All Left Out
Biography
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‘All Left Out’ surfaced in Hamilton, New Zealand in March 2002. Playing their own Kiwi brand of punk influenced rock, the band has encountered several line-up changes in its 5 year existence. It now consists of; Ken Pratten - Vocals, Guitar, Dave Murray – Guitar & BVs, Hiona Hay - Bass, and Nathan Speeden - Drums & BVs. The current members of All Left Out met through playing local shows together, in different bands.
Ken founded the band, to fulfill part of the requirements for a paper for his Bachelor of Media Arts. The band also served as an outlet for songs, which he had written, but was unable to sing because he was playing drums in another band at that time. He roped 3 of his friends into filling the other positions and ‘All Left Out’ was born. After rehearsing songs for several months, Ken booked a 5 date tour of the North Island for the band to get some live experience, inviting some more well-known acts to join the bill. After receiving a positive response from their first tour, the band continued to play various shows around the North Island through the second half of 2002.
All Left Out self recorded and funded their 5 track EP 'Retrospect' in December 2002, at ‘WINTEC Studios’ in Hamilton. The disc was released in January 2003 and has since sold out of its original run of 500 copies. There are no plans to produce any more copies.
2003 was admittedly a slow year for the band. Although they played many shows around the North Island throughout the year, the band had become less of a priority due to the band member’s busy schedules.
In January 2004, Ken was literally ‘All Left Out’ when all of the band members left, leaving him to pull almost an entirely new band together. It had always been an intention to make the band more than just a hobby, and with some perseverance, new band members were found. At this point Ken changed duties from bass and vocals, to guitar and vocals. After months of working on new material, the band began performing again. In August 2004, All Left Out played in the South Island for the first time. Around this time, the band started recording demos for their first full- length album, which they planned to record early the following year...
However, the end of 2004 brought yet another setback for the band. One member was asked to leave and another left by her own accord. The 2 remaining members were back to square one, but in January 2005, they released a bonus disc edition of the ‘Retrospect’ EP. It contained 8 previously unreleased tracks from the demos they had decided not to put on the upcoming album.
By this stage, recording plans had already been finalized for February 2005, so it was decided that Ken would fill in on drums and bass just for the recording, as the new members they had recruited, would not have enough time to learn the material.
The plan was to borrow money to record the album and make a trip to the United States to sell albums using ‘street marketing’, to recoup the costs. The band understood that if they wanted to record an album of credible quality, they would need to travel overseas in order to recoup the album expenses.
With the help of engineer, Peter Wood, Ken and Dave began recording their self funded and produced, debut 14-song LP, in February 2005. The drum tracks, grand piano and string quartet were recorded at York Street Studios, over 3 days. In order to cut costs, the remainder of the album was recorded in a cleaned out, abandoned pigsty on Ken’s parents farm. In March 2005, Ken traveled to Melbourne, Australia to have the album mixed by Kalju Tonuma at Studio 1. The band had decided to work with Kalju, after hearing some of his previous projects. Mastering duties were taken care of by Brian Gardner of Bernie Grundman Mastering. The album was titled ‘Never Say Never’.
The new band lineup, rehearsed from the beginning of April 2005 until they left for the USA in mid-June 2005. At this point the band became a fulltime occupation. On arrival to the United States, the band purchased a shuttle bus, tore the seats out of it and built 12 bunks to sleep them and some friends that were traveling with them. The bus was to become their home for the next 2 months, and the source of thousands of dollars of repair bills. With no fewer than 4 breakdowns a week and no air conditioning in the sweltering heat, they traveled all over the USA and Canada with the summer festival, ‘Warped Tour’. By the end of the 2-month tour, the band had perfected their guerrilla marketing techniques and sold 6,500 copies of their album, having only played 3 shows, during the 2 months. However, the tour proved too much for the bands bass player, who left the band and returned to New Zealand leaving the 3 remaining members in the United States. Determined to make the most of their time, they decided to ditch the shuttle bus in favor of a smaller van, and promote themselves by following some other genre tours around the nation. Although still plagued by vehicle trouble, this proved to be the right choice for the band, as the 3 went on to sell another 3,500 copies during the rest of their time in the US, bringing the total to 10,000.
Returning home to New Zealand at the end of November 2005, the band wasted no time planning their next visit to the states. They played various dates in New Zealand, over the summer, with a fill in bassist and began booking a 40-50 date national tour of the US, having faith that another bassist would be able to step in before they departed.
Thankfully, a bassist did join the band just 5 weeks before the band left for their second visit to the US in March 2006. The band took out another loan and purchased a late-model tour van and trailer. The self-booked tour was a huge learning curve for the band, during which they only sold about 100 albums, but gained invaluable gigging experience over the 9-week tour.
Always wanting to break new ground, the band traveled to the UK for a 3-week visit in May 2006. During that time, they played about 10 shows and sold out of the 600 albums they had taken with them.
June 2006, saw All Left Out return to the USA for a third time, and follow the ‘Warped Tour’ for the second year in a row. This time around the band managed to play the festival 7 times, selling a further 6,800 albums, and continuing to network with important contacts involved with the tour.
Through their relentless determination and self-promotion efforts, the band has established a fan base in all major cities of the USA and parts of Canada and the UK, independently selling 17,500 copies of ‘Never Say Never’, to date.
The band returned home, once again, in September of 2006, and promptly began writing the follow up to their successful debut album. The remaining months of 2006 were spent writing, re-writing and playing various shows around the North Island of New Zealand.
In February 2007 the band traveled to Melbourne, Australia to record the self- funded album. With Ken taking the helm as producer and Kalju Tonuma, this time, filling engineering and mixing duties, the album was recorded and mixed in 6 weeks. The album is titled ‘The Conquest’ and was mastered in late March 2006 by Howie Weinberg at Masterdisk in NYC.
All Left Out will make their fourth visit to the USA over June, July and August of 2007 to release the new album, participate in the ‘Warped Tour’ for the 3rd year in a row, and play their own club shows at selected cities nationwide. Plans are underway to subsequently release and tour the new record in New Zealand, Australia, Asia and Europe.
Band Members:
Ken Pratten (vocals, guitar)
Alex de Freitas (bass, vocals)
Dave Murray (guitar)
Nathan Speeden (drums)
