Driver Side Impact, an up & coming band recently signed to Victory Records, plans to win over virgin ears when they storm through Buffalo this December. But before they intentionally skid out in the Queen City, the band that sees itself as far from typical spoke with The Spectrum about their initial success and progress thus far.
Branden Langhals, lead vocalist of DSI, offered his modest take on his vocally stressful job.
"It's just like every other thing you do in life - I dunno, I enjoy it, it's really rewarding." He went on to say, "It's definitely not something I take for granted...I'm happy, I love it, I'm ecstatic about it."
Langhals, speaking on behalf of the band, definitely wants to do this for a long time.
"We want to turn this into a career. We want to try to figure out how to manipulate our sound enough to make this like something that will last forever...which is really hard to do, obviously."
One can't help but wonder where a name like Driver Side Impact came from. Was there a near-fatal accident that injured a friend, foe, or family member? Did someone narrowly escape an early demise?
"The name [Driver Side Impact] is actually a complete fluke. It was tossed around but it doesn't really mean anything. It was originally called Burn Out Bright for two weeks, like not even a long time."
"We'd found out there was a band called Burns Out Bright, so we couldn't do that anymore. Someone suggested Brace for Impact. Teddy thought it over and was like Driver Side Impact, and we were all like 'all right cool.' We weren't too concerned about the band name. We wanted to have a name but it wasn't that big a deal."
It's not easy to maintain an identity in a scene that's flooded with generic, mass-produced radio rock. Striving to maintain and improve their music within, Langhals describes their unique take on experimental emotive music.
"Usually [what] I tell people is that we really just collided all these genres that we were all individually into. When we wrote we just kind of collided all these things and I guess we just created this weird thing."
"We didn't want to write an album that sounded like anything. We literally wrote an album that was pleasing to our ears. We find a lot of kids like the bands we do and they like our band, so I think we're doing a good job..."
What music dominates the iPod of a band like Driver Side Impact? Not whom you would immediately think.
"We're driving to Dallas and I've been kind of controlling the IPod and I listen to so much stuff and I use it all in terms I feel about music, like anything form Coldplay, the Alkaline Trio, Thursday..."
The band travels from city to city, state to state, in a 15-passenger van. All of the vitals lie within the trailer, trailing closely behind. It would seem that Bayside's cozy tour bus would be motivation to continue along the right musical path.
Unlike the stereotype of a rock band, these guys seem pretty down to earth and real.
"You're always tired after every show you don't wanna do anything you just wanna go to bed. You wish you could shower; you wanna do your laundry. Maybe it's just us."
"We party if we have the opportunity to party with some of the other bands. We'd much rather find someone's comfortable floor to sleep on."
Obviously part of being in a band involves performing, which Langhals says is the highlight of everyday.
When asked about any cities the band really wanted to visit, Langhals jokingly replied, "Besides Buffalo, no, heck no, just Buffalo...We've never played a lot of cities we're hitting up."
This will be DSI's second time coming to Buffalo.
Before Langhals packed his bags and left to continue his hopefully non-impactful drive to the next city of choice, he offered his humble advice to up and coming musicians.
"The biggest thing to do is completely subdue your ego. A lot of people don't realize that no matter how good your music is, you're still a dime a dozen. There are 50 other bands that are planning to work harder and make money for people that wanna make money. You need to make three people happy. You need to make the people who are booking the show (the people in it for the money happy), you need to make your fans happy and you need to make yourself happy."
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
