Breaking Laces

Touring bands tend to make friends when they are on the road, but when Brooklyn's Breaking Laces was last in Jamestown they became part of a family.

Bonding with local bands and businesses, Breaking Laces found a home in the city and have since decided to make the area a regular stop on tours.

"We've sort of been adopted by Mojo's," said Willem Hartong, front man for the band. "We're the kind of band that sinks into things really well and we loved the situation in Jamestown, staying in the apartment above Mojo's. The problem is, most of those nights get a little blurry."

From 4 a.m. fishing trips to bumping into Lyle Lovett after a gig at Webb's, shows in Chautauqua County always seem to be surreal for the trio.

"We've become quite friendly with The Audience, a Jamestown band," Hartong said. "After one show at Mojo's I was done, so I just went to sleep. Our drummer was hanging out with a couple of guys from The Audience and they took him fishing at like four in the morning. I woke up to find a note that said 'Gone Fishing.' I don't know what they're going to do next, but I guess you can't really go whaling on Chautauqua Lake. Maybe we'll go falconing."

Describing his band's sound as "acoustic rock with the help of robots," Hartong explained the Breaking Laces setup includes more instruments than there are players. Driven largely by Hartong and his guitar, the band is comprised of Rob Chojnacki on bass and Seth Masarsky on drums. Additional sampling, synths and recorded music rounds out the band's sound.

Indie pop with a rock edge, Breaking Laces has been described as part long hair rockers, part country club golfers and part music school prodigies. As part of this tour, Breaking Laces will play locally at Mojo's and also at BJ's in Fredonia as the band makes its way to Buffalo and Rochester.

"New York has been really good to us, especially up north where you get the Canadian vibe," Hartong said of touring. "We've done just about everything east of the Mississippi, from Wisconsin to Maine and we've even been to Alabama. New York is especially good to us though, like in Buffalo where the bars stay open until 4 a.m."

Only a few years old, Breaking Laces have toured pubs in England as well as clubs in the United States and have shared the stage with acts such as Matt Pond PA and Oh My God. The band's new album, Lemonade, is currently available in stores and through online companies such as www.cdbaby.com. According to Hartong, a new EP will be available this month and future recordings will likely be out on larger labels.

"I don't mean to be cheeky and I also don't mean to toot my own horn, but we're on the verge of signing a really good deal," Hartong said. "Things are progressing, but it's baby steps. I don't know where we'll end up, but even if we get really big, Mojo's would still be a place we would want to play - even if we had to sneak in and do a secret show. i mean that sincerely, not just because we're coming back to Jamestown. They really treat us like family and you don't find that very often."

- The Post Journal

Each year, musicians sprout like mushrooms throughout the subway system. But, in 2002, one geeky twentysomething got a lot of attention, singing in a slender tenor and playing guitar next to a hand-lettered cardboard sign that read, "I Want to Propose to My Girlfriend But I Can't Afford a Ring."

That geek was Willem Hartong, who later became leader of Brooklyn's Breaking Laces, the Weezer-meets-Violent Femmes folk-rock trio that, in 2007, beat out 4,000 bands to cop first prize in that year's Starbucks Music Competition.

As Hartong explains of his early days: "I wanted to try busking - the trial by fire for a musician. It was amazing. Older people put their hands on my shoulder, lotsa moms hugged me, married guys told me I didn't need a ring, and single girls wanted to give me their phone numbers."

Tomorrow at Rockwood Music Hall, to an audience sprinkled with music-biz honchos, Breaking Laces will perform Hartong's offbeat tales of life and love, like the quirkily tender "Astronomy Is My Life but I Love You," the grunge-powered tongue-in-cheek "God in Training," about a basement rocker's dreams of fame, and even a raucous jab at the collapsing music conglomerates, "What You Can't Take Away."

Following a U.K. tour, this show marks the next step on the band's do-it-yourself odyssey.

"Thanks to the Starbucks competition," Hartong notes, "big-name producers take our phone calls."

Tong, as Hartong is called, was born to a Dutch immigrant father and American mother in Greenwich, Conn. "It's a dangerous place," he quips. "The soccer moms wheeling those vans take no prisoners." Once he beat Timmy Spencer for a fourth-grade choir prize, he says archly, "it was clear I had talent, which is what led me into music."

