MANCHESTER, NH – The fusion of ska and punk music has a unique ability to uplift and energize anyone who gives it a listen. The rhythms, which are fueled by the drums and bass while being accentuated by the guitars and horns, are bound to make people dance and jump around as if they were on a pogo stick. Based in Manchester, Sotah has a knack for creating this type of atmosphere whenever they perform.
On July 17, folks around the Queen City will get the chance to experience this when the band takes the stage at The Shaskeen. The show, which is titled “Cute Fun Music For Cute Fun People,” starts at 8 p.m. as Paint The Town Dead, Bastard Curse and Trading Tombstones will be rounding out the bill with Kinetic City Events presenting it as part of their monthly “Showcase 603” series.
I had a talk with frontman Casey Daron from Sotah about a new tune the band has out, collaborating with a ska-punk legend on a song and plans for future recordings.
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Rob Duguay: Last month, you guys released a new single titled “Sunrise.” Where was it recorded and what was the creation process like for the song?
Casey Daron: We recorded “Sunrise” at the Halo Studio, which is just north of Portland, Maine. It was produced by Kevin Billingsley, he is just this crazy producing talent who has pretty much worked with every local band that has amounted to anything within the local scene. He has had a part in their production, so I’ve been wanting to work with him for a long time. As a band, this was the very first time that we actually recorded with him, so his work is just phenomenal and I think it shines through with the song. I wrote the song a good four years ago, and when it comes to writing the songs of Sotah, I started it off as a solo project for myself.
It was kind of a side thing that I was doing because I used to be in a metal band, which was my main focus, but when I started writing songs, “Sunrise” was in that first batch that I had actually ever written. It’s a song about depression and trying to find the light and return to the light while knowing that it’s out there somewhere and trying to convince yourself that it still exists and you’re going to be able to find it. When I write my music, I tend to take a very spur of the moment approach, especially when it comes to lyrics, but with the music itself, a lot of times I’ll hear something in my head. I’ll map it out on a computer with my guitar and I’ll keep playing what sounds right while going through a ton of different revisions. One thing that I’ve kind of taught myself is to not work too hard, I think when you overcomplicate a song that’s when things aren’t working.
I try to write what comes naturally to me and what fits the best, so going from writing “Sunrise” four years ago to recording it, a lot changed and a lot of good was made. Kevin at the Halo Studio helped bring out the best parts of the song, he didn’t necessarily mess with the structure as much as letting certain parts of the song shine. I’d say that it was probably 85% of what I had originally written and 15% of Kevin kind of polishing it up. I write everything from the guitar to the bass and the drums, I write all of that myself.
RD: Very cool. You also put out a music video for the song, and from watching it, there are scenes that take place both at a church and on the beach with the band dressed up as ghoulish figures. For example, you look like a vampire with white makeup in the video, so where were these locations filmed and what inspired the whole aesthetic behind it?
CD: Those scenes were filmed at three different locations. We filmed the full band shots at the Searles Chapel in Windham, which is a place that was built over 100 years ago and is now an event space. It used to be a church and it’s based on very medieval, gothic architecture, and right down the street, there’s the Searles Castle that is now a spot primarily used for weddings, but it actually used to be a residence over 100 years ago. It’s a re-creation of an actual European castle down to every single piece of the blueprint as a replica. It’s crazy, I was told that there’s a fireplace, which was prominently featured in the music video, that was previously owned by Napoleon Bonaparte at one point.
RD: Oh, wow.
CD: Yeah, there’s so much rich history just in Windham and you’d never expect it, so it looks like we flew out to somewhere like Europe, but it’s actually right here in New Hampshire. The beach scenes were filmed at Hampton Beach and I just wanted to give it a very homegrown locale, but the whole idea for the vampires didn’t come to me until about six months ago. I was racking my brain for what I wanted to do in terms of what the music video should be. Originally, we had toyed around with the idea that it was just going to be the band playing as our regular selves, but I wanted to do something a little more flashy and more catchy. I was listening to the lyrics of the song after we had gotten an early demo back from Kevin and as I was listening to the lyrics I was like,”You know, this kind of sounds like it could be from the perspective of a vampire.”
I just thought that it was some silly imagery and I had made the album artwork for this song a number of years ago. It’s all based around tropical island vibes and I wanted to keep that in mind, so as I was brainstorming and listening to the lyrics, I figured that it would be kind of funny if this whole music video was about a vampire who desperately wanted to go on a tropical vacation but can’t because if he goes out in the daylight he will die. I felt that it was a nice way to reflect the lyrics in a way that wasn’t so on the nose, but it was still flashy, fun and engaging while having us get out of our shells a little bit, put on the makeup and make a big spectacle of it.
RD: I enjoyed watching the video, I thought it was wicked cool. Last year, Sotah released another single with Dicky Barrett from The Mighty Mighty Bosstones called “Division Line”, so how did that collaboration come about?
CD: I’ve been a big fan of The Mighty Mighty Bosstones for as long as I can remember. Before they broke up, I saw them around 16 or 17 times in concert and I kind of got to know some of the guys over the years just from being at the shows. I was a recognized face, I wasn’t a friend or anything but I was going to the shows and they see the people who are repeat customers. When the Bosstones broke up, Dicky lives out on the West Coast and he was kind of in his own bubble. There was a lot of controversy going his way, which I felt was pretty unjust because everything that Dicky has stood for since the ‘90s has always been about love, compassion, anti-racism and very liberal ideals.
When it comes to people, he’s a people’s person, and I saw a lot of anger being shown his way because of his political beliefs and it got me really upset. It made me frustrated about how you got this guy who stands for such good, has stood for that for so many years, and a simple political difference can completely divide our country. That was just really frustrating to me and I thought it was so sad to see one of my idols get shunned like this, so I have a mutual friend of Dicky’s. We got in contact and I told him,”Hey, I love what you’re doing and I love what you stand for and I always have.” I told him about how I wrote this song about the division of our country and how we really should be banding together as working class people and fighting against the tyranny of the government and all of the things that have been going wrong for these past few years.
I asked Dicky if he would be interested in singing on it, and he was all in right away. We’ve become very close over the last two years or so, we text weekly and I’m honestly proud to call him my friend. I was so excited about the collaboration at the time and I’m still so excited about it. It’s something that came together so nicely and it’s a dream come true.
RD: It’s cool that it came out that way. What are your thoughts on this upcoming show at The Shaskeen?
CD: We love The Shaskeen. Sotah has played it a couple times before, it is such a cool local venue and it’s one of the last clubs in the area where you don’t have to play a three hour cover set. You go there, you pay your ticket to get in, and you get to see local talent, so we’re so excited. We love the venue, we love playing live and we love playing in Manchester because it’s our hometown.
RD: It should be an awesome time. With this new single “Sunrise” currently out, can we expect any more singles to come out this year or is there going to be an EP or a full-length record that’s due to be released?
CD: When we went to the Halo Studio, we recorded four new tracks with “Sunrise” being one of them, so we plan on releasing at least one more single this year and then two more after that. People can expect another big, high-budget music video with another nice marketing roll out plan, which is going to be a lot different than “Sunrise”. That video was big and flashy and a spectacle, but the songs coming forward are different in nature. You’re going to see the true Sotah and the true image of who we are.