PureVolume

The Story of Lines Into Phoenix. As told by vocalist, Ian Hanlon.

Lines Into Phoenix started out in late 2003 as a three peice group from Juanita, a suburb right outside of Kirkland, WA. The three founding members, Tory Baird, Victor Olavarria, and Brandon Cowan each attended the same school and lived in the same neighborhood (The band started out with the name "Abeyance," but when I joined I thought it was a dumb idea to have a name which nobody in the group could define on cue, so I changed it). Tory's brother, Chase, was working on a project called "Backorder" at the time, but decided he wanted to do something harder, more influenced by bands like Thrice and At the Drive-In than by whatever the guys in Backorder were listening to, so he started playing with Abeyance as a second guitarist.

This is about where I came into the picture. At this point, Abeyance had recorded a demo with Brandon doing lead vocals and Tory screaming in the background. It was horrible. The group decided they needed a lead singer, so they started asking around. At this same time, I had been looking for a band to sing with. I had been out of the music scene for quite a long time, working at Starbucks, writing songs on my acoustic, and looking for a place to vent all my frustration with the consumer culture I had found myself in. I was looking for a band.

It turned out that Abeyance and I both knew Gavin Phillips: they knew him from playing shows with his band (This Providence) and I knew him from the first band I was ever in (Three For Nothing). They had called him asking if he knew anyone who could sing, and he gave them my phone number. Next thing I knew I was over at the Baird's house singing old Finch songs and getting made fun of for looking like a Starbucks employee.

We practiced, got three songs finished, and recorded a demo with Casey Bates at Johnny Cab Studios (Gatsby's American Dream, This Providence, Daphney Loves Derby). We put up a PureVolume.com account and started playing shows in the area, mainly at teen centers and bowling alleys, but didnt have any real promotion other than word of mouth. We were happy with the sound we were getting, but thought there could be something more.

Enter Spencer Mertel (Danger: Radio, Coma).

Spencer gave us a richer and fuller sound with his keyboards and interest in experimental sound, along with his wild stage presence. After several months spent playing shows and getting wayyy too drunk, we went back into the studio to record our debut EP, Aries. We still hadn't been able to promote ourselves properly and shows at teen centers rarely landed more than $100 anyways, so funding a six song adventure into the recording studio was no small feat. We did it, pressed it and got copies onto the internet (SmartPunk, BestBuy.com) and into local record stores (Tower Records, Singles Going Steady). We played more and more shows until eventually, with work and school coming together, we had more scheduling conflicts than we could handle, and nobody to competantly manage us. Things started to fall apart...

Victor had been accepted to the Berkely School of Music over in Boston and decided that he was going in a different musical direction than the band, so he left.
Chase went on a branch of the Gatsby's American Dream summer tour.
Spencer started working heavily on Coma.
Tory learned every song that The Fall of Troy had ever written.
Brandon smoked a lot of pot... Then again, thats sort of what he always did.
As for me... I drank too much and felt like shit most of the time...

When Victor left, not only did we lose a damn good drummer, we lost our practice space. With nowhere to play, no shows, and no drummer, we started to lose hope. After two months of uncertainty though, Spencer came through for us.

He introduced us to an old friend of his who played the drums: Aaron Voros. We tried Aaron out, liked his style, and invited him to join the band. When he joined, the group breathed a collective sigh of relief... We could finally play again.

From there, we decided that since none of us were able to get our shit together enough to balance being in a band with the rest of our lives it was above and beyond time that we found someone committed to doing it for us. We had previously played a couple of shows with a band from Bellingham, WA called Wilholm Knoxx and had since gotten to know them and their manager, Ryan Ainsworth. Ryan was moving into the Seattle area and looking to do a little more networking, so we asked him to be our manager.

...So here we are. Rocking your fucking house.

order ARIES from smartpunk.com
watch the video for ARIES
check us out on myspace.com