L.A.-based thatwasthen goes from winning Spring Sing’s best band award to performing at Troubadour
THATWASTHEN
thatwasthen, winner of best band at last year’s Spring Sing competition, will be performing at the Troubador on Saturday, Jan. 8.
thatwasthen
Saturday, 7 p.m.
Troubadour, $12
> Preview some of their tracks on SoundCloud .
By Madeleine Flynn
Jan. 5, 2011 11:55 p.m.
Songs by Auto-Tune-loving musicians may fill the radio these days, but the members of L.A. rock band thatwasthen prefer to keep their music ““ mistakes, imperfections and all ““ as it is.
thatwasthen won the award for best band at last year’s Spring Sing and has performed at other UCLA events such as Mighty Mic and Dance Marathon.
The band will release its first full-length album, also titled “thatwasthen,” on Jan. 11, and will play an all-ages show at the Troubadour on Saturday to celebrate its release. The album features two years’ worth of songs tested on the stages of L.A. music clubs, from the House of Blues to the Knitting Factory.
Unlike many current musicians, thatwasthen recorded the entire album live over a two-day period. According to UCLA alumnus and lead singer Brenton Sinay, in recording the album in this way, the band chose to sacrifice perfection in order to capture the passionate, high-energy feel of its live shows.
“It’s okay if it’s a little sloppy if we’re just getting crazy. I mean, that’s what rock ‘n’ roll is all about,” Sinay said. “Yes, we play live. Yes, we speed up slightly sometimes. Sometimes we’re off beat. Sometimes I miss a note … and that’s part of it.”
The current members of thatwasthen have played together for two years but knew each other growing up and going to school in Dana Point. Sinay and fellow UCLA alumnus and pianist for the band, Nathan Longdon, met while attending UCLA. The two are joined by fourth-year English student and lead guitarist Nicky Papageorge, bassist Benny Dacks and drummer Chris Bridge.
Taking its inspiration from classic rock greats such as Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin and contemporary bands such as the Foo Fighters and Incubus, thatwasthen combines heavier, hard-rocking songs with softer, ballad-like pieces.
“It’s, like, big rock ‘n’ roll,” Sinay said, describing thatwasthen’s brand of music. “It’s not garage rock ‘n’ roll. …It’s not elevator rock ‘n’ roll. It’s made for big, big stages and big, big spaces, such as Pauley Pavilion.”
thatwasthen had its first opportunity to perform in the famed arena when it performed there during Spring Sing last year.
According to Sinay, the positive reaction to thatwasthen’s music at the event motivated the band to continue playing and begin work on its new album.
“It felt like a tiny taste of what it could be if we keep working hard,” Sinay said.
thatwasthen recorded an EP, “Quod Erat Demonstrandum,” in 2008, but on the new album it decided against using tools like Auto-Tune to edit out imperfections and filling its songs with computer effects that would be impossible to recreate live.
“You know, if (T-Pain) were just sitting in front of you, and (he) tried to sing one of his songs, it would … sound stupid,” Papageorge said.
Dacks said he believed recording an album live with all of the musicians playing together in the same room, rather than the more common practice of recording each instrument separately, offered the advantage of helping capture the visceral experience of a live concert experience.
“(When you perform live) there’s like a tension in the air when you’re playing ““ and you can feel, like, this crazy energy,” Dacks said. “You can’t record it with a microphone, because it’s not a sound, but it’s part of the sound.”
After the initial recording sessions, the band spent months remixing and adding overdubs to the skeleton of the original live recordings. Still, while the long hours in the studio were difficult, the end result made the members’ hard work worth it.
“A lot of bands break up in the studio. … It’s a trying period of time, but if you make it through that, then it means something,” Dacks said. “It’s so worth it when it works, and when you can sit back, relax and listen to the tracks, and you have that moment of, like, “˜Wow, it sounds like it’s supposed to.'”
For the time being, Papageorge said thatwasthen will be encouraged by the example of bands such as Kings of Leon and Muse, who released several albums before reaching the airwaves of Top 40 radio stations and selling out arenas across the country.
“We’re making our way up the only way you really can,” he said. “It’s just a slimy hill. You just keep slipping down, but you gotta keep going. It’s fun though. Playing in mud is fun. Hard fun.”
