Josh Eskridge – vocals, guitar

Drew Norris – guitar, keyboards, vocals

Devon Norris – drums

Justin Sperrazza - bass

By Drew Norris

How it started…

Five years ago I got a call from my brother, Devon. He was living in Chattanooga, TN and was in a band that needed a guitarist. They hadn’t been together long, but they’d just done a low budget recording in Nashville and had some pretty big dreams. I told him I was interested, as long as the band didn’t mind coming down to Mobile, AL to do some writing and recording. They agreed, and over the course of a week we wrote about 5 new songs, debuted them at a local coffee shop, and then drove 400 miles to Chattanooga to record at a radio station that one of the band members worked at. We spent 24 straight hours laying down tracks for 4 songs, and thus started down a path that has had many branches.

The name

The band was originally named “Within Reach,” but when we discovered that some Swedish hardcore band already had that name, we started looking for another. “Sound Method” came about when I was talking on the phone to Rick Anderson (former guitarist) and misheard him when he suggested the name “Sound Message.” What does Sound Method mean? Nothing. We just thought it sounded cool at the time. If you’ve got a better name, we’re all ears…

The Perfect EP

We screwed around for about a year, constantly writing new stuff, playing at local Chattanooga venues when we could. One day Rick (guitarist/band name inventor) told us that he had a job offer in Oregon, and that he really felt like he should take it. That left four of us – me, Devon, Josh, and Seth (bass). We were pretty sad to see Rick go, but somehow we gained a lot of resolve out of the experience. We started refining our songwriting and started getting better recording equipment. Songwriting went from being solely Josh’s domain to something that was shared by Josh and I. Some recordings we had on the internet caught the attention of Fidelity Entertainment, a company that basically records and produces music for newer bands. They liked our sound and thought we had potential, so they signed us up for a 1-year recording/development deal. The firs t part of the deal was a 3-song EP that we named “Perfect.”

Start Over

We recorded our first full-length album over the course of 13 months. Over that time, a lot of stuff happened. First of all, we had a falling-out with our bass player, Seth, and we had to let him go. I ended up recording the bass tracks on the second half of the album. Josh and I continued to write the songs and the lyrics, but it was getting more difficult as the album progressed. Some songs (like Come Home, Start Over, and Breakdown) reflected a sense of dealing with some dark stuff and trying to come out okay on the other side. I think this might have been a reflection of how we were feeling about ourselves and our dream of being musicians at the time. Some songs (All We Are comes to mind) were written entirely last minute in the studio. Since we were down to a 3-person lineup, our sound was once again morphing, and the future was pretty unclear, “Start Over” seemed like an appropriate title for the album.

The tour

While the album was being mixed and mastered, we started searching in earnest for a bass player. We found Justin completely by accident, but couldn’t have found a better fit. After “Start Over” came out, we booked a month-long tour of the southeastern U.S. and did some promotion on college radio. One of our songs made it to the #1 spot at a high school station in Colorado. We played to crowds ranging in size from 5 to 100, but loved every second of it. It was an exhausting tour. On our way to one show in Florida, a wheelbarrow flew out of the bed of a truck in front of us and directly into our lane. I swerved to avoid it, losing control of our vehicle in the process. We were pulling a trailer, and it started fishtailing wildly, finally ending up on its side in the ditch. The trailer held all of our instruments, amps, and production equipment (we traveled with a full PA system and stage lighting). Incredibly, the only things that were damaged were a couple of light stands.

The aftermath…

After the Start Over tour, we all took a hard look at who we were and where we were going. Devon, Justin and I all went to school to finish old degrees or start new ones. There were a lot of reasons for the break from touring, but we never stopped writing. Music is something that we have all discovered will always be a part of our lives in one way or another, and good or not we will always be creating it – we just can’t help it. In the last 6 months we’ve really started to write like crazy. We’ve stopped trying to fit a formula and are just going where our muse takes us, and I think we’ve all been surprised by the results. The new songs are a bit rawer and truer to what we are.

The future

Right now the future is wide open. Sound Method is, once again, starting over. After everything that we have experienced, everything we’ve tried, and everything we’ve learned over the past 5 years, I think that now we’re finally on the verge of something great. Check it out, come out and see us and tell us what you think.