Once in a while, you're listening to an unsigned artist CD and one of two things happens. A). You stop listening after thirty seconds of the first song or B). You are completely captivated by the first song and wanna hear more.  Option B is the case with One Step Away. I viewed their submission through our Sonic Bids listing and after literally listening to hundreds of submissions, One Step Away's music jumped out of the pack.

One Step Away first began in 2006 when friends Terence Healy (guitar) and Mike Nuzzolo (bass) began jamming together. It wasn't long before Adam Carrington brought his classically trained voice into the mix, helping to define the sound that would become associated with One Step Away. A self-titled EP later and drummer Ben Trudeau joined the fray. The path since then has been an upward one, with larger and larger gigs covering a bigger geographic area. One Step Away has now played coast to coast and won several regional and national competitions for songwriting and performance. In early 2010 One Step Away dove into the studio with producers Dan Malsch and Alec Henninger of Soundmine Recording Studio (Four Year Strong, Framing Hanley, Forever the Sickest Kids). The resulting album, For The Broken, was released late 2010.

From their opening song "Here We Go", lead singer Adam Carrington's voice propels their fine tuned sound into the same stratosphere as well established band Fall Out Boy. There's no looking back after that point. (CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO "HERE WE GO")

I spoke with One Step Away (who are all 18 execept for one 16 year old) via phone from their home state of Massachusetts.

I listened to some of your songs and you guys are really good.  It seems like a "no-brainer" to a label looking to sign artists.  What has been the feedback from labels?

MIKE: Right now we're looking into a few indie labels to try to get another album going. We're actually currently writing for our second album right now. We're talking to a few labels, we're just trying to find a good deal right now.

Ok, I think it's definitely gonna come, your music doesn't sound amateur, it sounds like it should be on the radio right now.  The song I like the most is called "Here We Go". When you guys first got together, was there instant chemistry?

TERENCE: There was definitely alot of instant chemistry, like right off the bat, we could start writing really good songs and everything came together really well.

Do you all write or is there one main writer?

MIKE: The main vocal and the melody and lyrics are written by Adam and Terence does the guitar work,  but we all kinda check ourselves and we're all critics of the music and we all have input in the song.

What is favorite thing to write about?

MIKE: Relationships and girls

Who are your major influences?

MIKE: Boys like Girls, All time Low, Every Avenue, a lot of pop, punk rock bands.

BEN: I usually like go on Myspace and other social network sites and listen to new bands and see what they're doing. I usually listen to like Pop/Rock, like Fall Out Boy, Boys Like Girls. We all listen to alot of different things, our music is based on a Pop/Rock sound. But we try to incorporate elements from modern pop songs too, like hooks and all that.

I think that's what keeps it interesting. When doing my research, I found videos of you guys on the web doing covers of Usher and Taio Cruz. How does this band with the influences that you've named do these covers?

TERENCE:We really like playing those covers because our audience can relate to them, cause they are the songs they hear on the radio. It's always really fun to remake and R&B/Hip Hop song into a rock song. We also have a lot of respect for those artists too, because they write such great hooks.

How do you balance your everday life and continue to pursue this dream especially since one of you are still in high school?

TERENCE: It's definitely a challenge finding the time for everything, especially when you have a test or something like that. We're all really hard workers, both with the band and at school, it's a lot of time management but we somehow find out how to make everything work.

How do your parents feel about all of this and letting you go work your record?

TERENCE: They're very supportive of us, ever since we've started, they've been there helping us carry equipement or driving us to shows before we could drive ourselves. Our parents are always there.

That's really good, it's gonna take supportive parents for a band at your age to become successful. How often do you guys rehearse?

TERENCE: We generally rehearse like twice a week. We usually practice every Sunday and then we'll write during the week for like an hour or two.

Do you write separtely and then bring it together to finish?

TERENCE: It depends on the song, we generally come up with ideas on our own separately and then bring it together. We usually have the vocals written separately and the guitar written separately, then we'll come together and finsih the song. We'll have 1/4 of 1/3 of the lyrics and then the rest will get written together.

MIKE: It's like the editing phase. We'll come together, talk about how we like it. Sometimes there is changes and sometimes there isn't.

What do you want people to take away from listening to your music?

BEN: We're writing the music for ourselves, we love the music we write. I think that any band just wants people to listen to their music and connect to it in some way or another.

Well thank you guys for taking the time to talk with me. When you become famous, all I ask is that you don't act like you don't know me!!  I encourage all of my readers to check out this band. Check out more music on their myspace page at www.myspace.com/1stepawayband and continue to support independent bands who are making great music!