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The Ataris
- The Ataris, one of the most successful
independent rock bands of recent years,
debuted on Columbia Records with So Long,
Astoria, their first full-length album in
nearly two years.
"Musically," says
Ataris frontman Kris Roe, "we
took a back-to-basics straight-forward rock
approach. There's no novelty, no silly aspects
to this record at all. It's a serious
story-telling record. Everything is really
personal, every song is about something
different, each song is like a page in the
scrapbook of memories, but it's not a dark
record at all."
"In a lot of my lyrics," Kris reveals, "I like
to encode a lot of hidden messages and
whatnot. I like our fans to read into things.
I feel that our fans are smart and I don't
want to give them just a bunch of
surfacelyrics that you can take at face
value."
Conceptually, So Long, Astoria takes its
inspiration from an idea expressed in punk
pioneer Richard Hell's novel, "Go Now" (which
also exists as a spoken word album): that
memory can transcend the experience that
generated the memory. "That really hit home
with me," Kris points out. "That's how I try
and structure my life: to try to do what will
produce the best memories for later. When
we're traveling on tour, there are a lot of
things that you let go of and leave behind,
but, at the end of the day, even if you didn't
accomplish anything, you'll have these great
memories of all the people you've met and all
the places you've been and all these things
that you've done and all this time that you've
shared with your friends."
The primacy of memory is a theme that runs
through the songs on So Long, Astoria. When
writing for the new album, Kris Roe got in his
car and drove around to "places where I grew
up, places where I used to live, my old
school, all these places. At two in the
morning, I'd sit in my car and I'd just write.
I'd take all these Polaroids of where I grew
up. I went back and stole back these memories
that were once mine by taking all these
Polaroids. At this point in my life and
career, I can't very well go back to the house
where I used to live and say to the people
that live there now, 'Can I sit in my old
bedroom?' But I could take photographs in the
f***ing window. I tried to do anything I could
to make this record more vivid and detailed,
even going to stalker limits."
The idea behind So Long, Astoria is, according
to Kris, "more metaphoric. Astoria is the town
in that movie, The Goonies (director Richard
Donner's 1985 quirky family-comedy). We're
really big pop culture geeks. In the movie,
these misfit kids go on this great adventure
after they find a pirate's map up in the
attic. One kid's dad works for the historical
society in the small town of Astoria, Oregon."
The album's title track encapsulates the idea
of memory being a kind of buried treasure:
"Life is only as good as the memories we
make/and I'm taking back what belongs to me/Polaroids
of classrooms unattended/These relics of
remembrance are just like shipwrecks/only
they're gone faster than the smell after it
rains..../And when this hourglass has filtered
out its final grain of sand/I'll raise my
glass to the memories we had/This is my wish
and I'm taking it back, I'm taking 'em all
back."
"In This Diary," the album's first single, has
been slated to be lensed as a video by cutting
edge director Steven Murashige, whose resume
includes clips for Incubus and Rage Against
The Machine. The song itself finds Kris
admitting that "Being grown up isn't half as
fun as growing up" before offering up the hope
that "...eventually you'll finally get it
right."
For Kris, getting it right means connecting in
a real way with the band's audience and the
Ataris are ferociously dedicated to their
fans. "We are a very personal band with our
fans," Kris is eager to stress. "We definitely
go out of our way. We take it an extra mile.
We write all our fans back personally, we run
our own website personally. We have a kid from
the audience get on stage and play guitar on a
song with us every night. We opened up a
record store in Santa Barbara, where we live,
so that when we're off tour, people can come
visit us. We even rehearse and practice there
so when kids come, we'll let them jam with us.
We listen to the demos kids give us and we've
helped a few bands get signed to indie labels.
We want this to be known about our band: all
we are is a bunch of music fans who got lucky
and happen to be living our dream. We are a
band thatexists solely for the purpose of our
fans."
