Crash Midnight is from Boston, Massachusetts and consists of Shaun Soho (vocals) and his brother, Bo (bass), Alex Donaldson (Lead guitar), Jim Donaldson (drums), and Todd Friedman (rhythm guitar). Their album “Lost In The City” is scheduled for its debut release on November 18, 2014. I sat down with Shaun and Alex after their set at the Masquerade in Atlanta. The two of them have an immense amount of energy and vigor. This was probably the most entertaining and informative interview I’ve done to date. Imagine that, coming from a band that I didn’t even know about until 3 weeks ago. I was not familiar with “Crash Midnight” until I was notified that they’d been added to The Pretty Reckless tour. After listening to their album prior to the live performance and then seeing them perform live, it is blatantly clear that this band rocks solid and hard and puts on a show you won’t forget, and once I met them, I felt as if I’d known them for years. They are truly excited about the opportunity that they are being given right now. Their gratitude toward the people who have helped them get to this point is outstanding. In this industry, risk is certain, but the risk is worth taking. They’ve been together for 10 years, just waiting for this moment. They deserve the public attention that they are finally finding themselves surrounded by. Once you listen, you’ll understand why. Each member of the band brings an infectious, dynamic personality to the table. Like all of us, they like to laugh, drink, party, and have a good time, but above that, they put their heart and soul into their music and are ready to prove themselves worthy of fame; worthy of the fans base that they are quickly securing (as noted by a fan who offered Alex her Iphone when she found out he’d lost his during the tour, just before his birthday). Don’t underestimate the underdog; the rockers that you may not know today, because they will be the very ones to shock and awe you. They’ll be the ones to bring you to your knees. The name “Crash Midnight” may be fresh and new on your tongue, but their sound will make you thirst for more, and more is what they intend to give.
Interview with Shaun Soho (vocalist) & Alex Donaldson (lead guitar) of Crash Midnight
By Leslie Elder Rogers
Metal Exiles: You’re getting your name and sound out there, how do you feel about the chance to finally be heard and seen?
Shaun: Most of the Program directors grew up in the 70s and stuff and it’s so cool because we shouldn’t have gotten a lot of the radio covers that we have like The Blaze with Sparky and Animal, out of Lincoln Nebraska. They were awesome.
Alex: We’ve had some very awesome people like in Lincoln, Nebraska, come up to us, and in Columbus, Ohio. That guy out there, fucking Pharoh already plays us.
Shaun: Technically, you’re not allowed to play a song unless somebody gives you money, and they’re already playing our songs. It’s fucking amazing. They kick ass. We are blown away. What’s happening to us should not be happening!
Metal Exiles: I read that Crash Midnight was born from a late-night car wreck, elaborate on that and for those unfamiliar with you guys, what are the roots of the band and what pushed you in the direction that is Crash Midnight?
Shaun: It is metaphorical and it is true. My brother Bo, he’s the Bass player of the band, but not our touring Bass player. He wasn’t able to come on this tour due to some other stuff going on. The band got its name because he got into a late night car accident. When Bo drinks or Bo has an issue, he always tries to spin it. He called me up telling me he had this great idea for a band, we should call it Crash Midnight. I told him that was cool and he said yeah, he thought so too and then asked me if I could come get him. He had driven off in a ditch, hit a tree, and the car was currently stuck on rocks and was leaking gas. A tow truck wouldn’t take him out because you can’t drag metal over rocks when it’s leaking gas. So, that’s how the band got started and got its name. I think it really embodies the vibe of the band.
Alex: This was the second week I’d known these people. I was thinking who the hell are these people? Is this going to be a problem? I’m originally from Columbus, Ohio but I moved to Boston when I was 18 and we started this band. (Shaun says they adopted him). I was in a bad spot when I was 18 and a decade later, not much has changed.
Metal Exiles: What influenced you as a vocalist growing up?
Shaun: Honestly, the first album I ever got was Boston’s debut album. I don’t even know where I got it but I played that thing into the ground. I was singing along with Brad Delp and he’s really freaking tough to sing along with. It just kind of got me tuned to singing higher than that. When I was a little kid, my favorite thing in the world was Van Halen’s “Jump”. I would be jumping on the couch like a wild man all the time. So, I think technically, vocally, it was everyone from Brad Delp to obviously Axl because we sound a little bit like that.
