Jessica Martins and the other members of Via Audio met at Berklee College of Music and are now based in New York.
Skill, stamina, and serendipity all play a part in realizing the dream of becoming a successful rock band. But sometimes, plain old chutzpah is a necessary ingredient.
The members of Via Audio met while attending Berklee College of Music in 2003. The quartet played gigs around town at Great Scott, the Paradise Lounge, All Asia Cafe, and tomorrow night it returns to headline the Middle East Upstairs. Singer-guitarist Jessica Martins, guitarist Tom Deis, bassist David Lizmi, and drummer Danny Molad worked to perfect their sound: melodic pop-rock with pristine boy-girl harmonies and the occasional foray into metal guitars and burlesque rhythms.
But it was Martins's split-second decision to march up to Spoon drummer Jim Eno at the end of that band's show at Avalon in 2005 and hand him Via Audio's demo CD that really set the wheels in motion.
"It must have been fate because I don't usually have a CD in my bag, and I was surprised with tickets to a sold-out Spoon show," Martins says from New York, where Via Audio has made its home base since graduation. The two musicians exchanged no pleasantries, and Martins had no expectations.
"We get a lot of CDs on the road," says Eno from Austin, where Spoon is resting up following the critical and commercial success of last year's "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga." Because he gets "a lot of bad stuff," Eno says with a laugh, all new band demos must pass the iPod test of "is it worth the disc space?" Via Audio was, and Eno found himself returning again and again to the band's songs. "Then I started putting out feelers, and I noticed that they had been talking to Chris Walla [of Death Cab for Cutie], and I was like, darn I'm too slow, I missed it. Chris Walla got 'em!"
"I don't know how he even heard about it because at the time that was still a fabrication," says Martins with a sheepish giggle. Even though Walla had professed his admiration - a fact the band capitalized on in its press materials - he had not expressed interest in actually recording the band. Eno, however, did.
With Eno on board as co-producer, the band recorded its debut, "Say Something, Say Something, Say Something," partly in Austin, which has proved geographically important. The indie label SideCho signed Via Audio after seeing the band at last year's South by Southwest festival in Texas, which was also where someone close to Martins was living.
"I was going through this break-up as we were recording," says Martins. "And funnily enough, the person that all these songs are about had moved to Austin. So it really was an advantage because I had this force that was right around the corner compelling me to give these honest vocal performances, so it actually turned out to be a good thing."
Martins and her fellow bandmates split the songwriting duties, and break-ups, hook-ups, and the general ups and downs of life and love are the sweet spot of the group's lyrics.
Although drummer and "Say Something" co-producer Molad has amicably departed to work with another group and do more production work, the fact that the band has so many songwriters has yet to cause the fabled creative differences. "I think we're pretty good at listening to each other and telling each other what works, what doesn't and we all play our own roles," says Martins.
Fellow Berklee alum Adam Sturtevant has stepped in behind the drums, and Eno admits he initially felt some trepidation about working with music-school grads. "I was like, 'Oh, great. This is going to be a math-rock record or something,' " Eno says with a laugh. "But they don't write that way. They have good pop sensibilities, so they tend to write pop songs, which I really like."
When Via Audio comes back to Boston tomorrow night, the members will carry many memories, including one that resulted in their album title. When they left town to do their first tour, they were driving along the portion of the Mass. Pike that parallels the commuter rail tracks.
"There was one of those LED things that tells you what time the next train is coming," recalls Martins. "And it was stuck on 'saysomethingsaysomethingsaysomething.' And it was the first day of a tour and it was our first record and that's what we're trying to do, so it just felt appropriate."
Via Audio performs with Evangelicals, Headlights, and This Car Up at the Middle East Upstairs (472 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge) tomorrow night at
8:30. Tickets are $9 at 617-931-2000 or ticketmaster.com.
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