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"Featured Artists"
The Rocket Summer
Genre: Indie Power Pop / Emo Core
Location: Texas" ... Avary introduces himself as an expert crafter of catchy, intricately layered pop songs ... Always emotional, often affectingly so, Calendar Days is a promising debut." 4 out of 5 stars - Alternative Press Magazine
20-year-old Bryce Avary has been working on The Rocket Summer since he was 14. Producing his first EP at only 16, he shipped nearly 1000 copies through mail order which was based out of his bedroom. And now, his debut album Calendar Days has arrived -- a recording filled with enthusiastic pop songs that will blast the listener into an orbit of pure euphoria. Here is an interview I recently conducted with Mr. Avary, who by the way, plays every single instrument on his new album as well as sings...
The ten tracks of The Rocket Summer's Militia Group debut, calendar days was tracked at Red House Studios in Kansas, a project that was entirely produced and performed by Avary over a span of six weeks - drums, bass, guitars, keyboards, piano, percussion, vocals. Well, except for one very special part.
"I had an idea to bring an entire kids choir in one of the songs," Avary says of the group of forty 6th grade girls who sung a track called "What We Hate We Make." "We came to the school and recorded the tracks there. We had to get special approval and all that, but after a few takes, they made it happen and it sounded great. It came out better than I originally hoped."
His unique blend of equal parts Ben Folds piano-based power-pop rock, Matthew Sweet-laced melodies and traditional Beatles composition sensibilities have lead to rave reviews and critical acclaim in prominent publications in his Dallas hometown. So with all the chatter, the EP, major radio play in the bag, countless nights of shipping packets to any labels and managers he had heard of, major and indie labels started to take interest and began courting Avary.
Holed up in his bedroom for a solid year after graduation, Avary penned and tracked scores of compositions which made their way on to his debut album, calendar days. He paid for the recording with a loan from his dad.
"There was a lot of talking and people were definitely interested," Avary notes. "But at the end, I decided that the right thing would be to keep it indie and develop in a more natural way. I'm excited to be on The Militia Group and now the time has come for me to hit the road for a very long time."