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BIOGRAPHY
Gabriel Johns – vocals, guitar
Loren Molinare – guitar, vocals
Brian Irving – drums, vocals
Mike Gavigan – guitar, vocals
Peter Downing – bass guitar, vocals
With a classic rock ‘n’ roll sound as powerful as their band name, Slamdinistas are ready to take a step onto the world stage. The band’s five members have spent their lives writing and performing, and those musical chops are blazingly apparent in their contemporary take on New York glitter trash, Detroit streetpunk, and British Invasion rave-ups.
The group’s authenticity can be traced back to 1964, at the height of the British Invasion, when Loren Molinare and Brian Irving were just a pair of kids transformed by the musical andcultural tsunami. “Once I heard the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, and the Who, I knew I had to play guitar,” said Molinare. “But it wasn’t until later in the decade when I heard the MC5 that I realized rock ‘n’ roll had the power to move people, and I wanted to be a part of that sonic revolution.”
Molinare was well situated to take in the power of the Motor City Five as he grew up in Lansing, Michigan, just 90 miles northwest of his heroes in Detroit. In 1968, the teenage guitarist would form his own proto-punk band, the Dogs, and by 1970 they were sharing bills with the MC5. Having played a show as recently as October 2024, the Dogs have forged their own legendary career, so diverse and impactful that it took 20 pagesto cover it in the garage rock magazine Ugly Things.
As for Irving, he remembers banging on pots and pans for months before his parents eventually gifted him a set of Japanese drums for Christmas 1964. “I’ve been on the road to ruin ever since,” he said. “I saved up enough money to buy the Mono version of the Dave Clark Five album, Glad All Over. Those rompin’, stomplin’ DC5 drums, played by Bobby Graham, were my original template.”
Molinare and the Dogs moved to Los Angeles in 1975. They released their debut single, “John Rock,” in 1976, followed two years later by the classic early punk 7” EP, “Slash Your Face.” During this period, the Dogs opened for hard rock acts like AC/DC and Van Halen as well as new wave groups such as the Ramones and the Motels. The band relocated to the UK and toured throughout 1978 and ‘79. Molinare spent much of the next decade playing with the Dogs, who also recorded under the name Attack during this period. From 1989-1992, he was rhythm guitarist for Little Caesar, an L.A. hard rock act that released one album on Metal Blade Records and two on David Geffen’s DGC Records.
Immediately after Little Caesar’s first breakup in 1992, Molinare co-founded the melodic rock band Gilt Lily with frontwoman Carrie Hamilton. Gilt Lily was active on the Los Angeles club scene and during this period Molinare would meet two fellow future members of Slamdinistas, Paul Ill and Gabriel Johns. Ill played bass guitar for a time with the group, while Johns was the music booker at several clubs which featured the band, including the legendary Club Lingerie in Hollywood.
But the Slamdinistas were still two decades in the future.
In addition to continuing his adventures as a rock ‘n’ roll guitarist, Molinare spent much of the 1990s and ‘00s behind the desk in a different musical role, working as a product manager at such companies as Korg USA, Blackstar Amplification, ESP Guitars, and Line 6 Guitars.
The actual formation of the Slamdinistas would finally begin to take shape in 2015. That year, Johns had asked Ill to produce recording sessions for a short-lived progressive/alternative band he was fronting called FiDo. Ill bowed out claiming that production wasn’t really his forte, but he did recommend Molinare. Molinare agreed to come on board, but FiDo never really gelled, and the sessions were abandoned. However, Johns and Molinare enjoyed working together and a plan was struck to instead produce Johns’ first solo album. The resulting mini-album, Love Lives Here (Detroit Records), was released in the summer of 2018. It featured Johns on vocals and rhythm guitar, Molinare on lead and rhythm guitar, Ill on bass and keyboards, and Tony Matteucci (the Dogs) on drums.
