THE ACADEMY IS RELEASE A LIVE SOUNDING SANTI

The Academy Is have released ‘Santi’, which is the bands follow up to 2005’s ‘Almost Here’ and on the new album the band stepped away from writing songs on acoustic guitars and geared the album around the entire band playing live loud rock and roll together. While most of ‘Almost Here’ was written by lead vocalist William Beckett and guitarist Michael Carden, the band decided to write the album more as a tight five piece.

We caught up with William Beckett to discuss their songwriting process on ‘Santi.’

“Well the biggest difference between ‘Almost Here’ and ‘Santi’ is on ‘Almost Here’ Mike and I did the majority of the writing on acoustic guitars, like folk fashion. Where as on ‘Santi’ it was five guys writing in a warehouse together and playing live loud rock music. So I think that that’s one of the biggest differences in the nature of the songs themselves, you know it’s a more live sounding record.”

Another big difference between ‘Santi’ and anything The Academy Is have released in the past is the band enlisted the producing help of musician extraordinaire Butch Walker. We also talked with guitarist Michael Carden about how the collaboration between The Academy Is and Butch Walker began.

“Well we met Butch Walker, I would say two years ago and he was a fan of ‘Almost Here’ and he came to some of the shows when we played here in LA and we just kind of kept up a relationship with him. So demos were sent to him and songs and we spoke on the phone obviously about this record we were planning to make so when it came time to obviously put the producer in place, Butch was the guy to go to.”

Rolling Stone Magazine recently named The Academy Is as one of the top ten artists to watch in 2007. It was also announced that The Academy Is will be joining Fall Out Boy, +44, Cobra Starship, and Paul Wall on The 2007 Honda Civic Tour, with tour dates running from May 11th in Denver, Colorado until July 2nd in Anaheim, California.