He took some lessons and started writing songs. In high school, his first band, In the Attic, sold 10,000 CDs. Tong was hooked. So while he earned his B.A. in Latin and Greek at Colgate University, he kept up on contemporary beats.

"I still read ancient poets for fun," he says. "I don't mean to sound esoteric. It's just that the sense of meter and rhythm and language is obviously something I love. I try to use it in my way, with a mild punk attitude."

After graduation, Tong lived briefly in Boston and worked on music projects. Seven years ago he moved to Brooklyn and formed Breaking Laces. In 2003 they cut "Sohcahtoa" in an apartment studio.

After intense touring, in 2005 they recorded "Lemonade," then "Astronomy." Released by Tong's small label, these tracks built the band a modest cult.

Then came the Starbucks prize.

Hartong says, "Because we won, we're going to play at the Kauai Music Festival, and we got two days of recording in a great Boston studio and free PR. Maybe most important, it's made making those phone calls easier. The whole process was really good for us. We had to compete - and we had to win. That showed us something about ourselves and our music." - NY Daily News

A phrase that gets thrown around like a rag doll in music reviews is "pop sensibility." It's a convenient genre-neutral go-to when the reviewer wants to express in a sentence, rather than a paragraph, that although this band's contemporaries might not all write catchy toe-tappers, this band does. The problem is that when a phrase like that becomes overused, reviewers find themselves having to use a paragraph (see what I'm doing here...) anyway to just to emphasize it. Yeah, the phrase is played-out. But it would be doing a disservice to Brooklyn's Breaking Laces to describe them as one of the thousands of indie bands in Kings County without pointing out that they pen some seriously infectious rock.

Astronomy Is My Life But I Love You's title track is probably the most remarkable song on the record (you're going to play it over and over and over again), but each song will grab you given enough time. Check out what people are saying about Breaking Laces here on Amie Street, and give a listen or two. You might very well find yourself agreeing with Sshomi, that the whole album "sparkles!" - AmieStreet.com

Truth be told, Breaking Laces is one of the very few real bands that I've seen. Sure, I've seen lots of individuals playing along, in groups, that they call bands. But when you see a real, cohesive, band play, it raises the bar and separates them from the rest.

I first saw the Laces when they were just getting started, at the defunct Cafe 111 in Brooklyn. I knew a couple of them had come from Darby Jones (who played Harris Radio's launch party in 2002) and wanted to check them out. Not bad. Fast forward to a few months back and I got to see some amazing gigs at the Cutting Room. The band was tight, the music was just as good as the CDs, and the live act was tremendous fun. This was a real band! Indie Sounds caught up with band member Seth Masarsky on tour to find out their secret.

Indie Sounds: So who is Breaking Laces?

Seth Masarsky: We call ourselves a three-piece electro/acoustic indie rock band. I am the drummer, and also handle live electronics and samples. Willem (Billy) Hartong is our super sweet vocalist and he rocks an acoustic guitar like few others. Rob Chojnacki plays bass and keyboards, and sings backing vocals (also sweet, for the record). For our live act, we call on Harvey, the sampler, and Penelope, the keyboard.

IS: How did the band get together?

Seth: We try to convince people that we met at a Renaissance Fair or in the personal ads in the back of seedy publications, but it was really just a long string of good fortune that brought us all together.
Basically, Billy lived in Boston about the same time I did (circa. 1999). We had both recently graduated college and were getting our feet wet in the music scene and eventually he came to see me play and gave me a call. We played some shows together and made a connection, but we both were into different things and I don't think we were in to starting a real band at that time.
Billy was pursuing filmmaking and animation and I went on tour as a hired gun with Melissa Ferrick and did some studio work. After a year, things started to run their course and we both eventually headed to NYC and always stayed in touch.
As far as Rob, when I returned to the New York area, I was confident that I wanted to play music for a living and I joined Rob in a New Jersey band called Darby Jones. The band didn't work out but we had our moments and it was clear that, rhythmically, Rob and I had that once in a lifetime lock.
At the same time, Billy had gotten serious about music and had put a great album together (2003's Sohcahtoa). He wanted to play some shows so he gave me a call and we reconnected. But this time it was just magic from the get go and I knew we were on to something. Rob saw the Laces play as a duo and basically just told me to get him in the band. Of course, he was a perfect fit and Billy was all in at that point. We all just stopped everything else and committed to the Laces.
It's been a natural evolution from there. The band was formed in the middle of 2003 and started to grow as a unit and as a live show.
We actually had an electric guitarist for two minutes, but that was before the robots started to take over. Over the past two or so years, we started to really work and gel as a team and it's been on the up ever since.

