By JASON COLLINS Bee-Picayune staff -
posted July 27 -
Daniel Anderson has always
had a passion for rhythm and lyrics but also a showmanship
side that has led him to two types of stages. “I wanted to
play in a band. I always wanted to since I was in the second
grade. As I got older and got into junior high, I got my first
guitar,” said Anderson of Skidmore. “I love performing in
front of people and I loved music and it was a perfect median
for it.” Seed, a heavy metal rock band, may not appeal to
everyone but the music is important to Anderson, who plays
guitar with the three other band members. “I like all
kinds of music... I like soft rock, punk rock ... and even
some Texas and country,” Anderson said. “Heavy rock just had
that intensity, that energy. “When you go to a show, you
can feel that energy. The people are just moving. They are
just into it. “That kind of appealed to me, being able to
get people inspired to move and jump around and throw their
bodies into each other.” John Vasquez, nicknamed Biggi,
said, “We have been playing all of ours lives.” Vasquez,
who recently moved from Skidmore to Beeville, credited
Anderson for getting the band together. “He was playing
for a country band and decided he wanted to start up a rock
band,” Vasquez said. Finding a performance of Seed in
Beeville, despite its members all living in this county, can
be difficult. “Most of the time we will play in Corpus,”
Anderson said, adding Houston and San Antonio to the list. “We
just started playing in Austin. We are starting to get all the
cities here in Texas... “I think the main city we have not
played yet is Dallas and we are trying to get up there.”
Because performances in Beeville don’t happen often, the
upcoming Rialto benefit is more special. “In Beeville,
there is nowhere to have these kinds of shows,” Anderson said.
“People are afraid of what is going to happen. Nobody wants to
deal with it... and the insurance.. “Every once in a blue
moon, you will see a rock show around. It has been months and
months maybe a year since I have seen a good rock show around
here.” The Rialto benefit idea came about because of Paul
Gonzales. Paul Gonzales, who manages Seed and runs
CINEmachina Production, said that he came up with the idea
because he wanted to do his part to get the theater open.
Four bands will be performing at the Saturday benefit —
Painting Broadway and The Seduction, both from Corpus Christi,
Last Battle from San Antonio, and from Beeville, Seed.
Mike Moreno, with Sound Effect Entertainment in Beeville,
has donated some of the sound equipment for the show. The
gates to the Bee County Expo Center pavilion will open at 6:30
p.m. for the show which runs from 8 p.m. until 12:30 a.m.
Admission is $5 at the gate. CINEmachina Productions
and Zinger Entertainment are coordinating the show dubbed,
“Save The Rialto Rock-N-Roll Benefit Show.” “Any reason to
play another show is a great for us. We hardly get to play in
Beeville any more. To get to play at the coliseum, a place I
have wanted to play since high school, is great,” Anderson
said. For Vasquez, his hope is to one day play inside the
Rialto. “If we do enough shows for them maybe,” Vasquez
said. “I definitely would like to see it restored. I like the
sign in front. Beeville should definitely restore it. “I
have never been inside the Rialto. I remember my mom telling
me it was nice inside. They used to go and watch and shows
inside there. “I always wanted to see the inside of it.”
The combination of a heavy metal rock band and a theater
performance might seem a bit odd but there are more to people
than meet’s the eye. While music is an important part of
Anderson’s life, there is another side to him. “I have
this facade of looking like this street thug type of tough
guy. I am just this laid-back type of guy. I just like long
hair and heavy music,” Anderson said. “I went to school here
at CBC on a theater scholarship. I am going to Stephen F.
Austin in the fall to be a theater director. “When I am up
there, I am going to be working on a BFA in theater. I will be
learning lighting, costume design, writing plays and
understanding plays, all the while putting on shows and being
in shows. They give you the opportunity to study abroad. They
really give you an opportunity to succeed in theater.”
What ties his passion for the band and theater is the love
of the show. “I have always had an interest in performing.
It was just something to invoke emotion in somebody.” “I
like the idea of transforming into somebody else,” he said.
