Dan Marsala: vocals
Ryan Phillips: guitar
Phillip Sneed: guitar
Adam Russell: bass
Josh Wills: drums
Here’s the Story Of The Year: rock ‘n’ roll – real, raw and revealing -- is back.
It’s a newsflash straight from the heartland of St. Louis, Missouri, where the creative chemistry of five committed young musicians first reached critical mass five years ago, exploding with an original sound that pushed the stakes for pure punk energy, hard-edged live performances and dangerous fun to the limit.
Now Story Of The Year is about to make headlines in your hometown with their Maverick Records debut, Page Avenue featuring a clutch of potent new tracks written especially for the occasion, including such front and center showstoppers as “Until The Day I Die,” “And The Hero Will Drown” and “Anthem Of Our Dying Day.”
Produced by John Feldman, frontman and resident visionary for Goldfinger, Story Of The Year filters an all-out aural assault through a grid of razor-sharp lyrics, instantly accessible melodies and furiously focused arrangements. It is, simply put, one of the most impressive arrivals of the current musical season…and proof positive that hard work, dedication and dogged persistence are essential ingredients to great music.
“We built our audience one fan at a time,” contends bassist Adam Russell. “We started our own street team, put up flyers on every telephone pole in town and burned thousands of CD’s on our home computers. We designed our own website, shot our own video and put up our own money for everything. If there were dues to be paid, we paid them…and then some.”
It’s the kind of intense perseverance that has marked this band’s trajectory from the beginning. As members in good standing on the burgeoning St. Louis music scene, Adam, along with vocalist Dan Marsala and guitarist Ryan Phillips first joined forces in the late Nineties under the unlikely moniker of Big Blue Monkey. The band, in various configurations would go on to release five independent EP’s, even as they built an unparalleled reputation for live performances with virtually constant regional touring and a regular slot at the St. Louis hotspot, The Galaxy. Along the way, they recruited drummer Josh Wills and, eventually, second guitarist Philip Sneed. The Story Of The Year line-up was complete.
Their well-earned big break came when they won a local radio contest for a place on the bill at Point Fest, a music festival showcasing the cream of the Mid-western scene. “We saturated that crowd,” boasts Adam. “We handed out thousands of sampler CD’s and videos to anyone and everyone we met. We were determined to make the most of the opportunity.”
It was a strategy that paid off handsomely when one of the videos ended up on the tour bus of the band Goldfinger and immediately grabbed the attention of vocalist and Maverick Records A&R scout John Feldman. “He asked us to go on tour with them,” Adam continues, “and it wasn’t too long afterwards that he took us into the label.”
A solid month of touring as an opener for Goldfinger culminated in a showcase in late summer of 2002 for Maverick brass at Hollywood’s famed Viper Room. A deal was immediately inked and, to mark this auspicious new chapter in the Story’s saga, the group, who had already relocated to Orange County, helped facilitate the pre-production process with California resident Feldman.
“We wrote and recorded that fall,” Ryan explains. “Most of the time we’d hang out in John’s living room with acoustic guitars, trying out new stuff. We also had a rehearsal space we’d built in a garage, and the five of us would spend eight or ten hours a day just developing songs and arrangements. We wanted to move in some new directions and at the same time get back to the basics that had brought us together in the first place. In the end, almost the whole album ended up being fresh material.”
“If the song was going to be heavy, we made sure it was as heavy as it could be,” adds Adam. “If it was melodic, we’d push that as far as we could, too. We wanted to make sure we were operating in the extremes of what we could do.”
The result is Page Avenue, a brilliant, breathtaking exercise in musical extremes from a band whose hard won experience is matched only by their restless creative instincts. Spotlighting such live favorites as “Razor Blades” as along with dazzling new tracks such as “Falling Down,” featuring guest vocals by producer Feldman, H2O’s Toby Morris and Ray Cappo from Youth of Today, Page Avenue is a musical scoop of monumental proportions.