IS: You just released an EP Astronomy is my life but I love you. Tell us about it?

Seth: Astronomy is a six song EP of brand new songs. We have all this kick ass gear in my studio and we just figured it would be awesome to do a record on our own and then have it mixed and mastered by some heavyweights at Sony Studios. We went at it without putting pressure on ourselves and it exceeded our expectations in every way.
Compared to our previous CDs - Sohcahtoa, Operation Income (which was really a collection of b-sides and demos and not widely promoted) and Lemonade (released in 2005) - we feel the EP marks a new level of maturity for us, in that it was the first time we produced a CD ourselves.
The EP was as an opportunity to get our new tunes out, do it quickly, but at the same time strongly, and give a preview of what's to come from the Laces. I feel that the live show is really definitive of what the band is in a lot of ways in that we can do almost anything at any time. So, hopefully Astronomy will be the next step in the obligatory evolution of a band and capture both the beauty of the songwriting and the excitement of the show in one package.

IS: Why an EP after three full length CDs?

Seth: Frankly, we had some great new songs and not a lot of time! We knew we'd be on tour for a while and we wanted to get something new out there for our fans. So from both a creative and a business standpoint, it made a lot of sense. Plus, the industry is changing by the minute and we wanted to see how the idea of an EP (or possibly a number of EPs) would fare. The days of full length albums are sadly waning and the idea of putting out or buying an album is foreign to some kids.

IS: How do you go about writing songs?

Seth: It really depends. For the most part, Billy is the main guy in that he writes the lyrics and brings in melodic skeletons. He often comes over to the studio (or the lab as we call it) with ideas and we take it from there. Sometimes we all collaborate in the same room and jam to get the feel and arrangement. Other times, we'll use some technology, program some beats, lay down some scratch vocals and guitars and take it from there. Other times, we'll take a song on the road before we put it on record and it morphs a little that way as well.
We also hold mandatory band camps a few times a year where we lock ourselves away in Vermont or Connecticut for a week, turn off the phones, and set up in a nice room and do some serious writing. We just make a list of songs in progress and vibe off each other from there. Some songs take ten minutes to come together, others take two years.
It's a fun way to make some progress and one I would recommend to any band. It's like an organized free for all. At any given time, someone is doing something, but like Rob will be at the piano, Billy will have his notebook and guitar and I'll be on the computer laying down beats. We'll all meet up at night and record. A lot of great things have come from those band camps.

IS: You're currently in the middle of a tour. How is it going? Making any money?

Seth: The tour is awesome. I just took a much needed shower and I'm sitting naked on the bathroom floor at a Days Inn outside of Ashville, NC. My laptop is running out of juice and there is only one plug. I want to go to bed, but I fear I won't get to answer your questions for another week, so duty calls.
After more than 350 shows in two years, we have become a wonderful machine. This particular tour has been rewarding because we are starting to see the fruits of our labor. We know a ton of people and venues and the audiences have been increasing exponentially. We've gotten smart and aligned with some great bands like Chicago's Oh My God, Conshafter from Richmond, Virginia and the Lifetime Guarantee from Jersey. We bring them to our strong markets and vice versa.
We actually have a pretty good system down and after a few years of breaking even, we are finally making a little money. We work hard and try to sell our stuff and the band, but we also put in a lot of effort on a person to person level and spread the word in a grass roots way. It seems like every town we play is our favorite and we meet up with great friends and party a little too much, but that is part of the deal. We make lifelong fans one by one.
Recently, we put a Stella D'oro sign on our van and they give us a gas stipend in return, so that helps. We've also aligned with some good booking agencies, who can get us well paying shows but, most of all, internally, Billy and our booking goddess Lynette have done an amazing job of putting great tours together. We plan ahead and it works.

IS: What are your aspirations in terms of 'making it'? How are you going about getting interest from the industry?