Sensing that a good thing was happening, sessions for a second solo album got underway later that year. Johns, Molinare, and Ill were looking for a harder-edged approach this time around. The trio began searching for two more players. The first pick was Brian Irving, the powerhouse drummer who had recorded and toured with Molinare in Glitter Trash (2017-2018). And the new group was rounded out by guitarist Mike Gavigan, whom Johns had been admiring for years for his work in local blues-rock band, the Blessings.
“Under Loren’s direction, the combined playing brought out an organic, high-energy Brit rock sound,” recalled Johns. “Loren surprised me when he said we should be an actual gigging band, but it was immediately apparent he was right. Thus, we became one.”
“The name ‘Slamdinistas’ was suggested by Brian,” revealed Molinare. “Besides the great play on words related to the Clash, it tips its hat to anarchy in a political sense, and it’s a powerful name that projects what we envision as our sound.”
The debut album from Slamdinistas, Shoot for the Stars, was released by Rum Bar Records in September 2022. The band played local dates in support and ventured outside California to perform in New York and New Jersey. The album was quick to win accolades. In a review for The Big Takeover Magazine, Michael Toland wrote, “While the musicians create a backdrop of melodic, country-and-blues-inflected grit rock, Johns comes off like a survivor of a hard life, and his tunes sound like declarations of the joys of coming out of the other side of something other than paradise.” U.S. Rocker cut to the chase with, “If you miss good old-fashioned, no bullshit, 100% rock and roll, then let us introduce you to Slamdinistas.” The album’s focus single, “Brand New Day,” enjoyed heavy rotation on Little Steven’s Underground Garage channel on SiriusXM.
Slamdinistas reconvened in 2024 to record a second album, Wild & Restless, with producer Paul Roessler (the Screamers, 45 Grave) at Kitten Robot Studios in Los Angeles. Ill’s departure before the sessions necessitated the recruitment of a new bass player. Local actor-musician Peter Downing was brought on board, and he contributed two songs to the sessions, with his “Santa’s in a Punk Band Now” released to much acclaim as a holiday single in November.
Molinare gets the last word: “Los Angeles is a melting pot for musicians, and it certainly was crucial for us finding each other. But we don’t consider ourselves to be a distinctly L.A. band because none of us were born here. Gabriel comes the closest to being a native because his family moved here when he was two years old. The rest of us grew up in the Midwest and on the East Coast. Honestly, I see the Slams as a dirty (NYC) Lower East Side rock ‘n’ roll band that would have hung out down at the pub with Dave Edmunds and the Rolling Stones.”
INDIVIDUAL BIOS:
GABRIEL JOHNS – Gabriel Johns, the band’s frontman, co-songwriter, and rhythm guitarist was born in Chicago but raised in Los Angeles. He realized he wanted to sing around the age of 13 after hearing Rod Stewart on the radio. By the early 1990s, he was actively involved in the L.A. music scene, fronting the band Shelter (1993-1996) while booking shows at Club Lingerie, The Garage (now The Virgil), Hell’s Gate, and The Continental Club (1994-1998). By 2015, he was playing with the progressive rock band FiDo, which led to his professional association with Loren Molinare. Johns hired Molinare to produce sessions for FiDo, which instead turned into sessions for Johns’ first solo album, Love Lives Here, which was released on Detroit Records in 2018.
Gabriel Johns on Bandcamp.
LOREN MOLINARE – Starting his musical career in 1968 as the singer/guitarist for Michigan proto-punk trio the Dogs, Loren Molinare has lived his life in the rock ‘n’ roll trenches. His most well-known affiliation outside of the still active Dogs would be his role as one of the guitarists in L.A. hard rock band Little Caesar. Molinare has appeared on all eight of Little Caesar’s albums and has toured with them since 1987, including support gigs for AC/DC, Iggy Pop, and Jane’s Addiction. Little Caesar most recently toured the UK in September 2024 as special guests to Tyketto. Molinare also currently performs with the Ugly Things, a band led by Tony Marsico of the Plugz and Cruzados. Other band affiliations over the decades have included Attack (the Dogs under another name), Scott Goddard, Ampage, Texas Terri’s Baby Bird, Mike Hudson & the Pagans, Glitter Trash, Michael Des Barres & the Mistakes, and Cruzados.
