Wednesday 29 January 2014

Burning Chase Q&A

Your name:
Stefan Strasser - guitar, vocals.

Where are you from?
We’re all from in and around Vienna, Austria.

Name of band:
Burning Chase.

Who else is in your band?
Tom Goethe - also guitar and vocals. We share rhythm and lead parts for guitar as well as main and backing vocals more or less equally.
Siegfried Swoboda - drummer with the loudest snare in town
We’re currently transitioning between bassists, because Johana, our last one, will move back to Prague, where she’s from, to study.

How would you describe yourselves?
Alternative rock with funk, pop, heavy influences. It’s hard to pin it down, because it seems we’re constantly changing.

Who are your main influences musically?
Personally, Foo Fighters, King’s X, Dream Theater, Nuno Bettencourt, AC/DC … I really love rock music that kicks ass, but I like lots of different styles, from Beethoven over Stevie Wonder to Opeth. And I know Sigi, our drummer, also loves all kinds of rock music, Dave Matthews Band, Yes, also Foo Fighters, and is very much into everything funky and groovy, including fusion and jazz funk. Tom has a thing for John Mayer, but he also has a very diverse taste, as far as I know.

What do you hope to achieve in music?
Have fun! Write songs that people enjoy. Tom is the only professional musician in our group, but he makes his money with other projects and mainly with working as a sound engineer. Everybody else has a (more or less "normal") daytime job, which means we have to set realistic goals for our band. Playing some live shows, getting a song in the radio, reaching people and making them dance and enjoy themselves are what would make us feel accomplished.

What has been the highlight of your career so far, and why?
Personally, my highlights are always great live shows where the crowd enjoys itself. I remember one particular one I had with my band in Japan (I used to live there for a couple of years) when we rocked a small dive bar that was absolutely packed. That was awesome! Or the one gig with another band where we played at the inauguration party of a Harley Davidson custom shop. That was a highlight, because I made more money with music that night than ever before or after, haha.

And what’s the moment you want to forget?
I’ve witnessed it a couple of times that a clash of egos destroyed or almost destroyed a band. That’s probably the worst thing for me in this world of making music / being in a band.

If you had to pick just one of your songs to represent your music, what would it be and why?
Ooohhh… Impossible! We have only released two songs so fat that I could point to. I would probably pick Lie because I wrote it. But we have so many other great and different songs. It’s like asking a parent to pick their favorite child!

Where can we listen to it?
Where can we find out more about your music?
Well, our online presence is in it’s fledgling state. But you can find us on Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and Soundcloud.

Anything else you’d like to say about your band/music that I forgot to ask?
Well, some people ask us if we’re a political band. That’s because the two songs we have released so far are about the encroaching surveillance state (Step by Step) and about constantly being lied to by politicians and authority figures (Lie). Also, our band name is based about a series of paintings called Burning Chase, which show branches of Chase banks going up in flames. So, the question is justified. But, in fact, I’d say 90% of our songs are about a different subject matter. Personally, I am a rather politically minded individual with a skeptical, cynical and critical view of the world, so that’s bound to show up in some of the lyrics now and then. Most of our lyrics are about love, personal relations and stuff like that though.

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