Brian: I think the absence of guitar solos on the demo was partially circumstantial.

It was a short demo, just to get the songs down on tape. There is a slightly fuller sound when there is guitar and bass and drums supporting another instrument sometimes as opposed to just bass and drums supporting guitar. Not always, though.

Sam: Yeah, I think it was just this recording. In our live shows, there's probably an equal mix.

Smitty: No, I don’t think so – it’s not about which is more viable. I think we’ll definitely feature more guitar solos on future recordings.

Martin, your guitar work is filled with a lot of arpeggios. Is there somewhere you learned that from, or is that just in a lot of the music you listen to?

Martin: I think it’s sort of a chicken and egg thing in that I can’t quite tell you how it all started. Yes, I learned to arpeggiate parts from various teachers over the years, as well as from messing around on my own. I took a liking to this style of playing both as a tool for rhythm and lead work, so I deliberately sought out other players doing this so I could check out their work.

I listened to a lot of Larry Carlton, Andy Summers, Charlie Hunter, Yngwie Malmsteen, Joe Satriani, Pat Martino, Wayne Krantz and lots of others. Guys with big-time chops. I learned a lot of their parts and took what I liked.

With respect to this band, I do think about broken chords a lot. I’ve studied with Wayne Krantz from time to time and he’s helped me think about using arpeggios and different chord shapes in order to be fatter. I try to use open strings a lot in my chord voicings and then arperggiate the voicing, which was a powerful technique for guys like Andy Summers and The Edge.

It’s a big sound, which works well in a trio and affords you a way to be big dynamically. Also, when you finally break out into kicking, chunking, rock power chords, there’s a real element of release. Brian has also been a big help in encouraging me to open up and play my voicings and my style of rhythm playing.

The rhythm section tends to stay mellow instead of pounding into the songs, is that required for the type of music you play? Are there any heavy aspects to your music?

Brian: Once again, circumstantial. I never feel mellow about what I play or when I’m playing. If it reaches the listener that way, so be it. It’s not usually the intent. Plenty of the new songs have a much harder edge.

Smitty: We don’t feel mellow. There are certainly times when we feel it’s important to lay back, so the melody and the words can be more prominent. Sometimes being softer can affect extreme intensity in the music, and I think even if we’re not loud we’re always “pounding into the songs” somehow.

Martin: I also think this is just a coincidence. The tunes worked out that way and there was no conscious discussion or formula. Indeed, the newer songs often seem to be the polar opposite. The rhythm section comes out pounding. Some of our newer songs start with the chorus and full-blown distorted guitars and three-part vocal harmonies, as opposed to the clean guitar parts and rim shot drums on this most recent record. We definitely think a lot about dynamics and how being loud or soft contributes to the atmosphere of a song, not to mention transitions from soft to loud and all the areas in between.

Sam: It also makes a difference that we have only one guitar and a saxophone, so it's harder to get the "wall-o-sound".

How have you developed such a steady following in your home base, New York? What does that mean to you? How do you plan on maintaining it?

Martin: I think we started like most bands, begging and pleading your family and friends to come out to the gig. Then you keep begging them to bring their friends, and friends of friends, and so on and so forth. Sometimes I feel like the begging never ends, but, in the last year, I’ve seen a lot more people starting to return without my persistent supplications. We just try to put on the best shows we can and be reasonable about how often we play NYC.

If you play too often, you wind up saturating your audience because people won’t come see you every week. I don’t care how good you are as a rock band. In the city, you are competing against tons of other bands, bars, theaters, restaurants, parties and who knows what else. You’re not the only act in town, so we try to build some anticipation for our shows and keep our attendance up. We try to move from venue to venue to give people a change of pace. We’ve also managed to find a lot of help and guidance from the booking people at the Lion’s Den, Le Bar Bat and the Village Underground. We also make a point of promoting shows hard though e-mails, our website (www.smithaus.com), [and] going to the clubs to hand out CD samplers and flyers.

Whatever it takes. If we can get two more people, that’s two more than we would have brought without our promotion. We’ve been so lucky to have a very supportive group of people attending our shows. They tell friends, bring others and even offer to help promote outside the city. That’s how we’ve managed to get out of the city more and more.

