KEEPING UP WITH THE CHASING KINGS - RUMBLE LA PREVIEW

This afternoon we had the chance to sit down with one of the bands featured on tomorrow night's RUMBLE: LA bill at 3 Clubs - CHASING KINGS - and have a talk with them to find out more about this young act whose EP, 'The Current State of Our Future", has become a favorite on the FS radio show and around the HQ.

Chasing Kings are an LA based band that originally started back in Lake Arrowhead as kids and grew into the four piece that it currently is. We were immediately struck by the lack of pretension and downright sincerity of this young band, whose members have just hit the legal drinking age (wink wink). We tried our best to get them to dish the dirt on scenes or other bands or even boast of ambitions, but what we got were four guys that love '60's music and music history for that matter, a few with jazz backgrounds, that were humble yet driven but with realistic expectations on what has become the "music business" and their definitions of success. Refreshing in our current climate of band entitlement at times because of "overnight buzz bands" happening after the blog bandwagon revs it's engine and taps someone the next Deerhunter/Animal Collective/U Name it.

The band is made up of Draw Beck, Mic Gold, Knick Sandler and Matte Schwartz and they initially got together around a shared love for The Who, and the record, "Tommy" in particular. They raided their parent's record collections and discovered that people once wrote songs that had hooks and that 30 and 4o years later, people could remember the lyrics and the basslines and purchase them over and over again, every time the medium changed. I sometimes wonder if we will look back in 20 years and collectively sing lyrics by WAAVES. Just saying.

Cruise over to the band's Myspace page HERE, and listen to "This Town". You'll hear some big swirling vocals that do not lack ambition, they are full throttled blasts of a band that believes in their craft. They just returned from their first nationwide tour, self-booked, that had them playing places like Boston, universities around New York City, and a secret house party in Montreal. What we're hoping to get a taste of tomorrow night when they hit the stage around 10:15pm is the chops they've developed from playing night after night to those indifferent and those that meet them at the merch table later to pick up their self-released EP.

They are writing new material for a full length, that early on was set for unveiling by SXSW (the band is heading to Austin in March) but now is going to be patiently developed on the schedule that is reality. They look to bands like GRIZZLY BEAR as a role model "in just the fact that they went from making records that they do all themselves into touring constantly and continuing to do it all themselves". Sustainability is their goal, and success is touring with acts they admire and building their footprint.

No Future Sounds interview is complete without us asking the up-in-coming bands we love to tell us about bands that they love that we may not know of yet, and the foursome all agreed that the one we should all put on our radar is CHERRY CHAPSTICK. The main guy in Cherry Chapstick played guitar with them in Boston, but is from Montreal, and they are an electronic indie band with 2 EP's released. Check out this picture of them above, it's already interesting (check out your boy to the left).

Others bands that they mentioned that they would recommend are Portland's MIMICKING BIRDS or two bands from CALARTS out in Valencia: MAGIC MOUNTAIN and WHITE HORSES IN TECHNOCOLOR EVERYWHERE. The final act that they met out on the east coast but that have recently moved to Los Angeles is VERB THE ADJECTIVE NOUN.

THE RUMBLE: LOS ANGELES goes down tomorrow night at 3 Clubs. It's Free.