ADEMA Bassist Talks About Departure Of MARKY CHAVEZ, Signing With EARACHE

ADEMA bassist Dave DeRoo recently spoke to Digital-Noise.net about the departure of singer Marky Chavez and the group's recently released CD, "Planets". A couple of excerpts from the interview follow:

Digital-Noise.net: Tell me a little bit about what happened with Marky. It kind of seemed like his leaving the band was abrupt to outsiders. What happened with that whole situation?

Dave DeRoo: "It was a little abrupt, but actually in reality, it'd probably been a long time coming. The band had gradually drifted apart from Marky. Right after we finished the 'Unstable' record, there were some things that took place that kind of took place that kind of soured our relationship with Marky. He's got some personal problems that he's had for a long time, which I really don't want to go into because it wouldn't be fair to him. He just has some problems. We toured for all of 2003 behind 'Unstable'. We had a good time, and had some cool tours. Actually Mikey [Ransom, guitar] and Mark weren't talking the majority of that year. They really weren't getting a long at all. And so Mike quit the band subsequently at the end of 2003, around September. We toured for another couple of months as a four piece. We got home in December and found out actually about two weeks before we came out we found out we were being dropped from Arista. That was a week after L.A. Reid had left. He's who signed us to the label. About half the people at Arista got fired or moved on to other record labels. It was kind of a shitty way to end a shitty year (laughs). Everyone kind of dealt with that differently. We came home in December 2003 for the holidays. Took about a month off and around February we got together and started writing new songs and we probably had 12 songs written musically. And Marky only had maybe three songs. He only had lyrics to three songs and we weren't really happy with that or with his lyrics. He expressed that he wasn't really interested in touring with the band anymore. We had a couple opportunities to tour and make some money and things that were coming up. And basically when things got tough he basically quit. We kind of just viewed that as we can do one of two things, we can just wrap this whole thing up or we can start a whole new thing and have a fresh start. There's just so many fans who have been supportive of this band over the years that to me, we would be pretty un-rock-and-roll and we'd be pretty big pussies if we just curled up and died because two guys didn't want to do it anymore. I think our fans deserve better than that. The three of us wanted to go out and play. We love the road and we love our fans. We wanted to keep this thing going. As soon as we met Luke [Caraciolli], it's like we're having fun playing music again. It's like finding a missing puzzle piece. It's cool. It's a good time. It feels like we did when we had the first ADEMA record. Before we hit the road with that record. We were excited to play live and excited to spend some time with our fans."

Digital-Noise.net: Where did you guys find Luke and what drew you to him as a vocalist to this band?

Dave DeRoo: "That's a good question actually. What's funny is Kris Kohls, our drummer, he actually talked to me about … he mentioned Luke to me months ago. Kris had heard a demo of Luke's old band actually and we're like tripping, we're like, 'Man, this guys got a killer voice.' It was kind of odd to hear a dude from our town that was so good. And obviously he wasn't from Bakersfield, he'd been spending some time in San Diego. He's from Alabama originally. He'd spent some time in the Marines and stuff. And then moving up here just to play with his band. Kris gave him a call and was interested in having him come down to audition and his phone had been turned off so Kris got his voice mail and left a message. It was kind of funny because six weeks go by and we don't hear from the guy. We just assume he's a flake or he's just not into the band. He's happy with what he's doing now. We didn't hear from him, so we auditioned about 30-40 other singers and none of them were really gelling, we didn't find any sparks. Nothing really grabbed us. Then, it was kind of funny, Luke called back and said, 'Sorry man, my phone was shut off.' He came down and auditioned and as soon as we heard the guy's voice, it was kind of like, I think we all knew he was gonna be the guy. It was kind of funny because we weren't looking for Mark Chavez the sequel (laughs) or someone who sounded like Marky necessarily. We didn't really know what we were looking for. We just knew that we wanted some change. We wanted something different. A guy with the right attitude and someone who wanted to tour and have fun and someone who wanted to be the frontman for this band and we found that in Luke."

Digital-Noise.net: How did you guys end up with Earache Records?

Dave DeRoo: "We were contacted by Al Dawson [Earache U.S. label manager] around this time last year. He flew out and saw us play a show and met with us. We hit it off right off the bat. I usually hate labels, but Earache was a testament to their integrity. I think they know what we're capable of and they're totally cool and accessible. It's a welcome change from being small fish in a big pond. The way the industry is now, this is the way to go."

Read Dave DeRoo's entire interview with Digital-Noise.net at this location.