New Jersey has come to be known as a scene with a plethora of outstanding bands. However, only a few really get noticed outside of the garden state, where natives say, only the strong survive. Tokyo Rose are no longer satisfied with being a brilliant flower in the garden state, and with an impressive debut album the boys won't have to wait to long for the world to take notice. Tokyo Rose began in the summer of 2001 when Ryan Dominguez (vocals, guitar) and Chris Poulsen (bass) started playing together after they both parted ways with their previous bands. A couple of member changes later, Tokyo Rose brought aboard Jon Smith (drums) and a few short months later, Greg Doran (guitar also a old high school pal of Jon's), stepped up to the plate to complete the Tokyo Rose lineup. What became second nature of them was to write catchy emotional pop rock with insightful lyrics. Soon after they started playing shows with this lineup, things started looking up for them. They garnered a bigger fan base at home (Jersey) and managed to get themselves out of Jersey a few times to tour with the likes of The Beautiful Mistake, Glasseater and Northstar. Tokyo Rose was starting to happen. The story goes that even before playing their first real show (besides at friend's basements and such), Tokyo Rose had sent a demo to Chad Pearson, who works for SideCho Records. Chad quickly contacted them to say that he loved what he had heard, and the two parties quickly formed a close friendship. Soon afterwards Tokyo Rose had a more then a few labels interested in them in California so they decided to book their own tour out to California and play a few showcases for these labels. When we got to California to play for all the labels, Chad introduced us to James Cho, the owner of SideCho, and we instantly saw that both James and Chad were a cut above the rest of the typical label scum, Poulsen said, we felt that we really wanted to deal with SideCho from then on. Fast-forward through a few months of building a closer friendship and trust with each other SideCho presented Tokyo Rose their deal. It took me awhile to say. Let's do this! Cho comments, because I wanted to be sure that SideCho had the best resources to give Tokyo Rose. I definitely feel that we can work magic together. Tokyo Rose spent all of March and April 2003 at Portrait Studios in Lincoln Park, NJ recording Reinventing A Lost Art, Tokyo Rose's debut full-length out July 15th, 2003. Although the band had independently released an EP titled, Chasing Fireflies, it was not until the making of Reinventing A Lost Art have they had ever recorded in true studio fashion. Tokyo Rose paired up with Jersey-based producer Chris Badami (Dillinger Escape Plan, The Early November, The Starting Line, etc.) to help them on the record. [Chris] is a great guy and is very supportive of our band, Poulsen spoke of Badami. He had great ideas that we wouldn't have thought up to make our songs be the best they could be. Tokyo Rose plans to keep playing in their home state, as well as tour nationally. They have already booked their own 6-week national tour with The Lyndsay Diaries (The Militia Group). , There are so many bands [in Jersey], sometimes you can get lost in the mix, Chris comment on the jersey scene, but we have a lot of dedicated, loyal fans and they support what we're doing whole heartedly. That is strength in numbers--and only the strong survive in Jersey.
