30 November 25, 2009

C olorcast Veteran has been entertaining Lake Charles for over two and a half years now. If you haven’t heard of them, you’ve been under a rock. The band is fresh from recording an EP in North Carolina this summer. Mitchell Marlow, formerly of He Is Legend and now tour guitarist for Filter, recorded the bands EP. The title of their EP is The King, The Queen, The Guillotine.“It worked out really well for all of us. We went there hoping to get a good product and we got better than we thought we could get. It was two weeks with no pre-production. We just went in and hit record,” said Jordan Dougherty, vocals for Colorcast Veteran. Colorcast Veteran is: Jordan Dougherty, vocals; Luke Cooper, guitar and BGV; Sean Kelley, guitar; Alex Lasher, drums; Brett Howell, bass.The band’s style can be described as a cross between pop, indie, metal, and ska. They have many different influences. If you ask Jordan Dougherty to describe the band’s style he would say, “Some bands are straight-up Americana, some bands are

straight-up pop-punk, some bands are straight-up metal, some are straight-up hardcore metal, some are thrash metal. Then there is death metal and black metal. We are influenced par-tially by all of those. Our guitar players are metal heads and our drummer is too and he’s really into Southern metal which is a lot of breakdowns and tak-ing everything and putting it in halftime which makes it a slow groove on stage. So, Southern metal mixed with elements of pop and straight-up New England metal is our style.”All bands have their own way of approaching a song. Colorcast Veteran starts jam-ming and Dougherty writes a melody over it. He said they usually write the songs from

By Nancy Correro

COLORCAST

VETERAN

courtesy of Prolly Studios

November 25, 2009 31

start to finish. “Sometimes they write it in riffs which seems as if it has a format to it and I wonder what I’m going to do with that, but there is a format to it because Sean, he’s the guitar player, who taught himself guitar and read Berkeley Books and studied and studied—he studied theory and learned it front to back. He learned different modes and the country of its origin, it’s just absurd. He’s a very modest guy and would never talk about it,” said Dougherty. The bonus of having Sean and his knowledge and talent is when they went to record in North Carolina. Everything was written perfectly and no one could say it wasn’t right. “The producer couldn’t say this isn’t in the right key or you can’t harmonize those two parts,” said Dougherty. When the band got to North Carolina, Dougherty had half of one song written. He wanted to tell a story when he got there. That became almost overwhelming for him. “I was putting the story together for months and months be-fore we went there. I have four sisters. My sister Mary is really inspirational and she’ll give me ideas. I told her I wanted a story about my life mixed with music, but also like a fable. I didn’t write it to be some Jim Morrison weirdo; I just wanted to tell a story,” said Dougherty. The songs on the EP tell a story. In song one, Imitation of an Ac-tion (This is Where the End Begins), a King is killed by his son, the Prince. Dougherty is the Prince. Art is influenced by life and the next song was influenced by the divorce of Dougherty’s parents: Because it’s Judgment that Destroys. The third song, Duke of Scene, is how the Prince chose to take over the people and the land, but it is also like being a singer in a band. “The singer in the band is a metaphor for me being Duke in Duke of Scene, the third song. I chose Duke because there were no Kings in Ireland and I’m Irish,” said Dougherty. Song four is Wake Me Up. “That is like a call out to God saying wake me up, so that is the turmoil of the story, the conflict.”Song five is Madness on Madison. “Madison is the street I grew up on in Sulphur and the madness is growing up with my sisters, but they are my princesses so I take care of them,” said Dough-erty.Song number six is The Harlequin’s Cadence Upon the Sheets. “This song is making a mockery of lead singers and making a mockery of people who rule lands and how they are promiscu-ous and throw themselves out there and sleep around constantly as if it is okay to do that. It’s making fun of myself and it’s also a dedication to the Harlequin because I work there,” said Dougherty.Rot the Womb is song number seven. “It’s an abortion song. It’s about me impregnating a girl who is not of [royal] blood. I’m being promiscuous with a girl that is not of royal blood. Since I’ve cheated, the Queen-to-be finds out and she kills the heir to the throne.”Song eight is This is the End.

“We go to hell, basically, in this song because of our actions—me and the princess.” In the follow-up CD, the story will basically take place in hell and they are trying to get back on earth and rule the people to help them because they lost their king. “Now I’m not a Satan worshiper or anything like that. I’m Catholic. I just like the story. I enjoyed writing this story. It’s the best escape from reality I could have to tell you the truth. I was waking up at 6:30 every morning before I had to record vocals to write. The whole experience in the studio was great. It wasn’t like we went to Lafayette to record our CD. It felt like we had done something different,” said Dougherty. They wanted to make these eight songs bigger than life. Demos come and go, but going to North Carolina was a great move on the band’s part. They have a solid EP that is artistic, thoughtful, and exciting. Colorcast Veteran is known for their live shows. “It’s great to be in Lake Charles and have a following and get people out to shows. We started playing around town and I’d like to say that we were a part of the start of the scene around town. It’s built up now to where everybody in town wants bands to play at their venue. Every bar wants someone to play now. You’ve got Sylvia’s, Toucans, AJ’s, and Luna. People are hungry and want to play, it’s great, it’s fun,” said Dougherty. Jordan Dougherty’s dad is actually the singer for the band Handsome Harry here in town. They’re playing together at AJ’s on November 27th with Parallel the Sky. Check out the band’s music right now at: www.cdbaby.com/cd/colorcastveteran and www.myspace.com/colorcastveteran.

courtesy of Prolly Studios