Loren Molinare on Discogs and the Dogs on Wikipedia.
BRIAN IRVING – A native of the San Francisco Bay Area,Brian Irving honed his skills as a session drummer by recording soundalike station IDs of the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and other hit artists for KMET Radio in Los Angeles. In 1984, he was in the final lineup of Cheap Trick bassist Tom Peterson’s offshoot group, Another Language. In 1997, he recorded and played live for a year with Gilby Clarke of Guns N’ Roses fame. From 2013-2016, he was the drummer for L.A. punks Pat Todd & the Rankoutsiders. Irving has also played with legendary British session guitarist Chris Spedding, Jon Hyde & Bobby Pickett (Detective), and Glen Cornick (Jethro Tull). In addition to their work together in the Slamdinistas, Irving and Loren Molinarerecorded and toured with glam rockers Glitter Trash (2017-2018), and toured Europe as part of Little Caesar in 2022. Currently, he also records and performs with Richard Duguay and the Beautiful Decline, and the Mike Livingston Trio. The latter group features guitarist Mike R. Livingston from L.A. punk band the Mau Mau’s and bassist Dave Provost of the Textones.
Brian Irving on Discogs.
MIKE GAVIGAN – As a grade schooler in Pittsburgh, Mike Gavigan had his doors of perception thrown open wide when his parents took him to see Kiss in July 1979. “Once I heard Ace Frehley’s SUPER-crankin’ loud, bluesy, psychedelic and melodic playing, I said to myself right there and then, ‘I need to figure out how to do THAT and play and sound like Ace,’” he recalled. By the time Gavigan reached college, he was playing in a Kiss tribute band that gigged at venues and Kiss conventions throughout the Midwest and East Coast. Hungry for new opportunities, he moved to Los Angeles in 2000. While immersing himself in the city’s live music scene, he came across the Slimmer Twins, a blues-rock group led by Jeremy White and Ronnie Younkins (Kix, the Blues Vultures). He approached White and the two immediately started a collaboration which became the Blessings in 2006. As lead guitarist and co-songwriter, Gavigan has appeared on three albums by the Blessings, including 2024’s Woke Up with the Noonday Devil. A new album is planned for 2025.
Mike Gavigan on the Blessings’ website and Bandcamp.
PETER DOWNING – The most recent addition to the Slams’ lineup is bassist Peter Downing. He started life with his family on an organic farm located in the suburbs of Boston. By high school, he was dabbling in music and he turned pro in college as he gigged locally with Joey Scott and the Connection. While still on the East Coast, he played in numerous Boston area acts, most prominently the Peasants and Mezz. Upon relocating to Los Angeles in 1997, Downing quickly gained a foothold in the local scene when he joined actor/comedian Adam Sandler’s jam band. “I spent ten years supporting everyone from Joe Walsh to Debbie Harry to Flavor Flav at Adam’s famous Christmas parties,” recalled Downing, “Truly an embarrassment of riches.” When the Slamdinistas came calling in 2023, he was quick to heed the summons, and he entered the studio with them to record the Wild & Restless album in 2024. To date, he has written two songs for the band, “Johnny Wallflower” and the holiday single, “Santa’s in a Punk Band Now.” He is also a participant in Wayne Kramer and Billy Bragg’s non-profit Jail Guitar Doors, for which he facilitates songwriting workshops for inmates, and performs three times a week with the house band. Additionally, Downing is an actor and playwright.
this is the 1st single off our up and coming WILD & RESTLESS CD/Album out April 25th on Rum Bar Records!
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