Two twenty-something Fil-Ams hit mainstream fame in alternative rock scene
By Nickee V. de Leon/Asianjournal.com
Agustin Sanchez
Andrew Ampaya
(First of Two Parts)
EVER wonder what it would be like, headlining for the likes of the Smashing Pumpkins? It must feel hella good.
Both 22, with drop-dead good looks and living in Thousand Oaks, California, Andrew Ampaya and Agustin Sanchez seem like typical Fil-Am boys their age, poking fun and making jokes throughout the interview, save for one little extraordinary detail — they’re playing for Test Your Reflex, an alternative rock band already making waves in the music scene.
Composed of five young but very talented members, Test Your Reflex (TYR) is Ryan Levine (lead vocals, guitar and keyboards), Clark (lead guitar), Andrew Ampaya (piano, keyboards and vocals), Agustin Sanchez (bass and backing vocals) and Sal Cortez (drums and backing vocals). The band was formed almost four years ago in Thousand Oaks, California.
The Asian Journal had the privilege to engage Andrew and Agustin in a phone chat to get up close and personal about their stellar success at such a young age.
Agustin started playing the guitar at age 13 and shares that he is “just enjoying life right now with the band and writing songs and playing in front of people…” He has been with TYR since its inception.
Andrew has been playing piano since he was four, a fact that drew unanimous oohs and aahs from both me and Agustin (although the latter was obviously just poking fun on the former) and has also been with the band from the very beginning.
The BIG Break
AJ asked the two how TYR got their big break and closed the deal headlining for the Smashing Pumpkins’ reunion tour.
“We just got very fortunate through our management and booking agencies, they just happened to pull a few strings and I’m not sure about the details of how they did it but we just got very lucky we also covered one of their songs. That got us in the door,” Andrew quipped.
TYR did a cover of Smashing Pumpkins’ Ava Adore for an exclusive Spin/MySpace compilation to pay homage to the legendary group. Other bands included in the tribute compilation were The Bravery, The Most Dangerous Race, Gliss and The Academy Is…to name a few.
Wikipedia.com describes Smashing Pumpkins as “one of the most commercially-successful and critically-acclaimed bands of the 1990s.” The Smashing Pumpkins is an alternative rock band that was conceived in 1988 by Billy Corgan (vocals and guitar), James Iha (guitar and vocals), D’arcy Wretz (bass and vocals) and Jimmy Chamberlin (drums and percussion).
The band is known for its “diverse, densely-layered and guitar-heavy sound containing elements of gothic rock, heavy metal, dream pop, psychedelic rock, progressive rock, shoegazer-style productions and in later recordings, electronica.” Due to disagreements between band members, the band broke up in 2000 but two of its members reunited in April 2006. Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin officially announced that a new album was in the works. In 2007, new additions Jeffrey Schroeder on guitar and vocals, Ginger Reyes on bass and vocals and Lisa Harriton on keyboard vocals graced the band to tour behind SP’s new album, Zeitgeist.
TYR headlined for Smashing Pumpkins on their July 22nd performance this year at the Fillmore in San Francisco.
“It was kind of exciting and a little nerve-wrecking at the same time because they [Smashing Pumpkins] were one of the bands that we have grown up listening to and it’s kind of like a living legend, playing for someone our own age, who we saw growing up on TV and making us wanna be in a band and influencing our sound and the way we work…Just being able to play for our idols or heroes is a really big blessing and we were just very fortunate and very grateful to do it…It was very nerve-wrecking cause you don’t wanna mess up infront of, you know, someone you look up to, you wanna be the best you can be, so it’s kinda half-stressful and half in awe just to be at that show and play for that audience with Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin,” Agustin confessed.
The beginning
Asked how the guys of TYR first got together, Andrew narrated that Ryan and Sal met through Ryan’s ex-girlfriend. With Sal came the other guys. Sal and Clark went to school together and Andrew met Sal through a common friend. Basically the band members got acquainted with each other through mutual friends.
On the chemistry between band members, Agustin said that there was a lot of searching and that according to Ryan Levine it took around six months for them to screen people out. He claimed that he was the last one to join the group. “Andrew sent me some demos over Messenger and that was my first introduction to the band…” he narrated.
Ryan, Clark, Sal and Andrew had already formed the band at that time and had room for one more member. It was then that Agustin attended one of their band practices and stayed on.
“The chemistry when we first all played together was pretty good because we all had the same influences and an idea of how we wanted the music to sound like. The first moment I knew that we had that connection was when we rented out this place in the valley and played our first song… That’s when I realized that we sounded like a real band…and we heard this on a real sound system, that and the fact that we knew all the parts and we played the whole song and it was a good song,” Andrew further added.
The ties that bind
In terms of creating their music, Andrew said that “at first it was mostly Ryan presenting the songs to the band ‘cause he had been working on a lot of songs before we all got together. Then Ryan and I started collaborating cause I was playing and he was singing along with them, the songs came together nicely but then there would be other songs where the band would jam together with songs like I Know You’re Lonely which is in the album. So it’s a little bit of both right now, me and Ryan and just the whole band coming up with ideas.”
Music to their ears
Agustin described The Burning Hour (TYR’s debut album) as an album of songs that narrate “the life of a young man, what he goes through and all the emotions and all the relationships and everything he sees and does and what he sees in the world and around him, the people he meets that he affects or affects him and the world in general from thinking in his room. In the song I Am Alive [the song expresses] salvation of just being there, of living and breathing and experiencing all these things. Thinking of You is more of like a love song to the significant other, or Painted Red is something that he might have seen on TV that has affected him greatly…”
Andrew described TYR’s music as rock. “We also tell people [that we come] from the same vein as the Killers or U2 or any of those bands in that genre, but we really do have a certain sound that when people ask what we sound like, it’s just kinda hard to answer that question. So for the most part, we just tell people [that we classify our music as] rock.
Under the influence
AJ asked the boys how their musical influences affect the way they write their music and how they managed to produce their own distinct and unique sound.
Agustin asserted, “ I think that even though we all have a lot of the same musical influences, we also came from different music backgrounds like Clark was in a hardcore punk band growing up and that’s where he honed his guitar skills. Ryan was in a do-it-yourself electronic band where they played music through their computers and a lot of synthesizers and trumpets. Sal was in a rock band too. So we all came from different bands and different sounds but we all have the same love of music also. We love the likes of Bowie, The Cure and Depeche Mode and U2 but at the same time some of us have the likes of The Clash or Sex Pistols in their iPod… or the other person might have 80’s bands…or some metal influence like Iron Maiden. What we do is we take our influences, we have the same and then put a little spin on it with our playing sounds like Clark’s solos or Sal’s drums which are [U2’s] Joshua Tree-influenced. He’s also influenced by harder rock bands as well or maybe even by his merengue and salsa influences from growing up in Los Angeles.” (AJ) (Photos courtesy of Sony BMG Entertainment)
