The Void Union (click to buy album)

Hello all.  Things are going well in the Satori camp.  Rich Graiko (from The Void Union and Westbound Train) is mixing most of the tracks and they are all sounding really good.

So here is a little inside on the process.  I have all of the files on my computer and then I have to organize the ones I want to use and when I am happy with the track I send it to Rich.  He then does his magic and then he sends it back to me and we make a few minor adjustments and the song is done.  It is almost like sending the track into a magic time warp.

I can’t wait to share the new album with you all.

Steve

Satori Live In Boston

It’s 4 AM and I’m driving a supposedly eco-friendly school bus through the dark hills of some northeastern state.

Is it Maine? Massachusetts? New York?

We roll at a steady 20 miles-per-hour, maybe 30 or 40 if we hit a downward slope. There’s really no way of knowing our speed without a working speedometer, or the luxury of other cars to provide relative movement. It’s just us and this endless road, occasionally illuminated in the flicker of unnecessary hazard lights.

My ears are teased by the faint hint of a David Bazan song I’ve heard countless times since that moment before dawn when Steve first played it for me on one of these late-night drives. Does this shitty bus have shitty speakers, or is its half-hearted roar actually loud enough to drown out my last resort of entertainment?

Glancing upwards toward the all-seeing, all-knowing mirror, seeing the depth of this monstrosity, I know now how the bus drivers of my early days felt. The sheer size of the thing presses the weight of responsibility into your gut and fills your head with the drunken illusion of power. I control the fate of these limbs and guitars, these bodies and basses. Look at them sleeping, dreaming. Or am I dreaming? I see Jesse’s feet stretched across the aisle, which makes up the center of his bed for these few, but long-awaited hours of rest. Has he slept at all these past few days? Are these the first moments he’s had away from the giant wheel of this beast? I notice his dreadlocks strewn about the seat, and for a moment they begin to morph into snakes, slipping and sliding up the walls and out the windows.

Looking back at the road, I chuckle at my twilight delirium, before remembering I’m not alone.

“So, what do you want to hear next?” Steve says, bringing me back.

“You decide. Play me something I haven’t heard.”

Steve is a quiet companion, but a companion nonetheless, and while every other late-night passenger promises to stay awake, he’s the only one who manages to follow through. Within the grand spectrum of our lives, Steve and I really haven’t spent all that much time together. Despite this, I still call him one of my good friends, and I still feel that even if I didn’t see him for another month, another year, another decade, I would still feel this way the next time he came around.

Satori is much the same way. I’d be hard-pressed to count more than 20 shows I’ve played with Satori, if even that many, and yet I feel forever a part of it. When I think back on the time I’ve spent with the band, it’s less a period of time than a series of moments, both onstage and offstage, in which I was completely at home, and happy. Even driving that bus, when my body wanted nothing more than to be asleep, when the heat from the engine was nearly unbearable, when my leg was cramping up from being consistently forced down upon the seemingly inoperative gas pedal, even then was a moment in which I was exactly where I wanted to be.

Satori is and it isn’t Steve. It is Steve, because it represents how he lives his life, as something he holds dear in his hands and yet longs to share with the world. It isn’t Steve, because it is everyone else he has welcomed into its folds. Whether they were in Satori for a day or a month, they are in it now.

I look forward to my next Satori show, whenever that may be, and I hope that in my life I’m able to stay true to the things I love so deeply, as Steve has done and continues to do.

-Kevin

Kevin Verni On Guitar

Jesse Hayes, Steven Jess Borth II, Casey Gruttadaria Photo taken by Diana Levine

Many may not know this, but Jesse has been a huge part of the Satori story.  He has been there for me time and time again.  When I started to do Satori as my full time project, Jesse was ready to go.  He took a flight to Los Angeles, where we  set up a mini studio in my friend Chris Candy’s garage, to record what turned into “Leaves May Fall.”

That session ended up being a lot of fun and the template that we used for songwriting is still the format that I use for most of my recording projects to this day.

Jesse also came through for me in the past year when I wanted to setup some shows on the East Coast.  He arranged everything for me, housing, a great band, and shows to play.  We ended up playing shows on and off last winter and it went really well.

I plan on working with Jesse for many years.  :)

Steve