THE STORY SO FAR..

BODHII BLVD... The story so far

Somewhere down the tidal line / we found a place we’d then call home / gathered all that we could find / and started building…
(from “Short Story No.1”)

“And Off They Roared Into The Night” is the title of the Viennese band Bodhii Blvd’s debut album (2008 ii-records) – an adventure book full of storys about departure and goodbye, coincidences, lost paradises, search for meaning, the struggle with one’s personal demons and a ton of attitude to life; packed into songs somewhere between Pop, Rock and Acoustic, eclectic, colorful and yet catchy. Thus it’s possible for a pop song to be called “Short Story 1” and even pass for such or for Cubism to be used as a metaphor for a relationship. And they’re all there in the lyrics, the “surburb Jimmy Deans” and “the backstreet saints”, the cynics, the young, the jugglers and the charlatans, the hounded and the driven, roaring and searching for the “Inside Garden State”, for their Utopia, for the summer of the century.

Bodhii Blvd is the five piece band around singer/songwriter Markus “Bodhii” Brandstetter , who first gained attention with his self-produced EP “Shoreline Fandango”. “When I moved to Vienna, I already came with a suitcase full of songs, and so I started performing solo/acoustic everywhere I could, trying to get to know people to form a band with; and besides that, together with some friends, I started recording some of those songs”, says the songwriter. Seven of those songs later landed on the EP, and, especially the single “Days To Come”, received radio-airplay on a regular basis for a while, made it to a well known compilation distributed in various countries and served as the soundtrack for a ski-stunt movie (ironically the track “Summer State of Mind”), of which 100.000 DVDs were distributed in the USA, France, Germany and Austria.

By the time the EP was released, Bodhii already had found the first early Line Up of the band (back then simply called “Bodhii & his band”), already with drummer Konstantin Spork . The following year, 2006, consisted mostly of playing club-shows and experimenting – starting out as an acoustic project with upright bass, piano and acoustic guitar, the band became, with the exception of the acoustic guitar, that remains prominent, more and more electric. After a festival show in Summer 06, the band asked Andreas Grass – intended as a replacement for the former guitarist, who then quit, to join the band. Later joined by Nikola Paryla (who was asked to do a studio session but later joined the band – “we had a lot of fun and a lot of good vibes in the studio and so we asked him to join us, which he did”.

2007, besides the recordings, was a good live year for the band. With both a management and a record deal (ii-records, distr. Warner Music Central Europe), the band started to get gigs throughout Europe, played to support shows for Sean Lennon, festival shows with bands such as Incubus, The Prodigy, The Cult, Nick Oliveri & The Mondo Generator, and Macy Gray and even played as an opener for Lionel Richie in Vienna’s Stadthalle in front of 8000 people, getting great reactions. Late 2007, Georg Kostron joined the band as the new bassplayer, and the working on the album came to an end.

2008 will be a busy year for the band, who are currently in their rehearsal room preparing for this year’s shows, that will – besides the songs from the album – already include a couple of new songs that give a hint about the band’s further direction. Besides the band shows, Bodhii will play several solo/acoustic shows.

For progress shall prevail / you and I we should set sails / oh, what better day, says the song “Shoreline Fandango”, a kind of credo for the songwriter: “The big topic on the album, and maybe on my songs in general, is change. I’m not really much of a love-song writer, although of course I write about stuff like that… Change, departure, motion, travelling, going, growing up, going away, development, maybe even death, the change in relationships- that’s really what drives me and challenges me, the poetry about the whole thing”. So goes the story…

And off they roared into the night,
the night ran after
they watched it all come crashing down
they destroyed,
built up again
broke out in laughter

and danced upon exploding stars
they laughed about it all,
they watched it all blow up
(from “And Off They Roared Into The Night”)