Boys Like Girls
Martin Johnson - vocals, guitar
Paul DiGiovanni - lead guitar, vocals
Bryan Donahue - bass guitar, vocals
John Keefe - drums, percussion
“I feel like it’s been a wonderful chain of events,” says Boys Like Girls frontman Martin Johnson regarding the seemingly meteoric rise of his band. “It didn’t start feeling rapid until last spring, the first time we heard ‘The Great Escape’ on the radio. Since then it’s been a whirlwind. We base our success on the amount of kids singing the words back to us. Watching that number grow from 30 kids in basements and churches to thousands of fans in arenas is the most amazing feeling in the world.”
Life for Boys Like Girls has been an escalating series of amazing feelings and extraordinary events since the release of the Boston-based band’s eponymous debut album in August 2006.
Produced by Matt Squire (Panic! At The Disco, Northstar, Hit The Lights), the RIAA Gold-certified Boys Like Girls spent more than forty weeks on the Billboard Heatseekers Top New Artist chart and the SoundScan Alternative New Artist Sales chart, reaching #1 on both charts for three weeks running in June 2007. The album hit #55 on the Billboard Top 200 that August, remaining on that chart well into 2008.
Boys Like Girls generated two massive crossover hits: “Hero/Heroine” (which charted on Billboard’s Hot Digital Songs, Pop 100, Pop 100 Airplay, Top 40 Mainstream and Hot 100 charts) and “The Great Escape,” an RIAA Platinum-certified smash on Billboard’s Hot Adult Top 40 Tracks (#20), Hot Digital Songs (#17), Pop 100 (#9), Pop 100 Airplay (#7), Top 40 Mainstream (#8) and Hot 100 (#23) charts.
In 2007, Boys Like Girls won—with more than 68% of the votes—Spin.com’s coveted “Artist of the Year” honors and were named one of Alternative Press’s “100 Bands You Need To Know in 2007” as well as making the AOL “Breakers” cut.
The group’s spell-binding video for “The Great Escape,” lensed by director Alan Ferguson (Fall Out Boy), hit the #1 slot on MTV’s “TRL” a remarkable nine times and was retired from the countdown after 40 days on the chart.
Boys Like Girls received high profile coverage in USA Today, which accorded the band an “On The Verge” piece (July 26, 2007) while naming the Boys Like Girls single, “The Great Escape,” its “Pick Of The Week” (July 17, 2007).
After spending the summer of 2007 performing a series of highly-successful shows on the Vans Warped Tour, Boys Like Girls, a veritable touring machine minting pure fandemonium at every show, headlined the SRO “Tourzilla” concert extravaganza. Boys Like Girls spent much of January 2008 touring Japan and the UK before returning stateside for a run of shows opening for Avril Lavigne from March through May 2008.
The roots of Boys Like Girls lie back in the regional band scene of Taunton, Massachusetts when 17-year-old Martin Johnson, then lead vocalist for The Drive, a local punk band, met John Keefe, then drummer for Strutter, another local group. The groups began touring together, hitting bars, coffee shops, teen centers and VFW halls in the region. Before long, Martin and John had become best friends, forming the solid musical connection that would form the foundation of Boys Like Girls. John brought bassist Bryan Donahue to the party and the threesome--calling their fledgling rock band “Lancaster"--rented out a small practice space and living quarters in Taunton.
“Every day we would go to our day jobs,” Martin remembers. “I was waiting tables and folding clothes, Bryan was stocking shelves at CVS, and John was landscaping for his brother’s company. Every night we would practice until they kicked us out of the practice space. We were writing songs non-stop. Eventually we were evicted from the apartment (for excessive noise complaints of course) and all of us quit our jobs. This was where we really decided to take the band to the next level and pursue it full time, do or die.”