Smiity: I think we’ve developed a strong following by steadily playing here for the past few years. At first it was mostly a lot of friends and family who came to see us. But over time we’ve had many people join the mailing list, buy our CDs, and spread the word to many others. It’s been an organic growth, with not much of a budget to rigorously promote or advertise the group. We’ve relied on mailing out and handing out fliers, and just getting the name out there through live performances. We’ve also been careful not to play in the city too often. It’s a lot to ask people to come out and see you, pay $10 or $15, and commit a weekend night to that. We try to keep it to once a month or so.

Recently, we’ve been playing a lot of different rooms in the city, which has helped expose us to new audiences, and increased our fan base as well. Playing different rooms also helps because different parts of the city are easier for different people to get to. It means a tremendous amount to have so many people who come out to see us regularly, and who enjoy our songs. We hope to continue to expand this group of people.

You have really gotten yourself booked in many states, how have you accomplished this? How important do you think being persistent offstage is to being in a band?

Martin: If it were up to us, we’d be playing seven nights a week. I feel like we have too many holes in our schedule, whereas a lot of people look at our calendar and remark that we play so much compared to other bands at our relatively low and unconnected level. We don’t have a booking agent or manager. We do all of this stuff on our own and it’s an enormous amount of work. We make all of our own press kits, maintain our website, with some help from programmer friends, and try to make sure they are as professional as possible, that is, full of information and visually striking without being impossible to read or get right to the point. Our thought is that if the stuff you send out doesn’t look professional, people will think the same about your music.

We spend a ton of time on the phone tracking booking people down and trying to show swap with other bands. We also do a lot of research trying to find new spots to play. I guess we also try to spread ourselves over different markets and thereby increase our chances of securing a gig. We love to play our original material, but there are a lot of good gigs out there where the venue is looking for cover bands.

We’ve worked really hard to develop a wide array of cover songs so that we can walk into those gigs and be as professional about playing covers as any other full-time cover band. Most importantly, we never feel that we’re above any venue or crowd. We’ll pretty much play anywhere, as long as we can cover our expenses and maybe manage to eat. The room isn’t always perfect, but it’s been a while since I can remember an audience that didn’t like what we’re doing. Along those lines, we also try to be as classy as possible. We don’t fight, break things, treat the staff poorly, lie or deal with booking people in a disrespectful manner. This really does go a long way.

Finally, what you do off-stage is every bit as important as what you do at the gig, that’s my take. You make your own opportunities by staying smart on the business end. You have to be working all the time, on stage, on the phone, on your instrument, on the web and anywhere else there is a lead. If you don’t do it, there is someone out there who will and they’ll beat you to the punch. But, I could be wrong. I suppose some people just get lucky.

My father always says, “It’s better to be lucky than smart.” I just wouldn’t be happy waiting around for that big call. I like that we work so hard, I only wish more people would give us a chance to play.

Smitty: We’ve managed to book ourselves quite a bit. Most of that comes from being vigilant in sending out press kits, making follow up phone calls, follow-up to follow-up phone calls, and tracking down booking people at different clubs. They’re amazingly elusive. It helps to try to be professional when doing the booking, whether it’s putting together a really good looking press package, taking the time to find out the contact person’s name before you send the kit, or maintaining a detailed record of correspondence you’ve had with each club. These will all increase your chances of getting booked at new places. Often times it is difficult to convince people in other states to let us play since often we’re trying to develop new followings, and not attracting a built in crowd as in New York City.

I think our willingness to travel a lot also helps, even sometimes when the money is not good. We’re extremely committed to spreading our music to as many people and states as possible. Being persistent offstage is most important to being in a band. The time you spend on stage actually performing is a tiny percentage of the time you need to put in for a band trying to make it to the next level. There are always a thousand things that need to get done, whether it’s practicing your instrument, sending out posters, making phone calls, assembling and sending out press kits, etc. Being on stage is the reward for all the hard work we do offstage, and the reason we work so hard offstage. The harder you work offstage the more you get to be on stage. I think ideally we’d like to relinquish some of the booking responsibilities to an agent or a manager, but for now we’re still doing it all ourselves.