Full circle sound: Manhattan Beach’s Sand Section goes back to their musical roots
It’s a natural human inclination to search. For food, water, land, meaning, art, soul, sound… we search. Within ourselves, beyond ourselves, out of this world, we search. Sometimes, our search leads us straight back to the beginning.
“I guess you could say with this new sound, a good way to explain it is Tony and I in high school used to like relentlessly practice vocal harmonies at his house back in the day – we’d listen to like Crosby, Stills, & Nash, or the Eagles, and we’d spend hours on end trying to nail like these harmonies and practice song writing. And now I feel like we’ve finally come back full circle. Which is the two of us again doing all like the heavy lifting, if you will, kind of guiding this thing.”
Jeff Nisen provides the insight behind how he and Tony Gonella started what would become the Manhattan Beach-based band Sand Section, and how their journey thus far has led back to their original roots.
Early summer 2011 saw the unveiling of their Truth Over Harmony debut LP, 12 tracks of reggae rhythm infused rock n’ roll pointing to classic rock and heavy metal influences. Approximately 1 year later they released The Gun EP, bringing forth a beefier sound with expanded musicianship. Ironically, it was during this period when the band began playing acoustic shows in lieu of a regular drummer.
“The funny thing was that we soon discovered that we were a really good acoustic band,” Nisen told me in an interview back then.
In fact, in the last year Nisen and Gonella have effectively performed over 100 shows as an acoustic duo throughout various South Bay bars, restaurants, and venues, mostly playing classic rock covers while testing out new material. Even if they’re booked to play from 8-10 p.m., they’ll often go until closing time (without pay), utilizing the gigs as indispensable live practice sessions for honing in their harmonies; and really just getting back to what it was all about in high school.
There you have it, the new sound – basically their old sound, which was never laid down on record. Until now.
With vocal harmonies molded around an acoustic foundation, Sand Section has released a new full-length titled Still Life. It’s a dramatic shift from their earlier albums, but the band concedes to always have been searching for themselves, and their sound. It’s a full circle sound, with Nisen and Gonella at the helm managing all of the guitars, bass, singing, and song writing.
As for any other musicians, Gonella says, “The guys who are really playing with us, we’ve played with them over the years now quite a bit, so it’s kind of like, I’d almost call it like a best of. We’ve played with all these different drummers or keyboard players, or violin players at different points while Sand Section was in different phases of our progression, and so now it’s kind of like we just picked the best of. But Jeff and I have always been kind of the, ya know, we were always the songwriters and it was always kinda our band. I think from here on out too it’s just gonna be Jeff and I’s faces as the band. Do you feel that way Jeff?”
Nisen responds, “Yeah, unless we find some wild card somewhere.”
Still life was released Nov. 7 and produced by local musician Gavin Heaney, who many know as the performer Latch Key Kid. Heaney brought in Pat Salmon from Tomorrows Bad Seeds on drums, and the album also features Stefan Partelow on percussion, and Andrea Babinski on violin. Conceptually, the project encapsulates the last year of Nisen and Gonella’s lives.
For a standout track titled “Time Machine,” Nisen says he wrote it in two completely different mindsets. “I began writing it as a way of basically telling a friend of mine to stop living in the past. He was having trouble getting over a relationship, so it was a way of saying, ‘Stop living in the past, there’s all sorts of great things happening all the time like right in front of you.’ The chorus says, ‘It’s here, it’s everywhere, it’s right in front of you, you can see it if you open up your eyes.’
“It was essentially a lighthearted, fun kind of pop-song-catchy-chorus-thing; but right about the time I was finishing it, a close friend of mine from college committed suicide. So at that point as I was writing it took on kind of a totally different meaning – it became not only a tribute to good friend, but just a way of helping myself cope with such an awful friggin’ tragedy. I finished writing it up in San Luis Obispo with tears in my eyes after my friend’s memorial. It ended up becoming a really emotional song, when it started out lighthearted and fun.”
One of Gonella’s songs, “Only Foolish Hearts Get Broken,” was written during a lengthy car ride from Santa Cruz to LA when he only had the 5-word chorus in his head with a melody.
“By the time I was in Santa Barbara the song was done,” he says. “It’s the only time that I’ve ever written a song like that, and I think it’s probably like one of the better ones that I’ve come up with.
“It’s basically about the flipside of a relationship where someone’s getting cheated on. Instead of the one who’s being cheated on, it’s kind of from the perspective of the person who’s doing the cheating… I was always dumbfounded by the fact that people don’t see it coming – like, I’ve never been in a situation where I didn’t see that happening, with my girlfriend or something; I would pull the parachute before that even happened and be like ‘alright this is done, I can see where this is going.’ And so the song is kind of written from the perspective of the guy who cheated on the girl, and just like ‘did you really not see that coming?’
“I don’t wanna say one way or the other, just because I don’t want to f–k anyone over – it’s either about me or it’s about a close friend of mine, but I can’t tell you which.”
Of the title track, Nisen says, “It’s actually a pretty emotional song that I wrote about a falling out with a friend of mine. The main theme is portrayed through the line, ‘Still life flows on like a river to the grave, it’s not about who you hate it’s who you save.’ Essentially meaning that even though someone may have given up on themselves, it’s no reason for you to give up on them. It’s trying to encourage someone to reach their full potential, but it’s kind of lamenting the fact that they have yet to do so and may never will… It took me about two years to write and my friend and I ended up coming back around full circle in the process.
“I think it kinda worked perfectly with this album cuz we kind of had some rough water with the band, but we’ve landed on our feet and we’re moving on with a brand new, fresh start – I guess is what it really represents, to me.”
Still Life is currently available on iTunes. No album release show is scheduled at this time. You can listen to Sand Section and Latch Key Kid on DirtyHippieRadio.com, streaming tunes 24/7 from the independent music community.
