NAOMI LYNCH
Staff Writer
“Follow me — into the jungle!” X Ambassadors’ lead singer Sam Harris growled into the microphone.
The audience sure did.
New Masons, X Ambassadors and Hellogoodbye shut down the house for the return of Spectrum’s Spring Headliner. Sunday evening might sound like an odd time for a campus concert, but Steele Hall Fieldhouse was rocking out with the sounds of stellar musicians in their prime.
Fredonia’s very own indie-pop band New Masons, winner of Battle of the Bands, was the night’s opening act. Six members make up the New Masons: Ariel Arellano, Jonathan Mix, Deanna Civilette, Jimmy Hartmann, Jake Lorfice and Michael Gonzalez-Kelly. The band clearly took advantage of the warm weather as they prepared for their set by wearing spring colors. They sang a few original pieces and covered Shots by Imagine Dragons.
The band made sure to engage the audience and pumped up the crowd for the next act. New Masons closed out their set with a rousing rendition of Shut Up And Dance by Walk the Moon. The crowd sang along to every word.
However, it was WNY natives X Ambassadors who stole the show.
Consisting of siblings Sam and Casey Harris, Noah Feldshuh and Adam Levin, the quartet from Ithaca, NY, tore the house down with their 10-song set. Despite the beautiful weather outside, the men dressed in dark attire. Sam walked on stage with his hoodie up, but discarded his jacket as he began to pump himself up for the show. The band opened with Free and Lonely, a track off their most recent EP, The Reason, a song about going back to a time when obligations didn’t matter and the only person you had to depend on was yourself.
They weren’t always called X Ambassadors, though.
“We were [just] Ambassadors for a couple of years; we had done some tours, released an EP, and when we started getting more attention when we decided to sign with Interscope, it came clear that maybe we didn’t have the copyright to that name,” Sam said during an interview before the show.
“It was very clear that we needed to change it, but we needed to keep it as close as possible,” he added.
Sam is a man of many talents: in addition to being the lead singer, he plays saxophone, drums, guitar and does all the graphic design for the band. When playing around with words, the letter X just stuck, Sam said.
“The real story was, ‘It was a dark and stormy night …’” Casey said mischievously.
Sam’s vocal range is amazing: he crooned over the loudspeakers while performing Unsteady, his tenor vocals dancing over the track, as opposed to Shining, when his lower vocals reverberated through the crowd.
Casey, on keyboards, put his whole body into his performance — he danced with a burning passion to nearly every song like his life depended on it.
“[Touring,] its been pretty wild,” Sam said when he talked about the band’s growth from Ithaca, to Brooklyn, to playing shows all around the world.
“We never really broke into a scene in Brooklyn. When we say where we’re from, we say we’re from upstate New York -— and Adam’s from California — but that’s such a big part of our identity. Growing up, up here, you’re pretty isolated. You don’t get access to all of the cool stuff. I mean, now, it’s different, ‘cause we’re so much more connected,” Sam said.
The band has recorded two EPs since their major label debut, but they put a different twist on their songs for their live shows: for Love Songs Drug Songs, Sam pulled out his saxophone, and the crowd swooned to the smooth sounds.
Their influences range from soul to hip-hop to R&B to alternative music.
“The band that we really, like, fell in love with and obsessed over was Red Hot Chili Peppers. We were alternative rock fans: Rage Against the Machine, Jane’s Addiction. To us, that was the coolest. For us, the coolest [stuff] was popular alternative rock — Kings of Leon was a huge influence on me. Casey grew up with some crazy stuff, though,” Sam said.
“I loved ‘70s funk; I loved all that modern progressive rock [stuff], jazz fusion … the wild and more out there, the better it can be,” Casey said.
They also performed Renegades, the lead single off their debut album, VHS, which is being released July 10, 2015, under producer Alex Da Kid’s KidInACorner Interscope imprint label. They do have some features on there, but the band couldn’t spill any secrets but one: “I will tell you that there is another track with Jaime-N-Commons,” Sam said. Commons worked with the guys on their smash hit, Jungle, where Jay-Z featured on the remix.
With touring and recording, how does the four-piece band manage?
“It’s so weird … like, none of us hang out with anybody but our girlfriends and ourselves … it’s pretty crazy. But it’s great,” Sam said.
Feldshuh, the lead guitarist, was calm and controlled as he played, his fingers daintily flitting across his toy keyboard as the band played their major-label debut song, Unconsolable. Levin, the drummer, had a knowing smirk across his face as he played each song, never missing a beat.
