Undiscovered Band of the Month: Dark State Lines

Dark State Lines are a dark americana & indie rock outfit based in Seattle WA.  Guitarists/vocalists Cody Davis and Josiah Sumerlin are the southern transplants at the core of Dark State Lines. They have crafted a group of songs from which they hope channel the heart broken and lawless vibe inherent in the blues men and pioneers of rock n roll. Dark State Lines consider their selves Outlaw Music, an amalgam of their parents' generation of musicians and their own, paralleling the same societal influences of war, moral corruption, and heartbreak.
 
Dark State Lines are in the final days of mixing and mastering their full length album Hanging Out With Lucky (Ten Millimeter Omega Recordings) for release in January 2011. They will tour the east/southeast region directly following the record release, followed by the west coast in spring, and the northeast on the summer of 2011. One track from the forthcoming full length "Last Train To Tuscon" will be featured on a label compilation (Ten Years Of Ten Millimeter Omega Recordings) set for release on Sep. 26, 2010.
 
Cody Davis - Vocals & Lead Guitar, bass; Josiah Sumerlin - Vocals & Acoustic Guitar; Regan Hagar - Drums; Lou Alexander - Violin, bass; Sylvia Weidemann - Electric Guitar
 
l   MySpace   l   "Last Train" MP3   l

Who are your main influences?
Early Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Tom Waits, Velvet Underground, Staxx Records and Motown soul,  plus heavier things like Black Sabbath, The Ramones, Sonic Youth, Soundgarden, and Nirvana. We all like Reggae Music, especially the early rudeboy ska mixes like 'The Harder They Come' soundtrack. We consider ourselves to be a brand of Outlaw Music, like Johnny Cash or Jimmy Rogers were in America, and like Reggae represented the counter-culture, we too represent the moody and nocturnal wing of our generation.
 
How did you meet?
Cody & Josiah met in 2003 because we both moved to Seattle at the same time and were crashing on the same friend's couch until we got our own respective apartments. Cody had just arrived from a stint with a band in Los Angeles, and Josiah from living in Hawaii. Our interaction was that of casual, mutual admiration - until summer 2008 when Josiah threw a birthday party and Cody ended up there. We jammed on acoustic guitars all that night, and the next week we started putting songs together for a record. Cody met Regan Hagar when he was a west coast "bass-whore" playing bass for "From The North" a band put together by the surviving members of the pre-grunge, "Love Rock" band Malfunkshun - fronted by Brad, Satchel, and Pidgeonhead singer Shawn Smith, using the post-mortem lyrics of singer Andrew Wood. Cody and Regan toured together, and also recorded a heavy rock record called D.B.Cooper which was never released. Regan became a fan of Cody and Josiahs song crafting (which in spite of being semi-acoustic in general, are certainly dark and edgy - like Regan), so it was a natural fit that he play drums. Sylvia Weidemann, who played electric guitar on several songs was also the guitarist for the original all-female AC/DC tribute band Hell's Belles. Lou Anderson played violin.
 
What is your biggest achievement as a band to date?
Our Greatest Achievement is certainly the full-length album "Hanging Out With Lucky" which we have been working on since fall 2008. We have practiced the attitude that as long as we made a classic record it didn't matter if took forever. Luckily it did not take quite forever. Tracking was done at Studio Litho in Seattle is owned by Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard, and has been the incubator of many great recordings, including Deftones "Around The Fur", and a live Audioslave record. Regan got us a good price (or 'bro-deal' as they say)because he also plays with Stone Gossard in the band Brad (which we like better than Pearl Jam, but don't print that). We are mixing the record this fall of 2010 in Charlotte, NC as part of our association with the indie label 10mm Omega, a label started 10 years ago by Cody's Charlotte home-boy Jason Herring.
 
Favorite Bands?
Some current artists we like are The Black Keys, Ugly Casanova, Hank Williams 3, Eagles Of Death Metal, The Shins, The Flaming Lips, Massive Attack, M.I.A. and A. A. Bondie.
 
Where did the band name originate?
The name is the final product of a long list of terrible, mostly including some combination of Devils, Angels, Guns, and the word Black. Dark State Lines was meant to have an Americana Road-Dog feel (kinda like Austin City Limits), but is also a double meaning relating to lines written in songs with dark topics. It was the first name came up with that our friends didn't hate or get offended by, basically.