millions, then it can feel like work. That's true. Until that has got to be fun. And it takes work. You still need to do work. But if you love it, it shouldn't feel like work. What do they say? You never work a day in your life? Something, something, something? Yeah, that line. So speaking of music, I'm very eager for you guys to play some jams today. We're pretty eager, so I'll have to play some. So tell us a little bit about what you're going to play and who wrote it. We're going to start with All For You by Sister Hazel. It's a nice acoustic song to play. It's got some good harmonies in there, which our thing is that harmonies, I think, is one of our stronger selling points. So it's a really good opening song. And it's from both of our favorite eras of music, the 90s pop. Alternative rock-ish. 80s, early 90s kids. And here you have it, Acoustic Duo, Greg Nuovo, and Philip Benoit. Thank you for tuning in to Archimedia Studio Sessions. And hopefully we'll see you guys at the show at Sweet Melissa's, October 15. The show starts at 6.30. We'll have Greg Nuovo, Philip Benoit kicking things off for the pre-show at 6.30 to 7.30. And then we'll have the main event, which starts off with Chasing Days, that you heard in the beginning of this interview. Chasing Days will kick things off for Mr. Pete RG. And Pete RG, like I said, is backed by Dave Krusen, the original Pearl Jam drummer, Adam Curry on bass, which is the candle box bassist. Dave Krusen also plays for candle box as well on drums. And we have Brenna Koebler. Brenna is the keyboard player, and she is Pete's co-producer, as well as his fiance. And we also have Mr. Kevin Halland, which is the lead guitarist. He also was the lead guitarist of Skillet. Like I said, we have 12 tickets left. So if you haven't purchased your tickets, please call 802-224-1331. That number, again, is 802-224-1331. Or you can just email me at rich.lacombe, that's spelled R-I-C-H dot L-A-C-O-M-B-E 38 at gmail.com. So check us out. On the web, we have Facebook event pages for all three shows. Sweet Melissa's, October 15th, Sugar House, October 16th, and Moog's Place on October 17th. I just wanted to let all ticket holders know for the Sweet Melissa's show, make sure you arrive early because this is a almost sold out show, which should be sold out by Saturday night. And if not, yeah, we guarantee that it will sell out by Saturday night. So please arrive early. Make sure you get into the building because we are, once everybody's in, they are not allowing anyone else into the building. So ticket holders, I advise you to make sure that you are there early. Enjoy some dinner, check out the pre-show, and we'll see you there on Saturday, October 15th.