Tripdavon
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Tripdavon

Santa Barbara, California, United States | INDIE

Santa Barbara, California, United States | INDIE
Band Rock Alternative

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"Resourceful Band Enlists Military.Com"

For media-savvy rockers Tripdavon, the definition of “independent” band does not necessarily mean cutting out big business. In fact, the band welcomes it.

Hailing from Santa Barbara, CA, two hours drive north of Los Angeles, the quintet has established various relationships with entities one would not normally associate with a band lacking major-label support. From Gibson guitars, to Rockstar Energy Drink and, more re-cently, Military.com, the act has embraced an approach that openly seeks assistance from companies who are willing to lend a hand. And the results have been surprising.

Together since 2004, the five-piece, says vocalist, Justin Fox, “decided to record an al-bum ourselves to help get our name further out there.”Recording the nine-song album wholly at Fox’s house, the act went on to sell an estimated 5,000 copies of the self-titled release.

It was around this time that bassist Dave Heer, complain-ed about having to pay as much as $40 for bass strings. With that in mind, the band went a mission to find Heer a sponsorship. It was far easier than they thought. “We discovered quickly, that if we represent ourselves well and show that we’re really into what we’re doing and trying to improve our craft, most people are more than happy to work on a project with us,” says Fox. “We’d call up and say, ‘We’re a rock band and we’ve been recording and touring really hard, and this year we want to accomplish this. It would make our lives easier if you’d partner up with us and give us at least a discount on something or send us some free stuff.’ We’d say we’d repay them by mentioning their name when we went on the radio or wearing their t-shirt, so most companies were quick to sign up.”

While Fox is open about his band’s endorsement of corporate culture, he is aware that the approach breaks with the traditional DIY mentality. “I know it goes against the whole rock & roll image of yesteryear, but nowadays, it’s how an indie band survives.”

And though Tripdavon’s list of corporate sponsors is long, the act does not have companies flipping the bill for everything. Case in point, the recording of the combo’s latest release, Enlightened Operative. Self-released last Nov-ember, the sophomore effort drained the members’ bank accounts and then some. While their first album was a relatively no-cost affair, the five-piece felt they would have to enter a proper studio and hire professionals in order to compete with high-quality recordings by other bands. “We knew it couldn’t be a home-brewed thing anymore,” says Fox. “When we got into the realm of talking to music supervisors and trying to get on the radio or television, the re-cording quality just wasn’t there.”

Enlisting the help of producer Sylvia Massy (Tool, System Of A Down), Fox recalls booking the studio time without having the money to cover the cost. “It was a risky move, but there was only a small window of opportunity. We ended up maxing out our credit cards and borrowing as much as we could. About two weeks before, we were still short, so I sold my car. We finally came up with the money, but it was pretty crazy.”

With a new well-polished album, the band continued looking for avenues and methods of marketing their music to a broader audience. While watching a television crew follow an in-fantry unit in Baghdad, Fox struck upon an idea. “I was just seeing all these men and women operating tanks and driving around the desert while blasting music. I thought, ‘I’d love to be the band they’re listening to.’”

After speaking with his brother in the Navy and asking about websites that soldiers regularly visited, Fox found Military.com (which he says “is like the Armed Forces’ MySpace”). He be-came a member due to his brother’s affiliation. Realizing the site did not provide any sort of music service, “I ended up e-mailing the editor-in-chief who had his contact info posted in the corporate section. I sent him a link to our MySpace page and a link to download our new album. I just told him I would like to get our music in the hands of all the active duty people and asked if that was a possibility.”

Two hours later, Fox received a positive re-sponse. Telling Fox that he had loved the album, the editor was interested in working with the band and a meeting was set up to go over ideas. Learning that launching a music service through Military.com would cost a significant amount of money, Fox immediately went to Tripdavon’s en-dorsers. “Right away, Gibson hopped onboard and wanted this to become a Gibson-slash-Military.com thing.”