Seth: Yeah, we want to be huge! Seriously, we want to be a great band first and one that is successful and self sufficient. But we want careers, in the vein of a Wilco, REM or Built to Spill where we can make music for a living and make enough money to sustain the band and at the same time live comfortably and have lives. We are not quite there yet, but getting close to breaking through.
We have great relations within the industry, but up until recently we have found that it is just better to manage ourselves and outsource radio/video promotion, booking, design, publicity. We've had a lot of industry folks knocking on our door lately and I think we may have found some people who share our vision and have the ability and capacity to get us to the elusive next level. We'll see.
The industry is obviously in flux and I think we are going to be in a position to buck some current trends that are not working, like the major label mentality of hits only and looks only. Instead, we plan a more career-oriented route that focuses on touring and utilizing the technology to create alternative revenue streams in the digital realm.

IS: Who does the business in the band?

Seth: We are a team and everybody in the band chips in and works in areas that they are good at. In a nutshell, I'm the business guy, Rob's the website guy and Billy's the booking guy. But that doesn't really explain everything. We basically run the band as a company (which it is), have meetings when necessary, make plans and consult each other on what to do. After two years, we found out what works and what doesn't and we are still learning. We also have built a team that really helps us out. It has evolved over the years, but we will be forever indebted to the people that have come to bat for us. They don't get enough credit, but bless our team and the extended Breaking Laces family … you all rock!

IS: You're always smiling while drumming on stage? Do you guys get on, have fun?

Seth: I'm usually smiling at the ridiculousness of the whole situation. It's just so fun to play live and after all the bullshit and work that goes into being in a band, it's the one place where we are free and not restricted. It just is so clear to me when we play … enjoy it … this is what you do it for. Plus, our singer is just out of his mind and he cracks me up constantly.
We really do get along pretty well. It's a pseudo marriage. We call ourselves defacto best friends because we are around each other so much. We have our problems like any band but we know when to laugh and when to shut up. Or at least Billy and Rob do, I'm still working on it.

IS: Who is behind the 'hodgepodge' on your website, and your zany photos?

Seth: Billy and Rob are the main culprits for the hodgepodge portion of the website, with Billy being big on content and Rob being big on design. They are funny, tongue in cheek, dudes who like underground Internet things like Strong Bad and eBaums World and they bring that vibe to our website.
Photos are a weird thing for us as we don't do many shoots, but when we do, we let the photographer do their thing and do as we are told. That being said, the word "no" isn't in our vocabulary so we will end up trying anything, some good, some bad. This guy E J Carr has been shooting us lately and he is really good (see the cover photo).
We are really lucky to have a drop dead amazing designer for posters and albums, this guy Keith Vincent, who has done most of our visual work since Lemonade. He is one of Willem's buddies from his animation days and everything they do is on point.

IS: What's next?

Seth: Is world domination too much to ask for from an indie band?


- IndieSoundsNY

Ever had a hard time labeling a band? Here's another one to add to your list. Breaking Laces, a three-piece band from New York City, sounds like Weezer, Ben Fold's Five, Dashboard Confessional and Rufus Wainwright mashed in a blender and sprinkled with a bit of nerdiness. However, you don't have to be a dork to listen to them. Breaking Laces' most recent CD, "Sohcahtoa"(an acronym to remember trigonometry ratios in math class), features great anthems for the common man. Songs such as "God in Training", "Okay" and "Geek in Love" showcase vocal talent and peppy songwriting. These self-proclaimed "geek rockers" include singer-songwriter and frontman William Hartong, bassist and backup vocalist Rob Chojnacki and percussionist Seth Masarsky. Hartong's heartfelt lyrics, his great guitar skill and the background cello, provided by Dave Eggar and included in songs such as "Geek in Love" make this CD a worthwhile purchase. - Buffalo News

On the Breaking Laces' debut Sohcahtoa frontman Willem Hartong moves with relative ease from the catchy opener "God in Training" to the moody "Plain Jane" to the up-front love ballad "Meagan." Throughout the album's twelve tunes, Hartong skirts the pop landscape that has been plowed by the likes of Michael Penn, David Gray and Joe Henry. "Meagan" seems to borrow from John Denver, and that's not a bad thing here. These easily accessible songs never ask for more than a cursory listen, but given the chance provide more substance than any toss-off singer-songwriter ditty. While Hartong skirts the razor's edge of becoming overly orchestrated and looped (a la David Gray), his use of cello on five songs and programming throughout don't weigh down the results. What's so enjoyable about Sohcahtoa -- a trigonometry reference -- is how Hartong blends the best of indie pop with the classic singer-songwriter fare of love and loss. - Rolling Stone

Old-school video game geeks rejoice. Your musical messiah has come.

