Renee RennaSaosin is an alternative rock band from Newport Beach, California. The group consists of: Cove Reber, lead vocals, Justin Shekoski and Beau Burchell, guitar, Chris Sorenson, bass guitar, and Alex Rodriguez, drums.
The band formed in 2003, but in early 2004 lost their lead singer, Anthony Green, who is now the lead singer of Circa Survive. Cove was just out of high school when he joined Saosin in 2004 and since then they have been making history. Saosin has played on Warped Tour, the Taste of Chaos, and most recently Projekt Revolution. The band also had the privilege to open for Avenged Sevenfold and A.F.I. This fall they embarked on their first official headlining tour with Alexisonfire, Envy on the Coast, the Dear and Departed, and Norma Jean. I was fortunate enough to get an interview with Cove while they were in Orlando on October 19.
One of the first things I asked about was school and his first job. When talking about high school he answered “I wasn’t always the best student. I did not have straight A’s and if a D was passing, then that was good for me.” He went on to say that he never went to college, but if he did go back he would do something dealing with history. Cove’s first job was a junkyard boy at the age of 10. His first upon reaching the legal working age was working laser tag at a bowling alley. He told us, “I used to bring my friends in and we would bowl and play laser tag for free.”
We quickly shifted to the topic of music. Cove grew up listening to whatever his parents would put on. James Taylor, Styx, Neil Young, Journey, Dire Straits, and Jethro Tull are the few that he mentioned. He says he listens to completely different things compared to his band mates. Cove really digs the new Underoath CD “Define the Great Line” and admitted that Panic! At the Disco is one of his guilty pleasures. Cove went on to talk about how he just bought a 160 GB ipod and how half of it is just movies. “I am very anal when it comes to my ipod. Every letter of every word must be capitalized and if I just have part of an album by a band, I take it off my ipod.”
Every tour, the band has a new toy. For instance, on Projekt Revolution, the band had mini-bikes that they rode around on. Cove’s toy for this tour is a ball of energy named Matilda. She is an adorable 12 week old Dachshund. The other new toy he acquired was a vocal pedal. He mentioned that sometimes he goes to the back of the bus and messes around with it, seeing what weird sounds he can make. On a normal day or night off, the word shower comes to mind. Another thing the band enjoys is sitting back watching movies in complete silence. “Lately we have been in a sort of gay mood, because we keep watching romantic comedies.” Cove also mentions that this is a good time for him to rest, heal his voice the best he can, and gather who he is.
When writing lyrics, Cove expressed that the inspiration comes from real life experiences. “‘I Never Wanted to’ took two and a half years to write because I couldn’t write the next verse until something happened in my life.” Writing love songs is something Cove tries not to do and as for songs that have one meaning, they bum him out. When asking about his favorite songs to perform live, he replied, “It changes every night. Sometimes it’s a bigger song like ‘Seven Years’ and other times it could be ‘I Never Wanted to.'” Cove’s favorite part about performing is the build-up before they go on stage. As for the question about getting nervous performing in front of people; he gets more nervous talking to the crowd. “If I mess up in a song, I laugh and shake it off, but when I mess up talking, I feel like an idiot.” The next topic we talked about was about Projekt Revolution and other tours. Cove said that being on Projekt Revolution was a lot different than Warped Tour. He compared Warped Tour to the equivalent of what high school is. “Basically everyone parties all night and has to get up at 11 every morning.” He went on to say that Projekt Revolution was the biggest and most diverse this year with bands such as My Chemical Romance and Taking Back Sunday. “We expected Linkin Park not to be as awesome as they were. They treated everyone equally.” Cove went on to talk about how Saosin became very good friends with all the bands and how every night either they or My Chemical Romance would have a barbeque. In continuing the talk about tours, I asked Cove what he preferred more; headlining or playing a huge show with several bands, like festivals. Cove answered, “In headlining, many people get to see a different side of Saosin. We approach festival type shows differently than a headlining show because it is our opportunity to show people who might not know us who we are.”
We then began to talk about the what if questions. I asked Cove if he could have a superpower what would it be. His reply was, “I want to be like Hiro from Heroes because he can teleport and go through time. I want to be able to go to California whenever I want, come back for the show and go back home and sleep in my own bed.” Now, if Saosin’s plane was to crash and there was no food, Cove said for sure the rest of the band would eat him first. His reasoning is because he is the weakest, but since the rest of the band was elsewhere, Cove answered how he wanted to. “I would eat Alex because he has a habit of ‘marinating’ (not taking a shower everyday) and all the ‘marinating’ would make him taste really good.”
As the interview was drawing to a close, I asked Cove one final question, what are the band’s plans for next year? South America is something that the band wants to do, just to see what it is all about. They are planning to keep touring and striving to be the biggest band they can be. Another hot topic was about a possible new album. “We all have different ideas for the new record.” The new album is going to be more mature and is definitely not going to be like the last album.
If you want to find out more about Saosin go to http://www.saosin.com or http://www.myspace.com/saosin. Their new single “It’s Far Better to Learn” is hitting the radio later this month. They’re headlining tour continues until November 7. If you want to see Saosin in concert, they are going to be at 97x’s, Next Big Thing 7 on December 2 at Ford Amphitheatre.