Glistening Pleasure - STATE RADIO: Taking the Country Back, One Venue at a Time

Interview By: Hilary Hughes

With the last days of October closing in, politi-rock trio State Radio finds themselves on the final leg of their Take the Country Back tour.

Though the Boston-based musicians have been delivering impassioned sets to enthralled audiences at venues across the nation, State Radio’s presence offstage is what sets them apart from other acts as artists whose activism leaves an impression as lasting as the music they create.

As organizers of community service projects that coincide with cities on the Take the Country Back roster, Chad Stokes, Chuck Fay and Mike “Mad Dog” Najarian encourage their ever-expanding fan base through leading by example when it comes to inspiring change on both local and national scales.

When asked to describe the types of projects the band has completed throughout the course of Take the Country Back, Chad, State Radio’s frontman and guitarist, lists them off modestly: painting elementary schools in Philadelphia, protesting to raise awareness about the plea for the retrial of Troy Davis, speaking out against Joe Lieberman’s “war-hawkishness” in Hartford, and protesting alongside University of Vermont students to discourage the university’s involvement with corporations benefiting from the war in Iraq. State Radio joined several members of the music community, including ever-active Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, in playing and protesting at the Democratic National Convention back in the early days of the tour, where they marched alongside Iraqi Veterans Against the War.

“All of these soldiers came back really disenchanted with the war,” recalls Chuck, “And the idea was to get a message to the people, namely Barack Obama and all the other democrats who were there in town.”

(Video of State Radio’s performance at the DNC can be found on their Myspace page.)

Turning toward the future with Take the Country Back, State Radio, performing alongside several independent acts, including Zimbabwean quartet Bongo Love, are working tirelessly to deliver an inspiring, though solemn, message to their fans:

“Bongo Love is from Zimbabwe, where you get beat up or killed if you vote a certain way,” says Chad, “A bunch of their friends have been tortured because they voted for the wrong person. We’ve been using that to encourage people. Here in the States, we can vote without fearing for our lives, and it’s important that we take part in the democracy so that we can hold our government to a higher standard than it has been in eight years.”

For a band like State Radio, whose tireless activism calls for change on a global scale, their influence over their predominantly college-aged fan base could lead to a youth movement that’ll contribute to the election of the next president. When asked to speculate why young adults tend to gravitate towards State Radio’s sound, there’s a note of pride in Chad’s voice when he’s accounting for the crowds coming to their shows:

“I’d like to think it’s the content and that historically youth movements and protests,” he says. “It’s always the idealistic college kids who have the balls and sometimes the naïveté to push for what they feel is right, and the time.”

So, after protesting alongside impassioned rock stars and veterans working to be heard at the DNC, and after giving back to communities around the nation through their service projects and activism efforts, what’s the next project on State Radio’s agenda?

Chad, Chuck and Mad Dog are heading back to the studio to record their latest album, following 2007’s Year of the Crow and the first commercial release of the trio, Us Against the Crown. They may be recording in Boston, but the band’s eyes, like those of the rest of the nation, will be turned toward Washington on November 4th. It’s no secret that State Radio aren’t fans of the soon-to-be-former Commander in Chief: the lead-off track on Year of the Crow, Guantanamo, calls out Bush’s grandfather for robbing the grave of Geronimo as an Ivy-league secret society initiation, and the band is celebrating the close of the most disastrous double term presidency in history with an official “Bye-Bye Bush” event in D.C. come Christmastime.

As is evident with the addition of an Obama/State Radio t-shirt to the collection of official SR merchandise, Chad, Chuck and Mad Dog are all fiending for Obama, and half of the proceeds from t-shirt sales go directly to the Obama campaign. State Radio has been calling for social change since the release of their first EP, so it’s no surprise that they’re backing the candidate who’s campaign revolves around impending, necessary change:

“We want to elect someone who represents us, the people, and we feel like Barack Obama can do that.”