Alex: He did the signature Axl dance a few years ago and was looking good at it.
Shaun: Robert Plant is the fucking man and I love everything that they do bigtime vocally. As we got signed, as we perfected our sound and everything I went to school on Mick Jagger because the way that he can make a song, he’s not even hitting notes. It’s incredible what he can do with a song. We tried to cover “Start Me Up” one time and I was trying to sing it out and all that stuff, and we just sounded like a cover band doing it. I was like “what the hell”? So I went to school on what he was doing and he will make songs based on the attitude that he puts in them. It’s not the notes. It’s not the pitch. It’s not the flourishes and doing the Mariah Carey scale runs. He makes them with attitude and when I got that and I started listening to pop and got into punk, it was like “holy shit, attitude goes way farther than sitting there doing the technical skills”. Save that for American Idol. There are a lot of things that I can hit with my falsettos but I don’t. I hold it back because if I were to do that in songs like “Start Me Up”, people would think it sucked. (Alex said he’d unplug his amp). You just have to play for the song, not for yourself.
Alex: Except during the guitar solo, then you play for yourself; yourself and the girls, and the engineer who is yelling at you, and try not to trip over the cables. My signature move is falling over the cables.
Metal Exiles: You guys have a glam sound (at times like Vince Neil or Axl Rose) but your vocals have more of a dirty punk aesthetic. How did you guys manage to cleanly combine the two? Why do you think the rock fans want to latch onto Crash Midnight?
Shaun: So many bands are out there just hear what’s on the radio and they copy them. For years they wanted to copy Def Leppard or Nirvana or Pearl Jam. Now everybody wants to be like Nickelback or whatever. Not that it’s bad but they’re just trying to copy what they think would be successful. For us it was screw this, we want to hear what we want to hear. I remember very clearly before we started this band, I was waiting for Chinese Democracy to come out. Then I heard Velvet Revolver and was like “aw man, that’s great”, and it was but it didn’t scratch the itch that we had. I really like “Chinese Democracy” for what it is, but it isn’t what I wanted it to be. It was brilliant. It’s an Axl solo project and it’s fucking fantastic, but everyone wanted “Appetite” and it didn’t happen. That was the spark that got me going. I wanted to hear this type of music and nobody was doing it, so I said “fuck it, I’ll do it”. So we started there and we hit it way too close to the nose. It was like a Guns & Roses cover band. As we matured as musicians, we kind of broadened with all those other influences like Aerosmith and Boston. We got this great review from a show we did in Boston that said we were like Aerosmith in the 70’s in their prime.
Alex: Rock is dead? I’m sorry, no.
Metal Exiles: The original release date was October 20, 2014, why was it pushed back to November 18, 2014? What else do you guys have lined up to push “Lost in the City”?
Shaun: When we got this tour, the idea was to generate so much publicity.
Alex: We want to be in Boston for the release so we can party.
Shaun: We’ll be done with this tour on the 8th of November and will be capable of handling the release party and all that stuff. We want to be with the people that helped get us started; with our friends and family and all. The intention was to be back home before the release, so we have to wait until the tour is done. That’s why the date was pushed back.
Metal Exiles: Where did the first single, 151, come from?
Shaun: The alcohol! When we started the band, we were all living in the Fenway Park area of Boston, off of Alex’s student loan money. There were 5, sometimes 6 of us (sometimes 12 if you count the ladies all in Alex’s room) in this two bedroom apartment. All of us were living in this tiny ass apartment. We didn’t have two nickels to rub together but we found out we could get Bacardi 151 for about twenty two-twenty three bucks, the whole band could get drunk and it would be great because it was so strong and it was awesome. So as we’re drinking that stuff one night, we were listening to whatever we were listening to, oh yeah, Night Train came on. It was like, “oh man, these guys, they’re drinking Night Train and we’re drinking 151”. So we start singing new lyrics over Night Train, playing on the guitar and shit like that using 151. Everybody loved it. It was great. So after that, at all these other parties, people starting asking us to play the 151 song, so we kept playing it and then we thought, “well fuck, maybe we should make this into a real song”. So we started working on it. In the meantime, we found out that there was a liquor company a couple of towns over in Summerville, Massachusetts, that would sell this thing called ‘Roberto 151”. It was the cheaper version, and it was sixteen dollars.
