Don’t Miss Out: Marina City
Interview by Geoff Burns
Festival season is in full swing, and with that comes the biggest traveling festival of the summer- Warped Tour. This year the tour features a ton of throwback bands like Good Charlotte, Sum 41, Less Than Jake, New Found Glory and so many more! And while we love these bands and appreciate their contribution to the scene, we want to introduce you to some of the bands that you may not know about. Who knows? You might get introduced to your new favorite band.
For the 2nd installment of Don’t Miss Out, we want to introduce you to Chicago band, Marina City. Read the interview with the band below!
Can you tell us a little bit about how everything came together for you guys when starting out in 2012? I know you guys are from Chicago, but where did each of you meet each other and decide to start this band?
I was a solo artist signed to a production deal. When looking for a backing band I recruited my long time friend Brian to play guitar. He and I previously played in a band. He was in a popular band in the scene for a long time. Matt and I were in our high school play and musical together. He was a perfect fit for the band when looking for a keyboardist and another vocalist. We found Eric on Craigslist with a bigger resume than we deserved at the time. When the production deal was over we had a chance to renew but instead decided to create a band together. We added another long time friend, Aaron to play Bass shortly after Marina City started. Our old bands used to play with Aaron’s bands when growing up. About 3 years into the band’s career we were looking for a lead guitarist. We played a show with Todor’s band before they broke up. At the show we became friends and when looking for a guitarist he jumped on pretty quickly. We started a band to start over, have a clean slate from our past projects. We wanted to do it right and create something we loved. It was a simple idea that has made us grow as musicians, friends, and people. We are very grateful for it. (Ryan Argast/Lead Vocals)
Since the band has six people, how do you guys find time to get everyone together to go on tour, practice and everything else?
Everyone in this band is cognitive of the fact that Marina City comes before all. Whether it’s work, friends, or girlfriends, we work our schedule around Marina City. (Todor Birindjiev/Lead Guitar)
What was it like knowing that out of about 10,000 bands, you were chosen to work with producer John Feldmann for an EP and play two weeks of Warped Tour? Was this all because of you winning the 2015 Ernie Ball Battle of the Bands?
Amazing to have all of our hard work actually start to pay off. Made us feel like we are doing something right and just need the right opportunities to really make this happen (Aaron Heiy/Bass)
Can you tell me a little bit about your upcoming EP, ‘Lost Doesn’t Mean Alone’? What does this title of the EP mean to you?
We want to make music our profession. We want to live our dreams. Some people believe that means we don’t know what we want to do with our lives. They believe we are lost. This is why we always call ourselves the lost boys and our fan base by the same name. However, this EP, we made with our fans. We may be lost, but with our fans, we will never be alone. (Ryan Argast/Lead Vocals)
You guys went to five studios in five different cities across the Midwest to record this live acoustic EP. What sparked this idea?
We’ve toyed around with doing an acoustic EP for well over a year now and we knew we wanted to try something different. We’re big fans of the Jazz/ Fusion collective Snarky Puppy and they had released an album called We Like It Here where they performed live in front of an in-studio audience and filmed it. This was totally where the initial spark came from. We talked about it for months and figured one day we’d do it maybe in a day or two in a Chicago studio. After we heard Craig Owens was looking for projects we thought maybe we should try going to a few different studios since he’s based in Detroit. Plus that way we could get even more of our fan base to be involved in this project. Luckily for us Craig was extremely interested and excited about the idea and we moved on from there. It basically became a combination of the Snarky Puppy thing and Foo Fighters’ Sonic Highways. It was quite a project to take on logistically but fortunately it all came together smoothly. We’re super excited for everyone to hear how it came out! (Eric Somers-Urrea/Drums)
How was it different working with Craig Owens as opposed to John Feldmann for this? Did Owens produce this? Or did he just contribute vocals on songs?
Working with Feldmann was a surreal experience, he definitely pushed us far enough to get some unseen potential in all of us.
Owens helped us reimagine the songs. He refocused and made the songs stronger, I wish he contributed vocals to the tracks that would’ve been incredible! (Matt Gaudiano/Keys)
What’s in store for you guys this year?
2016 will be a huge year for us, we are playing the last two west coast weeks of Warped Tour and playing Riot Fest in September. Also opening up for Trophy Wives and Sleep On It on an east coast run from June 20th to June 30. On top of that, we will release our Lost Doesn’t Mean Alone studio project produced by Craig Owens so that’s just going to be the icing on the cake! Haha (Brian Johnson/Rhythm Guitar)
