Justin Routzohn
The story of Justin Routzohn, began on the 8th of September, 1986. Music was something he was no stranger to. His father, a drummer at heart (as well as keyboard player) was there from the start, introducing a young Justin to amazing drumming and equally great bands.
His fathers drums were sold eventually, but music would still remain present throughout Justin's life. From the music he heard on the video games he played, to the imagination expanding songs of Genesis and various other bands, the foundation for his future in music was forming at a rapid unseen pace.
"I'd say the trumpet has, still to this day, been the only instrument I have ever formally attempted to play."
After tackling the trumpet once and giving up on it, Justin eventually went back to his random piano playing.
"I didn't know how to play anything except for like 'When the Saints Go Marching In'. It is probably why I always made up my own music."
Eventually his father purchased a new drumset, and after several moves in the house and complaints from a stupid neighbour across the street, they settled down in the garage in a custom built sound proof "box".
"All I remember was sometime in 2001 after getting bored with my "rap demos", I got behind the drums and tried to play a simple song from a video game soundtrack. The rest, is history."
After several band experiences and a handful of shows, Justin finally began to work entirely on his own. His unique genre-defying music first officially started in the summer of 2005.
"Things were going slow, and I was looking for a way to put out some of these songs I had that would not fit with the band I was with at the time."
Enter the Euphoria Project. Originally, a 20 minute song meant to be burnt on 3 inch discs. It was completed rather quickly, but was just never released. It wouldn't be until about almost another year and many band tryout rejects that fueled another stab at doing a solo cd.
"Like a Falling Piano came together very quickly as well, but had many delays that pushed its release date to 2007."
Like a Falling Piano was technically Justin's first release. It featured select songs from the abandoned E.P., and had quite a few new ones as well. Only 150 copies of this cd were made. Not too long after Like a Falling Piano was released, the idea to release the E.P. came back again. But upon inspection of the "bones" of the project, some songs did not sound good at all, and some were missing completely. An ambitious task of "reconstructing" the E.P. began.
"I redid almost everything. I even added some things that I wanted to do for the original but couldn't because of my lack of technology at the time."
The Euphoria Project was released in March of 2007 with three different coloured covers to chose from (Orange, Blue, or Green). Only 50 of these discs were made.
Sessions that began as far back in November of 2006, the demos from this session for Justin Routzohn's third album showed early signs of a very dark and gloomy forecast. Completed in April of 2007 (with the exception of one song), this album was the first to feature someone else working with Justin. Two people to be exact. Those two are Magen White, and Kevin Cretsos.
"I really can't think of anyone cooler than these two people. No one else seems to ever want to jam or play music with me, so Kevin is probably about the only person as weird as me that I click with musically. As far as Magen White goes, she is such a talented girl from New Mexico that I have been a fan of ever since I asked her if she'd trade me CD's, and I been into her music ever since! When I asked her to write a guitar piece for one of my spoken word poems, I didn't know if she'd want to or not, but she came through in the end, and with one beautiful guitar piece that brought tears to my eyes. I say that because I felt so moved by the fact that she took time out of her VERY busy schedule to write something for me."
The third album eventually was completed, and due to its dark theme, given a dark title.
"I came up with the CD title when I was looking up a synonym for the word black, because I wanted to name the CD 'Dark (or Black) Days and Nights', but that sounded too plain, so I found the word atramentous, and thus the title was born!"
All in all, the album boasts 35 songs. Some are rather short, and one is very long, but one thing is certain, this album certainly has that "Justin Routzohn" sound to it.
Due to shortage of funding however, the album was released first online only to the world on the 21st of August 2007.
The next CD release with Justin heavily involved is from a band project he started, titled Pasta For Mario.
"I was coming home from an auction one day with my mother and grandmother, and half-asleep listening to her mention needing help making a large amount of lasagna for a dinner party. I imagined her kitchen table absolutely covered with pans of the steaming pasta, and thought to myself, "Man that'd be a lot of pasta for Mario. The name stuck in my head for a while, and since I had nothing better to do than not save up my money to release my third CD, I began to write some new music that was inspired by the classic Nintendo game series."
Eventually after completing several useable demos, Justin showed them to Kevin Cretsos and asked for his guitar assistance on a cover song of 'Underworld' from Super Mario Bros. 1.
"Many many many MANY years ago I was pretty big on the Over Clocked Remix community. No, not by popularity, I was just pretty into it and very fascinated by it. I tried my luck at making at a couple remixes for it, but never got one submitted to the site. One of the songs I re-did back then was called 'Of Goomba's and Men', and it was a remix of the Underworld Theme from Mario 1. I wish I can find that song to post for everyone to laugh at sometime, because it was deliciously terrible. So for this new project 5-7 years later, I wanted to take another stab at this song, because now, I knew how to read sheet music and not play songs just by ear!"
After a few sessions of trying to just play this song with keyboards and drums, Kevin finally came up with a suitable guitar piece and wanted to be in "the band".
"Kevin was more enthusiastic about this project than I was at first. We went through all the sheet music I had, and he found several songs he went on to learn on the keyboards, and one that is rarely heard on guitar. It was pretty cool!"
After two months, the CD, 'Marinara Mayhem!' was completed during the middle of August.
Several other projects are being worked on as of August 2007. 'The Store', an audio-play/concept album is planned for a release sometime this year. It is simply about Justin's extreme hatred towards working in the Retail Industry. An as of now, untitled punk rock/heavy metal project has several songs written for it.
"I don't really have much to say about the punk rock band I want to form. It is just me so far, and I don't really have the vocal talents to scream stupid 1 minute songs with various themes and explicit language. I don't have any guitar ability either, but most punk bands dont have good guitar players anyway, so I might be safe there. 'The Store' is supposed to be a "Frank Zappa meets Monty Python and both had a child named Justin Routzohn" type of CD. It has a lot of good ideas, and a pervert mascot, and some interesting puns and stories in it. It needs a little revision, but for the most part I am pleased with it. Now I just need to find a voice actress and maybe someone other than Kevin and I to do the voices for this. Also a country band might be needed for one song on here heheh."
End of transmission...
