OC Music Awards 2012 Nominees Announced

OC MUSIC AWARDS ANNOUNCES THE 2012 NOMINEES IN 21 CATEGORIES

(ORANGE COUNTY, CA) – The Awards Academy has voted, the ballots have been sorted and the 2012 OC Music Awards nominees in 21 Academy selected categories have been determined. The 2012 list of nominations welcomes back some OC Music Awards former winners and nominees as well as some fresh faces.

This announcement includes 21 of the 26 total 2012 Awards category nominees. Still to come are the Outstanding Achievement Awards for OC Impact and Lifetime Achievement to be announced the February 1, the Best Live Band and Best Live Acoustic Showcase Series finalists, which will be announced after the last Showcase on February 15, and The People’s Choice Award nominees, to be announced on Monday, February 27. Make sure to cast your  FARMER JOHN FAN VOTE for your favorite Showcase artist to help them advance to their category Finals, and vote online for your favorite band in Orange County to receive the People's Choice Award.

And the 2012 nominees are….

2012 OC Music Awards Nominees(Nominees listed in alphabetical order per category)

Best Album
The Aquabats - Hi-Five Soup!
Jeramiah Red - Ghost Tracks from the Getty
Social Distortion - Hard Times And Nursery Rhymes
Thrice - Major/Minor
Young The Giant - Young The Giant


Best Song
DJ Tempo - "June Serenadez" featuring Ashley Morphew
Jeramiah Red - "Can't Help Myself"
Kiev - "Loot Recovered"
Thrice - "Promises"
Young The Giant - "Cough Syrup"


Best New Artist
Ethan Hulse
Golden Afternoon
Jeramiah Red
Portrait of a Nightmare
The Ultimate Bearhug


Best Alternative
Ceasefire
Jack's Mannequin
Railroad to Alaska
Suedehead
Young The Giant


Best Blues
Jameson
Jeramiah Red
Parker Macy Blues
Robert Jon & the Wreck
Roman Alexander & The Robbery


Best DJ
DJ Bobby Soul
DJ Oldboy
DJ Tempo
DJ Thrifty Lips
Kedd Cook


Best Country/Americana
Big Sandy & the Fly-Rite Boys
Billy Kernkamp
Falling Stars
Jeramiah Red
Nicole Vaughn


Best Electronic
Blok
Electric Valentine
Free the Robots
Mphase
Speaker Junkies


Best Folk
Ethan Hulse
Field Trip
I Hate You Just Kidding
Micah Brown
The Ultimate Bearhug


Best Hip Hop
BLOK
Cirious and Deelux
I&I
Pwest
Speach Impediments


Best Indie
Kiev
The Devious Means
The Gromble
The Steelwells
Young the Giant


Best Jazz
Chris Williams
Evan Stone
Nancy Sanchez
Ron Kobayashi
Tony Guerrero


Best Latin
!Aparato!
Boogaloo Assassins
Nancy Sanchez
Signa
The Latin Jazz Syndicate


Best Metal
Anna Vexa
Avenged Sevenfold
Bleeding Through
Death By Stereo
Railroad to Alaska


Best Pop
Amanda Lamb
The Aquabats
Ethan Hulse
Stacy Clark
Suedehead


Best Punk
Audacity
Chaser
Death Hymn Number 9
The Adolescents
The Gospels


Best Rock
Echo Echo
Jeramiah Red
Red9
Thrice
Young The Giant


Best Surf
Alejandor Awesome Surf Band
Death Hymn Number 9
Headshine
Hindu Pirates
The Growlers


Best World
80 Proof
Craic Haus
Dirty Heads
Reel Big Fish
Seedless


Best Music Video
Blok - Jungle Dog Fang Hell
Red9 - Fanatico
Red Devil Squadron - Bobcat Wrangler
Semi Sweet - Chemicals Corrected
Young The Giant - Cough Syrup


Best Youth
CHIXX RULE
McKenzie Brandon
Ugly Paint
Un D Vided
Whiplash

Visit OC Music Awards online, become a Fan, Follower, and Subscriber

OC Music Awards Announces Best Live Band and Best Live Acoustic Showcases

OC Music Awards Announces the 2012 Showcase Series Artists and Schedule
 
On Tuesday, January 3, the 2012 OC Music Awards Showcase Series kicks off at Costa Mesa’s Detroit Bar launching 7 weeks of free showcases at different venues across the county. 35 local artists will compete for the titles of Best Live Band or Best Live Acoustic, a performance slot at the 2012 OC Music Awards on March 3 at the City National Grove of Anaheim, and a generous prize pack from the Awards partners that will be announced in January.
 
The Showcase Series is free to submit, free to participate and all shows are free to attend. OC Music Awards received hundreds of submissions from artists across the county hoping to partake in the two-month long live series.
 
