Stand Alone – Interview with bass player, Mike Goodman
Chris Clark – Guitar
Jeremy Dok – Drums
Michael Goodman – Bass
Wes Poss – Guitar
Kenny Hathorne – Vocals
From Atlanta Georgia, this 5-piece Rock band started out in 2001 with 3 members, a guitarist, a drummer and bass player, who didn’t stay together very long – but who reunited in 2005. Adding a second guitar player and lead singer, they recorded their first EP. However, before long, Stand Alone was in need of a new lead vocalist. They wouldn't know it until a year later, but while at a Chevelle concert, they stood in the same room with the man that would eventually be the band's singer, leading to the release of their first full-length album in March 2007, Beside Myself.
Interview
Diana: Stand Alone. What’s the meaning behind the band’s name?Mike: There is, we are very much for people standing up for what they believe in and 1 of our slogans, mantra, is ‘Stand Alone or Not At All’ and we actually have that on some of our new t-shirts that we have available for our friends and fans. We are up for that, and it’s your beliefs regardless of what they are, whether it’s family choice, or status choice, any bit of it. We’ve all gone through a lot in our lives and some of us have actually been persecuted for our beliefs and we’re all about the adverse.
Diana: Awesome. That’s very cool. Now in regards to genre, there are so many different genres of rock today, you know, pop rock, punk rock, emo rock, hardcore, post-hardcore, on and on and on and on, but you guys seem to have stuck more to the ‘traditional’ hard rock sound, you know, I don’t know what that would be – traditional – but you know, more of the Breaking Benjamin, Shinedown type of hard rock sound. What bands would you say have influenced Stand Alone’s music? Am I on the right track in describing it this way?
Mike: Well, we actually, and you have a small sampling group to listen to on myspace, we actually have a 10 song album out now, that can be purchased at places like Best Buy in the States, and the neat thing about it, is there’s very little similarity between each one. We all as musicians have come from completely different backgrounds with completely different musical tastes and influences and we’ve put together a sound that we try not to stick to too patterned to anybody out there. There are obvious production values that a lot of popular bands use. Now we’ve really tried to isolate ourselves a little bit and kind of be the black sheep of the far east as far as sticking to that particular formula, but you know, we’ve been influenced heavily by bands as far as what we came into it as, Alice In Chains, you know, Taproot, yeah, Breaking Benjamin, I’ve got a guitarist who loves the older Sevendust material, oh wow, the list is huge, 311, Chevelle, got to see them in concert at the Ritz in Athens, Georgia, which unbeknownst to me, we would be in the same room with our current lead singer, we just hadn’t met him at that point. Kinda neat that we ended up going to the same show way out of our way and we met him about a year and a half later, hired him on the spot.
Diana: Oh cool, quite a neat story.
Mike: And we actually are writing new songs and are coming into our particular sound more and more. And even a lot of newer material has really evolved from our previous states.
Diana: What inspires the band’s lyric writing and the music writing as well?
Mike: Well, a lot of the lyric writing, which is done by our vocalist, and we all have a little bit of input, it’s mostly the vocalist, Kenny Hathorne and myself that do most of the lyric writing. A lot of it is experiences in our lives, not necessarily current, there is a song called “Voiceless” that Kenny and I did a lot of work on and that one is about, you know, it is actually about a current life experience for myself. Getting into a position with someone who’s very close to me and realizing that there have been so many things that have happened in that person’s life and wishing that I could take some of that away, stop and rewind that person’s life and let them start again. In reality, that stuff has really made that person who they are today and I really couldn’t see myself wanting that person to be any different, just a little less hurt. And for him that same song echoes similarly but about a completely different relationship that he’s had.
Diana: Do you hope your music will affect others in any particular way?
Mike: Yes, of course, we want people to enjoy the music first, and what we try to do is take these songs lyrically and musically and give them a universal theme, something that people can grasp, whether they’re on a serious low point in their life or they’re incredibly happy, we want the song to touch everybody or understand where that person might be coming from and to help them out. There’s something that was said a while back about REM and “Losing My Religion”, as a song, when they first wrote and recorded that song, they had literally hundreds of pieces of mail coming in and they still do, with people saying, “Hey, this song helped me out in a really tough point in my life that I didn’t think I wanted to live.” A lot of people really were at their end and that song actually turned a lot of people’s lives around. And that’s something that we’re working towards. We want something that everyone can stand up for and say, “Hey, we need to change this and we need to stand true to our beliefs”.
Diana: That’s really good to hear. It’s always great when people want to affect others in that way. As far as touring goes, what would you say is one thing you have to have on the road with you?
Mike: The truth is we’re all friends in the band and we’re all family to each other and that is the ultimate thing we have to have on the road, there’s not a single item, it’s just having each other.
Diana: So if you went on the road and you brought absolutely nothing with you, you’d be all good, so long as the band was there?
Mike: We’d be great cause we’d have each other there.
Diana: Wow. Ok, cool, sounds very positive. Any favourite places to tour?
Mike: Oh, we love a couple places up in Memphis and we’re working on a really big tour for this summer that’s gonna be crossing colleges across the nation.
Diana: You have to come to Canada too.
Mike: We’re working on it. We also have some stuff over in Europe that we’re working on and there’s not a lot of details about it yet, we’re still working out all the initials kinks and getting funding together. And it’s amazing when people see a band in concert, they’re there for their moment and they’re there to see them perform but the stuff that goes on behind the scenes is just unreal in putting something like that together.
Diana: What would you say is the greatest advice anyone’s ever given you?
Mike: Oh you know, I’ll never be able to remember the person who said it, but it is just believe in yourself and stand up for what you believe in. That is my personal, and I’m sure that every member of the band could chime in with something different on that.
Diana: That’s great advice. So Stand Alone will be touring across the States and working on touring Europe – anything else we can look forward to in 2008 or in the future?
Mike: Those are the biggest plans right now. Plan what you can, but take it one day at a time. We love people, we love to see people out in the crowd. There’s nothing quite like being in front of hundreds of people, all enjoying the music and singing along, so we’re looking forward to meeting a lot of new people and making a lot of new friends and fans on the way, we’re looking to record a new album with all our new material, with our old friend, Shawn Grove, who did our previous album and he’s currently in the studio with Collective Soul. He actually, I think, finished up their last album, but they’re always doing something new, which I really applaud them for.
Diana: Well I look forward to hearing the new album and good luck with all your plans. Thank you so much for talking with us.
Mike: My pleasure.
P.s. bizarre fact: Mike has never had a cold or flu! :0 Lucky!
Riddle
buried deep, we've grown so cold
a hollow shell we must unfold
moments passing by
it's time to realize
this is how its goes
leave this far behind
every step we take
could be just a waste
this is now the time
leave this far behind
the way they look, things they say
ignore your fears cast away
you feel you've got to break
with every breath you take
hold it up
don't tear it down
we fake all we make
and never stop to think
the riddle stops you
don't force it down
don't force it down
reaching every day
something’s in the way
taking back whets mine
leave this far behind
every step we take
could be just a waste
this is now the time
leave this far behind
the things they took, games they played
replace the need, get away
and every day you left me wasting away
and i don't see the way you need it to be
don't force it down
