Social Networking Site Huge for Evans Blue

For St. Louis musician Dan Chandler, MySpace turned out to be more than a social networking site. It gave him the opportunity to try out for--and eventually be hired as--the new lead singer for Toronto-based rock group Evans Blue.

"I was familiar with Evans Blue as far as the songs on the radio," Chandler told Noisecreep. "I had a lot of friends who were fans of theirs. I was introduced to them awhile back. A friend of mine told me they were looking for a singer and, at the time, the band I was in (switchthree), we weren't really doing anything too serious at the time.

"So I MySpace'd them and asked them what I had to do to get involved. They sent me a couple tracks. I sang on them then they sent me an original track. I wrote to it and sang on it and sent it back. And it seemed like everything flew into place. After that, they flew me out to Toronto to see how we would gel together and it went perfect. It was really good."

Chandler and the rest of the band -- rhythm guitarist Parker Lauzon, lead guitarist Vlad Tanaskovic, bassist Joe Pitter and drummer Davis Howard -- will be on the road for most of the year to promote the release of their third album with producer Trevor Kustiak called 'evans|blue.'

Evans Blue debuted in 2006 with 'The Melody and the Energetic Nature of Volume,' which spawned the Top 5 Active Rock single "Cold (But I'm Still Here)." Their second album, 'The Pursuit Begins When This Portrayal of Life Ends,' was released in July 2007 and debuted at number 44 on the Billboard Top 200 and number nine on the iTunes Rock Albums chart. Since then, the two albums have collectively sold more than 650,000 units worldwide. Evans Blue has toured North America extensively for the past three years with such artists as Breaking Benjamin, Three Days Grace, Staind, Seether, Shinedown, Trapt and Taproot.

Chandler, who replaced Kevin Matisyn, said the chemistry in the studio was palpable when all five guys got together. While Chandler lives in St. Louis, Howard lives in Houston. The remaining band members live in the Toronto area.

"It was really awesome," said Chandler, who, the day of the interview, was enthusiastic after receiving a shipment of "evans|blue" CDs at his St. Louis home. "It was actually really easy. The whole writing process was smooth. The songs just kind of came together and since we have so much distance between us, I thought that might play an issue in getting the album as quick as possible. But there was no glitch. We just sent tracks over and we'd write to them. The studio was great. Everything was awesome."

The first single from the album is "Sick of It," but Chandler hopes "The Future in the End" sees the light of day.

"'Sick of It,' that song was actually released before the album was completed," Chandler said. "There are a lot of songs on there that have single potential. That one, right off the bat, we really fell in love with and thought that having that anthemic chorus would get the crowd involved at the live shows. We thought that was appropriate. But everybody has their favorites.

"Right now I would say mine is 'The Future in the End.' I'm really a big fan of that song. I think that one really stands out. I originally wrote that song as an R&B kind of on the piano kind of a song. It's really strange to convert it to rock. I thought if I'd put some guitars behind it and we'd thicken this up this could really do something. I brought it to the table and everybody really took on to it. It came out pretty good."