How do you get from Aaron Carter to a'tris?
Wellllll.... Blame Patrick Stump. (Thanks Patrick!)

Five years, right here. This, my friends, is the story of my musical evolution. And it's going to be incredibly long, so don't read this if you're bored easily... Don't say I didn't warn you.

Alright, so basically, I was raised on classic rock. The Eagles, for example. (Everytime I hear Hotel California, man... It just all comes back to me!!) I didn't listen to much in the way of music at all when left to my own devices. What was I interested in before music? I can't even remember. Barbie dolls, I think. Haha. Okay, sooo, fast forward to the summer of '04. (That puts me at ten years old, ladies and gentlemen. Ten years old. So cut me some slack.) I spent the month of June at my grandparents' house in Arkansas. It was definitely a lot of fun - that was the summer I caught my first and only fish (though the little bugger STABBED me with his fins), my cousin Shane and I invented a game where we were half-ninja, half-vampire warriors (We were vampires waaaaay before it was trendy) and I was exposed to modern music. Which actually wasn't that great, but it served its purpose... See, my cousin Tisha, who's two years older than me, was really super into Aaron Carter at the time, so by association I got into Aaron Carter as well. Shameful, I know. Haha. After that I got into a whole bunch of pop music - Jesse McCartney (Dear god.... I absolutely LOVED him), Hilary Duff, stuff like that. I was just your average obnoxious eleven year old who thinks they have good taste in music. I just feel bad for the people who had to live with me at the time. Haha.
Well, that wore on for about a year. And then one evening I was listening to the radio (it was this really tiny, lame boombox type thing) and I heard a song that I thought was really, really cool. It was called...


*dramatic pause*


Sugar, We're Goin' Down.

Well, that was it for me. I got the album and I absolutely loved it, and I never really felt the same about Jesse McCartney after that. He just seemed so.... lame. Fall Out Boy were so cool and talented and interesting. This was 2005, in September I believe, and it opened up a whole new world. Taking Back Sunday, The Used, The Academy Is..., The Killers, My Chemical Romance, and the following summer, Hawthorne Heights and Panic! At The Disco. Haha, oh, how I worshipped that band... Fall Out Boy were still #1, but P!ATD were like nothing I'd heard before. Things started shifting that winter, though. After I got My Chemical Romance's album The Black Parade, they were basically my new favorite band. It just all sort of continued from there for awhile - I started getting more into Victory Records bands like Aiden and I rekindled my interest for Hawthorne Heights, so it was quite a shock when their guitarist, Casey Calvert, died in November of 2007. That winter wasn't really a good time for me. I just kind of... self-destructed. It got pretty bad. I think the only thing that really got me through was Aiden's album Nightmare Anatomy, which honestly is not a very positive record at all, but it helped me feel like maybe I wasn't all alone in this. That winter wasn't all bad- that was also when I became friends via MySpace with a singer-songwriter from Baltimore, Jason Gudenius. (Check him out - http://www.myspace.com/jguden) Somehow he put up with the stupid kid that I was back then, which is quite admirable, and though his music wasn't like anything I was listening to at that point, I liked it anyway- He has a really great voice, and even then I could appreciate that.
Alright, so I did get through that winter (obviously) and as the weather warmed up I improved, picked up the pieces, so to speak. That summer I went to my first concert, which wasn't exactly the most amazing line-up, haha... It was Metro Station, Good Charlotte, and Boys Like Girls. I know, that's not cool at all - though I stubbornly maintain that Boys Like Girls are pretty good. The second show was a lot better- September 10th, 2008: Motion City Soundtrack with Dear And The Headlights, Margot And The Nuclear So-And-So's, and I Was Totally Destroying It. That show is when I really began to appreciate the merits of the keyboard as an instrument, and it was also my first real exposure to indie music and local-ish artists (I Was Totally Destroying It are from Chapel Hill, NC). I didn't think too much about the local scene after that until May of last year, which is when things got... interesting. I found out that my cousin, Michael Burgin, was in a band (http://www.myspace.com/michaelburgin) and in checking out others on the local scene, I found out about a really awesome one by the name of Einstein's Dream. Funny story about that- Okay, soooo, there is this health food store in Asheville called Earth Fare, which I went to pretty regularly that summer, and it was really kind of funny cause literally the week before I found out about Einstein's Dream, I first noticed one cashier in particular- Jared Hooker. And then the following week I found out about the band he sings and plays guitar in. Haha it was so weird when I figured that out- I don't think it ever would've clicked (cause I still haven't seen them play) if they hadn't had a video up on their page. It took me a minute to figure out where I'd seen him before, but when I did, it was definitely an "OH MY GOD" moment. When I saw him again I struck up a conversation about the band, and that just kind of set off everything. I've learned quite a bit about local bands since then - like what Brien Worsham (of Secret Lives! Of The Freemasons) is up to these days. I also learned about another not-so-local band, but we'll get to that in a minute. Alright, so that summer I got into the local scene, but I still wasn't really into indie-type music... But that changed one awesome day in Knoxville.
See, Stephen Christian of Anberlin has a side project called Anchor & Braille. Last summer he went on tour, and I somehow lucked out and was able to attend the show in Knoxville, Tennessee. That was such an amazing day, which I won't go into here, but the tour consisted of four incredible bands: Barcelona, Sherwood, Anchor & Braille, and Copeland. That was when I really fell in love with indie music- before it had never really interested me.
Alright, so with that brief explanation, the not-so-local band that I learned about through Jared. See, I was listening to the songs that Jared has up on his solo music page (which seems to be totally forgotten now) and on that page, he mentions a band he toured with during his time in Boston - a'tris. I thought they sounded interesting, so I checked them out, and, well... What can I say? They're incredible. The first song I heard was Automatic Doors (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oph-mJqzPPI), and I was blown away. They're so awesome, they really are. These days I rarely like a band instantly, let alone love them, but every once in awhile something special comes along, and I'm really glad I was around for this one.

So, there you have it! From Aaron Carter to a'tris. Weird, isn't it?!