Your name:
Colin Simson, lead vocalist.
Name of band:
The Gravity Guild.
Who else is in your band?
Jay Way – Guitars/Backing Vocals
Colin Simson – Lead Vocals/Rhythm Guitars/Percussion
Abel Vallejo – Drums/Percussion
Where are you from?
Guitarist Jay Way moved out to Los Angeles from Michigan
in 2000 to pursue music and studio engineering. He met a drummer who helped hone the sound
that would later become The Gravity Guild. Way found Boston native Colin Simson through an
online ad and the two started playing and writing songs, quickly realizing that they had the
same taste in music and had a great creative connection.
Shortly thereafter, Way and Simson met Abel Vallejo,
drummer extraordinaire, who embodied everything that the band stood for and wanted in terms of
heavy hitting and intelligent musical reactions to the riff-based sound.
How would you describe yourselves and your music?
The Gravity Guild blends a mixture of classic progressive
rock styles with modern progressive metal all wrapped up with a thick cocoon of 90's grunge.
Progressive grunge? Perhaps, but it’s more refined than that… Think Led Zeppelin, Dream Theater
and Rush meet Alice in Chains, Tool and Soundgarden.
Who are your main influences musically?
We are constantly inspired by classic rock and the grange
era - music that we grew up listening to as well as the newer bands who’ve come out
recently that clearly share our taste for heavy-hitting rock and alt metal.
What do you hope to achieve in music?
We want to take this project as far as it can go. The
Gravity Guild is currently laying down tracks for our third studio release tentatively titled,
"III" ... It promises to be our hardest hitting album yet.
Our first release, “I” is a crushing album that breaks
the typical boundaries of hard rock while paying tribute to 70's rock, 90’s grunge, and modern
rock. “I” swaggers with innovative guitar sounds and powerful riffs melded with heavy hitting drums
and monster bass lines that carve out canyon-sized grooves over odd-meters. Melodic hooks laced
with tight harmonies and evocative lyrics bring all of these elements together in this
impressive full-length album.
Our sophomore release, “The Great Divide” expands on our
experimental sound-scape while offering listeners a moody and introspective
experience. The tracks for “The Great Divide” and “I” were recorded simultaneously giving the
band an opportunity to have a follow up release less than a year after the release of
“I”. These contrasting styles inspired
the band to re-imagine a couple tunes from “I” using their new
acoustic approach. Ominous tracks “The Game” and “Time & Again” were stripped down and
restructured, giving the audience a fresh perspective.
What has been the highlight of your career so far, and
why?
The highlight of our career continues to be meeting new
fans. Our fans are everything to us! Without fans we’d be playing these songs in our studio
for ourselves. But because of support from loyal music enthusiasts, we’ve been able to play the
best venues all over Southern California and even make a little money for doing what we
love. It doesn’t get any better than that!
And what’s the moment you want to forget?
Being in a band is very much like being in a
relationship. We’d never speak ill of the musicians who’ve come and gone during the early stages of forming
The Gravity Guild, but the most frustrating parts of being a professional musician, and
the things I think we’d all like to forget, have to be those moments when you realize that someone in
your band isn’t working out.
Break-ups are never easy but often necessary in order to
keep moving forward creatively.
If you had to pick just one of your songs to represent
your music, what would it be and why?
SLO is the perfect track for audiences to get to know The
Gravity Guild because it is both heavy and upbeat. Plus, SLO showcases the band’s versatility
through Jay Way’s killer guitar lines featuring his effects-heavy sound, Simson’s soaring vocal
lines with tight harmonies, and an array of African percussion including congas and djembe
that augment Vallejo’s massive drum grooves.
Where can we listen to it?
Where can we find out more about your music?
twitter.com/TheGravityGuild (@TheGravityGuild)
Anything else you’d like to say about your music that I
forgot to ask?
The Gravity Guild is not yet signed, and though we
welcome the right deal, we are proud to say that everything we've released has been written,
produced, recorded and mixed in-house in our home: Inside Studios.
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