Brooklyn, N.Y., singer-songwriter Willem Hartong drew inspiration from the 1980s arcade game Paperboy for his band Breaking Laces' debut music video. Filmed for the track "God in Training," the footage is reminiscent to the game's paper route from hell as Hartong and his two bandmates attempt to deliver newspapers to New York's five boroughs.

"You lose half your customers after the first level. If you break their window once, they're gone, even if you get it on the doorstep as well," waxed Hartong while in a Laundromat in Charlotte, N.C., about the handle-bar game.

Breaking Laces is touring in support of its debut disc, Sohcahtoa. While initially released in 2003, the album goes to national release on Tuesday.

Breaking Laces has started to build a following in the Big Apple and beyond in the last couple years with a quirky sound that critics have compared to everything from the Violent Femmes and Radiohead to Ben Folds Five and James Taylor.

While the band has performed in Muncie, Indianapolis and Evansville on previous tours, Breaking Laces will make its Lafayette debut at 7 p.m. Saturday at Riehle Bros. Pavilion, 2270 Concord Road.

All of Sohcahtoa's 12 tracks were expanded from acoustic guitar ditties to more full-sounding songs.

Most songs are sample-laden, giving them more depth. The samples are kept in the live show as drummer Seth Masarsky triggers them from behind his kit. The 6'-4" bassist and singer Rob Chojnacki rounds out the band.

The samples, dual vocals and Hartong's guitar effects pedals give Breaking Laces a sound big enough to fit in a rock club such as Riehle Bros., but band members can tone down for appearances at bookstores. Hartong said it has been a new experience having to squeeze in between coffee stands and magazine racks to play his songs to promote Sohcahtoa's upcoming re-release.

"It keeps itself simple and lets the songs come out, but we can still bring it," said Hartong of his band's live sound.

Hartong draws inspiration from the Talking Heads and Soul Coughing, two New York bands who made the big time with sounds that had few contemporaries in NYC. Hartong said it's essential for his band to tour often. While New York is friendly to Breaking Laces, competition is fierce, and gigs are sporadic in New York clubs.

Breaking Laces has rarely performed west of the Mississippi river as it has maintained a Northeast and Midwest tight circle in the last couple years, but thanks to a strong showing at Austin, Texas' huge music festival, South by Southwest, Hartong's band was noticed in the South.

Hartong said Sohcahtoa could bring added exposure to the band, and the best part of it all is he isn't sick of it yet.

"I still like it after listening to it 1,000 times while mixing it," Hartong said. - Journal and Courier, IN

Breaking Laces' Willem Hartong is a self-proclaimed geek. His girlfriend is okay with that, though, and his song, "Geek in Love" is just one of the many standout tracks on the singer/song-writer's debut, Sohcahtoa. Clean-cut acoustic guitar riffs carry the dozen-track set and Hartong's pride in being a nerd who, in song, wears his heart on his sleeve is exactly what indie rock needs now. From the quirky laments of "Going Away" and "Okay" to the majestic pop gem "She Waits" and the Men at Work-like ditty "Global Warming Day," Sohcahtoa lets the sun shine in dire times. - Paste Magazine

Breaking Laces
sohcahtoa
Sidewinder

From opening, the cover art, with Willem Hartong looking like a student who graduated from the Rivers Cuomo school of fashion, equipped with the most bad ass mullet to date, to the opening riffs of God in Training, Breaking Laces is a band that I instantly found myself falling in love with. They have a quirky humor, as displayed in GOD IN TRAINING.......yet, can play absolutely beautiful music, as displayed in MEAGAN. I can assure you that this band is destined for stardom, at least on the INDIE circuit. Every song on this album is solid and left me wanting to put it on repeat, it was that good!!!!! Do yourself a favor and buy the album on their website........GO ON, BEFORE I GET MAD!!!!! -Jason Martinez Grade:A++ - Live Magazine