Evan Ranallo

What first pulled you into music?

I've always had music around since inception. My dad played bass for many, many years. He took jazz class in high school and learned the fundamentals of music, and he was in a cover band when I was a wee lad. There are actual pictures of me at band practice with my dad — I'm like two or something, carrying around this little electric bass toy.

So music's always kind of been a part of my life, but I didn't really want to do it until a friend of mine got a white Stratocaster — like an actual legitimate Fender Stratocaster. His dad was a repo guy, and that guitar was in one of the cars he repo'd, so he just gave it to his son. After I saw that, I was like, "Oh, this is cool, man. Guitar is awesome. My friend's playing, so I want to play too." That's what brought me to actually wanting to play, versus just experiencing it with my dad.

What has music given you that nothing else really has?

Fulfillment. There's a satisfaction with playing music that really doesn't come from anything else. I can't say that it's *better* than other things we experience in life, but it's its own category. When you have the ability to play music and actually perform it and see the fruits of your labor — when you're practicing a song and you finally get it and you nail that part and get that high, when you can play it with friends — it's something really special.

What do you feel like you bring to the band?

I bring a lot of stress, anxiety, and I'm our own worst enemy with production woes. [laughter]

But seriously — I've been lucky enough to do music in a lot of different facets of my life, at a lot of different severities of live performance. I've toured. I've played locally. I've been able to gather a lot of knowledge from those experiences. It can be a monster at times, but ultimately I bring the tools and the skill set to push us to that next level with live performance and production.

I try to be the guy on the spot who provides a comfortable environment for everyone else, who makes sure the bands are taken care of. And in doing that, the crowd is taken care of, and we put on a great performance.

What do you care about most when you're performing live?

Accuracy — but accuracy is born from wanting the crowd to enjoy themselves. It boils down to this: we're there to share the moment with people. Giving them that moment is what's most important to me. Making sure the crowd is entertained, making sure we're performing at our best — and in doing so, they have a great time and they're enjoying themselves.

What do you want the crowd to feel when they watch you perform?

With what we play, and the genres we play, and this whole movement with Echo Play Live — I want to take them back in time. To when they were young. To when they were listening to these songs. To be that escape for people. Life is getting crazy and crazier, and at these shows, time stops. We get to take people back to when they heard these songs on the radio, when they popped that CD in, when it was skipping on their Walkman on the way to school, when they had to eject the six-CD changer to swap discs. Stuff like that. I think it's needed right now.

What is one song you always look forward to playing live, and why?

I really like playing "Jambi." It's a fun guitar technique to nail live — a pull-off triplet — and it's really fun to get in sync with the rest of the guys on that song. And it's heavy. It's a really fun one to play.

What separates a decent show from a great show?

It's actually a common thing with musicians — when they think they had a decent show, they actually had a great one, and when they think they had a great show, it was actually decent.

A decent show is, you know, we went up there, we played, everything went semi well. There are going to be parts we missed. You're feeling like, *I could have played that better. I could have done this better.*

A great show, for me, boils down to the crowd. And that doesn't mean size. It could be ten people in front of us, but if they're raging and loving the performance and singing along, that makes the show. Not only did we make an impact with them, they made an impact with us. That's what makes a great show — the crowd participation. Especially with the bands we're in. We're not a coffee shop band. We're not a '70s groove thing. All four bands are full energy, and it's great to see that translated live.

What makes a great cover or tribute performance?

This is interesting because you would think it's accuracy. Covering a song, being a tribute band — that's definitely part of it. But more important than nailing the aesthetic or the look or the feel or the vibe or the tone is nailing what people *felt* when they heard those bands back in the day.

When they listened to those records. When they heard Lateralus for the first time. When they heard all the emo stuff from back in the day. It's just as important to give them that energy — to embody the performance these bands gave, to really take people there. We might add some flavor here and there, but ultimately it's for the betterment of the performance for the people. It's not them coming to see a clone. It's them coming to see the energy and the experience they had when they were younger — which does change throughout the years. That's what's most important.

What is harder than people realize about playing this kind of music well?

The variety. There are a lot of different techniques between a lot of different bands, and you have to code-switch throughout the set. You'll be playing a band that's sticking to a standard chord progression, and then you've got this weird pattern that's backwards instead of forwards. You have to really be on your toes, emulating as best you can all these different bands. Especially in The Dick Beldings — that's 40+ songs across 30 bands. There's a lot bouncing around. That's a big challenge.

What does being part of Echo Play Live mean to you?

It's the community. What inspires me to be part of this group is how dedicated everyone is to it, and how much it means to everyone collectively. It's so inspiring to be part of something where you're not the only one carrying the load. You're not the one person doing the school project. It's everyone doing it together. Everyone's eager to learn and carry their weight with this crazy thing we're doing. That is so rare in this industry.

Echo Play Live brings that camaraderie not just with the bands, but with the people we've met at the shows, the experiences we've had. It's become quite the community of people who really care about each other. It's not transactional. It's community-building. We feed each other with our interactions. I think that's really important.

What can people expect when they come to one of our shows?

Whatever it may be — however we feel that day, whatever we're going through, whether the computers are freaking out or the guitars are freaking out — we are going to give our 100%. Every single show. And every single show is going to be a different experience.

It's always a very heartfelt experience and a very genuine performance, every single time we play. That's kind of rare to see nowadays. Ultimately, that's our biggest value — being authentic when we get up there. Bringing the energy, not phoning it in.

What would you say to someone who has never seen one of our shows before?

If you've never seen a cover or tribute show before, one — you should go to one. Two — if you've never been to one of *our* shows before, there's something to be had with the experience we bring. There's an escape. There's an authentic experience I think people would really gravitate toward if they saw it for themselves, live.

We want to engage with you. We want to provide that experience. If you haven't been to a show, please come to one. See for yourself what it's like. Come see the community, come hang out with the people who make this thing we're doing so great. And who knows — maybe you'll stick around.