The World Famous KROQ station DJs will host each Showcase event and four respected industry professionals will participate as the Showcase Series Judges, scoring each band’s performance on musicianship, originality, song composition, stage presence and show attendance. The five finalists in each live category will move onto the Showcase Series Finals. Best Live Acoustic Finals will be held on Friday, February 24 and Best Live Band Finals on Saturday, February 25.
 
Fans of the OC Music Awards Showcase Series artists have opportunity to get involved through Fan Vote. Once the Showcase Series kicks off, fans can vote online at http://ocmusicawards.com for their favorite participating Showcase artist and move one band in each category onto the Showcase Series Finals, regardless of the Judges scores. Fans who vote automatically enter to win the “Fan Vote” prize pack courtesy of the OC Music Awards partners to be announced in January.
 
Farmer John joins OC Music Awards as presenting partner in 2012 and will bring their take on “tasting the local flavor” to the Showcase Series and main Awards show. Annual OC Music Awards partners 106.7FM KROQ, Bud Light, Wahoo’s, Red Bull, and BMI will also have interactive presence throughout the Showcase Series and March 3 event.
 
The final 35 participating 2012 Showcase Series artists and the complete schedule follows. Visit OC Music Awards online for more local music updates. http://ocmusicawards.com
 
 
2012 OC Music Awards
Showcase Series Billing and Schedule
 
1/03 Best Live Band
Venue: Detroit Bar, 843 West 19th St., Costa Mesa, CA 92627
Doors: 7:30p, 21+
(8:00) Jeramiah Red
(8:45) Paulie Pesh
(9:30) The Gromble
(10:15) Strange Birds
(11:00) James Fletcher

1/10 Best Live Acoustic
Venue: The District at Tustin Legacy, 2437 Park Ave., Tustin, CA 92782
Doors: 6:30p, all ages
(7:00) Nicole Vaughn
(7:45) Erick Macek
(8:30) Allensworth
(9:15) Moonsville Collective
(10:00) Headshine

1/17 Best Live Band
Venue: Slidebar, 122 East Commonwealth Ave., Fullerton, CA 92832
Doors: 7:30p, 21+
(8:00) We Are She Is
(8:45) Midnight Hour
(9:30) Ceasefire
(10:15) We Are the Arsenal
(11:00) PWEST

1/24 Best Live Acoustic
Venue: Malone’s, 604 East Dyer Rd., Santa Ana, CA 92705
Doors: 6:30p, 21+
(7:00) Kacie Yoshida
(7:45) Button Willow Locomotive
(8:30) I Hate You Just Kidding
(9:15) Skee
(10:00) Honeypie
 
1/31 Best Live Band
Venue: Tiki Bar, 1700 Placentia Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92627
Doors: 7:30p, 21+
(8:00) Red9
(8:45) Slime Kings
(9:30) Snakebit Drifters
(10:15) Death Hymn Number 9
(11:00) Railroad to Alaska

2/07 Best Live Acoustic
Venue: Continental Room, 115 West Santa Fe Ave., Fullerton, CA 92832
Doors: 6:30p, 21+
(7:00) Mandie & Ruby
(7:45) FoxxHound
(8:30) Danny Maika
(9:15) Parker Macy
(10:00) Tully James Wilkinson

2/14 Best Live Band
Venue: Constellation Room, 3503 South Harbor Blvd., Santa Ana, CA 92704
Doors: 7:30p, 21+       
(8:00) Ethan Hulse
(8:45) Robert Jon & the Wreck
(9:30) Italian Japanese
(10:15) The Devious Means
(11:00) Mphase

2/24 Best Live Acoustic Finals
Venue: Bands and Venue TBA

2/25 Best Live Band Finals
Venue: Bands and Venue TBA
 
3/03 2012 OC Music Awards
Venue: The City National Grove of Anaheim, 2200 East Katella Ave., Anaheim, CA 92806

GIRLS vs BOYS: Sticky Shaw & Brooke Reidt at AR4T feat. Railroad to Alaska

     Torrey Cook of the AR4T (Artists Republic for Tomorrow) space in Laguna Beach invited artists Robert "Sticky" Shaw and Brooke Reidt to face off their art...all while Costa Mesa locals, Railroad to Alaska did their best to prepare the perfect battleground music! Check out these photos from the event!

 

 

Railroad to Alaska, Omaha, & Mammoth Thunderpower at Detroit Bar

Railroad to Alaska at Detroit Bar Last Night

May 28^th, 2011

Detroit Bar, Costa Mesa

w/ Omaha and Mammoth Thunderpower

Tonight at Detroit Bar, the crowd of metal-heads made sure to grab earplugs before arriving for the Railroad to Alaska EP release show, featuring the heavy-hitting Omaha and Mammoth Thunderpower. For those who forgot their protection, there were plugs on sale at the merch booth, along with Railroad’s new four-track EP, titled Salvation, and a few newly printed t-shirts.

