Skate and Surf Festival is taking over Six Flags Great Adventure this weekend, and we simply couldn’t be more excited. So what better way to lead into the weekend of craziness than with our an official kick-off party featuring one of the festival’s hottest acts? That’s why we’re thrilled to invite you and all of your friends to join us Friday evening at Macy’s in Freehold, NJ for American Rag’s Skate & Surf Kick-Off Party featuring a FREE performance from T. Mills! Not only that, but the event will feature tons of fun stuff like our infamous photobooth alongside manicure and braid stations from our friends at Seventeen Magazine, free giveaways and SO much more. Fans who make a $25 purchase will even have the chance to meet T. Mills after the show.
Make your plans to join us now, then find us on the festival grounds all weekend long!
What: FREE Skate & Surf Kick-Off Party ft. T.Mills When: Friday, May 17th, 6-9pm Where: Macy’s Freehold, NJ (3710 US Highway 9 Freehold Township, NJ 07728)
Into It. Over It. is the moniker created by emo extraordinaire Evan Thomas Weiss. We adore the moniker alone, but it certainly doesn’t hurt that Weiss also makes some excellent tunes too.
If Into It. Over It. sounds familiar, you most likely recall the feature from Issue 17.
Since then, Weiss has been up to a lot: he will perform on Saturday, May 18, at Skate and Surf Festival, plus he is hard at work on on a forthcoming fall record (released via Triple Crown Records)!
Watch the video above, to catch a glimpse into Weiss’ recording process on the new album. Our bespectacled hero is seen mouthing lyrics and holding a guitar as electric fuzz blares and the words “new record coming this fall” appear.
Stay tuned for the next Into It. Over It.-related report!
Back in February, we announced some very exciting news: Skate and Surf Festival is back this spring after an eight-year absence!
Today, we have another update: the location of the festival has moved from Freehold, NJ to Jackson, NJ—more specifically, to Six Flags Great Adventure.
Though A Day To Remember is only headlining on Sunday, May 19, both this day and Saturday will be full of unforgettable fun, thanks to additional well-known showstoppers like Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Andrew W.K. and Fall Out Boy.
Buy your ticket here and make sure to say hi to us at Six Flags!
Straight from the pages of the new issue of RAGGED, we’re thrilled to give you an exclusive excerpt from our cover story with Walk Off the Earth! Be sure to grab the full issue download (for free!) for the rest of the article and more photos with the band. (Full issue download here!)
They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. This is perhaps what’s so compelling about a New Year’s resolution, which speaks to the deeply human belief that by committing to a shift in behavior, a person can change their life. Conventional wisdom says most folks fail the commitment part, so most of our lives stay the same. But what if you resolved to keep doing the exact same thing you’d been doing for years? And what if that’s precisely what changed your life? Crazier things have happened.
On New Year’s Day 2012, the five members of Walk Off the Earth gathered in vocalist Gianni Luminati’s kitchen to do the same thing they’d been doing for years: record a video of themselves covering a pop song in an unconventional manner. The idea: all five band members, playing a single guitar, at the same time; the song: a then-unknown (to North Americans) pop ballad by an equally unknown Australian singer named Gotye.
“Gianni had had the idea of multiple people on one guitar for a while,” says guitarist and co-vocalist Marshall, his already-raspy voice a bit even more so because of a mid- winter cold, discussing the year-old video from the band’s hometown of Burlington, Ontario, Canada. “We’d been doing that on our live show for years, where Joel [Cassady] will come over and play drums on my guitar, and so we thought: how many people can we put on one guitar?”
The whole band, it turns out, though it’d be cozy. At far left of the frame, Cassady taps his knuckles and fingertips on the soundboard and body; Sarah Blackwood looks most natural, her elbow crooked in a standard strumming position, keeping the barest of rhythms until it’s time for her take on Kimbra’s verse; snug in the center is Luminati, approximating the lead melody in the middle of the neck and belting out the chorus; beside him Marshall holds the baseline and handles verse vocals; at far right, keyboardist Mike Taylor, bearded and without affect or wasted energy, issues a series of harp-like flicks on the taut strings of the headstock. It’s brilliant, both in concept and execution—a dual visual metaphor of (A.) the seemingly disparate sound and rhythm components that, when played together, form a recognizable song, and (B.) the way five different people unite to form one band. It’s also funny, and flat-out amazing, that it’s captured in a single take (many of their videos are). And as Marshall explains, their timing made for “a perfect storm.”
Each day opened with three international bands and free breakfast tacos (is there any other way to start a day in Texas?) before kicking into the main event. Highlights and buzzworthy acts to keep an ear out for included Haim, St. Lucia, San Cisco (also featured in the new issue of RAGGED!), Local Natives, Charli XCX and Willy Moon. Check out some scenes from the week here, and head to facebook.com/AmericanRag for the full gallery!
