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Written by Kurt Brighton
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Friday, 21 December 2007 |
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As if you needed another reason to hate Clear Channel.
But if you’re a fan of heavy, loud, homegrown rock, you can blame — at least in part-Clear Channel affiliate KBPI for taking some of that away, in the form of the demise of Adam’s Ruin. The band formed in the spring of 2006 and was once one of the most promising up-and-coming bands in Fort Collins. By December of that year, they were opening for national act Saliva at the Fillmore. By February, the band was headlining at the Gothic, bringing in a record crowd for a Denver metal show at that venue. The group also collected an award for KBPI’s “Best Band In Denver” out of a pool of 400 entrants, garnering promises of label showcases, heavy radio rotation and major-venue gigs.
It looked for a while like the band might truly break out.
Somehow, a year later, Adam’s Ruin is playing its final show Saturday night. For singer Chadd Smith, that means it’s time to lay his cards on the table.
“Since this is the last show, I might as well get it all out,” Smith said. “There’s a lot of aspects, really, that led to us calling it quits. One big one was the constant disappointment the whole KBPI thing has led to. They’re a bunch of (expletive), really. They promised all these things and nothing happened at all.”
With grand assurances that the band would get heavy air play and contacts with major record labels, KBPI program director Willy B. ushered the group into a Denver studio to cut a three-song EP in the wake of winning the contest. Everything seemed too good to be true — which, it turned out, it was.
“When we won, they were all about it, Willy B. was all about it,” said Smith. “When the contest went down, they promised the winner would get full radio rotation and label attention, and all these huge shows — they basically promised we’d get signed. They gave us a couple of shows, but we ended up playing these dinky little bars. And they never played us on the radio — not once.”
And although Smith is quick to add that the band members themselves aren’t without blame, it was largely because of the heightened expectations foisted upon them by KBPI’s hollow munificence that the band finally decided to pull the plug.
“We were under contract with management, and we had all these other pressures coming at us from all sides,” Smith said. “You can’t believe how much stress we were under. When the music isn’t fun anymore, there’s no point in being in a band.”
But, as is the nature of the universe, when one thing ends, another by definition begins. In the case of the soon to be ex-members of Adam’s Ruin, there is a whole flock of phoenixes rising from the ashes. For Smith, Adam’s Ruin guitarist Trystin Sann and drummer Tony Caya, the new project is Resthaven, currently in the studio working on their debut release. And Adam’s Ruin’s other vocalist Roger Foster is working on his own project, Down the Rabbit Hole. The remaining two band members, guitarist Joel Karschner and bassist James Hicks, have formed The Crimson Red.
“We’re all still best friends,” Smith said. “We hang out all the time and play in new bands together. It had nothing to do with us individually — it was all this other bullshit that came down.”
Thanks a lot, KBPI.
But hey, maybe in their way, KBPI did a good thing: they’ve given us not one but three bands to look forward to seeing.
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