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| ::Interviews:: |
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| review & interview content, as well as web site graphics & design, copywrite 2003-2004 Euphonia Online. use of materials granted only with reasonable purposes. |
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| interviewed by robby sumner |
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Danny Casler - Vocals Stan Moniz - Guitar Jeff Alan Feuerhaken - Guitar Joey Kaimana - Bass Robby Caveney - Drums |
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| Interview with Danny May 27th, 2004 |
| E: Danny, National Product has one of the most impressive nationwide fanbases out there for bands of its kind. What has been done on the band's part to accumulate this many followers? Danny: Honesty and integrity and passion through our music and our fans. We return every single email and spend countless hours online letting people know about the band. People get worried about me especially, because I'm always online. Seriously, I'm online twelve hours, easy. E: Aside from National Product, you're also the lead vocalist for SoCal band A Storybook Ending. Is it difficult to divide your time and still give each band full devotion? Danny: Not at all. To be honest, I've been doing a lot of projects on the side. I am a very driven, focused person, and I can multi task and handle different projects at once. On the side, I have picked up doing vocal production for bands... basically assisting with song structure, vocal melody and just maximizing the quality of the recording. I also am writing to the new Saosin material. I've been a huge fan of them for a while now and I got the opportunity to become homies with them, and they asked me to come in and audition. I'm in no way trying to replace Anthony [Green], who's by far one of the most amazing singers I have heard, and if they liked me and the opportunity arose, I would just be more than honored. They are an amazing group of guys who make great music, and I'd be honored to pick up where Anthony left off, with all respect to him and everything he's doing now. Who knows, though... it's just fun to have the opportunity with all these great things in life. E: Do you expect National Product to remain your primary focus? Danny: My primary focus will always be music. Whether it's playing National Product, Storybook, Saosin or a stinking country group. As long as I am involved in music, and it's still my passion, and business hasn't clouded those feelings, music will be number one. National Product is my baby, and that will never change. I will always be a part of National Product no matter what, and it will always be a part of me. The guys in National Product are my family--that will never change. E: Prior to National Product, how much experience had you had as musician? Danny: None. *Laughs* I was just a gazer at shows, and I remember the feeling even to this day. I just wanted to be able to create something that people would follow and become part of. Music is so integrated into my soul that I have no idea what I would be doing without it. Life would suck... it would be dead, quiet and silenced. E: So how did your history with the band begin? Danny: Well, I met Robby in high school, and he was sitting in math class and we started talking. He obviously was too smart to be in my math class. *Laughs* So I met him for a few days and he was transferred. I didn't see him the rest of the year. That summer, my best friend Kevin Read and I had a camp-out, and we were talking about how amazing it would be to be in a band. His parents were musicians and had a bunch of instruments all around the house, so he would fool around with the guitar, but wasn't any good. I was completely horrible at guitar back then. We plugged this electric guitar into a karaoke machine and fooled around as he plucked one string, and we started writing songs, and I sang through the karaoke machine. We just kind of figured that he would play bass since he could only do one string, and I would do vocals since I have a big mouth and talk a lot. *Laughs* We hung out all week, working on songs that were absolutely horrible. Joey had an uncle that lived three houses down from Kevin, and I woke up to Kevin telling me to get down to his house ASAP because he found a guitar player. Joey was seriously talented, man, and he could sing. We sat in the house until 3AM, singing and playing some of our favorite bands' songs. Our harmonies matched really well, so we were like, cool... Joey plays guitar, Kevin, bass, and I'll sing. Now we just need a drummer. That summer ended and Joey transferred to go to our high school. We spent all of September writing music, and we were coming to October with no luck in finding a drummer. The week before Halloween our friend Adam Seymour, who was in a ska band, asked us to share a studio on Halloween. We figured we wouldn't be doing much, so we decided to go. We arrived to the studio, and it was in an alley and had a large steel door to get in. We banged on the door, and it slid open, and Robby, the nerdy kid from my math class who I hadn't seen again until that night, was standing there with drum sticks in his pocket. I mean, you would never have told by the looks of this kid that he played drums, or was any good at it. He was there and was looking to join a band. To me that was just too much coincidence, and was amazing. We got in a room and played a few covers to test his tempo and see what he could do. I mean, it's not like any of us were qualified musicians--we just wanted to rock out. Long story short, on Halloween, the band National Product was formed. We were playing any show we could get at that moment, and recording everything into a karaoke machine, which I have to this day. We sucked ass so bad. *Laughs* So then what happened is I met Stan on a commercial shoot, and Stan is a hero of mine. He was a pro bodybuilder, and I had posters and videos of him from when I was a kid. He gave us our first real show, and after that offered to record us. So Stan did our first demo, and man, that thing is crap when I listen to it now... but Stan saw something and asked