Platinum rockers The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus have completed recording their sophomore album, Lonely Road, at the Valley Village, CA, studio of super-producer Howard Benson (Hoobastank, P.O.D., Less Than Jake, Daughtry, Seether, All-American Rejects), the follow-up to the Don’t You Fake It. Their debut breakthrough was two years in the making, a tribute to the label’s commitment to long-term artist development, and has gone on to sell more than 2.1 million singles and scan over a million copies in the U.S. to date.
The new album,
Lonely Road, streets on Feb. 3, 2009, and is preceded digitally by the current hit track, "
You Better Pray", as well as a fan’s only studio demo for "
Pen & Paper", available at the band’s RedJumpSuitAlliance.com website, and now on MySpace. To mark the release,
RJA will embark on a headlining, international tour, starting Dec. 6 at the 97X Next Big Thing 8 in Tampa, FL, then heading to a number of South East Asian countries in late February and March including Australian dates in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth.
"We’re really psyched about these tracks and the new record and hope you are, too," proclaims lead vocalist Ronnie Winter on the band’s MySpace page. "Just like Don’t You Fake It, you can be sure Lonely Road will tie together these and a bunch of other sounds in a classic, but new-and-improved RJA-sounding way."
Consisting of Winter, guitarist/pianist/singer Duke Kitchens, bass/singer Joey Westwood and drummer/singer Jon Wilkes, RJA connected immediately with listeners on their first single, "Face Down", a plea against domestic violence that introduced a band with a commitment to social issues, not just in their music, but in their day-to-day lives.
Don’t You Fake It charted for 62 weeks on Billboard’s Top 200 while "Face Down" stayed atop the Top 20 Modern Rock airplay list for 52 weeks before being retired. "Face Down" earned the band platinum status by selling 1.5 million digital singles and has been streamed over 16.6 million times on MySpace. Songs from the first album have been streamed more than 50 million times on the band’s MySpace page, along with such favorites as "Your Guardian Angel", which generated 10.2 million MySpace spins and 455k downloads, as well as marking the festive occasions of thousands of Facebook and YouTube photo flipbooks and videos. Two other songs from their debut, "Damn Regret" and "False Pretense", are both at almost 100,000 downloads apiece.
Since the release of Don’t You Fake It, RJA has also been an active force for a wide array of charitable organizations and social causes, including teen suicide prevention (including co-headlining the US Take Action Tour with My Chemical Romance and Rise Against), mental health parity and a strong commitment to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, teaming up with their label Virgin Records, to raise funds.
In addition, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus Guardian Angel Foundation has been formed as an umbrella group to support under-funded high school band programs, to promote and enhance student musical development; support individuals affected by domestic violence, to break the cycle of abuse; and contribute to research that focuses on management of acute hyperglycemia in hospitalized patients.
"We’re looking forward to finally getting the new record out and once again hitting the road," writes Winter on the band’s MySpace blog. "And as you’ll soon hear, it was all worth it."
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