The Smashup

As self-proclaimed storytellers with a musical intensity all their own, The SmashUp conquers your attention before you can even attempt to ignore them.

This quartet, featuring vocalist Watt White, guitarist Vin Alfieri, bassist Rich Liegey, and drummer Ant Cee, pride themselves on concocting a unique style that ditches glossy ballads of torn relationships to tackle more socially relevant issues.

"We let other bands whine about broken relationships and love lost," explains White. "We deal with the important issues that life is really made up of: Loneliness, suicide, addiction, disorders, fear, abortion, religion, and contemplation of life, death, and the meaning behind our existence. We try to put a positive spin on these things and show that anything can be overcome."

Its rock sound, fused with hints of punk and metal is a direct result of such eclectic influences as The Police, Metallica, AFI, Pink Floyd, Rancid, NOFX, Jimi Hendrix and more. Vin Alfieri points out, "We are influenced by everything we hate that music is supposed to fit into a specific genre these days."

While on the road this year, the band is promoting its 2nd and latest album Being and Becoming, the first after signing with the WARCON Enterprises family. Collaborating with WARCON co-founders Bob Chiappardi (Concrete Marketing) and Kevin Lyman (Warped Tour/Taste of Chaos) catapults the band to a higher artistic level.

"WARCON gets what we're about. We are ecstatic to be working with such an amazing team of individuals who truly understand the music business, with the key focus being on the music," claims Alfieri.

But the band didn't always have such stellar support.

In Winter of 2004, just three years following their 2001 formation in New York City, The SmashUp released their first album, a self-titled EP produced by Sal Villanueva (Thursday, Taking Back Sunday). They immediately adopted a "Do it yourself" work ethic, developing their own label, AimFirst recordings LLC as a means of releasing and promoting the album. Quickly learning that it wouldn't be a smooth ride, The SmashUp spent the better part of that year-and-half in a battered van with broken windows, booking all their own shows. To gain exposure, they played everything from national bills at major venues to VFW basement hardcore shows, totaling upwards of 300 gigs.

"When it comes to touring, we don't care whether we play to five people or 5,000... [It] is a privilege and if you're not willing to go that extra mile and lay yourself out on the line, you don't deserve to be up there," explains White.

The SmashUp has an unparalleled dedication to its music and fans. The band once mustered enough strength to perform on stage after a near-death experience where slick roads almost caused the aforementioned van to fall 100 feet off a freeway railing. More recently, while crossing into Canada with the Taste of Chaos 2006 tour, the band had an unfortunate run-in with a full grown moose at 65 mph. Needless to say, the van was totaled and the band was stranded in Bonners Ferry, Idaho. Not wanting to miss a single date on the tour, they left their trailer and what was left of the van, grabbed what gear they could, and found a ride to the next venue. With the help of some of the other acts on the tour, As I Lay Dying, Atreyu, and the Deftones, they were able to continue on and complete the rest of the tour without missing any shows.

"Hell, we had fans waiting for us, and if we had to walk with our instruments strapped to our heads, we were going to show up and play our hearts out," says Watt. "This is a band with four equally dedicated, hardworking sons of bitches that won't let anything come between us and our music.

The SmashUp will be on the road with the "Van's Warped Tour" throughout this summer, and will continue to tour into fall 2006.

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