After winning the spotlight feature from National Rock Review’s Michigan Music Showcase, Sons of Sabotage sat down with us for an interview.

Hard rock band Sons of Sabotage had their debut show in National Rock Review’s Michigan Music Showcase. Performing along with Detroit favorites such as A.S.S., Reign, and The Kung Fu Lovers, this young band held their own, bringing in the biggest crowd and catapulting the night into a frenzy of hard rock with a heavy metal twist. Vocalist Chris Mosier, guitarist Matt Yoder, drummer Tim Hoeft, and bassist Anthony Tippy sat down to talk to National Rock Review about their formation, their first album, their sound, and plans for the future.

NRR: Tell us about your band and how you came to be. Why the name Sons Of Sabotage? What history do other members of the band have playing in bands?
Tippy: I was asked if I wanted to play bass in the band, the rest is history. As far as experience, I’ve been doing music related things since I was 12. I’m still very excited every time I get a chance to perform.
Yoder: Short story, me and Chris left our last band that we started together in the high school due to rather severe creative differences. And then we created this new group under a different moniker.
Mosier: Me and Yoder had played in a band together previously so I started the band at first because I wanted to continue to work with him. Later on we asked Tim to join us followed by Tippy. The name, Sons of Sabotage, was chosen because it had a nice ring to it. For me it also kind of felt like a brotherhood, and a banner under which me and my friends could make music if you will.

NRR: What influences drive the music writing process?
Yoder: Well, if you mean my musical influences, then I would have to say blues and folk music are the types that resonate the most with me, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Ray LaMontagne which leads to metal artists like Zakk Wylde. If you are looking for what drives us though I would say the ecstasy of writing a good song as a group.
Mosier: For me my musical influences are mainly the hard rock and metal bands that I listen to. Bands like Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, and Motorhead. That style of music just really resonates with me. Plus hard rock music just has a great feel to it that makes it really fun to sing.
Tippy: As a bassist, I try to find unique, yet not obscure rhythms that complement the songs that we write, while not being generic. I’d love to add some walking basslines to the mix, but that is something that I see being implemented down the line.

NRR: The showcase was your first gig live as a band. What were your emotions like leading up to the event?
Yoder: My emotions in the previous week were actually a mix of muted excitement and stress. This being my first large show in years made it a little rough on the senses, also being the venue where my now late father last saw me playing meant an underlying stutter in my thinking.
Mosier: For me the emotions of performing my first show with this band were mainly excitement. To me this show was about me sharing the stage with lots of great bands and performing with my three best friends. There were moments were I was nervous but more than anything I was just pumped to perform the songs that we had written together as a band.
Tippy: We worked very hard to write what we feel is solid with value and meaning to it. It was very rewarding to see all our hard work and effort having been put to use.

NRR: You have an album in the works. When do you expect it to be released?
Yoder: If I had what I wanted, probably sometime in the late summer. But funds and schedules do not always mesh together as well as we would hope. I can promise that we will not spend our time lightly within the studio, because anyone willing to pay for our sound deserves something well orchestrated.
Mosier: I’m not entirely sure when that will happen. More than anything it’s like Yoder said, we really want to improve our equipment so that we can give a better show and see what kind of reactions we get from these songs. So that we can put out the best album that we can.
Tippy: Sometime within the next year hopefully. We are very excited to get into the studio and do some of our own recordings as I am a sound engineer in training right now. It’s very cool to have a medium in which to record while I learn more.

NRR: What are your goals for the future?
Mosier: Our goals for the future are to continue to rehearse, write and perform so that we can grow as a band. The next goal for the immediate future is to book more shows so that we can bring our music to a bigger audience.
Yoder: At this point, we need to look at better equipment, fine-tuning our overall dynamic and of course more performances; this one took two years to get ready for. It’s about time for us to get this train moving.
Tippy: Start playing shows on a consistent basis. Finish up the album, and keep building more and more.

Drummer Tim Hoeft, had his own response to the interview.
Hoeft: These questions are great and all, but what wasn’t asked was why. Why dedicate anything to a project like this? Why still keep going, after practicing for years without a show, many failed attempts at making shareable material? That’s the question I am going to answer. After dedicating more than 2 years to this project, I have been asking myself this frequently. I’ve been playing music since grade school, and even before that, music has always been in my life. But I don’t do it for music. My family influences the choices I make in my music growing up, but I don’t do it for my family. I surround myself with the best and brightest people I can find who support the choices I make on a daily basis, wrong or right. But I don’t make music for my friends. People in general may like how I sound and appreciate what I do on the drums, but they are not the reason I do what I do. Years back all of my friends and everyone I went to school with had these big goals and dreams to chase. Now, they work a job they hate, pay to learn things they have little to no interest in, or live a life they don’t choose for themselves. I do this in defiance of that. I do this because I refuse to let my dreams get washed and wasted away by the monotony of mediocrity. I live my life for me, and I hope others start doing the same. I was thrilled to do this show and to be granted this interview opportunity, and I know that this is not the last time Sons of Sabotage will play.

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Sons of Sabotage
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Read our review of the NRR Michigan Music Showcase event, which included Sons of Sabotage.