Endeverafter

Life is pretty good for the members of Endeverafter.

Just a few months ago, the band—lead singer and guitarist Michael Grant, guitarist Kristan Mallory, bassist Tommi Andrews and drummer Eric Humbert—were in Los Angeles, where they spent just over two months working on their eponymously titled debut, which may just be one of the most fun-loving rock albums that music fans will hear all year.

Days after completing the record, they hit the road with two of the icons of the 80’s: Cinderella and Poison, who took them out on their first amphitheater tour across the US. While out on the road the members of Endeverafter did what rock bands are supposed to do—they had fun. Lots of it. That’s rock ’n’ roll. Or at least it used to be.

But as of late, rock ’n’ roll—in all of its wind-in-your-hair, guitars-in-your-ear glory—has given away to a slew of broken-hearted emo bands and sensitive singer-songwriters, which is something that Endeverafter are looking to change. The way Grant and his bandmates see it, things are starting to get a tad depressing. “When you look at what’s ruling the airwaves now, it’s things that are predominantly sad. It’s ‘You Had A Bad Day,’” Grant says in disbelief. “That’s sad to me. With these singles that come out now, it’s like, ‘Is anyone happy anymore?’”

For their full-length debut, the members of Endeverafter say that they had only one goal—to return to the good time anthems and freewheeling rock ’n’ roll of the ’70s and ’80s—and it’s no coincidence that the album shares the same swaggering attitude of now-classic rock bands like Aerosmith, Guns ’N Roses and Mötley Crüe. On the song Bright Lights, Big City, Grant even borrows a page from one W. Axl Rose’s lyrical notebook, as he dreams of finding his own reckless haven where “the grass is green and the girls are pretty.”

As an ambitious teen growing up in Sacramento, California, Grant was raised on lots of classic rock—“The Stones, Led Zeppelin, bands that were all about attitude,” he says proudly—and though he began playing in a handful of local punk and hardcore acts at the age of 18, bashing out noisy songs about teen angst never really suited him. As a listener, Grant has always lived for that moment when you crank up the stereo and abandon whatever it is that’s troubling you—and it was that type of catharsis that Grant would try to recreate when he began putting together Endeverafter in 2004.

But first, he needed to find the right bandmates—which he did in Mallory, Andrews and Humbert, three musicians that shared Grant’s hell-bent ambition as well as his desire to form what they dreamed would eventually be the biggest band in the world. “From the very start we wanted to be more than just some other band,” says Andrews, recalling his inauguration into the band later that year. “We wanted to be the biggest thing we could be—or the best—and I think we all still have that drive.”