Fox is intimately involved in the development of the service, and says a micro-site will be launched off of Military.com to provide music. It will rely heavily on user-generated content in the beginning, with Tripdavon the first and only featured act on the site. From there, different acts will be featured on a regular basis at no cost to the artist. And with the amount of traffic Mili-tary.com experiences, the amount of exposure is potentially huge. “The numbers are unbelievable when you think about it. It’s like 300,000 people visit this site every day, so it should be pretty awesome for everyone involved. And that’s exactly what we’ve been trying to do; trying to leverage our partnerships to get what we want, but being able to give back to the companies that have supported us in the process.
- Music Connection


"A Trip Around the World"

I.V.’s Tripdavon Returns Home
by Drew Mackie

As a rule, the lifecycle of Isla Vista bands parallel the parties that serve as their most frequent gigs. No matter how raucous the party, an empty keg means the partygoers will be shuffling off to the next destination. In a similar way, scads of Isla Vista-spawned bands have flourished in the area’s party-hungry, venue-rich atmosphere, then all but vanished when, after four years, graduation sends the band’s fan base — if not the members themselves — in different directions. It’s a dilemma that’s cursed many bands with short, glorious lives and abrupt ends.

But then there’s Tripdavon.

Well after three of the five members graduated from UCSB, the band was riding a tour bus across Germany, Austria, Holland, and Hungary accompanied by Eric Burdon, the renowned front man of The Animals and War, and playing to packed venues, poised for the greatest exposure the band has gotten yet. On top of that, Tripdavon was fortunate enough to score a deal with Advanced Technology Office — the creators of iSee, a new attachment that can convert a standard iPod into a handheld video recorder — to be the only rock band to have videos packaged with the product.

Indeed, Tripdavon defied convention by outliving its collegiate surroundings. But the band’s members, who now live together in Montecito, haven’t let their recent success cloud their judgment. Despite a world tour under their belts, the boys — Justin Fox, Greg Doscher, Adam Coons, Dave Heer, and Russ Cummings — are keenly aware they are a young band yet to prove their potential on their sophomore album, The Enlightened Operative (released November 9).

The tour, in fact, was not in the original plan. Tripdavon was initially supposed to play at Burdon’s 2005 CD release party at the Viper Room in Los Angeles, but when that gig fell through, Burdon summoned the band with him to Europe. Fox, 27, a longtime Santa Barbara resident, said yes. It didn’t take much work to convince the others to come along. “That very day, I nearly cut off my hair for a job I was going to get at the DoubleTree,” said a relieved Cummings.

As much as the boys like to recall their European tour, however, they admitted that a truer test of the band’s abilities was recording the second album. Upon returning from their time with Burdon, Tripdavon migrated north to the quiet streets of Weed, California. They teamed up with Sylvia Massy, whose multimedia recording complex occupies a full city block in the town and who previously produced albums for Tool, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Prince. Beginning on June 7, the band recorded for 40 days in Weed. The outcome? What the boys estimate is their most mature sound yet and nothing but gratitude for Massy’s influence on the project. Doscher explained that one song in particular, “Never Let You Go,” was presenting a few problems. “It needed some work, mostly on the chorus. But the verses and the bridge, too,” he joked. In the end, Massy’s tutelage helped find the gems buried within the song’s faulty structure and rebuilt it into one of the new album’s stronger tracks.

The album represents a kind of rock that defies the subcategorization that befalls so many other musical efforts. No prefixes, no hyphens, no alt, no indie — just rock in the purest sense. “In the end, if you have a guitar and drums, you’re a rock band,” said Coons, the band’s guitarist and a New York native who arrived in California to study at UCSB. It’s a genre that stands out even though it shouldn’t, especially in the hip-hop and reggae-saturated Santa Barbara music scene.

However selective downtown might be about live music acts, Tripdavon originally flourished in Isla Vista, where throngs of wandering revelers allowed for a greater variety of musical acts. “I’d rather take the backyard in I.V., honestly. If you’re in I.V., you know if you’re playing a good show,” Fox said. “If you’re not, then everybody gets out their cell phones and starts talking.”

That knowledge comes from many years of hard knocks. The boys’ first gig had them performing for 400 I.V. partyers at an apartment complex on Del Playa Drive, dubbed 6525 Palooza. Shortly thereafter, they played UCSB’s annual Reel Loud in 2004 under the name Audiophile. The members were pleased with their sound but knew their name was a clunker. Although initially cagey about the etymology of “Tripdavon,” the band’s members now freely admit the name came from their initial rehearsal space’s proximity to a Vons grocery store. Music breaks often resulted in a “trip to Vons,” which the five eventually slurred into the band’s name. While touring, the band discovered that Tripdavon comes close to a German profanity, though the name never caused them trouble while abroad.

Whatever the origin of “Tripdavon,” the name has served the band well. And though word of the band may spread to communities beyond Santa Barbara, the members maintain the band is a local fixture. “Our home is always going to be Santa Barbara,” Fox said. “Every time we leave, it’s amazing to get back. Coming up over that hill and seeing Santa Barbara and the ocean and smelling that sweet air …” But if the past is any indicator, the future holds many a foreign horizon. After all, according to Doscher, “We’re going to ride this thing until the wheels fall off.”
- The Independent


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Discography

Sketches From Silence - NEW

The Enlightened Operative
Tripdavon: Tripdavon.

