The Countermen (From left to right: Andrew Vardanega; Dante Cairns; and Justin Clare) playing a live show at The Boardwalk in 2019. (Photo Credit: Odin Rasco)

The Countermen’s newest single, 2 AM, is finally out after two years of waiting for the band’s earliest fans.

Taking a break from his busy schedule of social distancing (like everyone else in California), Andrew Vardanega, frontman of the Sacramento-based band The Countermen, spoke with me about 2 AM’s recording and release, as well as the band’s past, present, and now unclear future.

For the sake of ‘journalistic integrity’ (which, as I won’t be taking a course on it for a few months yet, this will just be my best guess at what that means) I feel it is important to lay out my involvement with The Countermen. The first show they were ever booked on was in May 2018- the first show I produced- and they have been involved with every show I have put on since. I have been friends with the band basically since their inception, and have had the luck to count Andrew Vardanega as one of my best friend for years now. I can without hesitation say that I have made it to a majority of their live shows, I wear their shirts at most of my own performances (twice now leading to fake blood stains on my white Countermen shirts), and I listen to their music a lot- they were on the first suggestion playlist I put up on this site. As both their friend and as a producer of a few of their shows, they have shared a number of unreleased recordings and demos, I have a trove of recordings of their performances at my own shows that could one day make me a killing in bootleg sales. While I am clearly a fan of their work, I do want to assure you this is not the empty support of ‘oh, my friends started a band and I have to be supportive.’ I consider myself to be honest with my friends about their artistic endeavors, and will not shower praise on something that is undeserving of it. And this band is highly deserving of all the praise they receive.

“This song’s a long time coming. It’s a really important one to the band and it’s exciting to see it finally done and out.”

The cover art for The Countermen’s latest single, 2 AM.

The Countermen started off as a soundtrack to the short film “Someday,” which Justin Clare was writing and directing in 2017. As it was described in its announcement Instagram post, “Someday is about High School, Guitars, and Dreams.” While the final project is not publicly available, I can confirm that synopsis is apt; the 23-minute story centers on the longingness of big-time dreams while living stuck in a small town (a theme all too understandable for both The Countermen and myself, all of us starting off in Placerville, CA). Andrew Vardanega was just about to move back to Placerville from San Francisco when he ran into Justin Clare, a close friend from high school, at a party. As both had bonded over music in high school, Justin asked for Andrew’s help in writing the soundtrack for the film. At around the same time this conversation happened, Andrew had been playing as a fill-in for another band, where he met the drummer Dante Cairns, who he included in the project; Justin met Trevor Matson, a mutual friend through Andrew, and invited him to play bass with them. The opening shots of the short film (a fair portion of which was filmed in Andrew’s house) linger on a Strokes album, and photographs of The White Stripes and Morrissey, all of whom can be listed as influences on the band. Moments later, as the screen displays the title card of the film, the recognizable opening riff of 2 AM starts playing.

The version that plays in “Someday” is the first recorded version of 2 AM; the version now available on Spotify and Apple is the fourth. From the first time the rest of the band heard Justin play the opening riff for the first time, they knew they had to do something with it- they hammered out the chords of the song the same day. And then, coming home from work a couple days later, the lyrics came to Andrew and the band pulled their gear into his living room immediately and played through the song, and afterwards went to Bricks (a restaurant and bar on Main Street in Placerville) to celebrate the occasion. The first recording was basically an at-home demo which was featured in Justin’s film. The sound is alright, though the structure and sound of the song has evolved through years of play and with more opportunities available in a studio setting. While the band liked the recording, they were unhappy with the tempo, feeling it wasn’t fast enough to match the speed and energy of how it sounds live. And so, they tried again while they were recording the songs that would make up their debut EP which came out July of last year, but once again, they just couldn’t seem to match the feel and speed they felt the song needed, even after a long and eventually intoxicated quest of Andrew’s to nail the solo. An extremely limited release of the cassette tape edition of their EP actually has the original recording of 2 AM as a hidden bonus track; when asked if that version may be released digitally in the future, Andrew responded “Maybe like a long time from now. We kind of want it to be an exclusive thing for those people who bought the tapes, who wanted to support us so early on, a special sort of thing just those people will own.” After the first two attempts, the band was more resolved to make sure the next time they recorded, they would have the finished product they wanted. When they went to Sacramento’s Earth Tone studio, they came armed with live recordings of the song to play along to to make sure they had a tempo that was fast enough. Their first run at it (recording number three, for those of you keeping track at home) still didn’t meet what they wanted, so they started over and went at it with all they had, which is all the more impressive that both Andrew and Dante were three days into a flu and “felt like absolute shit, honestly.” But, at long last, they finally had a version they were happy with- “This song’s a long time coming. It’s a really important one to the band and it’s exciting to see it finally done and out.”

