Interview with Support Force

Jonathan Magdaleno and Douglas Smith of Support Force during a recent show at Rontoms

Support Force is a rising star in the Portland music scene for good reason. The triple guitar attack of this young act has been turning heads since its debut shows.

The band plays this Sunday as a part of Mischievous Productions’ up-and-coming bands showcase at Holocene. Recently we had a chance to speak with lead singer/guitarist Jonathan Magdaleno and guitarist Douglas Smith about an upcoming 7-inch and the Portland musical landscape. Here are excerpts from that conversation:

bePortland: Are you originally from Portland?

Jonathan Magdaleno: Doug and I are from southern California. We grew up in the suburbs together in this town that’s just right between LA and San Diego. And then our other guitar player, he’s from Fontana, CA, right near LA. And then our drummer is from Birmingham, Alabama, actually.

So how did you guys meet then?

JM: Doug and I have been best friends for the past seven years or so -- just hanging out, playing music. And then we met Booth, our drummer, through Craigslist. When I first moved up here I posted just an ad because I didn’t really know anyone. I had just recorded some music in a basement, wrote, “Hey, if anyone likes this, I’m looking to start a full project.” Booth responded and kind of blew my mind. He’s just a really awesome dude, we’ve been with him ever since. Then we met Nick, our other guitarist and newest member, because he was actually coming out to a lot of our shows. So at one point we said, “Oh, let’s just go talk to this dude, we see him a lot,” and he ended up being from the same area as us. We shared the same southern California-isms. So we just hit it off super well and he joined the band.

That makes it easier than having to dig for somebody again.

Doug Smith: We didn’t want to have to do that, and he was hanging out with us for a while before he joined, so it was really cool to be able to incorporate a friend.

JM: That’s the best part of being in a band, having some sort of connection or friendship with everyone. So much of being in a band is sharing similar interests and just wanting to hang out with the people outside of playing music. I feel like that’s the way you can start actually writing music collectively. We’ve definitely been fortunate with the lineup that we have now.

When did you start playing in shows together?

JM: We started out with a completely different line-up when it was more of a solo project.

DS: Yeah, we started in 2009. We used to have a keyboard player and Mike Cantina, from Archers, used to play in our group. He played our first three shows but then things kind of whittled down. Then we were a three-piece for a really long time.

JM: Yeah, we played shows for a couple of months, and then we kind of retreated and were writing from October until January/February of last year, just kind of figuring out our line-up and everything until we started out again. I consider us to fully have started in the beginning of 2010. That’s kind of when we were more structured and knew what we were doing. It was the beginning of the sound that we would continue to develop around that time period.

So you two played together before the band came together. What type of music were you playing then?

DS: It was kind of just solo acts really. I played under the name Light Life for a while in southern California. We put out a few things on our own and started a little label. Mostly we just released stuff for our friends. We would play shows around San Diego and LA. Things kind of started that way, and just progressed into what we’re doing now.

JM: Yeah, I have been playing in bands for a while, since high school and stuff. Then I started just playing solo when I was 16 and just kind of kept at it and releasing stuff on my own. Now culminating with the full band, it seems like it was just a natural process.

So what are the songs you’re playing now from? Those older days of solo shows?

JM: A lot of the stuff that we’re working on now I had written on a trip that I took down to southern California last August. I had stayed for about three or four months. In my hometown, all there is to do is play music in your garage, so I’d just kind of do that every day for a couple months. When I came back up with a batch of new songs we started piecing them together.

Unholy by Support Force

So are you collaborating more on more songwriting now, compared to you bringing the skeletons of songs to the band?

JM: Yeah, definitely. It’s for the better. When the Support Force project started out it was mostly me writing and guiding everything. I think I was 19 or 20 and I didn’t really know what I was doing. The collaboration has inevitably come out of us hanging out and sharing the same interests. When we everyone else start contributing ideas, I felt like we began working much better together. It was exciting to see us develop individually but together at the same time. So it became clear quickly that this definitely was not a solo project anymore, which was the best feeling ever.

So are you putting something out in the near future?

JM: Yeah, we’re coming out with a 7-inch early next year on High Scores and Records. We just finished recording and so we have to get it mastered and send it out to the presses.

Who’d you record it with?

