Lansdowne
The main concern of most young, independent bands is doing everything they can to book shows and get signed. While Boston-based pop-rock quartet Lansdowne is focused on those things too, they have another goal in mind: being patriotic.
Recently, the United Service Organizations (USO), which focuses on supporting armed forces overseas chose Lansdowne to travel to Iraq and perform for the troops.
“It’s so cool to be able to give back,” said lead vocalist Jon Ricci. “The bottom line is [the troops] let us do what we do because they’re making the sacrifices.”
With his buzz cut, broad shoulders and dog tags, 24-year-old Ricci could pass for a soldier himself. In fact, he describes Lansdowne as “literally, a band of brothers.”
Lansdowne has been together about a year, but the members have grown close throughout this time. They’ve released two albums – Leaving Boston and their latest, Burn This For Your Friends – and played countless shows from Boston to Los Angeles. However, they say no city can compare with the town where they found their namesake.
#”It’s almost unfair that we get to do this and get to see all these places that are just amazing,” Lichtenstein said. “But nothing’s ever going to beat coming home to Boston.”
Lichtenstein, who dropped out of Berklee College of Music, has wanted to be a musician his whole life.
“I have a memory of Christmas one year, when I got a plastic guitar that wasn’t even real,” he said. “It had like, built-in sounds and I would jump up and down on my parents’ bed with it and pretend I was in front of 10,000 people.”
In contrast, Ricci, a self-described former “math geek,” saw himself following a different path when he grew up. He graduated from Babson College with a degree in finance and planned on becoming “a corporate kid in a tie, driving a Beamer,” he said.
However, once he got on the music track, it completely re-prioritized his life.
“I could literally be buying a house right now with the money I could have been making,” he said. “But there is nothing better than playing a live show and watching kids sing back your lyrics. You can’t buy that. So, if money comes with this, great. Security’s good. But we’ve got an opportunity that not a lot of people are ever going to have and I just feel lucky.”
Lannen Fall
The members of Lannen Fall don’t have a good story behind their band’s name.
They used to make a different one up whenever people asked – “Our friend Mike Lannen died, it’s a tribute to him;” “It’s a street in Georgia;” “We wrote it on a napkin at a party” – but in reality, the band’s first bass player just liked the word “lannen” and wanted to use it in a band name. “Fall” was a random choice, they said.
“It’s nice to have a band name that you can Google without getting a million results,” said drummer Matt Wishnack.
Lannen Fall is made up of Wishnack, Jay Tagg, Ryan Mercedes and Dave Horsman. After writing and performing for the past two and a half years, they are on the brink of gaining popularity. This year, the indie-pop rock band won the Honda Civic Tour contest, the Ernie Ball Battle of the Bands contest and the Absolute Punk contest, leading to performances at a Fall Out Boy show, the Vans Warped Tour and Saints and Sinners Fest.
Horsman, the bass player, said he still gets starstruck when opening for musicians he admires.
“When we won the Fall Out Boy concert, that was awesome, because we played with Mark Hoppus from Blink 182,” he said. “He’s in +44 now. He autographed my bass, and I was shaking like a little kid.”
Life provides plenty of inspiration for Lannen Fall’s songs. Everyone in the band writes and contributes to their repertoire.
“I tend to write my songs about something very specific, whether it’s specific to myself or to a specific idea, and then I try to flush it out into something more universal,” said Mercedes, the guitarist. “I write about myself , but not in an ‘I’ way, especially because Jay’s singing it. It’s very hard to channel yourself through someone in such a personal way.”
When Wishnack writes, he prefers to use his creative freedom to re-interpret experiences and hopes others will find their own meaning.
“I’m really happy if someone listens to our lyrics and takes it for whatever they want to,” Wishnack said. “I don’t really feel the need to explain a song. As long as someone takes something out of it, and makes it their own, that’s totally cool.”
Lannen Fall released its debut EP, Stories, in February. The band doesn’t have specific plans for when its next full length album will be released, but one thing is for sure: it will offer fans something new.
“We really just always write what pleases us,” Mercedes said. “[But] I think it’s a personal goal of mine, and of the band as a whole, to not repeat ourselves. And I think that works out well in the long run.”
Medicated Kisses
On stage, Alanna Quinn of Medicated Kisses is a force to be reckoned with. When her powerful, passionate vocals and demands of the audience to get up, one might even call her slightly terrifying. Fans who know Quinn for her stage presence might be surprised that she got her start with showtunes.
A life-long singer, Quinn’s musical roots begin in theatre. She has performed in “Into the Woods” and “Damn Yankees,” and also sang R’B and jazz in high school. When she’s not performing, she works at local coffee shop Espresso Royale Caffe on Gainsborough Street.
Nonetheless, her onstage persona is no act.
“I feel like when I look at somebody onstage, they see through me and they see that this is it. There’s not anything fake about it,” Quinn said. “If I tried to be someone else onstage, I couldn’t, because I’d just act like myself. I have a very specific personality and that’s how I like to be.”
Medicated Kisses is a Boston-based rock band that combines strong, soulful female vocals with driving, heavy guitars. It’s a sound the band’s members and fans find difficult to classify.
“We’re five very different people, but when we play music, it brings out all our similarities and makes us one unit,” Quinn said. “But since we’re such different people, it comes out like rock music, but in this very twisted, weird way.”
The band’s original sound has garnered the attention of the Boston Music Awards, and this year, Medicated Kisses was nominated for two awards: Best New Act of the Year and Local Female Vocalist of the Year.
Medicated Kisses’ placement in the female-fronted band category doesn’t always work in its favor.
“Any time a female-fronted band is mentioned, I feel like the same thing is said every time. Like, ‘I normally don’t like chick singers, but I really like this band,'” Quinn said. “I feel like there are some people that are going to be like, ‘Oh, Medicated Kisses, I’ve heard of them, they have a girl singer. I hate girl singers. I’m not even going to listen.’ But I don’t let that get me down.”
Not much can get Medicated Kisses down these days. The band’s latest self-titled EP was produced by Michael Birnbaum and Chris Bittner, who has worked with Coheed and Cambria, Bad Brains and The Sleeping. It has had strong sales on iTunes and www.smartpunk.com, but Quinn pointed out that there are still millions of people who haven’t heard it. The band is in no rush to record another album, or to get signed to a record label.
“It would be nice to find a company that feels the same way about music as we do and sees us for what we are. It might happen in the next couple months, or it might not happen for another year,” Quinn said. “Either way, we know what we like about our music, and we know what everyone else likes about it, so preserving that is our main goal.”
