How did you guys form?
Anthony Maestu: My brother and I always jammed, and we had been trying to put together a band for three or four years. We went through several guitarists, but we needed guys who were willing to take the band more seriously. We held auditions last summer (2013) and Jose showed up originally with Jevon to audition and Jevon afterwards decided that he wanted to play with us as well.
Jevon Olea: I actually wasn’t planning to join you guys in the beginning. The way it happened was that their (Anthony and Dean’s) former manager was a friend of mine and she asked me to look around for a lead guitarist for SoundGlass and I knew Jose was the perfect guy. (To Anthony) I really thought that you guys were only looking for one guitarist.
AM: Well we were looking for one but in reality we wanted two, that way we had a rhythm guitar player and a lead guitar player, which would give us another variety to our music.
Where did the name SoundGlass come from?
AM: Well, when Dean and I were deciding on a name for the band we wanted something that would reflect how transparent we wanted to be with our music. And thus SoundGlass was created.
What are your influences as a band?
JO: They’re very different. I’m the softest guy in the group. I like soft rock. Lots of 90s, lots of 80s as well, very pop. I could jam along to Taylor Swift and be fine.
Jose Mena: I’m a metal head. Metallica, a lot of metal from the 80s and 90s, basically just total shredding, heavy guitar.
Dean Maestu: I was mainly influenced by John Bonham from Led Zeppelin. I just remember hearing him hitting really loud and hard and all of these grooves that he would play, and I wanted to play like that and sound like him. I was about three or four when I first started playing drums.
AM: I’m a mix of everything. I could go into song writing styles or bass playing styles but really I was influenced by Paul McCartney’s writing and his ability to play bass while singing. I had never seen a bass player sing before and it really freaked me out. Mark King from Level 42 also had a huge influence on me. Singing wise I try to emanate Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails and a mix of Noel Gallagher from Oasis, which was an accident.
What is your writing style?
AM: I’d say we’re a mix of Foo Fighters, Nine Inch Nails-
DM: Cheap Trick
AM: We have a pretty retro feel. Our recordings are very professional and modern but our writing style is very retro with melodic. It’s like pop rock where you know its heavy and the lyrics are dark, but it’s heavy with melody.
How do you guys record your songs?
JM: We go to our friend’s studio.
AM: We have a studio that we refer to as “The Leaky Spigot” which is literally a house run by an old family friends that has been converted into a studio. You can record live or separate. We lay down the drum track first and then we layer bass, guitar, and vocals. All of our recordings are done in a bedroom.
What has been your favorite gig memory?
JO: We recently played a gig in Revolution that was a pretty cool stage.
JM: That’s my favorite as well.
AM: I think we can collectively agree on Revolution.
JM: I’ve seen a lot of my idols play there so to be on the same stage as them was pretty humbling.
AM: I think we can also agree on the Young Circle Artspark in Hollywood, which is just a massive stage to play in front of a hill. It was about 150-200 people and it was great lighting, great space. It was the first time we played a full set as a band.
Is there an albumin the works?
AM: We plan to release our first album mid December, titled "All You Ever Wanted". The content and the music revolve around greed and hypocrisy so we used the title sarcastically implying that it would appeal to a society obsessed with consumerism and materialism. When companies advertise a product, they use a bunch of charged words and make their product seem like it’s the best thing ever invented. We tried to satirize consumerism by saying ‘What would be something that's just obvious to make people want to buy something they saw on T.V. or in any advertisement?’ and "All You Ever Wanted" sounded like the most blatant and obnoxious way to do it.
Do you guys play a lot of songs from your album at gigs?
AM: Of course. We’ve been together only a year, so this is our first full-length album. It has 12 songs, and out of those we probably play nine at each show along with covers of Foo Fighters, Nine Inch Nails, and Rage Against the Machine.
JO: The audience goes crazy for the covers.
AM: The only reason we don’t play the other three songs is that they’re a bit heavier, progressive sounding. We like doing our own thing, but we don’t want to insult the audience by giving them a big, lengthy, boring song just because we love to play it.
Who would you say your audience is?
JO: It’s definitely mixed.
AM: We tend to attract a more mature crowd. I’m going to sound like an old man, but kids these days are really into indie pop or indie rock like the Arctic Monkeys or the Strokes where it sounds like they’re recording in a garage, where as our sound is more mature sounding and we don’t sound like we’re in a garage. A lot of the other local bands have a more indie coastal sound while we don’t.
What are your plans for the future?
AM: In Miami we’re not planning to become the next big thing. We have realistic goals and right now I’m starting college and he (Dean) is finishing high school and the other two (Jevon and Jose) have work and as much as we’d love to be signed by a huge record label and play our music to millions of fans we’re more realistic than that and we’re just looking forward to creating a good fan base down here in South Florida.
(To Jose and Jevon) What are your day jobs?
JM: I’m an electrical engineer.
JO: I’m a university instructor.
JM: He’s a nurse.
JO: But I teach at the university.
(To Anthony and Dean) And what do you plan on studying in the future?
DM: I still have no idea, I feel as though I’m too young to really know yet. Hopefully playing football at Columbus can pay off my college a little bit.
AM: I’m at FIU honors on a full scholarship on the pre-med track but I don’t know what job I want to later in life.
JO: I think it’s one of these things that we’ll keep doing what we’re doing and if the band takes a break then we’ll go from there but right now we’re really enjoying ourselves.