Starting off the night was Mammoth Thunderpower, a Costa Mesa metal rock band just recently formed. For their second show of all time, Thunderpower offered the perfect orchestrations to build and wind the crowd up for beastly sounds of Omaha to come. Most notable was the double-peddle booming from the drummer, the Sabbath-like riffs from guitarist Jeremy Munoz, and the lead vocalist, spouting vocals inspired by Suicidal Tendencies and Adolescents.

Although Omaha consists of only three musicians, each member brought enough power to overwhelm a band twice their size. Bassist and lead vocalist, Brandon Seger, cast a dark shadow over the thick crowd with his intensely furious lyrics, while each note from guitarist Ben Brown created a little more electric anxiety around onlookers. Behind his massive drum kit, Jon Maherhan, kept a perfect, yet uneasy beat that kept heads bobbing throughout their set.

As the dancefloor filled to the brim with loyal fans, the lights lowered to black, with the stage still empty, but pulsing with musical possibility. Wasting no time, Railroad opened with up-tempo track, “Handsome,” sending the front of the crowd into a frenzy. One by one, each song took on more life, with members Justin Suitor, Justin Morales, Jeff Lyman, and Derek Eglit, becoming more unhinged as they fell deeper into their set. Although most of the music was new tonight, Railroad sent the final shock across the crowd during their encore, featuring the hit, “White Nite.” By the final note, the crowd was sweaty, beaten, and looking for a copy of the EP and some fresh air.

Overheard: “Look at all those panties!”

Set:

Handsome

Make Mother

Indian Death Cheer

The Real Thing

Bible Pelt

White Marbles

Antique Roadshow

Mum

Coffin Drag

Learn to Share

Janie Had a Boyfriend

White Nite

Railroad to Alaska Releases "Salvation" EP

(L-R) Justin Morales, Justin Suitor, Jeff Lyman, Derek Eglit

Photo by Austin Bauman

Before their EP Release show at Detroit Bar this Saturday May 28^th, Railroad to Alaska members Justin Suitor (vocals/guitar) and Justin Morales (bass) filled us in on what their newest release Salvation is all about, their plans for an upcoming full-length, and their ideas on touring.

So what is your game-plan for Saturday?

Justin Suitor: We haven’t headlined in a long time, so we’ll be playing a longer set. We’re going to try and play old songs-- not obscenely old, just off of the first EP-- and songs off of the EP we’re releasing now, and songs that may or may not be recorded on the full-length album we’ll be recording in the next couple months—some brand new stuff that people haven’t heard.

So for the first EP, LuckyBearClawDoom, you had one concept. Has it changed as you went into producing the second EP, and how would you describe your newest concept?

Suitor: Yeah, definitely. Well the first EP was out of necessity. We just needed a recording. I don’t think anybody in the band had any grand ideas about what the concept was. I think it was something that we put together, and then explained. On Salvation, we had a little bit more of a concept, but it was kind of born out of necessity too. We needed an updated recording. I guess when you’re in a band and you’re functioning on a level of not having a budget, you can’t really have a huge scope.

Justin Morales: I think that both records are just two incidental snapshots during a period of growth of the band, and they’re a year apart. Naturally, there’s changes that took place in there.

Suitor: The songwriting got more deliberate. When we recorded it, we were much more aware of the end product that we were going for. In terms of overall theme, we still didn’t really have any specific direction, whereas the full-length that we’re recording now--even though we are still in that “budget” category—we’re going to attempt to have an overarching theme and a specific direction, and we’re going to attempt to create an overall atmosphere and mood for the album.

So what would you say is the theme of Salvation, and what will be the theme for the full-length that will be coming out?

Suitor: Salvation has very few songs on it; it’s just an EP. There’s a song on there about drug use, a song about depression, there’s a song on there about being crazy, and there’s a song about weighing the ideas of hating yourself, versus being happy about what you’ve done on earth. So like Morales said, there are a few little snapshots within the EP that are little bits of everyday life. There was no theme on that, except for, we wanted it to be real, and it’s real. For the full-length, we can’t go into that because we’re still developing it all. It will be darker, and bigger, and a lot more serious. I think that’s what we gathered on this second EP—a lot more seriousness. We became more adult.

Why so serious?

Suitor: Because that’s who we are. I mean, even if we’re happy-go-lucky right now, we all want to play serious music, we’re all serious musicians. We’re trying to play hard, we’re trying to play tight, and we’re trying to play for real—we’re not trying to pull one over on anybody using parlor tricks. Overall, I think what can be said about what we’re trying to do differently for the show, is that we are trying to up our production level, to a place where we are holding the attention of the audience for as long as we can. It’s a lot easier in 30 minutes, but for one hour, we’re going to really have to dig deep and try to use lights, song order, and dynamics to our advantage—just really try to arrange all of that properly. I think we pretty much have that worked out.