JM: We recorded it with our friends at this collective’s house dubbed the Badlands. They have a studio there, and they’re some good friends of ours that we met through playing a show there. It’s great because that type of collaboration seems to be happening more and more nowadays. But this collective definitely has a really responsible way of doing things. When they have shows, they make sure that everyone leaves at 12 and that it doesn’t turn into like a party of any kind. They’re super nice dudes from New Jersey.

How do you think you’ve progressed from your last EP to the songs you just finished recording?

JM: At the very base level I think they’re better in that they’re more honest.

DS: More natural.

JM: They’re way more natural. It’s exciting. When we were writing songs before we could kind of tell it wasn’t exactly where we wanted to be. And so we’re closer to what our sound could be and what we think it should be. It’s been a development for us as individual musicians, developing our own individual styles.

If you were going to describe your sound to someone, how would you do that?

JM: It’s hard because every song is kind of different, at least in my opinion. We’ve kind of heard different things all the time, anytime people talk to us about it , which is cool. If I were to describe it to somebody, and I think I did this drunkenly one night but it sounded pretty accurate, I always kind of say it has tendencies of At the Drive-In, Broken Social Scene, John Lennon, and Al Green. But maybe those are just people or groups that have really inspired me.

I’ve seen bands with just three guitars and sometimes it’s too much, but you guys make it work. Is that something you did purposefully, or are you planning on adding a bassist?

JM: We’ve talked about it. We’ve tried out and played with bassists before. But we always felt that in a certain way, it kind of limited our sound to a one that’s very contemporary and one that we feel like we’ve heard a lot before. There’s something we found in having a third guitar where we could have this completely different sonic register while still maintaining a really bass-like element. And there are things that we use to kind of help with that. For example, with my guitar setup, one speaker is a guitar amp speaker, and the other one’s a bass amp speaker. It’s also in the way we cue things. We always really focus on melody and how there can always be a low-end in some form. Our drummer also tunes his drums a certain way so the toms can be a very solid foundation. It’s definitely something we’ve put a lot of thought into.

What do you think of the music scene here? Compared to, perhaps, Southern California?

JM: I really like the sense of community here. Anywhere you go, you’re not going to enjoy 100% of the acts that are going on. But there are a lot of really genuine artists and musicians up here. It’s definitely the most supportive environment that I’ve ever been in musically, and I think that’s a really good place to be if you’re a musician in general, regardless of if you know anyone or if you have a favorite band in the scene. There’s a lot of national attention on Portland right now for that very reason. I think it’s only going to get better.

DS: I agree. Where we grew up, music was such a frowned upon thing. There was only one place you could play music and the cops quickly clamped it down on. It’s just such a strange leap where I see so many bands here that if I saw them growing up I would lose my shit. It’s just cool to live in a community where being creative is natural. It’s a very welcome change from what I’m used to and it’s easy to forget about.

JM: In SOCAL it was us and these three other dudes that were best friends that would just play music and follow it. We’d get called faggot as we walked down the street. It seemed like we definitely stood out. I guess when you are so into music, naturally you will look like it or whatever. That was just kind of a bad attitude they had down there. Wasn’t exactly a hospitable place.

Since you both go to PSU, what do you guys think of the PSU culture?

JM: If there is one.

DS: I wish there was more. It seems like they make some good attempts. Actually, they’ve been doing live shows like every Tuesday and Thursday in that lunch area, and sometimes they do it outside. They’ve been bringing in some really sick bands. It’s just been great for me because it’s just right in between where I get out of class. I have an hour break at that time so I get to watch a band. I saw Radiation City last time.

JM: There’s a café in the basement that throws shows every once in a while. And they actually get a pretty good turnout. But I wouldn’t say it’s exclusive to PSU students. There’s definitely not like a sense of solidarity or a real cohesive student body of any kind. It’s interesting.

What do you guys see for the future? Full release? Tours? Writing?

JM: What we plan on doing is the 7-inch is going be coming out sometime around February or March next year. We’re going to go on two tours, one around April and then another later in the summer time, primarily in support of that release and other material that we’re going release with it as like a side EP. After that, kind of toward the end of next year, we’re going to start working on recording a full-length. I mean, we’ve already started writing for it, but we want put as much time and focus into it as possible.