One of the most compelling live rock acts on the circuit, Beasto Blanco recently unleashed their third studio album, We Are, on Rat Pak Records on May 24, and tore through a tour of North American shows as openers for Halestorm, earning legions of new fans, including many on an extensive series of shows in Canada.
Beasto Blanco is the brainchild of a veteran member of Alice Cooper’s band, bassist Chuck Garric. He is the Beasto ensemble’s lead vocalist and plays rhythm guitar and formed this new musical entity as a vehicle for his own compositions along with longtime friend Chris ‘Brother’ Latham. The two had been pals since Latham moved to Los Angeles many years ago from his native Alaska and formed the embryonic Beasto in 2012. Shortly after coming together with this new concoction, they were joined by Alice Cooper’s actress/vocalist/all around badass daughter Calico Cooper, adding a dimension of personality and theatricality that has become one of their most notable characteristics as a group.
Beasto Blanco live is an all out sensory experience that borrows a sense of cinematic theatricality from Alice Cooper but approaches it with far more spontaneity – bordering on complete abandon. The band’s music is hard hitting, but deftly melodic and perfect for a high intensity concert experience.
Beasto Blanco’s debut album Live Fast Die Loud was released in 2012 on Rat Pak Records, and was followed by acclaimed tours of Europe, including Scandinavia and the U.K. For the next couple of years, in between Alice Cooper shows and Calico’s TV and film work, the band performed throughout the United States. Along the way they were writing material for a second studio album, simply entitled Beasto Blanco, which came out in 2016 also on Rat Pak Records.
More recently the band, which also includes bassist Jan Legrow and drummer Sean Sellers, launched the Live From Berlin CD/DVD, which gives the uninitiated a glimpse into the steampunk inspired, sublimely cinematic stage show of the quintet. The shows in Canada earlier this spring were the first for Beasto Blanco, although both Cooper and Garric had played in the Great White North many times with Alice.
Garric said We Are took a little over a year from the beginning of the conceptual process to release in May.
“Whenever I had some down time, I was recording demos and I just started sending out producer [Ryan Greene] demo versions of about 15 or 16 songs. He started rifling through those to figure out which ones he thought we should record. And then we started the process of going through each part, deciding what each song needs, thoughts about a concept and things like that,” said Garric, who co-writes all of Beasto Blanco’s songs with his wife Lindsay and guitarist Brother Latham.
“So, it’s been a process, but we’re taking our time; we were in no rush to get this thing out. That’s the beauty of being in the position we’re in, we can release it when we’re ready and it’s been one of the most incredible experiences I have ever had making this record and having the opportunity to tour it the way we’ve been doing. We work so hard at what we do. We don’t go into something like a new record saying, ‘let’s just make a record and spend as little money and time as possible.’ We definitely go in with a concept of wanting to grow as musicians, to grow as songwriters. We’re always trying to evolve and change. We have an incredible fan base that also is growing, and we like to give people the opportunity to grow with us, and experience Beasto from the beginning to where we are now.
“If you’re coming in to Beasto for the first time, you can go into the back catalogue and you can hear and feel what has been happening to this band, which has been such a great organic, natural process. What is so special is that we have worked really hard in making this record as good as it can be. Ryan Greene has also put a lot of time into it; he has spent hours making sure each part is exactly the way he hears it and getting the performance out of us that he wanted. He really pushed us all to the limit, from our drummer to vocals, lyrics – everything.”
Cooper said the intent was always to evolve. The more shows the band played, the more interactions they had with fans, the more each member of Beasto Blanco got to know the other the closer they became as a creative entity – and the more fearless.
“When we began, it started with a really good, but really simple core concept. And that was to do something really theatrical, but we weren’t quite sure what. And let’s write songs that are intense, kind of mid-tempo. So it was very cool, but the more we toured together and the more fans came out and the more obstacles and challenges that we faced too the more we realized that this was getting honed, and the songs were becoming more clear, and we were getting closer as a group,” she said.
“The first record was very skeletal and then the second record kind of added on some muscle and people were like, ‘oh that’s what Beasto sounds like.’ It has this kind of grit and is really grounded and gnarly and it has multi-generational appeal. It’s sort of basic rock and roll, although it really defies categories – it’s heavy metal, it’s electronic, it’s punk – it’s all those things, but essentially, it’s rock and roll.
“And this latest record is really the fully formed idea now. And it’s all of those stories, all of the crazy experiences, it’s got all the amazing highs we’ve been through and it’s all culminated in this one record. And you can really hear everybody celebrated on it. You can really hear Chuck pushing his vocals. And we’re different as a band too because we were all there for the recording of everybody’s parts. So, when Chris [Brother Latham] was putting down guitar tracks, me, Chuck and everybody else was there for the whole day. So, I actually know Chris’s guitar parts and I don’t even play guitar. That whole process was also a great bonding experience.”