Alex: Oh my God, it took years off of my life. It did the same thing. 151 kicked ass.
Shaun: Actually Bo kept getting drunk on it and woke up in the Boston Commons to a little league team kicking him saying ‘Sir, we’re about to start the game”. He was in right field. It was amazing.
Alex: Literally he was in right field, but he was in left field if you know what I mean.
Shaun: So that’s the story of 151. It’s a liability. Alex’s family owns bars and stuff. He was back home one time and his uncle was like “you guys know you’re only supposed to have 151 maybe once or twice a year because that will literally destroy you”? We had empty bottles, we would go to radio stations and sign the empty bottles and give it to them and they would be expecting a full bottle. We didn’t have those, we got thirsty on the way.
Metal Exiles: Do you have a song from the album that you consider the best one?
Alex: My favorite song on the album is probably City Girl because I have 3 guitar solos in it, so yeah, that’s my personal favorite. I’ve spent so much time learning that shit man.
Shaun: Mine rotates all the time. It depends on the night. I fucking loved “Made for the Money” tonight. Other nights I love ‘Diamond Boulevard” or “151”. It totally depends on the mood which one is my favorite at the time.
Metal Exiles: You guys are hyping that your tour bus is running on clean energy, tell me about that.
Shaun: Our rhythm guitarist, Tony, has tricked out a 1970’s motorhome to start running on clean energy. We call it the “hell bus”. This tour was a little bit of a surprise and he wasn’t sure if it was going to be ready to go but we said “fuck it”.
Alex: It was actually questionable whether or not we’d make it to Atlanta. Half the people said yes and half the people said no. We actually stopped in Washington DC to go check out a Walmart and what do you think happened right near the Capitol? We were swarmed by police because that looks like the type of vehicle that felons would be in. So we were held up in Washington DC for a while and they were taking photos of our bus in case something happened I guess. I don’t know.
Shaun: I was still in Walmart at the time during all that. It is really cool though. He gutted the whole thing. He took all of the auxiliary load off the motor, so it’s basically just the motor and two other things. All the auxiliary systems are pretty much running off battery power now so the engine is more efficient or at least on its way. We’re getting a ton of donations which is really cool because we’re trying to show people that it’s really not that hard to convert to cleaner energy. He buys parts from home depot and stuff. He’s got a bucket on there that he’s going to be converting to hydrogen energy. If we can do an entire North American tour in this thing for next to nothing, that’d be great.
Alex: He converts salt water; he separates the hydrogen from the oxygen and runs it off the hydrogen. It’s freaking great. Honestly, I want to drive it. On the tour before, we had a brand new 12 passenger van. I liked it better because you could actually stand up.
Shaun: Tony is really, really good at technical stuff. Not so good at timing, because when we follow his schedule, we get there at like 20 minutes before we play.
Alex: We didn’t have any beers before the show; hence, I had to get a beer from the audience. They were so cool.
Metal Exiles: You guys just did a stint with Sevendust/Gemini Syndrome and now Pretty Reckless/Adelita’s Way. What are your thoughts about the tour so far?
Alex: Well, first off, The Pretty Reckless’ tour manager, Luke, has been pretty awesome. He got us on all the catering for free. (laughing) He got us the beer for free.
Shaun: Ok, The Pretty Reckless, nobody told me that Taylor Momsen was an actress. Nobody told me that she was in Gossip girl. If they had, I probably would’ve judged the shit out of that because it’s so hard to impress me as a female lead singer. It’s tough as a female lead singer. As a woman, if you get out there and start talking about, singing about sex, boom, you’re thrown into the whole whore thing. When you start partying too hard, people are like “oh, you’re an idiot bimbo”. All I heard was the first thing “Fucked up World” and I thought “holy shit, who the fuck is this? I’m sure she gets compared to Joan Jett all the damn time”. Oh my god, it was amazing. I was blown away by how powerful her voice is live. I do production, I know I can make it sound good, but hearing her live, I was like “wow, that girl can sing”. She has that attitude and swagger that you just can’t fake. I was so happy to see a female front woman like that, like Joan Jett, Janice Joplin, Cindy Lauper (not Girls Just Wanna Have Fun but all the other stuff). She just has this fucking attitude. I just love it. I am so GD proud of her. As a front man, I am proud of her. She is fucking awesome.