“While being somebody else, you grab the audience and say,
‘Look at me. Look at me. This is my story. Listen to it.’ They
don’t see you as you anymore. They see you as that character.”
While Anderson has performed in many plays and been
numerous characters, his favorite is Arnold Wiggins from “The
Boys Next Door” from a 2003 production at Coastal Bend
College. “He was a really fun character to play,” Anderson
said. “He has a nervous compulsive disorder. He was in his own
world every day. It was so much fun to have that freedom...
“Every day I went to go be him and it was a complete
transformation. As that character he has problems and he can’t
help it but, at the same time, he likes who he is.” Plays
and concerts aren’t the only time you will see Anderson
performing. A few years ago, he was a character in
“Pressure Point,” a movie filmed in Corpus Christi. “It
was definitely an experience,” he said. “It was definitely a
departure from theater.” Now, he will be the main
character in “Scum,” a movie being filmed in Beeville. “I
am Charlie Sharp. He is this character at a crossroads of his
life,” he said. The title of the movie, Gonzales said in a
prior interview, comes from soap scum and it is about a young
man returning to Beeville. There is a shampoo bottling plant
in Beeville and when soap scum mixes with the shampoo and the
product is used on the heads of the people of Beeville, they
become zombies and commence to run amok. “I do like
theater better,” Anderson said. “Movies are understandably
more accessible... The theater is more intimate.”
Eventually, Anderson would like to run a theater in
London. “If I had my choice anywhere in the world I would
love to get on at a theater in London,” he said. “To have that
history around you would be inspiring.” Anderson said he
is not tied to one type of play nor time-period of writing.
“I like classical. I like period pieces,” he said. “I am a
big fan of Eric Bogosian and his Suburbia. A lot of people
know it as a movie but it was originally a play. To me it
never mattered what time period the theater came from, as long
as it has a good story line.” But for now, his music
consumes much of his time as the band plays in cities across
the state. And while Seed’s music is predominately heavy
metal, they do dabble in softer genres. “We will also goof
around with some Jimmy Hendrix, Voodoo Child type of cover.
Most of the time our (Extended Play) is original,” Anderson
said. “I don’t write any of the lyrics. I and the guitarist
will get together and write the music part of it. “We will
get together and jam, and we will stumble on something once in
a while. “He will throw his part into it and I will throw
my part into it and we will bring the drummer in and it will
just click. Everybody puts in their two cents when it comes to
the songs. Everybody has a little input into writing the
songs.” For Anderson, his favorite song on their recent EP
album is “Stronger than the Man.” “It is a really fun song
to play. It starts off really strong,” he said. “It is about
the apprehensive minds that try to force their ways on top of
you. To rise above that you have say that I am not letting you
get me down because of your own insecurities and shortcoming.
I am not going to let that affect who I am. I am not going to
change for anybody. You have to step-up and really be a strong
person to be yourself.” Likewise, Vasquez’s favorite from
the EP is “Stronger than the Man.” “I feel like we put
more time into it,” he said. “It just tells a real good story
about different things in life. “I wrote the lyrics to it.
I write the lyrics to pretty much every song. Vasquez
seemed reluctant to discuss the song or the occurrences in his
life that led to its lyrics. “I can’t explain it,” he
said. “You have to read the lyrics. “It is about a lot of
things — just overcoming negativity from people that are
around you. There is all kinds of things that are thrown into
the song. “I like to take it from my personal experiences.
I write a lot of emotional things that I can’t relate to
anyone else like hardships I have been through in my life that
I can’t relate to people any other way.” For critics of
heavy metal, the lyrics almost take a back seat to the hard,
fast moving music, but for Anderson, the lyrics are just as
important as the notes. “I think it has to be a little bit
of both,” he said. “If you hear a song that starts off really
great and the music is really pounding and gets you going, and
then the singer comes in and ruins it. “I think heavy
metal has some of the best lyrics. To be a really good rock
song, it has to have that pounding driving force behind it and
lyrics that you can really relate to.”
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