An Interview With Southern Californian Rock Band, Galvanized Souls!

The Galvanized Souls are not your everyday Southern California rock band. Despite their young ages, these talented guys know how to take a stand. They engage in many fundraising, anti-bullying, and awareness efforts to shed light on teen issues and struggles. Galvanized Souls recently filmed a music video for their latest original song, “Carry On” which is an anthem for their fans to be strong and CARRY ON!

Along with all this, the band is also featured in the June 2014 issue of Guitar World Magazine, and on Modern Drummer’s blog.

Galvanized Souls were kind enough to answer a few questions for me about their music-making process and how exactly they got involved with the Stop Bullying Event.

Please list all of your band members and their roles in the band.

Zakk Silveira – Lead Vocals & Rhythm Guitar, Chris Traylor- Lead Guitar & Back Up Vocals, Matt DeMartini – Bass Player, Synth & Back Up Vocals and Kevin Cogen – Drums.

How did you guys come up with your band name? What exactly are ‘Galvanized Souls’?

Creating a band name is by far the hardest thing to do. When we were trying to come up with a band name, we were looking up other bands with cool names like Guns N Roses and Velvet Revolver and the names had hard and soft imagery to them. We were also going to a construction school and there were galvanized nails that we would use. So we thought “galvanized” was a cool word to use for the hard imagery. So, then we looked for a name to depict the soft imagery like “souls” that would work with the “galvanized”. “Galvanized Souls” means protected souls.

When was the first moment that you all realized that you wanted to form a band, write, and perform together?

We realized that we wanted to be in a band, write, and perform together when 3 of us were jamming in another band and we wanted to do more than jam in a garage. We wanted to tour and create music to inspire our fans. We met Kevin soon after we formed Galvanized Souls.

What’s the best part about being in your band?

Writing and playing music and inspiring others and helping others escape their problems.

Tell me how you guys got started taking apart and then making your own guitars? How long does this process take?

We started taking apart and making our own guitars about a year ago when we found out that our music mentor, Doug Peyton of Rock City Studios, created guitars. If you’re just modifying a guitar it doesn’t take very long (depending on what you are doing). But if you’re making a guitar from scratch, it could take a month to a year to make depending on the level of complication.

Who are some of your musical influences? Who are some of the newer artists who inspire you?

Our musical influences are Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Alice In Chains, Failure, and Queens of the Stone Age. Newer artists that inspire us are Imagine Dragons, 30 Seconds To Mars, Arctic Monkeys and the Black Keys.

How are you guys using social media networks and sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram to interact with your fans?

We social media use it to keep our fans informed and updated on up and coming events and projects and get a peek into what our band life is like. We try to respond as much as we can to questions and comments of our fans.

How did you guys get involved with this Stop Bullying Event? And how did you connect with Colin Cunningham? What brought on the inspiration for your song “Carry On”?

We got involved with the “Stop Bullying Event” because we know what it is like to be bullied and we would love to stop bullying that is going on. We got connected with Colin because we loved his story and how he got through his tough times. We wanted to help spread his story through a music video with our song “Carry On”.

We were inspired to write “Carry On” because we saw a lot of our fans on social media doing self harm and we wanted to help them not inflict any more damage to their bodies. So we thought that writing a song to our fans about carrying on would help them get through their hard times.

Galvanized Souls will be performing at the Stop Bullying Event on Tuesday, June 17th

What is your approach to songwriting? How do you capture the inspiration when it comes?

How we approach our songwriting is writing “free writes” or “focused free writes” about general topics, historical events, and problems in everyday lives.

If you had the opportunity to work with any artist/band from the past, present or future, who would it be and why?

We would work with the Foo Fighters because they have created such amazing and inspiring music that has inspired what we’ve created in our music.

Why is this lifestyle (recording, singing, traveling) one that you’re all willing to follow now?

It’s what we love to do, we enjoy creating music, traveling and meeting new people. We love playing to people and to touch people’s hearts and souls and inspire them to do something great.

Do you guys have any pre-performance rituals?

We drink lot’s of hot tea and do a lot of warm-ups.

What is everyone’s favorite song to perform live and why?

Our original “Kingdom of No One” because it is a fun and energetic song to play.

When you guys aren’t performing and writing new material, what do you guys like to do in your spare time? What do you for fun?

What we like to do in our spare time when we aren’t performing and writing new material is we like to create and modify our instruments. We also enjoy going to theme parks for fun, seeing other bands perform, and we like to play cards on the road.

I know that you guys are all pretty young. What about high school or going to college?

We all know that school is very important and we get our school work done and out of the way. We are really working hard and pushing for our band to make it because we all want it.

Do you have any great/interesting road stories you’d like to share?

We were scheduled to do a show in Arizona and decided to schedule a mini tour all the way to El Paso Texas and back through Las Vegas. The day we left, we got an email that the Arizona venue cancelled last minute for all the bands scheduled for the show. We had to go anyway and hung out in Arizona and decided to network with local music venues. We made it all the way to El Paso and had a great experience and an awesome reception from a lot of new fans. The show in Las Vegas was awesome and the hotel was overbooked and we were upgraded to all Presidential Suites in the hotel which was so awesome and unexpected. So the trip started on a depressed note and ended on a great one!

Is there anything in particular that you’d like people to take away from listening to your music?

We would hope that people would appreciate the messages that we try to convey and that people can be assured that there are still rock bands out there that come together organically and write and perform their own tunes. Rock is not dead!

Do you have any advice for upcoming musicians?

This is a quote we take to heart “If you expect anything from music, you expect too much” – Josh Homme, Queens of the Stone Age. We think your first priority should be do it because you love to do it and not for anything else. Be yourself and do what you love to do.