Alex: And a little bit of Brody Dalle, Tim Armstrong’s ex-wife.
Shaun: Adelita’s Way are our homeboys. They are so cool. We’re sharing a room with them and it’s really a burden on them I think, but they are really cool about it. We’re just having an amazing time with all of them.
Band website: http://www.crashmidnight.com
Preorder their album @ https://itun.es/us/Rkpa2
Follow the band:
facebook @ https://www.facebook.com/crashmidnight
twitter @ https://twitter.com/crashmidnight
View and listen @ http://www.youtube.com/user/CrashMidnight
Interview with Shaun Soho (vocalist) & Alex Donaldson (lead guitar) of Crash Midnight
By Leslie Elder Rogers
Metal Exiles: You’re getting your name and sound out there, how do you feel about the chance to finally be heard and seen?
Shaun: Most of the Program directors grew up in the 70s and stuff and it’s so cool because we shouldn’t have gotten a lot of the radio covers that we have like The Blaze with Sparky and Animal, out of Lincoln Nebraska. They were awesome.
Alex: We’ve had some very awesome people like in Lincoln, Nebraska, come up to us, and in Columbus, Ohio. That guy out there, fucking Pharoh already plays us.
Shaun: Technically, you’re not allowed to play a song unless somebody gives you money, and they’re already playing our songs. It’s fucking amazing. They kick ass. We are blown away. What’s happening to us should not be happening!
Metal Exiles: I read that Crash Midnight was born from a late-night car wreck, elaborate on that and for those unfamiliar with you guys, what are the roots of the band and what pushed you in the direction that is Crash Midnight?
Shaun: It is metaphorical and it is true. My brother Bo, he’s the Bass player of the band, but not our touring Bass player. He wasn’t able to come on this tour due to some other stuff going on. The band got its name because he got into a late night car accident. When Bo drinks or Bo has an issue, he always tries to spin it. He called me up telling me he had this great idea for a band, we should call it Crash Midnight. I told him that was cool and he said yeah, he thought so too and then asked me if I could come get him. He had driven off in a ditch, hit a tree, and the car was currently stuck on rocks and was leaking gas. A tow truck wouldn’t take him out because you can’t drag metal over rocks when it’s leaking gas. So, that’s how the band got started and got its name. I think it really embodies the vibe of the band.
Alex: This was the second week I’d known these people. I was thinking who the hell are these people? Is this going to be a problem? I’m originally from Columbus, Ohio but I moved to Boston when I was 18 and we started this band. (Shaun says they adopted him). I was in a bad spot when I was 18 and a decade later, not much has changed.
Metal Exiles: What influenced you as a vocalist growing up?
Shaun: Honestly, the first album I ever got was Boston’s debut album. I don’t even know where I got it but I played that thing into the ground. I was singing along with Brad Delp and he’s really freaking tough to sing along with. It just kind of got me tuned to singing higher than that. When I was a little kid, my favorite thing in the world was Van Halen’s “Jump”. I would be jumping on the couch like a wild man all the time. So, I think technically, vocally, it was everyone from Brad Delp to obviously Axl because we sound a little bit like that.
Alex: He did the signature Axl dance a few years ago and was looking good at it.
Shaun: Robert Plant is the fucking man and I love everything that they do bigtime vocally. As we got signed, as we perfected our sound and everything I went to school on Mick Jagger because the way that he can make a song, he’s not even hitting notes. It’s incredible what he can do with a song. We tried to cover “Start Me Up” one time and I was trying to sing it out and all that stuff, and we just sounded like a cover band doing it. I was like “what the hell”? So I went to school on what he was doing and he will make songs based on the attitude that he puts in them. It’s not the notes. It’s not the pitch. It’s not the flourishes and doing the Mariah Carey scale runs. He makes them with attitude and when I got that and I started listening to pop and got into punk, it was like “holy shit, attitude goes way farther than sitting there doing the technical skills”. Save that for American Idol. There are a lot of things that I can hit with my falsettos but I don’t. I hold it back because if I were to do that in songs like “Start Me Up”, people would think it sucked. (Alex said he’d unplug his amp). You just have to play for the song, not for yourself.