But this kind of
24-7 attention to fans can create conflicts
with other real-world responsibilities. In
"The Saddest Song," Kris writes a heartfelt
apologia to his daughter, hoping that she'll
grow up to understand why her father's work
took him away from home so often. "I'm trying
to tell my daughter that I know what it's like
to be without your father," he confesses,
"because I was without my dad for about five
years after my parents got divorced." "I pray
I get the chance to make it up to you," he
sings to her. "We've got a lot of catching up
to do."
Kris extends both identification and empathy
to the poet Emily Dickinson in "Unopened
Letter," tracing a spiritual kinship between
the Belle of Amherst and Kurt Cobain, two
great poetic souls who live on in a
"posthumous life." "It's about how a lot of
artists never get the credit they deserve,"
Kris offers, "until they pass away." Visiting
the Dickinson Homestead while collecting the
stories and images for so long, astoria, Kris
was inspired to ask "If I died tomorrow, would
this song live on forever?"
When the Ataris received a fan letter written
to the band by a young girl confined to a
hospital bed with a life-threatening illness,
Kris was moved to write "My Reply," one of the
most emotionally powerful songs on so long,
astoria. "I want to make sure that every thing
I say is something that is really from my
heart, something really personal, and
something positive," Kris says about writing
this song. "I want to know that if I'm
reaching kids, I'm reaching them in a way
that's really helping them. I know what it's
like to be a kid that's totally down, that
grew up in a small town and doesn't have many
friends, that doesn't feel like he or she fits
in or belongs. If I'm speaking to somebody in
that way, I want to make sure that I let them
know that 'Hey, man, there's hope out there.
There's a lot more beyond this life and you
need to look for it."
When it came time to find a producer for so
long, astoria, the Ataris chose Lou Giordano (Goo
Goo Dolls, Sunny Day Real Estate, Samiam, Paul
Westerberg, Hüsker Dü, Sugar). "I wanted this
album to possess this kind of straight-forward
powerpop rock vibe," Kris admits, "kind of
what the Replacements always did. I wanted to
make a record that spoke to a wide audience.
Lou had worked with a lot of bands outside of
just our scene."
The result is a dream come true for fans of
this high-energy modern rock combo, with the
new original songs showcasing the
emotionally-charged Ataris sound while a
revved-up rendition of Don Henley's "Boys Of
Summer" gives a full-on jolt of the band's
spirited fun.
The Ataris are: Kris Roe (lead vocals/guitar),
Johnny Collura (guitar/vocals), Mike Davenport
(bass/vocals), and Chris "Kid" Knapp (drums).
The group was first discovered in 1997 when
songwriter Kris Roe passed along his demo tape
to Joe Escalante, bassist for the Vandals and
owner of Kung Fu Records. Moving from
Anderson, Indiana, to Santa Barbara,
California, Roe assembled The Ataris' line-up
and recorded the group's first full-length
offering, Anywhere But Here, for Kung Fu. The
Ataris subsequently recorded an EP, Look
Forward To Failure (1998 - Fat Wreck Chords),
as well as the additional Kung Fu albums: Blue
Skies, Broken Hearts?Next 12 Exits (1999) and
End Is Forever (2001), each of which has sold
more than 100,000 copies in the U.S. and has
achieved similar sales successes around the
world.
A virtual touring machine since the band's
inception, the Ataris have shared bills with
Jimmy Eat World, Social Distortion, Blink 182,
the Hives, 311, and others. The group has been
a main stage attraction on the Van's Warped
Tour and has sold out tours in Japan,
Australia, New Zealand and Europe.
"After months of writing and recording our new
album, we are very excited to be getting back
on the road to see all of our loyal fans
again," said the Ataris' Kris Roe. Following
the release of so long, astoria, the band
intends on touring for at least a year with
shows including performances on the main stage
of the 2003 Warped Tour.
With the release of so long, astoria, the
promise of the Ataris' early indie roots is
fulfilled with some of the most provocative
and emotionally powerful rock sounds this
continually-evolving group has ever made.
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