Ballard VOX Video Premier: Apology Wars 'Please Don't'

Ballard VOX Video Premier: Apology Wars 'Please Don't'

Apology Wars
Words by Seri Thompson (Crooked Arrow)

Boldly and accurately claimed on the homepage of the band’s website, Apology Wars are bringing indie to a new level. They easily meet the mark with melodic vocals, well-placed harmonies, upbeat tempo, and their danceable rock feel. These elements alone would land them soundly and softly into the belly of the indie rock world. But they are so much more than the genre’s standard.

Lead vox is far beyond. Kyle McAllister is a powerhouse vocalist. McAllister has a unique ability to transition between different aspects of their vocal range and delivery: one moment delicate with precision, then intensifying rock’n’roll grit. Combined with the cleverness to their cadence and creative lyrical choices, this vocal is unbeatable. The throwback support vox, reminiscent of 50’s and 60’s pop champions, in addition to traditional harmony sections, sends it all soaring.

The players are beautifully matched. Ryan Rodgers’ riff game and solo game are both on point. Bryce Hamm travels between a steady, driving bassline and a funky hitch, in perfect timing with drummer, Asa Morris. Several of Apology Wars’ tunes also include a horns section which blows the dang roof off.

The Apology Wars experience is incredibly dynamic and energized. Get some.

Seri Thompson's Q&A with Apology Wars

Did you all know each other before you started playing music?

Ryan (Guitar):

“No, in fact if I had never started working at Papa Murphy’s pizza in 2015, I never would have

met any of these guys more than likely. I first met Kyle through a mutual friend and coworker I

had at Papa’s in 2016 or so, and joined what would become Apology Wars in the later months of

2017. Asa was the first one Kyle had recruited to the project, so I met him at the very first

practice I had in the band. I met Bryce around this same time; he had joined a different band I

was playing with, as the drummer. We needed a bass player, and although Bryce wasn’t a bassist by choice, I had seen him shred progressive metal on guitar and knew he possessed more than enough skill and good taste to join on.

How did you meet/ find each other as band mates?

Kyle (Vocals):

“I’ve been in a few other bands before this one where I joined after they had already formed, and didn’t get as much say in our sound or direction as I needed. I wanted to try starting this one from scratch, and actively recruited all of the members with their skill and style on their instrument in mind before anything else. Asa was in Jazz Big Band with me at Western, and he was just under 21 when I nabbed him so he wasn’t in any other gigging bands at the time. I stole Ryan from a friend’s band I had been drumming for because I thought he was wasted playing rhythm guitar and backing vocals when he could play every other lead guitarist I knew under the table. Bryce was my roommate in the big music house my friends and I lived in at the time and started playing with us because we couldn’t find a bass player, and he was not so secretly trying to recruit Asa for his metal band which he plays guitar for. (He did manage to steal him and Ryan as well, but we have an arrangement that works pretty well.)”

What does the Apology Wars songwriting process look like, including structure choices and dynamics?

Ryan (Guitar):

“While every song has come about a slightly different way, often times some riff or melody will

either pop into my head or just sort of fall out of my guitar while jamming. This may happen

randomly while I’m at work, or playing guitar by myself, and occasionally this will happen during

a band practice and we’ll all immediately start jamming on something. Hush Money’s main riff

was just a throw away thing I was sort of playing as a joke, and then we all started jamming on it

and within that one practice the structure that stuck around till the recording process of it was

largely complete. The instrumentals of one of our newer songs “Better” were something I had

been working on for a while just about two years ago now. The hook before the chorus was

something I had written along with the chord progression. I took a trip to Costa Rica, and while

hanging out all day on the beach with my girlfriend, ideas for a bass line and a pre-chorus in 5/4

time were buzzing around in my brain and I knew when I got back we had to put it all together.

It took some time to structure the song in a way we were all satisfied with once I returned and

showed the rest of the band, but I think we’re all super proud of how that one turned out. To

me, the tone on the guitar in the verses for Better will always remind me of that amazing beach

in Costa Rica.”

How do you find the muse? Where do your songs come from (personal experience, creative vision)?

Kyle (Vocals):

“We start with the music first. I always write melodies before lyrics. We do a lot of experimenting and recording, and oftentimes we will find something that will become a song a long while after we’ve recorded it and filed it away. It all depends on context, sometimes you write something on a good day that will only speak to you on a bad one. We discover gems that we gave up on long ago all the time. It has never worked for me to actively try to make a song about something, usually I have to wait for the song to tell me what it’s about. There have been a couple occasions where Ryan wrote a chord progression that we both loved and I’ll say “this one feels introspective” or “this one feels like I’m on a sinking boat” and he’ll say “that’s exactly what I was thinking about when I wrote it!” And so it comes from our interpretations of what the songs feel like, usually based on all of the other songs we’ve listened to in our lives and how they made us feel, we take those associations and weave them into something that resonates with us on a personal level. I tend to relate our songs to events and feelings from my personal experiences, and then we might go another step further and try to do some word painting with the textures and rhythms so the song becomes a reflection of itself. I want my art to be a wilderness of mirrors, reflections of reflections so we don’t know if we guided the song or the song guided us to its final form.”

When you think about it all— your music, your bandmates, what you’ve created and what you have left in you to create— what is next? What’s the dream?

Kyle (Vocals):

“I would love to be able to make a living off of this. I love making music and I love sharing my music with people. Most of all I love performing music in front of people. I go back and listen to our recordings a lot and dissociate. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that my friends and I made it, it sounds way too professional for me to be involved in any way. The dream right now is just to keep making music with my best friends, and give our audience some goosebumps while we’re at it!”

Asa (Drummer):

“What’s next is next. We still have our creative feelers suspended about us, like the bristle worm’s bunches of branching, chitinous parapodia. Like extremophilic Pompeii worms, clinging to bellowing bathypelagic deep-sea vents, with their multitudinous protrusions eagerly lapping up superheated sulfides, WE TOO, the band known as APOLOGY WARS, are feeding on our steady stream of creative fuel and inspiration, until it burgeons and blooms into our next big project and release. In the meantime, we hope to see you soon.

*Paraphyletic annelid worms not included*”

SUPPORT THE BAND:

Download their killer music on Bandcamp:

https://apologywars.bandcamp.com/

Listen/share on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5ze3rvMGXRmlywmZhU1Bei?si=VBkNiDnASSmcoTh_GSazuw

Keep an eye on the Apology Wars website calendar for upcoming shows https://apologywars.com/home#shows

Follow the band and all their adventures on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/Apologywars