By Elyse Wanshel

Lead singer Jason Chambrot

Arsonist is totally gay for each other. Not in the literal sense—although drummer Alejandro Tuesta jokingly admitted in front of me and the rest of his male band mates that he could masturbate to Iron Maiden, “And on beat,” bass player George Ubieta cleverly added after Tuesta’s half-witted confession—but, gay in a metaphoric way.

Under the golden glow of the band’s “sexy” disco ball, hung overhead in their warehouse rehearsal space near Tamiami Airport, these four undeniably straight guys from west Kendall describe their musical union as a marriage, and a happy one at that.

Lead singer, Jason Chambrot elaborates. “People have a lot of musical differences, you know? Sometimes you stop talking to a person and you’ve been jammin’ with them for, like, three years. Music can break up a lot of friendships…and bands.”  Which is exactly where each member of Arsonist stood a little over a year ago, all newly divorced from previous bands and scattered through out the small, but surprisingly connected, Miami rock scene.

Apparently, someone knew someone, and someone knew someone else, who knew someone who wanted to start a band. Or at least that’s how Arsonist tends to describe their initial convergence.

	Darren “D-Rock” Dyer, who plays guitar and keyboards

“We all kinda stumbled together,” admits Ubieta, as he sits on the arm of an old couch that looks like it was just salvaged from Flamingo Plaza. The four started playing together and the musical chemistry bubbled.

“It was like I found my musical counterparts,” guitarist Darren “D-Rock” Dyer, reminisces as he munches on a fresh baked cookie. “It was like I found my bassist, I found my drummer, I found my lead singer.”

One may stop to wonder how these scruffy, laid-back T-shirt and sneaker-wearing guys managed to meld so well together, especially after knowing one another for such a short time. Maybe the answer lies in their mutual passion for playing music. Perhaps it’s their shared ambition and strong work ethic. Or maybe, just maybe, Chambrot pinned the tail right on the donkey’s ass when he accidentally described the band as the color “plaid”.

Drummer Alejandro Tuesta

In the beginning of our interview, I playfully asked the band what color best describes Arsonist. The band sprung at the question screaming out blue, black, and then came Chambrot’s very enthusiastic “Plaid!” I laughed and told Chambrot that plaid is a pattern, not a color, and dismissed the comment all together. Yet, the next day, after listening through our recorded interview and taking notes, Chambrot’s outlook finally struck a chord.

Plaid is a pattern that is made up of different colors, shades, and lines that all come together to create something larger then themselves. They create a pattern, a harmony, and in a band where musical tastes vary from Sunny Day Real Estate, U2, Outkast, DJ Shadow, Deftones, Iron Maiden, and PJ Harvey, Arsonist is pretty much forced to take everyone’s opinions into consideration in order to create music.

“We all have the same idea of what we’re about and what we’re looking for,” expresses Dyer. Yet, because the band prides itself on being artistically opened minded and musically democratic, “It takes us a really long time to finish a song,” Ubieta admits.

In fact, in the year that Arsonist has been together, they’ve only written eight original songs, “with a few more bouncing around, here and there,” Tuesta explains. Yet, what the band lacks in prolific song production they make up for in quality and drive.

If you ask the band to describe their own sound Chambrot likes to describe them in pictures.  “It’s making love in a tunnel, at midnight, with two chicks and a bottle of liquor, just chillin’,” while Dyer claims he just “tries to make a feeling.” Yet, if you were to ask me, I’d say they’re a very organic, mellow-sounding band that smacks their own melodies with bolts of hard edge. The balance between Tuesta’s aggressive drumming, Dyer’s and Ubieta’s stream-of-consciousness sounding bass and guitar, mixed in with Chambrot’s raw, yet smooth voice that ranges from a controlled whisper to a gut-wrenching belt, give the band a purely distinct sound.

They’re also great live. During shows each member of Arsonist becomes so enthralled with their own music that they seem to escape their own bodies and often push one another away in shock when they unintentionally crash into one another on stage. Perhaps this energy present during shows is due in part to the fact that the band is not yet signed by a label—they actually had to produce their own three-song demo, which is available for free at each show—and are eager to build a following. Their following at the moment, they admit, is not that large. Yet as always, Arsonist is optimistic about their future.

“Each show we leave with at least one fan,” Chambrot says, “so we figure if we play 300,000 shows, we’ll eventually get 300,000 fans.”

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