Say It Like You Mean It

Fourteen-year-old boys are probably the single most unproductive demographic in American society. When not whittling away the hours trying to pay attention at school, most members of this lethargic fraternity can be found watching TV, surfing the internet or quite possibly, indulging in their new-found hormone-stimulated "wrist exercises." Music, for most of the 14-year-old set, is only good for playing loud enough to cover the sound of slapping meat and for trying to impress 14-year-old girls. However, as a Pennsylvania 14-year-old, Ken Vasoli, frontman for new-school phenoms The Starting Line, found a much more successful way to impress girls: start a band and write songs about them.
Vasoli initially met the other members of what would prove to be The Starting Line - guitarist Matt Watts, guitarist Mike Golla and drummer Tom Cryskiewicz - in cyberspace while still at the tender age of 14. The band soon garnered the attention of small Orange County label We The People Records, who realized the mainstream potential of The Starting Line and passed the word to burgeoning L.A. pop-punk label Drive-Thru Records, home of bands like New Found Glory, Finch and Homegrown. The members of The Starting Line found themselves being offered tours with some of their favorite bands and the chance to record a nationally distributed record. With Hopes Of Starting Over was released in summer 2001, thus transforming The Starting Line from a primarily Internet-spun mp3 band to a veritable record store commodity. The release of their debut full-length, Say It Like You Mean It, in 2002 proved the band's mainstream appeal, appearing on the Billboard charts and being praised in Rolling Stone. Produced by Mark Trombino (Jimmy Eat World, Finch), Say It Like You Mean It showcases the emo-influenced pop-punk goodness and simplistic lyrical themes that make The Starting Line so appealing to teenage girls and sappy journalists.
The Synthesis recently caught with The Starting Line's Ken Vasoli, currently on tour with ska-core band Reel Big Fish and now an elder statesman at 18, via hotel phone. Despite a bit of youthful squirreliness, enough words were exchanged to constitute the following report.


Where are you guys right now?
We're in Portland, Oregon.

How's the tour going so far?
It's going really well; this is only our second day. We played Vancouver yesterday, and had to go through all the border crossing bullshit, but it was such an awesome show. It was only our second time in Vancouver and we got a huge reaction, which we didn't really expect.

So how does it feel to have a record on the charts? Say It Like You Mean It debuted at #109 on the Billboard 200 - not bad for the first time.
I'm not sure what kind of exposure we're getting radio-wise, but we're really happy with how people have been reacting to the record and we're really happy with the way that it came out.

What was it like to work with Mark Trombino?
He did the Jimmy Eat World record…

Clarity.
…yeah Clarity. Ever since we heard that record we've just admired his work so much and have always wanted to work with him. So we were really happy to see him incorporate electronic kind of sampling sounds into our CD. We're just really happy with the way it came through.

I thought the new version of "Cheek to Cheek," really showed his influence, and I think it's definitely one of the stronger tracks on the album.
That was one of the first songs we ever really actually recorded, to actually put out, so we were really excited to do it again because it was a really classic song for us.

I read that you originally joined the band through an instant message? What's the story with that?
It wasn't actually an instant message; Matt e-mailed me when I was 14 years old, asking me if I knew anybody who could sing for the band. I'd never met him before but I was kind of looking to start a band and actually sing for someone, so I e-mailed him back and we met up and he was such a cool guy - we clicked as friends - and the other guys that we jammed with were just awesome and everything that we did just seemed to turn out really well.

How did you swing being in school and being in a band full-time?
Well, I was in high school when this band first started, and I was going into my junior year when Drive-Thru first started looking at us, and they really wanted to put us on tour, but it was kind of a now-or-never thing and I really didn't want to drop out of high school because I think that having a high school diploma is a really important thing to have and I didn't want to go through the rest of my life not having one. So I went to my guidance counselor and she got me into some extra classes at night so I got to graduate early, my junior year. That summer we went on tour and haven't stopped since.

How'd you guys get hooked up with Drive-Thru?
We had our stuff posted on mp3.com for about three or four months and this label called We The People Records from Orange County, California contacted us and said that they were interested in putting out a recording for us. So we got back to them and kept in contact with them and they flew us out to California to play for them, and we found out then that they used to work for Drive-Thru. So they brought Richard and Stephanie [Reines, sibling owners of Drive-Thru Records] to the practice. Drive-Thru didn't really like us that much back then…

Why?
We didn't really have our shit together back then. But we always wanted to be on Drive-Thru so we kept nagging Richard and Stephanie and eventually they signed us just to get us off of their case.

How was Warped Tour?
Warped Tour was amazing; it was such a good experience. The crowds were crowds that we otherwise probably wouldn't have got to play in front of and we also got to meet bands that we never expected to meet. Just to be playing 50 feet away from those bands was just amazing.

So what's the future holding for you guys?
We're on tour with Reel Big Fish for five weeks. After that we have about two weeks off and we're gonna try to write some songs for our next record.

When's that coming out?
We're hoping to get back in the studio by about March. After we're done working on the songs, we're going out with Taking Back Sunday on a U.S. tour.

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