I had a great talk with the lead singer, Matt Langston, in a coffee shop in downtown Laurens.
They are all pretty chill people and easy to get along with. It was definitely one of my favorite stories so far.
Band makes it big and keeps local roots
by Kathleen Brown
For The Advertiser
After touring for almost four years, the members of the pop-punk band,Eleventyseven have begun to get comfortable playing shows around the country, and as a result, they sometimes feel out of place when they come home to Laurens. Not as alien however as a certain incident left them feeling while on tour in Japan last year.
A couple minutes before being thrown off a subway car in Tokyo, band members, Caleb Satterfield, Matthew Langston, and Jonathan Stephens, had been a little perplexed at the fact that they were literally the only males on the crowded vehicle.
“Looking around we thought, ‘Wow, the women really outnumber the men over here,’” said Langston who is the lead vocalist and guitarist for the band. “We had boarded the all-girl school shuttle.”
Like subway signs in Japanese and yelling policemen, a lot can get ‘lost in translation’ while touring a foreign country, but the one thing that remains intact is the band’s ability to please their fans-no matter what language they speak.
“We do the same shows, but we try to talk as little as possible in between songs,” said Langston. “It’s always a fantastic experience.”
Caleb Satterfield, who plays bass and performs background vocals, said he doesn’t think the language barrier is a hindrance to Eleventyseven’s growing popularity in Japan.
“There aren’t any defined genres in Japan so it’s just music,” said Satterfield. “The kids like the music regardless of the label it has.”
The band will be making new memories overseas at the end of the month when they begin their second Japanese tour on June 30. The tour will be a chance for Eleventyseven to promote the upcoming release of their new album, “adventures in Eville.”
Since the band’s formation in 2002, the musical talents of Satterfield, Langston and Stephens have carried them far from the main streets and tiny venues of their hometown where they struggled to shake-off their “garage band” status.
On their third album the band electro-pop rocks listeners with their self-proclaimed up-beat style while adding a few new twists.
“This album is pretty diverse,” said Satterfield. “We’ve got some synth-pop, some punk-rock, even a little rap.”
Eleventyseven’s almost 40,000 fans on MySpace have already had the chance to hear several singles from “Eville.” As of Thursday “Evil Genius” had been listened to 12,000 times, and the band is excited to air the music video they made for what they hope will be their next big single.
Despite their expanding fan-base, they have continued to remain true to the positive message that they have been shaping since their early days as high school students playing gigs in Laurens County.
“We want the music to mirror what we are and what we are genuinely passionate about,” said Langston.
With an album release set for June 9, a new music video filmed and a Japanese tour booked later this month, the band has been lucky to catch a breath. That busyness prompted them to purchase their own “creative” lodge in the mountains of North Carolina.
“We can’t really say where but it’s a secret cave inside of a mountain,” Langston joked.
After the two-week tour the band plans on escaping the distractions of the world for a while and concentrating on writing music. Yet, in spite of the new “cave” and 20-show tours in Japan, Eleventyseven finds that their hometown always calls them back.
“Laurens is like no other place,” Satterfield said, “and it will always be home to me.”
Langston agrees, “On one hand we are really happy traveling, but we also realize that there is something to be said for the ‘small town America’ feel.”
Eleventyseven’s album is scheduled to be released online June 9. For more information on the band and their tour schedule go to their website, eleventysevenrocks.com.
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