Region 6 Spotlight Band - The Rooftops -

Questions answered by Nassaw Tate

 

 

1.) What are the names, city of residence, and responsibilities of each member?

 

The Rooftops are a three piece punk band from West Chester, PA where we all reside. Nassaw Tate is the lead singer and guitarist, Frankie Bags plays Bass Guitar, and Patty Kavka plays drums. Nassaw writes the lyrics and vocal melodies, and we all have equal input on song structure and instrumental parts. We all share equal responsibilities in online promotion, advertising, and street promotion.

 

2.) Give us a brief History of The Rooftops.

 

We formed as a band at the very beginning of 2007 after running in to each other in a West Chester music store. I (Nassaw) was pursuing a solo career at the time and Frankie and Patty had both recently parted ways with their former band The Burning Sensations. I had seen Frankie and Patty play with their former band a year previous and thought that they were both extremely talented.

We had got to talking and realized that we all shared the same dedication of succeeding in the music business. Over the proceeding Winter and Spring we had started laying out the ground work for our first album. We all knew that we had something special going on and when we played our first show at Mojo 13 in late May, the audiences reaction confirmed that.

 

3.) Recently, you held your cd release party for your first release entitled "Hope on the Streets". Tell us a bit more about the album.

 

"Hope on the Streets " is a ten track , hard hitting, no bullshit album with Catchy melodies and serious theme's. The title of the album itself has a double meaning. It touches on the whole Rocky Balboa feel of being the underdog ( as expressed in the song Adrian), as well as having hope for real music to return in the industry again.

We pride ourselves in having a recording in which every track paints a picture both lyrically and instrumentally, and that the album can be listened to in it's entirety without ever getting "boring" or monotonous. We believe in writing songs for quality; not quantity, and will continue to write albums in this fashion. If we think a song isn't keeping the attention of the worst ADD case, then it is not worthy of having in our catalog.

"Hope on the Streets" is available on iTunes, CD Baby, and will soon be available on Amazon.

 

4.) Being your first experience into the studio as The Rooftops, what did you learn from it?

 

Patience! It is a tedious process that can get extremely frustrating at times, but if you keep focused the final product makes it all worth it. Also, we are glad that we went with Soundmine Recording for this project. Dan Malsch was the producer/ engineer of the album and has lots of experience recording our type of sound. We did a lot of shopping around, and many studios we looked into were very nice facilities, we just knew in our hearts that they ultimately wouldn't have been able to capture our sound as well as Soundmine would.

 

5.) What can someone expect at one of your live shows?

 

Lot's of drinking and jumping around! As for our live sound, it is very close to the album. All too often you hear bands that go too over the top on their album, and are unable to reproduce the same sound live. Being a three piece, we had to make sure that our recording held true to the integrity of our live performance.

 

6.) In your area, what are some things that could be done to better the music scene as a whole?

 

That's a great question. It is very hard to pinpoint one particular thing that could be done to better the scene. The problem right now I think is the fast changing media. With all of the digital downloading going on it seems to have the music industry so stirred up and confused, that this is a question that is almost impossible to answer in 2008. Until the music industry gets a hold of itself again, I think we will all be in the dark. I will tell you one thing though. People are going to get sick of sitting at home and watching everything on a computer screen. Hopefully people will long for the older days when you actually had to go to the store to buy a record of their favorite band!

 

7.) What makes all the work of being in The Rooftops worthwhile?

 

Playing music that isn't watered down. Playing genuine rock and roll the way it should be. The Rooftops aren't a fashion show. We are hard drinkin' punk rock that believes in honest music. At the end of the day we can all take pride in the integrity of our music.

 

8.) What are future plans for The Rooftops?

 

When we released the album, we incorporated ourselves as "Drunk Rock, L.L.C". We did this not only as a smart business decision, but also with the hopes of eventually starting our own label, "Drunk Rock Records". The way the business is today, you are much better off building your name up yourself without having to rely on major label support.

As far as touring, we are determined to play all of the national Warped Tour dates so that we can really expose our music to the best possible audience for our style. We don't think this will be happening in '08, but next year we are confident that we will have caught on enough to make this a reality.