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Official Site
Jason Ross: Singer/songwriter/guitar
Thomas Juliano: Guitar
Casey Daniel: Bass
Giti Khalsa: Drums
"Everything I thought I wanted in this world has
got me turned upside down"
Seven Mary Three's day&nightdriving, their sixth
album (and first for the Bellum/ICON label), represents
a return to the band's original motivation - to make music
for themselves, unbound by expectations or constraints.
The group, founded by singer/songwriter Jason Ross while
a student at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg,
VA, released Churn in 1994, an album they recorded in
the basement. The single, "Cumbersome," picked
up local radio airplay, leading to a deal with Mammoth
Records, and a platinum-plus major-label debut in American
Standard, for which they re-recorded most of the songs
on Churn. That instant success was both a blessing and
a curse, according to Ross.
"We were under a microscope right away," he
explains. "We hadn't even decided on who we were
and we were already being identified as this grunge-rock
band."
If Jason Ross is a grunge singer/songwriter, then so
are Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Richard Buckner and
Sam Beam of Iron & Wine. . On day&nightdriving,
produced by Brian Paulson (Wilco, Son Volt, Beck, Uncle
Tupelo and Slint's influential cult classic Spiderland)
Ross delivers a compelling set of songs that lives up
to its dichotomous title. The album combines surging,
dark, rock anthems like the first single "Last Kiss,"
the ringing Gaelic guitars of "Was a Ghost"
and the heavy swagger of "Break the Spell,"
with the Americana roots feel of the country-flavored
swamp stomp "Dreaming Against Me" and the twangy
slide guitar on "Upside Down." The album also
boasts soulful contemplative songs like "Hammer and
a Stone," the after-hours drinking ballad "Strangely
at Home Here" and the domestic meditations of "She
Wants Results" and "Dead Days in the Kitchen."
For those only familiar with Seven Mary Three from the
hit "Cumbersome," they will be surprised by
the band's new direction. It's an album about reconciling
a career in a rock group with home life, and balancing
commitments to band mates with those of family, in a highly
personal, reflective, yet raw and honest work.
Unlike past releases, day&nightdriving was recorded
over the course of a year without label pressures or expectations.
"The album started with me and my guitar," explains
Ross, who demo-ed most of the songs in his home studio
in Chapel Hill, NC, where he lives with his wife, a writer
and professor at the University of North Carolina, and
children.
"Thomas [Juliano, Seven Mary Three guitarist] and
I would work through much of the material, fleshing out
parts, moments and textures," continues Ross. "Our
agenda for making this record was very different from
the last few. We let the songs dictate the style. Sometimes
I'd just sit down, hit the record button, play a half-hour
and that would be the genesis of the song. Once we had
the songs in a good place, we brought Casey and Giti to
North Carolina to lay down tracks at Mitch Easter's studio."
Among its many themes, day&nightdriving deals with
the contradictions of a rock lifestyle a decade-plus after
the fact. "Last Kiss," the lead-off track and
first single, could just as soon be about Ross' fellow
Seven Mary Three members as another person, its lyrics
wracked with guilt, self-incrimination and the need to
move on.
"Music was always an outlet to express unresolved
melancholy and anger," he says. "whether misplaced
or not." "Love is easy. Relationships are hard.
The first kiss is easy. Forgiving somebody for kissing
someone else is hard. You can't live in the past; you
have to keep moving forward. I've wanted to walk away
from this band several times, but there was always something
bringing me back, like gravity. I can't get away from
the orbit."
More introspective songs like "Hammer and a Stone"
and "Strangely at Home Here" confront the loneliness
of being away from your family, as well as how the stage
can turn into a home away from home, the fans forming
an alternative, if transient, substitute for the real
thing.
"Can you be a great musician as well as a great
husband and father?" Ross poses the rhetorical question.
"Are you willing to sacrifice relationships for your
art?"
The pleading histrionics of "Break the Spell"
and the quietly strummed "Dead Days in the Kitchen"
are stylistically different, but both are about keeping
relationships, with family and colleagues, fresh and vibrant…
not taking them for granted.
"From the dead days in the kitchen to the best ones
in the bedroom," sings Ross, playing again to the
album's contrasting themes of day and night, and reinventing
the ordinary as extraordinary.
"I always felt there was a switch that turned on
and off between me playing with the band or being at home
with my family," he says. "I'm simply trying
to find within all this static and distortion, some of
which I've created myself, something holy, natural and
real. I'm not looking for sympathy. It's more a self-examination.
I want to write from where I am right now, and continue
to improve. I've discovered more music since selling a
million records than I did in the 10 years between when
I started listening and when I formed the band."
Seven Mary Three have come a long way in the 12 years
since breaking out with a platinum debut and a hit single,
but in many ways, day&nightdriving takes them back
to the beginning, this time with the cumulative knowledge
of a veteran band and songwriter.
"I feel liberated," admits Ross. "I couldn't
have written these songs when I was 24. I thought I could,
but I really couldn't, having not gone through these experiences
myself. I feel like I'm just beginning as a songwriter."
For Seven Mary Three, day&nightdriving is the start
of the next chapter, and the story is far from over.
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