Adelaine: Your Heart Is A Weapon

When I stumbled across post-emo rockers Adelaine a year or so ago, the band almost sounded too good to be true, honestly. I mean, c’mon; how could I not like a band that melds melodic-yet-heavy, very emo-influenced guitar rock with gorgeously sweet/tough female vocals a la Cruiserweight or Veruca Salt (no, really; listen to Eight Arms to Hold You, and you’ll see/hear what I mean) and insightful, seriously personal lyricism? It’s like Adelaine pulls together most of my absolute favorite aspects of modern-day rock and assembles them into this configuration that’s simultaneously new and familiar. And yeah, it’s great, too.

The band lurked out on the fringes for a while there, but after singer Stormy Piña won “Best Vocalist” in the 2009 Texas Buzz Awards and Adelaine started getting airplay on The Buzz — no mean feat, in this radio-starved city, especially on a station that’s historically ignored most music out of Houston — the quintet started showing up more regularly, branching out to play shows with other like-minded rockers.

I’m damn glad to see it, of course, because the band’s sound is knock-you-to-the-floor impressive, particularly on their new EP, Take Heart, released back in the early spring of 2011. Since then they’ve been playing like mad, both here and elsewhere, and gaining fans everywhere they land. Trust me; this is a band that can’t help but move onwards and upwards.

With that in mind, we here at SCR peppered the band with some questions, and the Adelaine folks turned out to be amazingly nice and answered ’em all. Here goes…

SCR: Okay, first things first: can we get a little history on the band, for folks who might not’ve heard of you ’til now? Had you been in bands before this one?
Adelaine is the brainchild of Donny Bayless [guitarist], Wayne Davis [guitarist], and Zach Sebree [drummer]. After having gone separate ways following high school, the three realized they could not run away from music no matter where they were or what they were doing, and they would not be happy unless they were playing; thus, the idea for Adelaine was born.

With a couple additions needed, Donny, Wayne, and Zach began searching for a bass player and singer. The first addition would be a co-worker of Wayne’s, Matt Hannum [bassist]. Matt clicked with the band and has been described as having “fit like a glove” by Donny.

The final addition to be made would be the voice of the band. After widespread searching, the guys came across a band fronted by Stormy Piña, and fell in love with her voice. Stormy agreed to audition for Adelaine and was immediately embraced. She may have been the final addition to the band, but she’s brought with her the experience of not only being in a band but dealing with the local music scene.

I know you released the EP this past spring; what’s the response been like to that?
The response has been pretty good. As far as we know and have been told, people have really connected with it. And as a band, that’s our goal.

Who would you name as influences, musically speaking? I can’t help but think of a lot of emo/post-emo bands, particularly female-fronted bands like While You Were Gone, Cruiserweight, Jejune, or Pohgoh, so I’m curious what you all feel goes into the music.
As far as influences go, we really look up to and are inspired by Anberlin, Emery, Blindside, There For Tomorrow, Conditions, You Me at Six, Third Eye Blind, Mariah Carey, 311, Sugarcult, Foo Fighters, and countless others. We personally draw from such different backgrounds of music that this list could be endless.

Is there an overall theme to Take Heart? The songs seem to tie together somewhat, so I wasn’t sure…
Yes, there is a general theme. The title track “Take Heart” says it best: have courage and don’t be afraid to stand and fight for what you believe in. Stay strong, stay hopeful, and love.

I’ll admit that this is a bit of a loaded question, but from your mission statement it seems like you’re a fairly spiritually-minded band — would you say you’re a “Christian band”, specifically? Or is it more broad-ranging than that? I’m asking as pretty much a heathen, myself; I really like the emphasis on passion and hope and not focusing on being famous or raking it in, so I’m just curious.
We get that question often, and the answer is that we’re Christians in a band, but we don’t classify ourselves as a “Christian band.” We all believe in God and that we were here for a specific reason. We try our hardest to stay away from being classified as anything other than a rock band. Putting people in classes just ends up shutting people out. We want our music, our message, and our love for people to reach everyone, not just a specific group.

How did the “Texas Buzz” thing you did a while back at The Scout Bar come about? Have your songs gotten airplay on The Buzz? If so, that’d be pretty awesome…
Well, we’ve played The Texas Buzz several times. A.D. over at 94.5 got us into contact with the owner of The Scout Bar. The Buzz has been great and supported us by playing our songs frequently and helping us keep local momentum.

I know you played a benefit for something called the Got Your Back Movement, but I wasn’t really clear what that was; is that something you’re involved with as a band?
We met the Got Your Back team at a music festival we played this year in Illinois called Cornerstone. They are an organization that sells apparel, and all the proceeds go to children in Third World countries that need uniforms in order to be educated. The show went great, and the people that are a part of the organization became family to us. If we ever get the chance to use our music for the greater good, we don’t miss it.

What are your plans for the band going forward? Any hint of a followup release in the works, or are you going out on tour, or…?
We definitely plan on staying busy with our current release. Touring, playing festivals, doing absolutely anything we can to stay busy. As far as our next release, we’ve been writing a lot lately and are really excited about the new material.

So, I saw the recent video…do y’all do a lot of karaoke? It was, um, interesting…
We don’t get to hang out as a band as much as we’d like to, so when we do, we try our best to make it memorable. The karaoke video was just one of those times we never wanted to forget! If you’ve seen any of our other videos, you’d know we’re all pretty goofy.

On a totally random note, I have to say it was kind of refreshing to *not* see tattoos up and down everybody’s arms; these days it seems like every band I talk to is covered with ’em, even if they’re some absolutely sweet, un-heavy pop band. Are y’all totally tattoo-less, bucking the trend?
Not to let you down, but we’re all actually big fans of tattoos. Stormy actually has four and has plans for more. We’d all have some, but unfortunately we’re all starving artists. None of us plan on being covered in them, but we definitely have some ideas of getting a few that would really mean a lot to us. END