With their new EP release, Take us To Tomorrow shows their passion and unique flare for alternative and progressive rock songwriting. As with many great bands, Take Us To Tomorrow had to go through line-up changes, direction changes and name changes to get to this present point. Angelo Loa, the guitarist and chief song writer, formed what would become Take Us To Tomorrow with Brad Day on drums and later found Sean O’Leary to take the bassist position.
The EP, by the same name (Take Us To Tomorrow), is made up of a group of melodic, atmospheric, and intricate alternative rock songs, some of which creep in to your psyche slowly, as they build and breathe, and some that hit you head on, right from the get go. “Well, a paradigm is a pattern or model of something and a paradigm shift is when one model has been unable to progress over its inadequacies to an opposing model, and the opposing model, then, becomes the model. For the band, it’s just our “pop” song, but for each individual member, the name and theme have become something. For me, it is making a pop song without lyrics.” explains Sean.
The bands genre crossing (or as they put it, “genre-mashing”) aspects are one of things that draw people into the music. As you listen to one song, these different genre influences come through and the song, at that point, takes you on a sort of journey.
Exposed Vocals: So tell us your story. Where did you grow up? What made you decide to become an artist?
Personally, I grew up in New Jersey, went to college for philosophy at University of South
Florida and moved to Austin after that for a better job. I used to draw a lot
and took about 9 years of art classes outside of school and only then did I get
involved in music – when I was about 16. I was writing poetry from 12 on, was
in theater in high school, and got into a pop-punk band at 16. So, I guess you
can say I’ve always been an artist in some form. As for the band though Angelo
Loa and Brad Day grew up in Texas and it seems we all became musicians because
we couldn’t live without doing it.
Exposed Vocals: How did you come up with that name? What was your inspiration behind
it?
We’ve had a few versions of this band but this name came from watching the Croods movie. There is a part that a
boy is showing a family the stars and says that it is tomorrow and later the
grandmother says she wants the boy to “Take us to tomorrow.” We felt that we
want this band to bring us to something more promising as both musicians and
people.
Exposed Vocals: What do you think about online music sharing? Do you ever give your
music away for free? Why?
We love it; we give away almost all of our music. At the moment we are still a fledgling band (at least this
version) and we only have a five song EP, so to get our name out there more, we
give most of it away as promotion. However, we will probably continue with
giving the majority of it away and make our money from performing, merchandise,
and royalties.
Exposed Vocals: Since everyone was a start-up once, can you give any smaller or local
bands or artists looking to get gigs and airplay some tips?
First, name: pick a memorable name and make sure when you google it no other band has it. Next, sound quality of a
recording isn’t as important as getting it out there. Also, finding a sound
comes through performing out for others and getting their feedback so shouldn’t
be in the forefront before playing shows. While I can keep going, I’ll just end
with saying that even if you get backed by a label or a collective, the work
and self-promotion never ends – it is necessary.
Exposed Vocals: Do you ever make mistakes during performances? How do you handle that?
Of course we do, doesn’t everyone? As long as you don’t point it out, it probably is unrecognizable to the average patron. If it is greatly obvious, just don’t let it get you down, recover as quickly as possible – stop if you need to and pick up on the next comfortable beat – and just keep going.
Exposed Vocals: Do you tour? Anything interesting happen on tour that you think our readers would enjoy hearing about?
This band has not toured but I have been on small tours with other projects in my life. I
think almost everything on tour is interesting, so that would be a better question
for someone to ask me personally.
Exposed Vocals: Where do you usually gather songwriting inspiration? What is your usual
songwriting process?
As for the band, Angelo (the guitarist) does most of the writing and then I usually structure it and make
some suggestions – maybe even write extra parts. After that Brad and I usually
write our own parts. As for the inspiration, it usually comes from some song or
riff we like. Every once in a while we write something that just comes from a
feeling we want to convey for the song.
Exposed Vocals: Do you have a band website? What online platforms do you use to share
your music?
We don’t currently have a dot com but are going to be getting it up with the pre-release of our full length,
probably around summer’s end. You can find our music on bandcamp, reverbnation,
soundcloud, musicbaby, noisetrade, ourstage, mixposure, imradio, musicsubmit,
thesixtyone, artistecard, and I think even last.fm . We will be putting up our
full length (as well as this EP) on spotify, itunes, pandora and the like when
we release the full length.
Exposed Vocals: What are some really embarrassing songs that we might find on your mp3
player?
I don’t really get embarrassed easily and I am simply a music lover so I can’t really say, but I do have some
boy bands on there as well as some pop from different periods like Whitney
Houston and stuff like that. All of them I would say are still good in some
way.
Exposed Vocals: If you were given half a million dollars and a year off, what would you
do? How would you spend it?
Record the full length right now, release it without pre-release, make some videos, buy some gear, and go on
tour.
Exposed Vocals: Any planned studio upgrades? What are you working with now?
We don’t have our own studio but the studio we recorded the EP at was a friends and he had to borrow some mics so we
should probably help him out with that. He worked with Studio One and did a few
things with Audacity (like the sample used on the last song).
Exposed Vocals: How do you find ways to promote your music? What works best for you?
We hired a promotion company and they suggested a lot of the platforms that we are now on but they mostly help
with presenting our stuff to movies, television, and radio – the bulk of it is
on us though. We mostly go out to shows to meet different artists and set up
shows with them. We also find new friends on social media, like Facebook, and
invite them to our pages. We also hand out flyers and a lot of business cards;
really, we just try to build our network anyway we can.
Exposed Vocals: If you could perform anywhere and with any artists (Dead or Alive) where and who would it be with?
Why?
Personally, I love the Red Rocks ever since I saw a live DVD with Incubus performing there and I think the rest of the band would agree.
As far as the band, it is different for each member on what the number 1 choice
would be but all of each other’s choices are in our top 5. For Brad it would
probably be the Mars Volta, for Angelo it would be Incubus and for me it would
be the Fall of Troy because they throw a great show.
Exposed Vocals: So, what’s next? Any new upcoming projects that you want to talk about?
For the band we are finishing and polishing the last couple of songs for the full length. For Brad and me though, we are always
working on other stuff. We are jamming with some other people and maybe
something will come out of that, or it might just push us to finally do the
duet that keeps getting pushed back.
Exposed Vocals: If you weren’t making music, what would you be doing?
I would be a massage therapist, which I still might be doing in the future, if time and money permits. I couldn’t picture Brad doing
something that didn’t involve music; although he does actually have a black
belt in karate, so maybe he would have been a karate instructor. Angelo is a
salesman in everything he does so he would be in some type of sales.
Exposed Vocals: Do you remember buying your first album? Who was it? What was going through your head?
Not really, but at the time I wasn’t that in to music, I think it might have been Toni Braxton – the one with “Unbreak My Heart.” I
loved great voices, which is probably why we haven’t settled on a singer, and plus she was hot.
Exposed Vocals: How do you juggle the rest of your responsibilities while trying to stay ahead in your
music life?
Music is my biggest priority, so I work extra when not doing music to give me leeway when I need to do things with music. I am a
manager at a restaurant, so I have been doing something right; I usually take
some extra shifts or fill in for other managers at their times of need to have
them do the same for me at my times.
Exposed Vocals: What should fans look forward to in 2015?
The most immediate thing is a video for our single, “Paradigm Shift,” then the website,
maybe another video, and the full length around summer’s end. We are also
coming up with some ideas for doing a Youtube channel with monthly webisodes
showing some practices, previews of new songs, and any other news on all things
TUTT. If all goes well we might be able to do a mini-tour in the fall.