How many of the songs for from the upcoming full length will be incorporated into the set?

Morales: It’s not really determined which ones are going to make the cut for the album or not, so we can’t really say for sure. We are going to play at least one that we’ve never played before, and three that most people haven’t heard before—and they definitely haven’t heard them the way we’re going to play them on Saturday. The newest songs are still in some stage of infancy, considering the transition that happens when you’re writing them—adding parts, taking parts away, changing lyrics, sometimes even changing key. It will be how it’s going to be on Saturday. Again, it will be another snapshot of the life of a song.

It sounds like you’re trying to progress in your musical work everyday then?

Suitor: Absolutely.

Morales: And learn from our mistakes, and learn from our triumphs.

When are you planning on a tour, and the chance to progress outside of Orange County?

Suitor: We don’t want to go on tour with EP’s. It seems a little counter-productive to leave such a small stamp in the areas we might tour. I think once the full-length is complete, we’ll try and pool our resources, determine the best possible way to tour without killing ourselves. We’re getting old and we’re not 21 years old anymore We can’t just leave for a year and roll the dice, so we need to make a pretty calculated effort on our tour. Admittedly, I know it demystifies rock and roll a bit. Right now we’ve got some dates in California on the Van’s Warped Tour. Once we see how that works, I think it will give us some incite on how to approach a tour where we’ll just be rushed in, rushed out, not really being that important—those things that go into playing on a side-stage show. I’d say by the time 2012 comes around, and if the earth hasn’t really ended, we’ll probably be touring the greater United States—in a Dodge Caravan.

Morales: Hopefully on someone else’s dime. That would be just magical if we didn’t have to find it ourselves. It’s not like we’re depending on it, or waiting for it, but if it happens, it happens.

How will you be releasing the EP? Will there be vinyl, digital download, a CD?

Suitor: We don’t have any ‘synergy,’ as Jack Donaghy would call it. We’re just releasing a good old-fashioned CD. I think that we will move towards a download, and it will be up on iTunes and all those other avenues. At this point, we gotta get people to pay. There are others who maybe can afford to give their music away, but we work hard on ours and we’re not asking for much. Give us like three bucks or something. It’s not for a 40oz. and a crack-rock. It’s for more gear, touring, and I think people will understand that.

When you do record your full-length, what type of medium are you planning on implementing?

Suitor: We’ve thought about tape, we’ve thought about various producers, we’ve thought about going back to work with our good friend Mike Troolines, but it’s undertermined. The material is taking shape, and that’s gonna dictate where we’re gonna go. If the material is more low-fi, maybe we’ll go for tape. If it’s turning into more of a production, and it’s getting more detailed and intricate, we’ll be forced to go digital. We tried something new with the mastering on this EP, with a new process that’s very futuristic. Maybe we’ll try futuristic mastering with lo-fi tape, lo-fi tape mastering after recording digital—we’re open to all that, but like I said, the material is going to dictate how we record.

Morales: It depends on what studio we record at, and what kind of gear they have. I like recording on tape, I’ve done it before. Having four guys on a huge Triton board all mixing down to ½ inch tape is crazy. One little mess-up, and it’s like, ‘Whoops, we gotta start over again.’ I really felt like, ‘Why aren’t we doing this digitally?’ In the end, it was worth it.

What can you say about the bands you are playing with on Saturday?

Suitor: We’re playing with Omaha and Mammoth Thunderpower. I don’t think anyone knows about Mammoth Thunderpower, it’s maybe their second show, and I know there are members from previous bands that we’ve played with, so we’re looking forward to that. We’re just happy to hear bands playing some hard rock. If they turn it up, and they play hard, we’ll be happy. And Omaha, they’re our good friends and we back them. They play sludgy, heavy, and dark music, and are serious musicians as well, and serious dudes too. That’s always a good pairing for us to play together because we were all to the point when we’re focused on playing. I’m not saying we’re not up there having fun, we’re not machines up there. But when we’re playing with those guys, they are focused, we are focused, and I think it brings a good vibe. People are there to see a show, rather than just to hang out. I think it’s a good lineup and I think people are really gonna enjoy. We’re also gonna have a guest cameo, Mr. Josh. People who don’t know who Mr. Josh is, they should come out ‘cause he has a carnival wheel that you spin and win prizes. Prizes vary all the way from buttons he’s made, to life-size cartoon paintings he’s made. He’ll also be handing out some of the band’s shirts and cd’s as well for free.

Morales: He may or may not be wearing a white tuxedo.