Bryan and John had met guitarist Paul DiGiovanni, then 17 and a senior in high school, while helping a friend with a demo. (Months later, John and Paul would discover that they were distant cousins.) “We rented out a new practice room and jammed with Paul for the first time,” Martin recalls. “Things immediately clicked: old songs were given a new life, new songs were budding by the second, and we were beyond inspired.”
In November 2005, Martin “thought of the name as a joke at 4:30 in the morning. We eventually fell in love with it. I think of it as social commentary on the constant chase between boys and girls. Wherever you go--from a high school hallway to a crowded bar--it’s what makes the world go round.”
The newly christened Boys Like Girls began practicing eight hours a day, playing their first gig at Club DeNiro, a now defunct venue attached to the Taunton practice space where they’d rehearsed from 2003-2005. “There were about 30 people there and they were mostly just friends and family,” Martin recalls. “We only played about six local shows before our first tour, because we pretty much locked ourselves in our practice space writing the record.”
The lovingly-crafted Boys Like Girls sound reflects each of the band member’s musical influences and interests. Primary songsmith Martin Johnson grew up surrounded by the classics--the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, the Everly Brothers, Paul Simon, the Rolling Stones, U2, the Police. “Music was always played in my house,” he remembers. “I got my first guitar when I was 7 and, rather than learning cover songs, I taught myself how to play by writing my own songs and teaching myself my own chords.
“When we arrange songs, everyone has a different set of ideas to bring to the table,” Martin continues. “I love anything with an honest lyric and a great pop melody. John draws influences from old 40s jazz records to 90s grunge rock like Pearl Jam, Tool, Nirvana, and Soundgarden with a big soft spot for a massive pop hook. Bryan’s influences come from bands like Glassjaw and the Deftones and newer bands like Minus The Bear. He always knows what’s new and hot in the underground scene. Paul grew up playing jazz and blues on guitar listening to the greats such as Stevie Ray Vaughan, the Allman Brothers Band and Tom Petty. In high school, he found himself falling in love with bands like Saves The Day, the Get Up Kids, Copeland, Death Cab For Cutie and fused his influences into a very unique style of guitar playing.”
Drawing inspiration from real life situations and experiences, Martin poured himself into creating the songs for the Boys Like Girls debut album. “My songs are my diary,” he says. “Rather than keeping a journal, I write music. Every song is taken from a real life experience and tells a story. Our album is basically a run-through of my life from ages 18-21, my relationships, what it was like being thrown out into the real world and leaving my hometown comfort zone, losing my mother. It’s a commentary on life and my own personality.”
They posted their first demos--an acoustic version of “Thunder” and a rough electric rendition of “The Great Escape"--online. According to Martin, “The demos got immediate attention from purevolume.com, myspace.com, and absolutepunk.net. We rose to the top of the purevolume unsigned band charts within weeks.” Before long, Boys Like Girls had inked a deal with Red Ink/Columbia Records.
“The Internet was huge for us,” Martin admits. “It’s a blessing. It lets the fans--not the industry folk--decide who gets attention! All our early promotion was entirely based on the Internet, from the millions who watched our videos on YouTube to the millions who streamed our songs on myspace. Word of mouth at cyber speed was basically the way we built our fanbase.”
The members of Boys Like Girls are humble in the face of the group’s burgeoning success. “We haven’t changed at all as people,” Martin allows. “When we go home Bryan still drives around the 15 passenger van, we all still live with our parents, we all still do the dishes and take out the trash. We love our fans so being recognized in public is a compliment to us because the people we care about the most are those who love our music. None of us are ever too busy for a picture, autograph or a quick conversation.”
Coming up on the horizon is The Soundtrack of Your Summer headline tour. After that, the lads plan on getting down to writing and recording a new album filled with the unforgettable melodies, insightful lyrics and uplifting sounds that make Boys Like Girls one of the great American bands to watch in 2008 and beyond.
http://www.boyslikegirls.com
http://www.myspace.com/boyslikegirls
http://www.columbiarecords.com