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http://www.itunes.com/tripdavon

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Bio

Tripdavon: Rock’s Newest Rambling Men

Across highways and low roads, on four restless wheels and tireless tires, the Tripdavon tour bus – fueled by a combination of its own diesel and the unlimited potential of its passengers – devours pavement en route to its next destination. And whether this coach and its crew are advancing toward new adventures or untapped sonic possibilities, they are always moving forward on the road to rock greatness.

Tripdavon came together in 2004 and started out playing the nonstop party scene around U.C. Santa Barbara. Friends since childhood, singer Justin Fox and drummer Russ Cummings had played music together for many years. But not until a chance encounter led them to guitarist Greg Doscher and bassist Dave Heer did the band actually start to take shape. A few short years later the guys were playing venues like the Knitting Factory, House of Blues, and the historic Royal Albert Hall, and even touring the world with Eric Burdon of War and The Animals – a far cry from the keggers and local clubs where they cut their chops.

Just as a rolling stone gathers no moss, an evolving band accrues no confining labels. And that’s exactly how Tripdavon likes it. The group defies all labels but one: they are, to the core, a rock band and they’re not trying to be anything but a rock band. No “alt-”; no “indie-”; no hyphens. Strictly rock. Yet the guys constantly tap into, and are influenced by, many other musical styles. (Just not reggae. If you’ve spent any time in coastal California surf towns, you understand.) But whether savoring Latin jazz flair or old funk grooves, these guys always make sure their sound rocks. They don’t have a platform or agenda. They’re not attempting to redefine genres. They are simply four guys from very different artistic backgrounds united by their love of music and insatiable hunger for new adventures and creative frontiers.

Tripdavon’s first, self-titled release heralded the band’s arrival with powerful melodies, heavy riffs and soulful vocals. As they wrote their sophomore album, The Enlightened Operative, the guys really wanted to amp up the intensity of their sound. So they enlisted veteran music producer Sylvia Massy Shivy – who had previously produced Prince, Tool, and The Red Hot Chili Peppers, among many other notable artists – to achieve a more cohesive, mature and artfully produced album. On Sketches from Silence, their latest offering, Tripdavon rose to yet another stage of musical evolution, channeling the experience and knowledge gained from working with Sylvia to produce the album on their own. But this time, envisioning an even further advanced sound, they combined the melodic tones of the original release with the more visceral guitar rock of their second and infused it with altogether new artistic influences.

With their destination forever ahead, Tripdavon knows there’s no time to stand still. It’s this ramblin’ band mentality that ceaselessly drives them to do what they love most – make great rock music – while hopefully inspiring good feelings and memorable experiences at the same time. In just the last five years, they have not only performed and toured the world with Burdon, they’ve also provided support for Dishwalla, The Ataris, Fuel, Poison, The Doobie Brothers, Whitesnake, and The Bravery. They scored a national TV debut on HBO’s hit show Entourage with their song “Nothing or All,” reached #2 on the MySpace Music Charts, and beat thousands of bands across the nation to be named Famecast Fenoms for 2007. Somehow during all of this, the guys also found time to join the Armed Forces Entertainment Tour and perform for more than 50,000 U.S. troops stationed in the Pacific, singlehandedly raise more than $15,000 to aid Hurricane Katrina victims, contribute to Project Greenhouse, support CASA (a group that helps at-risk youth), and take part in many other important humanitarian efforts too numerous to list.

Now with the third album on its way, Tripdavon is once again gearing up to hit the road. And having amassed a small army of loyal fans in Europe from the last tour, they’re headed back to kickoff the new material. But the journey doesn’t end there. When they finish rocking their way through the old country, the band will head home to continue touring across the U.S. Meanwhile, with no rest for these weary travelers, they’ll also keep working to have their music featured in new outlets across radio, television, the web, and other channels. In fact, three songs from The Enlightened Operative have been chosen for the soundtrack of the upcoming film, The Harsh Life of Veronica Lambert.

Beyond that, the opportunities stretch as far as the horizon unfolding endlessly ahead of their tour bus. And whether it’s their dream of rocking Madison Square Garden, playing the Grammys, or selling out their hometown Santa Barbara Bowl, these guys know it only takes one singular moment in this journey to turn possibilities into re