“The thing about our band that I’ve always thought sets us apart is that — first of all — we’ve known each other for so long. Adam, who’s the newest member of the band, we’ve known for about a decade, and we feel like we’ve always known him. That helps so much, and the fact that when we were kids, we knew that this was what we wanted to do, and we found this home, this family. And it’s a family — we’re brothers in this. Literally and figuratively,” Sam said.
By the time the men played their last song, Jungle, the whole crowd knew the name X Ambassadors.
When Hellogoodbye hit the stage, the crowd thrummed with energy from the electricity of the last set. With Andy Richards on guitar, Augie Rampolla on keyboard, Matt Garzon on drums and lead singer Forrest Kline heading the band, they jumped right into playing their hits.
Hellogoodbye’s name is uncommon among the throng of bands that exist today. So, how did the founding member, Kline, come up with such a quirky name?
“It’s just about the quickness of life, and things coming and going … kind of about the Beatles,” Kline said.
Hellogoodbye has been through many different members, so how did the current band mashup happen?
“Through traveling — I met Andy on Warped Tour, and we toured in a band that Augie used to be in. So you just meet a lot of people out on the road, and every one out of 1,000 is a keeper,” Kline said during an interview before the show.
“We met a nice guy the other day, and I’m worried for myself now, because this guy was so nice, that [I thought], ‘Wow, there’s only so many spots available,’” Rampolla joked.
So what make a Hellogoodbye member a keeper?
“In this band? Oh, I don’t know. But in life, you meet some people you really have a connection with, people who you just get friendly with,” Kline said.
“We toured together, and we all got [along], like, really well, I think, and when some guys moved on — got married, started other jobs — I didn’t have a band, and we were just in touch, and it was pretty natural,” Rampolla said.
They were all wearing bright, sharp clothing while casually sipping a curious liquid out of their red Solo cups during their performance. There was a lot of rapport with the audience, which the crowd loved.
When it comes to musical tastes, they’re all different, but they like to pick on Rampolla for his particular taste.
“Augie’s like … a pop void. He just sucks it all in,” Richards said jokingly.
“I do like a lot of big pop [songs] that I do get mocked for a lot,” Rampolla admitted sheepishly.
But despite the difference in tastes, they all agree their “genre” is pop: “I’ve liked pop as a genre because it is all things. A lot of [pop] is bad, but the fact that there’s no rules genre-wise, like … it’s not really a genre, so that’s why I always liked it,” Kline said.
“Some people might not consider what we do all the time is pop, like, certain songs, but to me, if [there’s] chords and melodies and structure, it’s a pop song,” Rampolla said.
Hellogoodbye had their own record label for a while, but it was only “a vehicle to release the [Would It Kill You?] record,” Kline said.
“We were open to the idea of keeping it going and expanding to releasing other things, but that’s been on the back burner. It wasn’t really like running a record label as much as putting out one record. But it was nice to have all the control doing it,” he added.
Each member was different from the others, the most distinctive feature being Richards’ vivid tattoo sleeves. Every song sounded perfectly produced, despite the show being played lived.
“Usually I like being in the studio. When I started doing this, it was to be in the studio — that’s why I started doing it in the first place. Over the years, I’ve grown to love [the live shows and recording] equally, but my heart [was] always originally in the making of the music,” Kline said.
During one of their songs, Kline invited Sam, of X Ambassadors, back on stage to provide some smooth saxophone magic for one last time.
Halfway through their set, they finally performed the song the crowd was all waiting for: their breakout single Here (In Your Arms). During the song, Kline walked over and ruffled Rampolla’s hair and kissed him on the cheek. The audience sang along gleefully to every word.
In terms of new projects, Kline is just writing new material.
“I’m just writing music for ‘this-ish.’ You got that written down so you can use that word later?” Kline joked.
There were a variety of instruments being used — guitars, tambourines, drums, maracas and sound boards … no expense was spared for a quality sound experience. The set did end rather abruptly, the audience wondering for a few moments if the band would return before the lights turned on later.
While the main act wasn’t as spectacular as fans of Hellogoodbye had hoped, X Ambassadors made a myriad of new fans, and they definitely brought the house down with a performance infused with a medley of different sounds. The quartet delivered such an electric set that captivated the audience.
Overall, Spectrum put on an amazing show. For the return of the Spring Headliner concert, these three acts set a hard precedent to follow for next year’s performance.