THE FULL (SPACE)BEARD

On a rainy Friday night, this past one actually, I went down to NYC's Ace of Clubs, formerly the rock club Under Acme, to check out Brooklyn's Spacebeard. It was a CD release party for their new album, Specimen, and the guys were ready to rock out. This was my first time checking out the band live so I didn't know what to expect. What I got was four guys who rocked out and had a good time doing so! The show got stronger as it went along and from about the song Swords (the band's 1st song ever) on it was balls to the wall metal. I hadn't seen a pure old school type of metal band like SB in awhile and it just felt good. The high point of the performance was their instrumental Bratta, in which the band seemed the most tight. Afterwards I spoke to bass player Andrea Verderame for his reactions...

Was it nerve wracking to play a CD release party?

There were a bunch of people there that haven’t seen us before, so that was a little nerve wracking, but otherwise I wasn’t that nervous. I think I was more concerned about getting through “Synthetic” - our opening song. It’s a relatively new song and not on the record. We didn’t have the opportunity to rehearse it as much as we would have liked, but we were given extra time to play, so we decided to throw it into the set at the last minute. I think we did a good job with it!!

How do you feel the band came through the experience?

Overall I think we did well and everyone in the band agreed that it was one of our strongest performances to date. However, there is always room for improvement. It can and will get better!


How do you feel you guys translated the material from the CD?

We did great on that front. Mirroring the album isn’t too difficult because it was recorded using the same equipment we use on stage, in a live environment at Terminal One Studios. However, each of us has already added new elements to the songs that were not captured on the record, so there are aspects that are exclusive to the Live Beard experience.

The band really sounded tight during the instrumental piece, Bratta, my favorite song of the night, is there a more sense of unity when doing a song like this?

Absolutely! For the first year or so the band played instrumental versions of these songs exclusively - it’s the foundation of the band. I think we all look forward to the time in the set where we can just interact musically with each other and not focus on the vocals. Personally, I would love to put Brett (our drummer) in the middle of the stage and have the rest of us stand around him and just jam.


You guys covered Tom Petty's You're So bad. Petty is very far from what I think of when I think of your band's sound, why choose that song to cover?

We probably choose it because it’s quite different from what we normally do. However, I think it works well with our sound because we get to arrange it our way and still retain the feel of the original. It’s definitely fun to play live and I’m happy because I get to throw in a quick bass solo into a Petty song.

What do you personally come away with from this experience?

The fact that our drummer came through with getting a great banner made for us!!! Seriously, though, I’m just happy we are getting some really good feedback and people seem to genuinely enjoy what we are doing. Can’t really ask for much more!!


For more Spacebeard check out their website: http://www.spacebeard.com/

photography by Sal Cipriano