Alex: Except during the guitar solo, then you play for yourself; yourself and the girls, and the engineer who is yelling at you, and try not to trip over the cables. My signature move is falling over the cables.
Metal Exiles: You guys have a glam sound (at times like Vince Neil or Axl Rose) but your vocals have more of a dirty punk aesthetic. How did you guys manage to cleanly combine the two? Why do you think the rock fans want to latch onto Crash Midnight?
Shaun: So many bands are out there just hear what’s on the radio and they copy them. For years they wanted to copy Def Leppard or Nirvana or Pearl Jam. Now everybody wants to be like Nickelback or whatever. Not that it’s bad but they’re just trying to copy what they think would be successful. For us it was screw this, we want to hear what we want to hear. I remember very clearly before we started this band, I was waiting for Chinese Democracy to come out. Then I heard Velvet Revolver and was like “aw man, that’s great”, and it was but it didn’t scratch the itch that we had. I really like “Chinese Democracy” for what it is, but it isn’t what I wanted it to be. It was brilliant. It’s an Axl solo project and it’s fucking fantastic, but everyone wanted “Appetite” and it didn’t happen. That was the spark that got me going. I wanted to hear this type of music and nobody was doing it, so I said “fuck it, I’ll do it”. So we started there and we hit it way too close to the nose. It was like a Guns & Roses cover band. As we matured as musicians, we kind of broadened with all those other influences like Aerosmith and Boston. We got this great review from a show we did in Boston that said we were like Aerosmith in the 70’s in their prime.
Alex: Rock is dead? I’m sorry, no.
Metal Exiles: The original release date was October 20, 2014, why was it pushed back to November 18, 2014? What else do you guys have lined up to push “Lost in the City”?
Shaun: When we got this tour, the idea was to generate so much publicity.
Alex: We want to be in Boston for the release so we can party.
Shaun: We’ll be done with this tour on the 8th of November and will be capable of handling the release party and all that stuff. We want to be with the people that helped get us started; with our friends and family and all. The intention was to be back home before the release, so we have to wait until the tour is done. That’s why the date was pushed back.
Metal Exiles: Where did the first single, 151, come from?
Shaun: The alcohol! When we started the band, we were all living in the Fenway Park area of Boston, off of Alex’s student loan money. There were 5, sometimes 6 of us (sometimes 12 if you count the ladies all in Alex’s room) in this two bedroom apartment. All of us were living in this tiny ass apartment. We didn’t have two nickels to rub together but we found out we could get Bacardi 151 for about twenty two-twenty three bucks, the whole band could get drunk and it would be great because it was so strong and it was awesome. So as we’re drinking that stuff one night, we were listening to whatever we were listening to, oh yeah, Night Train came on. It was like, “oh man, these guys, they’re drinking Night Train and we’re drinking 151”. So we start singing new lyrics over Night Train, playing on the guitar and shit like that using 151. Everybody loved it. It was great. So after that, at all these other parties, people starting asking us to play the 151 song, so we kept playing it and then we thought, “well fuck, maybe we should make this into a real song”. So we started working on it. In the meantime, we found out that there was a liquor company a couple of towns over in Summerville, Massachusetts, that would sell this thing called ‘Roberto 151”. It was the cheaper version, and it was sixteen dollars.
Alex: Oh my God, it took years off of my life. It did the same thing. 151 kicked ass.
Shaun: Actually Bo kept getting drunk on it and woke up in the Boston Commons to a little league team kicking him saying ‘Sir, we’re about to start the game”. He was in right field. It was amazing.
Alex: Literally he was in right field, but he was in left field if you know what I mean.
Shaun: So that’s the story of 151. It’s a liability. Alex’s family owns bars and stuff. He was back home one time and his uncle was like “you guys know you’re only supposed to have 151 maybe once or twice a year because that will literally destroy you”? We had empty bottles, we would go to radio stations and sign the empty bottles and give it to them and they would be expecting a full bottle. We didn’t have those, we got thirsty on the way.