The album’s title We Are is representative of the band’s idea of themselves and their fans as being part of one singular collective, like a gang or a family. It flows from the fact that Beasto Blanco has been, from the outset, more than just a band. It’s an idea, a philosophy, an approach to life that is brought to life on stage each night through the band’s emphatically visceral, evocative and curiously still intimate shows.
“I think the name of the record – We Are – couldn’t have nailed it on the head any better. It’s not ‘us’ and ‘you’ it’s ‘we.’ We are all Beasto. And by the end of each performance, the look on people’s faces is like a mix of wonderment and this intense desire to get on stage with us and just be there. It’s all about unleashing your own Beasto,” said Cooper.
“How do you summon your own inner Beasto? How do you turn fear into courage? I can tell you how it works for me, but now you’ve been able to figure it out for yourself and that’s the conversation that I want people to start having. Yes, there’s always going to be obstacles, there’s always going to be joys, there’s always going to be failure. How you deal with all of that stuff in between, that’s the message that we’re about. I know that’s what Beasto is for me. When I started this band, I was stepping into a completely different role as a musician and I had to figure out a way to turn that fear into courage,” said Garric.
The lead-off single and incendiary video for We Are was for the song The Seeker, with Cooper directing the video. It is a powerhouse song of empowerment and individuality that fits in perfectly with the overall Beasto Blanco ethos.
“It is pretty self explanatory when you really dig into the lyrics, and it’s a very unique story. It’s one of those things where you put yourself in a little bit of a situation and for some reason it kind of reminds you of the old 17th century woman who is accused of being a witch, and how she is trying to explain to people that she is not a witch, but they aren’t listening and keep calling her a witch. And it’s basically about people defining you by something they have heard or something they think they have seen which is not the truth,” Garric explained.
“But, at the same time, you do have this kind of wicked, evil secret that you are keeping inside you that you don’t want anybody to know because, first off, it’s not of their f***ing business, but now they are trying to tell you who you are. And you have to go on this journey to get away and find your own refuge and find your own place of solitude to be who you really are.”
One very noticeable difference between We Are and the two previous Beasto Blanco studio albums is that Cooper’s vocals play a much more prominent role in various songs, including the powerhouse, Solitary Rave.
“There is just so much talent in this band and it’s just time that we introduced the world to what else Calico is capable of. And it’s not just Calico; you will hear Brother Latham stretching out his guitar playing a lot on this album, and we always have the live show in mind. We’re always building a show and in order to do that when you have essentially two lead singers is to make sure that you have flow and peaks and valleys. With Calico, we’re able to stretch her out a little more and give her more freedom. It gives me a little bit of a break, but it’s also just a really important aspect of the show and the band – it adds to the impact,” said Garric.
“Especially on this record, it’s a whole different thing for me. I am unaware of having the different voices I can tap into; it’s like having multiple personalities. One of the best compliments I’ve ever got, and it came on our recent Canadian run with Halestorm was there 17 or 18 year old girls, who I didn’t know would really have an opinion about vocals at all, came up and said, ‘oh your vocals are so cool. You don’t sound like anyone else.’ For me, it’s really touching to have these teenaged girls saying that to me,” said Cooper, adding that Solitary Rave came about after giving her bandmates some insight into her, let’s say, uniquely fierce personality.
“I was talking to Chuck and Lindsay in a bar and telling them about how most girls when you have a fight with them, they say, ‘do NOT’ follow me’ when they leave, and they actually do want you to follow them. I do NOT want you to follow me. If I am leaving it’s because you are real close to the end of your life. And so, the story behind that song went from there. I opened up to them about how I really am, and how in that situation I will going unto my room and lock the door for hours and everybody wonders what goes on in there. You can hear laughing, you can hear things breaking, you can hear violins – what is going on in there?
“When I come back out, I am alright, but everyone wants to know what went on behind the closed doors. So, I let them know what goes on behind closed doors when I have a full-on melt, and they wrote a song about it. It’s a cool meta sort of thing where I told them what I do, and they wrote a song and now I get to perform that song. And listen, the one thing that can really set me off like that is telling me to calm down. In the history of that phrase has anybody ever turned to somebody and said, ‘hey, calm down,’ and the person went, ‘oh, you’re right, I should calm down.’ Never once has that worked. It usually makes them a billion times angrier.”
After completing their most recent North American jaunt opening for Halestorm, Beasto Blanco currently has no tour dates booked, but said they will hit the road again in the fall. In the interim Garric is back to his bass playing duties, while Cooper returns to being her dad’s onstage theatrical foil as Alice Cooper hits the road for a string of summer dates beginning July 4, including a show at the Roxodus Festival north of Toronto on July 13. They head to Europe for some festival dates in late August.
For more information on Beasto Blanco, The Seeker, and any forthcoming new and concert announcements, visit https://www.beastoblanco.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for a quarter of a century. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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