Time to get your weekend rocking with a band from Moscow! No, not that one…
Simple things first – where are you guys from?
The band is located in Moscow, Idaho. Mitch, Scott, and George all grew-up here. Dakota came to us from Boise, ID and I grew up in Bremerton, WA.
How did you meet?
Well, Mitch, Scott, and George are brothers so they were kind of stuck together from the beginning. I met Mitch when I moved to the area and we worked together at an oil change place. Scott and George came into the picture when I started hanging out with Mitch outside of work. Dakota came into the picture is a real six degrees of separation kind of situation. We were a band without a singer and Scott’s wife’s friend’s co-worker’s son happened to be a singer without a band. We had a few emails and phone calls then he drove up from Boise to meet us and we have never looked back.
How long have you been playing as a band?
We’ve been playing under the Silent Theory banner since November of 2009, and Dakota joined us in December of 2014.
Before you get sick of being asked… where does the band name come from?
I really wish I had a better story, but it’s the product of some delicious Mexican food, margaritas and about 4 hours of “hey, what about (insert name)?” before someone stumbled upon Silent Theory. We decided to try it out for a few shows to see how it felt, and we going on 11 years now.
What are your influences?
As a band our influences are a very broad spectrum. I grew up on a lot of 50’s and 60’s stuff and that transitioned into pop punk, rap, metal. I think Dakota’s biggest influences have been Linkin Park, Chevelle, and anything Maynard and I think those have the biggest impact on the way our songs turn out.
Describe your music. What makes you unique?
When Dakota started performing music he was doing a hip hop project with some friends and he developed a skillset that sets him apart in our genre. Like, Dakota could properly tackle both Chester and Mike’s vocals if he were doing Linkin Park karaoke. He’s got the scream when we need it heavy and he’s got a really quick delivery when we need to dazzle and we try to exploit that.
Do you have any particular lyrical themes?
It was never a deliberate decision to go this route, but we named our last album Delusions because it ended up with a mental health story through most of the songs. That seems to be continuing in a lot of the songs we’ve written since. We never set out to write a specific song, but mental health is something we are clearly passionate about.
What’s your live show like? How many shows have you played?
We are music fans ourselves and we love watching a good concert, so our live performance is really important to us. We always try to have high energy, a good intro and a lot of intense eye contact. We figure if people are kind enough to part ways with some money to see us play, the least we can do is leave it on the stage. I mean, Scott torn his ACL during a show last November. As for the quantity of shows, I honestly have no idea. Since Dakota joined us we have played so many shows ranging from 50 person capacity bars to Rocklahoma from Portland, Oregon to Pipestem, West Virginia.
What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen or done at a live show?
I don’t know about wildest, but the first thing that comes to mind is at Warped Tour a few years back, Story of the Year doing a giant guitar toss across the mainstage at the Gorge in Washington. They tossed their guitars like 20+ feet to guitar techs on either side of the stage then the guitar and bass player climbed on top of their amp stacks and did a sycronized backflip and landed on a heavy downbeat of the breakdown. It was one of those things that happened so fast it took a minute to fully wrap my head around what happened.
What kit do you use / guitars do you play / etc.?
My primary set up is a PRS Tremonti guitar and Jet City 100HD amp. Scott and I just picked up some Kemper Profilers, so we’re pretty excited to incorporate those into the live shows.
What, if anything, are you plugging/promoting at the moment?
We recently release a new song and lyric video call “Six Feet Under”. We are really happy with how they both turned out. We recorded the song with Jimmy Hill at Amplified Wax in Spokane, Washington and for the video we worked with Jon Kuritz at Make Waves Media House. The song is a little more pointed lyrically than Silent Theory usually writes, but it was a topic we didn’t feel like we could tip toe around. The song is really just comes from a place of frustration, it feels like you can’t turn on the news or get on social media without seeing something about another mass shooting at a school or nightclub or festival, etc. There seems to be a lot of people talking about it, but somehow we are no closer to a solution than we were when Columbine happened 2 decades ago. I would like to clarify also that this song is not a statement on gun control or anything like that. If you want to legally and responsibly own guns, knock yourself out. Our issue is that somehow we as a society have gotten to a point where some people feel the only way they can express themselves is with a gun in a crowd of people.
We’d love for everyone to check it out and let us know what they think. You can find the song anywhere there is music on the internet; iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, Spotify, etc. The video is up on out Youtube channel for your viewing pleasure. There is also links for all of it on website silenttheory.com, there you can also find a link to our online merch store if you want to check out physical CDs, shirts, hats and all kinds of good stuff.
What are your plans for 2020?
We were hoping to get out on the road and field test some new music, but thanks to the Covid-19 situation we had to scrap those plans. We do have to studio time booked with Jimmy Hill at Amplified Wax and we’re going to crank out as many songs as we can and we will hopefully wrap up a new album in 2020.
If you were second on a three-band bill, which band would you love to be supporting and which band would you choose to open for you? A chance to plug someone you’ve toured with, or a mate’s band we’ve not heard of before!
Off the top of my head, I think it would be a good fit musically as well and just a great show to be a part of to open for Nothing More. They write great music with impactful lyrics and their live show is simply unbelievable. And if we could bring a friend along to share the experience, I would have to say our friends from Spokane in Elephant Gun Riot. They are all crazy talented, their songs are super catchy and they have a blast on stage which in turn makes you have a blast watching them.
