INTERVIEW: For Paralandra, rock runs in the family
Photo: Paralandra’s new album is called The Body Electric. Photo courtesy of the band / Provided by Atom Splitter PR with permission.
Paralandra, which celebrated its 10th anniversary as a hard rock band in 2023, recently released its new album, The Body Electric, featuring songs penned over the course of several few years. Many of these tunes, including the singles “Dirty Love” and “Love of My Life,” have been performed by Paralandra during the band’s live gigs, and now fans have the chance to dig deeper into the songs with recorded versions.
The rockin’ band is a unique group. Casandra Carson is the vocalist, and she’s joined by her father, Paul Carson, on guitars. Rounding out the group is bassist Sawyer Rikard and drummer Dakota Watson. Over the years, they have shared the stage with a bevy of rock ‘n’ roll and metal outfits, including Warrant, Lita Ford and Firehouse, among others. And their 2024 is jam-packed with gigs across the United States and well into the fall season.
“They can expect 10 bangers, that’s for sure,” Casandra Carson said about the new album. “The Body Electric is really cool. It encompasses about 10 years of work, just from Paralandra over the years. There are songs on there that we’ve been playing live, like literally since the beginning, but we’ve never recorded them. They’re familiar to a lot of our hometown fans, but then there’s also songs that we wrote a few years later. There’s songs that we wrote right before we were going into the studio, so it’s really cool. It’s very much a collection of Paralandra.”
That hometown is Springfield, Missouri, where Paralandra has a dedicated fan base, but now the rockers are trying to expand that geography and appeal to audiences throughout the United States and beyond.
“This whole thing is serendipitous,” Carson said. “I’ve definitely been chasing being a rockstar since I was 12 years old. Paralandra started by me and my dad saying, ‘Hey, we’ve been writing some songs. What if we played them live one time?’ And that one time turned into two times, turned into we never stopped, and here we are. … It’s great. Me and my dad have been super tight my whole life. We’re very much alike, interested in the same types of music. I have taken a lot of inspiration from people that inspired him, like Eddie Van Halen and all the guitar heroes my dad introduced me to. It’s super inspiring, so I mean it’s great. We’re like best friends. I’m very lucky to be in a situation where me and my dad get along like that. I know it’s not very common.”
When Carson writes songs, she often uses voice memos on her phone. She thinks of a little ditty and starts singing to herself. Before losing the lyric or the melody, she hits record on her phone and stores the recording for a rainy day. When she’s ready to bring an idea to the band, she plays back the memos to see what seeds might sprout into full-blown songs.
“As far as our sound goes, I feel like it has just been progressively getting better and better because we’ve been doing more stuff,” she said. “We’re able to play more often. We’re able to spend a little more money on the studio, so whereas the first couple of recordings, like All Fall Down and Ascension, it was great for what we could do at that time. But now we’re on a different level, and now this is our second album working with [Michael] Elvis Baskette. He is the fifth member of this band. As far as what you get from Street Magic and from The Body Electric, the songs are very much Paralandra. It’s what you get from our live shows, but he just takes them to a whole other level on the recording. The quality is incredible. It’s cool seeing how our quality of music and the recordings have progressed over time.”
Carson added: “As musicians in the band, we’ve definitely grown a lot. I’ve grown a lot as a vocalist and a guitar player, but we’ve always stayed true to that high-energy rock sound.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Paralandra’s new album is called The Body Electric. Click here for more information.