us if we thought about having two guitars. We were like, hell yeah. Stan was playing in one of my favorite all-time bands called Field Trip. He ended up leaving them and coming to National Product to drop the bass and pick up guitar. We had an issue shortly after with my best friend Kevin (bass) and cocaine. He was having a problem, and we just weren't about that, so we had to make him get his life straight first before trying to continue with the band. It turned out to where Kevin would be out permanently, and that was the hardest thing I have ever dealt with besides losing friends. I had to tell my best friend he couldn't be in the band with us, and he is the reason National Product was even a band. It was hard, you know. The band was basically on the verge of breaking up after we auditioned bass players to fill the slot, and Stan was debating marrying his fiancee and just focusing on settling down. Joey wasn't going to let that happen, so he dropped the guitar and taught himself bass every day, and we got in the studio and pounded the pavement until he had it down. He's such an amazing player right now. He always was. Anyhow, we set up a west coast summer tour after meeting our close friend and, at the time, manager, Craig Landsburg. He took us under his wing and put it all on his credit card. Without him, we would never have made it to California. I firmly believe that if you have people believing in you, you can do anything. Long story short from that point, we moved here, and met Jeff, who was in a big late 90's band called Sick Shift. His band dissolved and he came on board as lead guitarist, and has been with us for a year now. We are now where we are today, all the sacrifices and deaths in our friends and family. We are what we've become today. E: What is it about the band's line-up that you think makes the music you play turn out so successfully? Danny: The only reason this band is where it is right now is because of the hard work and dedication of our fans and friends. This band works really hard, but honestly, we have nothing without the people that love and support us. It's a big family. E: How does National Product reward its most loyal fans? Danny: We reward our fans by making them a part of the family even more than the normal "Hi, hug, goodbye." They spend holidays with us, BBQ with us, take road trips with us, get to sell merch for us, and get in for free. Not everyone gets the same treatment--it's your level of involvement. For instance, we just sent four fans to go see Story of the Year, My Chemical Romance, and Poison the Well for free, and in November we are taking one lucky fan to Hawaii with us. E: How often do you find yourself songwriting for your band? Danny: I'm always songwriting for myself, so if it ties into the band using the songs I've written, then that is awesome, too. Either way, I am always writing and composing. E: Is there a certain style or energy that you set your writing to? Or does it just come out as it will? Danny: I write from personal feeling on a day to day basis. I'm not going for a particular style, and I know that National Product is not writing to be a certain style. We just want to write from our hearts and experiences. E: Would you say that the songs written for your newest release are at all different from those written prior? Danny: Yes, and the new material coming out after this release will be even more mature and different from the prior. That's what I love about National Product--the guys keep pushing the limits. E: What sort of goals did you have going into the studio this most recent time? Danny: My personal goals were to create solid rock songs with structure that we felt represented the music we were trying to put out. I wanted to have pre-production and get the songs solid, so we could walk in and knock them out fast. We did, too. We got everything done in a matter of days, instrumentally, and spent the rest of the time on vocals. E: How important do you think it is that a band be completely unique from other bands on the scene? Danny: It's important and it's not. It's what you're going for, you know. You have your segregation of bands all over the place, whether a gutterpunk band, straight edge band, hardcore band or what have you. All that is good if you're a part of that clique and want to come up in that scene. We, however, refuse to be a part of any particular scene. We play music for ourselves, and if kids happen to like it, they will come to shows and be a part of it. If not, that's cool, too, but we aren't going to sit down and think about ways to write songs so the scene can approve of what we do. I'd rather stab my eyes out. E: Danny, you are obviously involved in things outside of the band. Do you think that you are at all different person when you are not working on something musical? How do you think you'd be a different person if you'd never joined a rock band? Danny: I am involved in so many different things in life... I sell real estate, and help people puchase real estate. I have a merchandise company and a graphics company. It's funny, though... everything I do revolves around music. All my real estate clients are people I met through music--managers, bands, labels, etc. And all my merchandising clients are bands and musicians as well. If you have a focal point in life, everything else starts to center around it, kind of like the sun and how the planets revolve around it. If I were not working on something musical, and music was not a focus in my life, I think I would be back home in Hawaii, working on films like I was before, and still involved in surfing heavily... and I would be fat and have, like, five kids, and I would probably have dread locks. *Laughs* Okay, so that's not true, but my life would be very different, and I wouldn't even want to think that all I've experienced through music could be taken away if you could go back in time. I wouldn't trade any of this for the world. Not even having to eat Top Ramen and scrounge for gas money. I'm happy with what we have gone through. E: Well, thanks a lot for sharing. There's no doubt you're bound to go even farther. Danny: Thank you so much. It was awesome to do this interview. |