Photo courtesy of The After Hours.
The timing was right for The After Hours to embrace a reality that was a long time coming.
The four-piece, who have been playing together under the moniker since September 2021, have been making a name for themselves regionally over the last two years, though their relationships as musicians go back much further than that.
Vocalist Jordan Trevino, 34, who also joins the band on drums, bass and guitar, and guitarist Sean Saman, 37 (who you’ll also hear on keyboards and bass) were both longtime members of the former Harrisburg band, Hot Jam Factory. Multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Elena Rossetto was briefly a member of Hot Jam Factory in 2020, but, as many musicians felt the pangs of the global pandemic, touring—and Hot Jam Factory’s time as a band—came to a grinding halt.
This clean slate opened up a new world of opportunity, though. Trevino, Saman and Rossetto were excited about another sound that they’d started exploring and felt committed to a “singular direction and vision of what this vision and project could be,” thus beginning a new era as The After Hours, Trevino said. Gordon Lauffer, 25, has since started working with the band on drums.
When listening to a few of the band’s dreamier, synth-heavy melodies, one can appreciate the different members’ shared efforts to create emotional, vibe-y moments. Combined, their individual talents create a rich, atmospheric sound that feels very current, with a hint of New Wave nostalgia.
The group’s first full-length album, “Late Night Social,” comes out Friday, Oct.13, and includes 11 original tracks. If you want to catch the band performing songs from the album live, you’ll have two chances to do so that weekend.
The After Hours’ Album Release Party hits the Stage on Herr at H*MAC at 7:30 p.m., Oct. 13, and the band will play at Choctoberfest at ChocolateTown Square Park in downtown Hershey on Oct. 14, sometime between 4 and 6 p.m.
I caught up with the band one evening in August at Trevino’s house while members were having an “art night,” adding the finishing touches to some album artwork as well as conceptualizing some props and storylines for upcoming music videos.
TheBurg: How did the band come to be?
Jordan Trevino: We had Hot Jam Factory for so long… This [The After Hours] is a jumping-off point to do more centered works. We released two songs, “Back Here Again” and “Anytime,” and then retouched them up, this time as The After Hours, and released them under this name as our first two singles.
TheBurg: How long have you been working on “Late Night Social?” Can you talk about the recording process?
Trevino: It’s a lot of themes. Lyrically, moving into this album, we as The After Hours really wanted to get back to emotionally based writing. We were getting really intrigued by concept—bigger, grander ideas. … We just kept talking about chasing a lot of vibes with it, setting atmospheres, and after the fact, there are a lot of themes of change and time, and connecting, whether it’s people reconnecting or slowly growing apart, pursuing romantically or whatever. It’s kind of, at least for me, these different snapshots of different stories in a night.
Sean Saman: We record with Jason Shaffer at Full Tilt Recording in Mechanicsburg… he’s sort of our unspoken sixth member.
Trevino: This is the first album [where] we’ve really recorded most of the base tracks ourselves and took everything to Jason, for mixing, mastering and overlaying. We’ve worked with him for about 10 years. … We recorded all the basic stuff at our place, and then we recorded some violin and saxophone stuff at Jason’s studio.
TheBurg: Who does most of the songwriting for the band?
Trevino: Elena joined (Hot Jam Factory) to mostly sing and do some auxiliary, and then got really good at bass during COVID and started writing bass lines. Sean’s been leading the soundscape in most of the songs, written the drum parts, guitar parts and everything.
Elena Rossetto: We’re all multi-instrumentalists; we all do a lot. And Gordon’s on drums! Though it’s a matter of time before I’m hopping on your drum kit.
Gordon Lauffer: Please do!
Trevino: I do most of the lyrics, but it’s a big bouncing off of each other process, a lot of, ‘what do you think?’ I come up with a starting point for the melody, and Elena will help steer the melody a lot, harmonize—it’s a playful process. … I’ll be asking everyone: are you sure about this line? Do you like it more if it’s phrased this way?”
Saman: Then I come through and fix the typos. (Whole group laughs.)
Trevino: I feel like it started when Sean and I lived together. Most of the time, we played together so we’d be writing, heavily collaborative. Elena came in and fit that so well because she’s naturally gifted at picking up instruments and very creative, talented with melody. It’s made this really nice structure where we chime in on what everyone is doing.
Rossetto: When we are live, we perform what we know best and tend to switch instruments depending on what we’re playing live.
Saman: We do it strategically—what’s the energy of the songs, and who has what instruments, and what makes it flow the best?
TheBurg: What songs did you have the most fun recording?
Saman: To be fair, I had a lot of fun recording all of the parts and all of the songs.
Rossetto: We used a theremin in the song, “My Type,” and Jordan had a lot of fun playing that.
Trevino: It was super fun.
Saman: During COVID I bought a marimba, so I put that in “Back Here Again.”
Trevino: “Me & My Girl” is pretty special. They all were special, but we recorded vibraphone, cello and violins while working on that song, and [from the song’s] finished written [form] and then in the studio, it was such a different song. That one still surprises me, just hearing some of the fun orchestration stuff we did. “In A Little While” is a song where a lot of things that were just played in the recording process ended up sticking. We used some extreme effects and had fun with a lot of sounds, but I remember thinking, “This will never make it to the album,” and it’s definitely making it to the album.
Saman: That’s one that I really enjoy playing live.
For more information on The After Hours, visit the band’s page on Spotify.
You can catch the band live at their “Late Night Social” album release party at Stage on Herr at H*MAC at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 13. For more details for that show, visit www.harrisburgarts.com
The Q&A has been edited for brevity and clarity.
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