The Countermen (from left to right: Justin Clare, Dante Cairns, Andrew Vardanega, and Blake Eitel) playing at a private Halloween party in 2019. (Photo Credit: Odin Rasco)

“It’s almost impossible to get a recording to sound like the song does live, and it’s hard to have it sound like you have it imagined when you play it live. As a smaller band it’s just an issue with kind of just a lack of resources, but this recording is a sort of good in-between of the two.”

Both songs recorded at Earth Tone will stand as the beginning of The Countermen’s next step sonically. In 2019 the original bassist, Trevor Matson, stepped away to focus on other projects; luckily, the band was friends with Blake Eitel, a talented musician who filled in for a couple shows before being officially added as a full time member in later 2019. Blake has proved to be a very worthy inclusion in the band’s lineup, bringing his personal stylings to the overall sound of the band. The whole band has grown, both as a unit and as individual performers- when talking about Justin, Andrew said “He’s always improving and surprising us.” As the band has been playing over the past two years, their sound and tastes have evolved, which they incorporated in the single version of 2 AM- “our music tastes and stuff have kind of changed and we put that into the recording, sort of doing one of our old songs but with our newer style.” The changes range from small details, such as an extra bit of guitar during the chorus Andrew isn’t normally able to play during live shows, to broader changes like entire extra backing tracks included to provide a more complete sound and atmosphere to the song as a whole. “It’s almost impossible to get a recording to sound like the song does live, and it’s hard to have it sound like you have it imagined when you play it live. As a smaller band it’s just an issue with kind of just a lack of resources, but this recording is a sort of good in-between of the two.” And yet, with all the changes big and small, one part of the song is a throwback all the way to the original recording- “there’s this feedback sound that comes in before the solo that Justin just loved, like I (Andrew) had accidentally left a mic on or something when we recorded it. We tried to recreate it in the studio but it didn’t sound- it just wasn’t the sound that we really liked- so we actually just took that from the original recording and put it into the new song because it was just the perfect sound that we were going for.”

While the 2 AM single is reflective of both their origins and expanding sound, Andrew thinks the other single the band recorded at Earth Tone, “My Fault,” “feels like proof of the band’s improvement as writers and musicians. We’re playing with more definition and variance, not just playing straight through a song; we’ve got more riffs and bridges and all that and not just straight through chords, and we’re reaching out to new genres and styles of playing.” The next single is due for release within the next few months.

When asked about the tendency for his lyrics to carry a tone of dissatisfaction, disconnection, and inevitability, Andrew spoke directly about his songwriting and his growth as a writer, saying “Yeah, that is kind of an intentional choice. It speaks to the kind of person that I am and the music that I like. Those feelings resonate with me, especially when I was writing some of our older songs. I’m trying to broaden out with the lyrics in the newer songs but it’ll always be there because it’ll always be a part of me. I think people relate to those things that make you uneasy and have to think about how you’re feeling and not just another ‘hey lets go party yadda yadda’ sort of song. Though, I mean, we have a couple of those too.”

As far as I am concerned, one of the best pictures of Dante Cairns that exists. Taken at the New Year, New Problems show on Dec 31, 2018. (Photo Credit: Odin Rasco)

“Yeah, Corona kind of fucked everything up. It hit the exact perfect wrong time for us.”

As with every other band and performer, the Covid-19 situation has had a negative impact on the short- and long- term plans for The Countermen. They had multiple performances lined up which were all cancelled for the foreseeable future, dashing their plans to promote their two new singles with live shows. The band was finally starting to pick up more traction, picking up more shows with bigger touring bands- “like, bands I knew about and already listened to”- especially in the last half year or so. Venues were beginning to take some notice, they were starting to get their foot in the right doors, and one of the bookers involved with Sacramento’s Concerts in the Park series was set to see them at the next show they were set to play, but then the Corona closures began. “We had momentum starting to get going, and we had new songs coming out to promote and all the stuff they like to see for a band to put on Concerts in the Park. We were midway into the plans for kind of a miniature tour of the west coast. Yeah, Corona kind of fucked everything up. It hit the exact perfect wrong time for us.” While there are a few projects that have been sitting on the back burner, like the “My Fault” single and the possible release of a music video for their song “Excess”- “We recorded it because like, when Justin was shooting ‘Someday’ he had the equipment for an extra day so we shot it, but that version of the song is really old and doesn’t line up with the timing of the recording now at all. But, Justin is kind of a wizard when it comes to editing, so maybe”- others may have to be rethought. "Originally the next single was going to be the last thing we put out for a while until we could get enough attention to get a record deal, or maybe like at most one or two more songs before that, but now we might come out with another EP or something just to keep putting things out there because of the attention we’re losing during this whole thing. I mean, we haven’t even really been able to play together since the lockdown started, and everything is just sort of on pause. We’re kind of waiting for the world to get a little bit better so we can even make a plan.”

The Countermen can be found on Facebook, Instagram, their website, Apple, and Spotify

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