bob

2008 rang in as the year of bob. For more than a decade, middle school mates Adam Smith and Matt Santoro have sung, strummed, banged and riffed through a plethora of sounds and styles before finally settling on an intense rock feel with edge and energy which has led to hundreds of fans at shows, support from Anheuser-Busch, and an album produced by a legendary rock veteran.
bob cohered into its current sound after years of guitarist Smith and frontman Santoro trying out different arrangements and potential bandmates, finally finding Drew Recny to sit behind the kit and Carl Schmeig to keep rhythm on bass. After a few years of developing a large D.C. area fan base, the band started spreading its live shows out across multiple states along the mid-eastern seaboard.
It was last fall, when on a whim, the band contacted renowned producer Garth Richardson who has worked with the likes of Red Hot Chili Peppers and Rage Against the Machine. Richardson liked what he heard and invited the guys up to Vancouver to spend December and January recording the band’s first full-length album in his studio.
“It was the best decision we ever made,” Adam says. “It was intimidating as hell to walk in Garth’s office and see all these platinum records around. What was really amazing was that Garth was able to take our sound and somehow make it even more bob. He got an amazing dynamic going between us.”
The band spent 12 to 15 hours a day for a month in the studio with Richardson, taking only a well-deserved half day on New Year’s Eve. “It was a life-changing experience,” according to Matt. “Garth was unbelievable in the way he knew how to handle everybody and the best way to get everything out of me that I had and everything out of everyone else. It was a hell of an experience.”
The band was even fortunate enough to experience a drop-in by a buddy of Richardson’s, Dave “Rave” Ogilvie. The Skinny Puppy and Marilyn Manson producer liked the band so much, he decided to get in on the bob action and helped produce one of the album’s tracks, “Busted Dreams.”
As for the album itself, “bbbob” features 11 tracks of the unadulterated, unfiltered, raw energy that is bob.
“I think this album is kind of a throwback to what rock used to be,” Matt says. “I think rock should have an edge and aggressiveness to it, and I think the underlying theme in our music is basically thumbing your nose at authority or anything that tries to push you in any one direction. A lot of songs come back to being about doing what you want no matter what the fuck people want to say.”
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