FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DOWNTREAD RETURNS WITH STAND YOUR GROUND
Midwestern Quintet Planning Summer Tour Mixing Headline
Dates Alongside Support Appearances
Minneapolis — Rock quintet Downtread have returned with Stand Your Ground, a follow-up release to the band’s 2010 debut album 144. Their aim, to continue building a fan base drawn to the music they are recording, and to simply provoke a response. Vocalist / Guitarist Brett Petrusek shares, “We fit in our own weird, restless little spot. We want to provoke an honest response, whatever that is. If someone gets pissed or happy or bummed out – I don’t care, as long as the music makes you feel something. That makes the whole journey worthwhile.”
On the latest leg of their ongoing journey, the band will continue to build an audience through appearances affording Downtread a higher profile than the vast majority of their contemporaries in the development phase of a career. In mixing prime support appearances alongside headline dates, they will play in front of tens of thousands. Since forming in 2007, and making their first appearance at the Dallas International Guitar Festival, Downtread has appeared on stages that cumulatively placed the band in front of over a million rock fans. They made the pilgrimage to perform at Sturgis and Rocklahoma, while also taking the stage in front of Collective Soul, Whitesnake, Judas Priest, Cheap Trick, Ratt, Bret Michaels, and many others. They relish the opportunity to connect with fans on the road, and those travels have been the primary driver in a career that now boasts a large legion of fans.
The unintentionally provocative title of their second album, Stand Your Ground, was coined long before headlines ran rampant in news media. Days before the album was manufactured, the tragic shooting in Florida pressed the phrase in to the public’s consciousness. Petrusek offers, “It was pretty weird – purely coincidental. We finished recording the album, chose the title song and completed the artwork. And then all of a sudden the ‘Stand Your Ground’ law in Florida turns into a major topic of debate, with people screaming about it on TV. For us, the phrase isn’t some kind of agro challenge or an excuse to whip out a pistol. We always thought of it as a patriotic and creative testament: if you’re in a position to stand your ground, it means you must’ve arrived in the first place.” He continues, “We don’t have any emphasis on being a political band, but you can’t go through a day without being bombarded by the media and world crisis. It’s unavoidable. It all started with ‘Don’t Get Weak’ which is basically says ‘This whole situation blows, so let’s get together and kick some ass — raise a fist and fight for what’s yours.’ I guess that was a bit of a departure for us and it led to a few more tracks, including the title track ‘Stand Your Ground’ which sends the message ‘make this nation strong.’ It’s safe to say that we don’t have uniform political beliefs in this band,” Petrusek laughs. Bassist / Vocalist Robert Berg adds, “Different band members are voting for different people.”
Produced, engineered and mixed by Jeremy Tappero, Stand Your Ground is a locally grown Minnesota product: you can hear Downtread’s home-turf swagger fueling the recording sessions at Pound Sound Studios in St. Paul, and Greg Reierson nicely wrangles the savage beast during mastering sessions at Rare Form Mastering in Minneapolis.
One song on Stand Your Ground seems to epitomize the collaboration: “I Told You” features a string arrangement by the band’s good friend Joel Kosche (solo artist and lead guitarist for Collective Soul), perfectly ensconced in an epic-scale sonic landscape.
Stand Your Ground shows Downtread’s sound growing and deepening since the 2010 debut album 144. The new album also benefits from a different recording method. “On our last album,” Petrusek explains, “we recorded the way most bands do. We laid down basic tracks, then layered on guitars, then vocals – working on the album in its entirety. This is a really long process and it can tend to lose momentum. On Stand Your Ground we completed one track at a time, from start to completion. We’d get really pumped up, because we could hear the final product of the first song before we even started work on the second song. Each song stayed fresher and the flavors change from song to song. It’s a lot more inspiring to do it that way and we’re going to keep doing it that way from now on.” Guitarist Teddy Gordon echoes these sentiments sharing, “The big difference between this album and 144 is the cohesion. On 144 we had all the basic pieces in place – big heavy guitar riffs and monster drums – and we were simply trying to get it all out. On Stand Your Ground the band has learned how to make it all click together. It’s both an ignition as well as a refinement, and our vocabulary has grown. The same lineup has been together for a few years, and we’ve learned how to speak a language together better over time.”
Downtread is Brett Petrusek (Vocals / Lead Guitar), Robert Berg (Bass / Vocals), Teddy Gordon (Guitar), Marc Paradise (Guitar), Eric Domagall (Drums). A complete itinerary will be announced shortly.
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