Roanoke - Many indie-pop music lovers around here are familiar with Shapiro because they played many shows in Roanoke not too long ago.  Nowadays, the band is known as one of Harrisonburg’s most popular acts.  Having been snowed out their last time through, they are playing their second attempt at the Penn Forest Worship Center.  We are all hoping that tonight all the little flurries in the air are just pollen.

After setting up equipment for the show with the two local bands, Twelve O’Clock Knob and the John Barry Conception, half of the members of Shapiro showed up in a white tour van.  Jeremy Teter (vocalist), John Granofsky (drums), and Aaron Parker (special guest guitarist, known for his work with the K-Word, the Silent Press, and many other projects) came in the side door and shook all of the band members’ hands very graciously.  They came in and set up with a little time to hang out before they went on.

I went outside to see what everybody was doing.  Jeremy was just hanging in the passenger’s side of the van by himself at the moment so I asked if it was a good time to ask him a couple questions.

33: Thanks for coming.  How are you doing?
Jeremy Teter: Doing well.  We are booking a summer nationwide tour.  It’s a lot of work but it’s coming together.  Should be fun.  We’ll be out for about a month and a half.

33: Where are you planning on going?
JT: I think we’re going to kick off the tour in North Carolina.  Then, we’re going to go down to Florida on a Southern route.  Then, we’ll go up to Portland and over.  We should hit up Boston before we go back down.

33: Sounds pretty awesome!  When are you aiming to make this happen?
JT: Sometime in June until the last week of July. 

33: Is the show tonight part of a tour or is this a special trip?
JT: We just had two shows planned this weekend.  Special trip. 

33: You guys came from Harrisonburg today, right?
JT: Yeah, we played in West Virginia last night.

33: Where did you play?
JT: Franklin.  It’s a really small town.  Our drummer’s sister was putting on a little festival called Spring Fest.  We played and Nathan’s other band played.  It was a really good time.

33: What is Nathan’s other band?
JT: A band called Song Suns.

[About this time, the rest of Shapiro arrived at the van]

33: Just to get the story straight, what is the band’s background prior to Harrisonburg?
JT: We started in Harrisonburg.  None of us have lived in Roanoke.  We toured with a band from Roanoke, the Silent Press, a long time ago.  Aaron Parker, former member of the Silent Press, is actually filling in for our guitarist tonight.  He’s doing a really bad job. [joking with Aaron as he is getting ready to leave]

33: Do you enjoy playing The Kirk Avenue Music Hall? What other venues in Roanoke do you like?
JT: Yeah, we liked playing there.
CS: [Looking around at bandmates]  Where else did we play before Kirk Avenue?
John Granofsky: I remember the Water Heater [all nod].

33: Are there any least favorite places or maybe just really bad experiences here?
JT: [hesitates] Green Dolphin [everybody laughs].  We played a show there a long while back.  It was just bad.
Nathan Granofsky: We really just weren’t what they were looking for.  They were expecting us to play three hours and when we got there, we just played thirty minutes.  Then they all were like, “Wait.  What are you doing?  Keep playing!”
JG: I just remembered a good show at Hollins College.
JT: Yeah, Hollins was fun!
CS: Alejandro’s at Hollins was great food!  We didn’t play there.  I just liked it.

33: So what venues do you like to play in Harrisonburg?
JT: Venues?  Well, there aren’t many.  I mean, my favorite places to play at home are house parties.
CS: Yeah, Yeah!  I was about to say.
JT: But there aren’t too many of those anymore.

33: So it appears that the MacRock Festival is a big festival for you all.
JG: It is big.  We played four years in a row, but the last two years, we had other things going on.  This year we had shows in New York and Baltimore, and last year we had our album release party two weeks after MacRock so we didn’t want two Harrisonburg shows too close to each other.  MacRock is good.
JT: [to Nathan] Why didn’t you all play MacRock this year?
NG: We were on tour!  There were some pretty ridiculous shows, too!  I had a lot of fun though.

33: Who are the brothers here?
JG: Nathan and I. I know it doesn’t look like it. 

33: Is there any sibling related conflict within the band?
NG: Conflict?
JT: Pssh.  There’s tons of conflict.  You don’t want to talk about that.
JG: There’s pros and cons, you know.  We’re family so we don’t have the fear of taking new paths and playing shows.
NG: We hate each other so much and that hate comes across in our music, which makes it rock more.  It works out.

33: I can definitely feel the hate when I listen to your music.  Jeremy is blood related to you, too, right?
JT: That’s correct… We think.
NG: Jeremy doesn’t have a test tube.  He was born in a test tube. 

33: All of you are blood-related except for Carl Shapiro, which is where the band name derived from.  Where did you find Carl?
JG: We used to skate together.

33: I saw on a link from the Shapiro People website [ShapiroPeople.com] that Shapiro’s Arabic translation means “pretty or good”.  Was that at all intended or just coincidence?
JG: We just like to think that we are pretty good.  But no, we found that out after we named the band Shapiro.

33: What would you say you are influenced by?
NG: Sex.
JG: You don’t have to put that.  Are you talking about music or influences in general?

33: What music influenced you all the most?  I was talking in general or just musically.
NG: In general, you could say clouds and triangles.
JT: I’d say we are all influenced by Spoon and we grew up listening to Newsboys.  We all have individual tastes though.

33: What are some individual influences?
JT: I like Brian Wilson.
JG: That’s the thing.  Some of us have weird tastes like Kings of Leon and Charles Mingus.  We don’t play music like we listen to.
JT: We listen to a bunch of old music.  You can say Christian music because we grew up listening to that.

I had to wrap it up because I needed to start setting up with my band, Twelve O’ Clock Knob.  I said thanks to the band for letting me get an interview, and they were very gracious.  Overall, they were very fun to hang out with and I was very anxious to see them play live.

After seeing them play, I was stunned.  Jeremy’s falsetto, tenor vocals were great layered over his broad piano playing.  Nathan played upbeat, intricate guitar solos in many songs like “L-E-A-V-I-N-G”.  He was so full of energy, jumping high into the air and stomping on the beats.  Towards the end, he took it down when we played his synthesizer, but he kept the energy high.  Carl kept the bass strong the whole time.  Aaron Parker was doing a great job filling in.  I did not hear one off note, and he played both guitar and a moog keyboard!  The best thing that had my attention was their drummer, John.  He was laughing and having a great time.  He put his whole body and facial expressions into his drumming and foreshadowed many crashes and progressions without giving too much.

Shapiro had everybody humming and singing along.  For a Harrisonburg-based band, you would think they were Roanoke local for having so many dedicated fans engaged and singing the lyrics word for word.  They were so laid back, too.  They explained how Aaron was filling in during small tuning breaks, and they made jokes about playing the old school arcade games in the back room.  They played a couple downbeat songs, but they made everybody feel good and had everybody’s attention.  The band was asked to play an encore so they played "Soporific (When I'm With You)".  It was a great ending, especially for those who knew the words.

MySpace.com/shapiro

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