Today we’re bringing you a full album stream of Some Scars, the debut LP from Vegas emo/rock band Safely. The band is a collaborative effort between Rob Kemerson, who cut his teeth in the Vegas music scene with pop punk bands Wear Your Heart and Calmosa, and Jonas Vece, a producer who has worked with locals including Characters and War Called Home.
Vece also produced all three Calmosa EPs, which is where he and Kemerson first met. According to Kemerson, “I met Jonas when Calmosa recorded its first EP and we very quickly became good friends. He was always willing to help me with any random thing I could need recording software for, and the band always loved working with him. The start of Safely came about in a pretty random way. One night, we just thought that our shared influences could be used to make some cool music. The original idea for the sound of this band is pretty far off from what it eventually became, but we ended up having a great time working together and just let the songs flow naturally into what would become Safely’s sound.”
While Calmosa was a shared effort between the members of a full band, Safely, on record at least, is all Kemerson and Vece. “Everything on the album was played by me and Jonas” explains Kemerson. “We split the vocals pretty much evenly, as you can hear on the record. Jonas handled the majority of the rhythm section including all of the drums and bass. Guitars were probably a little closer to 60/40 with me doing all of the leads and things and Jonas handling some rhythms. We both had a hand in writing every part, regardless of who played it on the recording, so both of our influences show up on every instrument throughout the record.”
“Writing was very much a shared effort for us” he continues. “Usually someone had a song idea and made a demo of it and then we would both get together and build it into something bigger. These songs wouldn’t sound anything like the way they do without the input of both people along every step of the way. That’s something I really loved about the writing process for this album, there was a lot of give and take and really working together to make something better than we were capable of individually.”
“For us, something we love about music is honesty, and we wanted to highlight that,” explains Kemerson. “We didn’t want it to be about technical proficiency, or even marketability. What we wanted it to be about was the heart going into it. These songs felt like they came together because they needed to, there were things that both of us needed to say. That’s what shaped our sound on this record.”
In recent years, the “verb the noun” style band name has come into vogue. But like Calmosa, Safely is a striking, single word name. We asked Rob Kemerson where it came from. “Safely was a name that Jonas thought of one night while he was daydreaming about the band at work,” explains Kemerson. “We knew we wanted the name to be simple and Safely was given context in the title track of the album so it ended up sticking. I think we both fell in love with the name pretty quickly.”
With only two members on the record, the guys needed to reach out to the music scene and find more members to round out the live band. While Safely’s debut show hasn’t been announced yet, the full band is coming along nicely. “We’re all very excited about these songs and getting to play them live as soon as possible. Joining me and Jonas is Garrett Breach, Blake Henley and Myles Kennedy. We have some big ideas for a record release show once we get the physical copies made, so be on the lookout for that!”
Some Scars will be available to purchase via the group’s bandcamp page later today as a name-your-price download. After Sunday Nov. 9, the price will increase to $5.
Safely on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/safelyband
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