Echo Echo, formerly known as the Steve Carson Band (named for the band's front man, Steve Carson), have garnered comparisons to Radiohead, U2 and Snowpatrol for their alt-rock sound after releasing two EPs and the LP “Fall Like You're Flying.” But the group—Andrew Carter, Bruce Yolken, Darren Carr and Jameson Burt, plus Carson—aren't concerned with mirroring anyone else's work or falling in line with the established SoCal sound. Instead, they are working as a creative unit, writing songs together and collaborating on ideas to create an image and voice entirely their own.
OC Weekly: How did you come up with the name Echo Echo?
Steve Carson: Our producer [Richard Hine] had this idea that we would each get five pieces of paper and write down some words we like, and we'd put the papers in a hat and each pick two, and the two words that we liked paired together would be the name of the band. After a few rounds of that, we came up with some pretty ridiculous names.
How did you guys get all that footage of 90 people lip-syncing the lyrics of “Good Morning” for the song's video, and why did you omit yourselves from the video?
I thought, “Let's do something different; let's have other people sing the song.” It was something I wanted to do that would not only involve fans and potential fans, but would also have more of a community feel, in which everybody was a part of this video. When we started filming, we started out by saying it would be all strangers, and we would just walk up to people and say, “Hey, you wanna be in a rock video?” Everybody in the video [was filmed in] Orange County, except I made one trip to Long Beach.
Did the band have a lot to do with the album-cover art?
Yeah, that's all us. We did a band photo shoot in my parent's back yard. I had an old piano, and I tried to give it away for free, but no one would take it. So, I said, “I'm gonna use this for our photo shoot.” We're just eating, drinking, having a good time, and I dunno—I just got to the point where I was looking at the piano, and I went to my dad, “Do you have any lighter fluid?” . . . I sprayed the keys down, and I lit it on fire and started shooting pictures. Then Bruce was like, “WHAT'S THIS LION? . . . WHAT'S THIS LION OVER HERE?” [It was a lion statue] We set the lion on the piano stool and basically burned the piano down. A couple of weeks ago, we had a show, and some guy bought the vinyl and was like, “I love this cover man; it's cool. Who did your Photoshop and graphic design?” And I was like, “No, those are real.”
You were like, “Dude, I have lions and burning pianos in my back yard.”
Yeah, somebody actually said, “Oh, I would've taken that piano.” I think of the guy I got that piano from being like, “Man, you lit my piano on fire.” But now that I think about it, I'm like, “Yeah, there was going to come a day where I was going light it on fire.”
This column appeared in print as “Lions and Burning Pianos—Oh, My!”
