Pleasure Trip: Meet
Brad Wait - vocals, guitar, keyboards
Brad brings many years of experience performing, songwriting, and composing to Pleasure Trip.
From 1996 to 2000, Brad was an integral member of Vegas DeMilo (VDM), where he played guitar and keyboard, and contributed to songwriting and arranging. With VDM, he helped record two critically-acclaimed CDs: Before It Gets Old and Motel California.
With VDM and others, Brad has played many musical festivals and venues, including:
CMJ Music Marathon (CMJ)
North by Northwest (NXNW)
South by Southwest (SXSW)
Emerging Artists and Technology in Music (EAT’M)
San Francisco (The Fillmore, The Great American Music Hall, The Paradise
Lounge, The Bottom of the Hill, Slim's, and many others)
Los Angeles (The Viper Room, The Gig, The Joint, and others)
New York City (at CMJ)
Austin (at SXSW)
Seattle (The Old Firehouse)
Portland (The Roseland at NXNW)
Las Vegas (The Mirage at EAT’M)
With VDM, Brad performed for live and taped radio shows and TV programs, including:
KMBY Monterey
San Francisco Sound
San Francisco KRON Morning Show
Brad and VDM were also featured in Billboard Magazine, BAM (Bay Area Music magazine), and various online music eZines. Here are some accolades for VDM during Brad’s tenure with the band:
A band “on the verge of a national breakthrough” - Billboard Magazine
One of “California's hottest unsigned acts.” - Music Connection
“The band can make you sing along, they can make you have fun, and they can make you cry. They're good at bringing out emotions and getting their points across quite well. Catchy, melodic, and good on the lyrical front, this is a great pop record you'll love to indulge in. I'll give it an A.” - In Music We Trust
“...Brad was probably the best musician we ever played with. He could do everything: guitars, keyboards, vocals, drums, loop programming, even full on string arrangements. He had a really unique guitar style that sounded like a cross between Johnny Maar and the Edge. All kinds of picked, delayed melodies played so fast you could hardly make out the blur of his hands. “ - Foster Calhoun Johnson (Vegas DeMilo founder and primary songwriter)
Brad also brings to the band his experience composing for film, TV, and video games. He has contributed music to several TV specials for Fox and USA Network, including:
Ghosts - Caught on Tape
UFOs - The Best Evidence 2
Alien Autopsy
Why In the World Do They Do That?
Brad’s film credits include two independent films:
Under the Influence
The Breakaway
For Atari Corporation, Brad composed music and designed sound for the Jaguar game Hoverstrike: Unconquered Lands, for which he received excellent reviews.
Brad is both a Writer and Publisher member of ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers).
Rich Recker - vocals, bass, guitar
Schooled as a recording engineer, Rich is comfortable behind the board and in front of it. He has many years of stage and recording experience with Bay Area bands including American Scream. Rich is an avid songwriter and plays bass and guitar.
Rich's musical destiny has been a foregone conclusion since birth.
Born to a trumpet playing father and a piano playing mother, Rich was
surrounded by music at a very young age. A vocal solo in his elementary
school Christmas concert was the inspirational moment that solidified
his path in music. He picked up the cello in grade school, the clarinet
in middle school, and the bass guitar in high school. A few spins of the
"KISS Alive II" album later and Rich was forming his first garage band
in the hopes of superstardom.
As a teenager, Rich cut his musical teeth on "heavy metal" and was
mesmerized by the over the top concerts of his favorite bands. "I loved
the fact that, when you went to a concert, the bands were larger than
life." At the same time he was admiring his childhood heroes from the
crowd, Rich took his first steps at writing and creating his own music.
After graduating high school, Rich attended California State University,
Chico where he earned his BA in Music with an emphasis in recording. In
addition to the engineering focus of his education, his college
curriculum exposed him to many different styles of music. Most
importantly, it was back to basics with required classes in classical
music theory, ear training, and the origins of western music.
Fast forward to the present and Rich's musical vocabulary is still
expanding. With over 20 years of experience performing and writing Rich
has never stopped absorbing inspiration from artists in all styles
of music. It's that diversity that Richbrings to Pleasure Trip. Rich's motto is "Do what's best for the song." It's that philosophy that has helped guide Pleasure Trip through the making of their first CD.
Scott Smallwood - drums, percussion
Scott Smallwood brings driving energy to Pleasure Trip as a drummer. He has an encyclopedic mind for songs and recording artists, which might explain why he owns several iPods.
Scott's earliest music recollections include rummaging through his
father's record collection - listening to the likes of Barbara
Striesand, John Gary and Jose Feliciano and taking piano lessons from
his classically trained mother. Piano lessons were soon replaced by
cornet lessons making the trumpet Scott's primary instrument through
grade, intermediate and high school years.
Despite his parent's conservative, religious upbringing, Scott was a
closet rock and roller with a passion for the drums. Discovering later
that both grandparents were drummers, his parents originally dissuaded
him from switching to such a "noisy instrument." Beginning to compile an
extensive record collection of his own which included albums by Deep
Purple, Foghat, Kansas and Black Sabbath, Scott remembers a pivotal
experience at age 15 when a neighborhood friend purchased a copy of KISS
Alive. Days later, Scott would be sitting behind a borrowed drum kit
flailing through tunes by the likes of Ted Nugent, Led Zeppelin, and of course his grease-painted heroes - needless to say he was hooked!
While working on a Business degree, Scott began playing clubs and was
the member of such original Bay Area acts as Scarlett, Bad Boy Eddy,
Sweet Liar and the American Scream.
Scott tempers his straight-forward "slam it home" approach to mesh with
the pop-sensibilities inherent in Pleasure Trip's music. Scott provides
an energy to Pleasure Trip both rhythmically and visually via his stage
antics during a live show. "I've always thought it important to express
yourself both musically and visually during a live performance - the
entertainment factor has got to be there."
Scott has always had an open approach to music and enjoys all genres
including Opera, Jazz, Latin and World Beat. Current faves on the
Alternative front include MUSE, AFI, H.I.M. and Evanescence.
Robert Wait - drums, guitar
For many years, LA-based Robert Wait has been writing and recording songs and composing scores. The former filmmaker shifted focus from making movies to making music. A few music credits from this period include: TV scores for cult favorites "Alien Autopsy" and "Ghosts Caught On Tape", feature film scores for "Breakaway" and "Under The Influence", and songs placed alongside Beck and The Rolling Stones in the Denzel Washington movie "Fallen". Most recently, two songs by Tin Man Alley have been licensed for the documentary about LA Screenwriters, "Talk Fast". Rob is a successful songwriter and recording artist initially as the band Tin Man Alley and later, as simply Robert Wait. He has earned kudos from numberous reviewers for his indie releases "Public Display of Affliction" and "Dear Significant Other".
Originally a drummer, Robert Wait grew up in a musical household in Norther California. On one end of the hall, classically trained sisters practiced cello, violin, and voice. On the other, street-trained Robert and Pleasure Trip's Brad Wait, Rob's guitarist brother honed their skills by covering classic rock bands like Led Zeppelin and the Who. Anyone listening certainly experienced a dizzying blend of harmony and cacophony at the Wait house. In the quieter moments, everyone would meet in the middle and
listen to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Perhaps it's this exposure to so many styles of music that helps Robert write and produce in the varied genres of today. At the very least, it makes life interesting.
In Pleasure Trip, Rob has taken on many roles: he has played guitar for live shows, and helped engineer and co-produce PT's debut CD. In that role, he not only mixed and helped with arrangements, but he also played drums and guitar on several tracks.