Metal Exiles: Do you have a song from the album that you consider the best one?
Alex: My favorite song on the album is probably City Girl because I have 3 guitar solos in it, so yeah, that’s my personal favorite. I’ve spent so much time learning that shit man.
Shaun: Mine rotates all the time. It depends on the night. I fucking loved “Made for the Money” tonight. Other nights I love ‘Diamond Boulevard” or “151”. It totally depends on the mood which one is my favorite at the time.
Metal Exiles: You guys are hyping that your tour bus is running on clean energy, tell me about that.
Shaun: Our rhythm guitarist, Tony, has tricked out a 1970’s motorhome to start running on clean energy. We call it the “hell bus”. This tour was a little bit of a surprise and he wasn’t sure if it was going to be ready to go but we said “fuck it”.
Alex: It was actually questionable whether or not we’d make it to Atlanta. Half the people said yes and half the people said no. We actually stopped in Washington DC to go check out a Walmart and what do you think happened right near the Capitol? We were swarmed by police because that looks like the type of vehicle that felons would be in. So we were held up in Washington DC for a while and they were taking photos of our bus in case something happened I guess. I don’t know.
Shaun: I was still in Walmart at the time during all that. It is really cool though. He gutted the whole thing. He took all of the auxiliary load off the motor, so it’s basically just the motor and two other things. All the auxiliary systems are pretty much running off battery power now so the engine is more efficient or at least on its way. We’re getting a ton of donations which is really cool because we’re trying to show people that it’s really not that hard to convert to cleaner energy. He buys parts from home depot and stuff. He’s got a bucket on there that he’s going to be converting to hydrogen energy. If we can do an entire North American tour in this thing for next to nothing, that’d be great.
Alex: He converts salt water; he separates the hydrogen from the oxygen and runs it off the hydrogen. It’s freaking great. Honestly, I want to drive it. On the tour before, we had a brand new 12 passenger van. I liked it better because you could actually stand up.
Shaun: Tony is really, really good at technical stuff. Not so good at timing, because when we follow his schedule, we get there at like 20 minutes before we play.
Alex: We didn’t have any beers before the show; hence, I had to get a beer from the audience. They were so cool.
Metal Exiles: You guys just did a stint with Sevendust/Gemini Syndrome and now Pretty Reckless/Adelita’s Way. What are your thoughts about the tour so far?
Alex: Well, first off, The Pretty Reckless’ tour manager, Luke, has been pretty awesome. He got us on all the catering for free. (laughing) He got us the beer for free.
Shaun: Ok, The Pretty Reckless, nobody told me that Taylor Momsen was an actress. Nobody told me that she was in Gossip girl. If they had, I probably would’ve judged the shit out of that because it’s so hard to impress me as a female lead singer. It’s tough as a female lead singer. As a woman, if you get out there and start talking about, singing about sex, boom, you’re thrown into the whole whore thing. When you start partying too hard, people are like “oh, you’re an idiot bimbo”. All I heard was the first thing “Fucked up World” and I thought “holy shit, who the fuck is this? I’m sure she gets compared to Joan Jett all the damn time”. Oh my god, it was amazing. I was blown away by how powerful her voice is live. I do production, I know I can make it sound good, but hearing her live, I was like “wow, that girl can sing”. She has that attitude and swagger that you just can’t fake. I was so happy to see a female front woman like that, like Joan Jett, Janice Joplin, Cindy Lauper (not Girls Just Wanna Have Fun but all the other stuff). She just has this fucking attitude. I just love it. I am so GD proud of her. As a front man, I am proud of her. She is fucking awesome.
Alex: And a little bit of Brody Dalle, Tim Armstrong’s ex-wife.
Shaun: Adelita’s Way are our homeboys. They are so cool. We’re sharing a room with them and it’s really a burden on them I think, but they are really cool about it. We’re just having an amazing time with all of them.
Band website: http://www.crashmidnight.com
Preorder their album @ https://itun.es/us/Rkpa2
Follow the band:
facebook @ https://www.facebook.com/crashmidnight
twitter @ https://twitter.com/crashmidnight
View and listen @ http://www.youtube.com/user/CrashMidnight
