Greg Yock (bass) Cliff Revis (drums) Dan Kinzie (guitar,vocals) Ben Howard (guitar,vocals)
Bottom Line is a band that aims to please and continues to succeed. They will persist until they invade every stereo on the planet with their contagious harmonies, unorthodox drumming and eclectic style of writing. Bottom Line is one of the freshest and most explosive acts in punk rock today. We’re talking about a group of guys who were able to reach the VANS Warped Tour and tour Japan before high school graduation.
Bottom Line incorporates a diverse musical background into their music to create a total package for their fans. “We are just a bunch of melody addicts,” declares guitarist/singer/songwriter Ben Howard. The band also prides themselves on the emphasis they put on their stage show, as they are amongst few bands that can tastefully unite distinctive harmony and energy from a recording with powerful kicks, jumps and all the charisma that is felt by the audience at any one of their live performances.
This band is built on a principle that any band should uphold – finding inspiration by being passionate and vigilant. Bottom Line creates songs that surpass the typical girl problem tunes that plague current pop punk, and instead runs with uplifting tunes about experiencing the world through youthful eyes. Says bassist Greg Yock, “If you aren’t on the edge of your seat by the first chorus, you aren’t listening to Bottom Line. Music is beautiful and exhilarating to us and that’s what we want to help everyone else feel.”
They are certainly no strangers to unexpected delivery. It seems they have been ahead of their time since conception. After catching the attention of Nice Guy Records in their hometown of Cincinnati, OH, November of 2000 saw the release of Bottom Line’s first 8-song disc, “In and Out of Luck” on the Nice Guy label. Recorded in a basement over one weekend, the CD’s initial purpose was to give friends and local fans a chance to hear what the band had to offer. It surprised the four members when it ended up kick-starting them straight into the local scene, opening for acts such as Dashboard Confessional, Something Corporate, Brand New, Finch, Ultimate Fakebook, Hey Mercedes and Hot Rod Circuit.
The following summer, Bottom Line embarked on their first major tour to support the disc, scheduling shows all over the Midwest and east coast with the likes of Thursday, The Starting Line, Rx Bandits, River City High and one unforgettable date of the VANS Warped Tour in Boston, Massachusetts. The band, still in high school, was making waves quickly.
The year ended by teaching Bottom Line to work harder and to plan ahead. The unforeseen national appeal of the CD turned heads, but the music needed a facelift to match their growth as a live act. So, in 2002, the band agreed to re-release “In and Out of Luck” as a full-length record on Nice Guy. They re-recorded and combined 5 songs from the original disc with 5 new songs that had worked their way into the set over the years, but were never before available to fans.
“It didn’t make much sense to us to sell people old recordings when we had gotten so much better. But because we were still performing songs from the old CD, we took this as an opportunity to give some of those old tunes justice,” explains guitarist/singer/songwriter Dan Kinzie.
The band’s first stab at a full-length album immediately floored critics and took punk fans by surprise. The group had leapt from the constraints of typical pop punk music and distinguished their sound to welcome rock influences. The self-produced album released on October 1st, 2002 was an instant success among fans, new and old, and proved that Bottom Line had what it takes to seize larger audiences.
To support the refined “In and Out of Luck” in the U.S. and overseas, the guys found themselves touring Japan, where the record had been licensed to Japanese label Big Mouth JPN, with Drive-Thru/MCA artists Midtown in December 2002. This was followed by numerous spring and summer 2003 dates, including 17 dates of the VANS Warped Tour spanning from California to Florida and their hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio. Meanwhile, “In and Out of Luck” became available in more and more places, including Best Buy stores, and in its first year sold almost 4000 copies worldwide.
“I feel like if it ended now, my dreams would already have come true. I flew halfway around the world as a senior in high school to rock for people who love listening to a record my best friends and I put together for no reason other than that we love to play what we love to hear,” says Howard.
Out of school, a November 2003 Cincinnati Entertainment Award for Best Punk Act, and with a tornado of new material, Bottom Line plans to make 2004 the best year yet with recently paired drummer Cliff Revis and a massive amount of touring. Their song “All The Time” will appear in the upcoming “Gumball 3000” movie, and May 2004 will welcome the release of a brand new album on Nice Guy/Big Mouth.
Source: http://www.bottomlinepunk.com/
