Rademacher
By Veronica Young
Photo by Rachael Olmstead

When you're famous in Fresno, the next logical step is to get out. At least in the case of Rademacher, the Fresno-based pop/rock outfit assertively poised to take over the California indie landscape. They've been compared to Pavement, likened to The Walkmen and mentioned in the same breath as Grandaddy. In anticipation of their debut full length Stunts (released last month), they conceived an industrious plan to increase their exposure in outside markets within their reach.

"We've been touring in San Francisco and Los Angeles on and off for the past couple years, but going there every single week is a recent development," says guitarist Brad Basmajian. "We set up residencies in each of the cities [Fresno included] because we wanted to promote our first full length in a different way that would get attention, while getting us on the road without straying too far from home."

The four main players in the cast of Rademacher packed into two cars for the 200 mile trips back and forth between residencies. Malcolm Sosa is the force behind the lyrically-driven band, responsible for writing the songs and their witty, light-hearted and intelligent lines. Three years ago, it was just Sosa and Basmajian playing shows as a duo. After a few rounds of musical chairs, the two were fortunate enough to hook up with bassist Greer McGettrick, and less than six months ago with drummer Eli Reyes.
Together, the quartet has been extraordinarily good at nailing down gigs at hot spots up and down the state. "We'd been booking our own shows for a long time," says Sosa, "I'd call up people I knew who were music writers, bloggers, friends in these different cities and keep in touch with them. I'd chat with them about new records and kept things personal."

Because of these connections, Rademacher managed to book weekly residencies at The Knockout in San Francisco and Tokyo Garden in Fresno, as well as alternating weekly gigs at Eagle Rock Bowling & Drinking Club and Spaceland in L.A. throughout the month of November. "It is lucky that Fresno is right in the middle," McGettrick says, "especially since we are playing four or five shows a week." In tandem with these performance residencies, Rademacher booked an L.A. blog residency, in which they essentially pre-released Stunts for free via four local sites: Radio Free Silver Lake, You Set the Scene, Aquarium Drunkard and Inflight at Night.

Realizing that some fans might attend more than one show in each city, Sosa explains how Rademacher keep things fresh, "We started our residency tour out by covering old material, then for our second and third appearances we plan to bring out some of our newer material off of Stunts, and may even bust out some costumes. We're also going to try to play our new album from beginning to end, as straight as possible. Aaron doesn't think we can do it, and to be honest I don't know if we can either - but we're going to try!"

Sosa is referring to Aaron Espinoza from Earlimart (and originally from Fresno), who helped produce and engineer Stunts at The Ship, his recording studio in Eagle Rock. "We recorded all our EPs in my old production studio, Garden Salad, which was a really comfortable environment," says Basmajian. "So the biggest difference with Stunts was that we had to get it done in a certain amount of time, which got a little scary. But the pressure was beneficial."

The album's fun and quirky tracks, though all quite different, manage to be driving and fractured without sacrificing melody. "My favorite track has got to be 'Not My Home,'" says Basmajian. "It's one of those songs where we went into recording it without it being arranged - a 'learn as you go' type of thing. I just love the way it turned out. You wanna be riding your bicycle up a hill with headphones on, and just as you're about to go downhill this song will come on."

Rademacher look forward to more of this kind of forward momentum in 2008, planning to kick their touring schedule up a notch and bring the freshness of Fresno to the rest of the coast and the country. After all, after you conquer California, what's left but the world?

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