One of the shining stars of San Francisco Bay Area's amazing music community, Communiqué have their poison arrows aimed at your ears and heart. Hailing from Oakland, California, guitarist-songwriter Rory Henderson, bassist John Peck, guitarist Ryan Massey and drummer Jamie Kissinger have been playing music together since they were teenage friends in the East Bay suburbs. In 1995, the friends... Read More.

One of the shining stars of San Francisco Bay Area's amazing music community, Communiqué have their poison arrows aimed at your ears and heart. Hailing from Oakland, California, guitarist-songwriter Rory Henderson, bassist John Peck, guitarist Ryan Massey and drummer Jamie Kissinger have been playing music together since they were teenage friends in the East Bay suburbs. In 1995, the friends collected themselves into the punk band American Steel and quickly conquered the hearts and ears of the underground punk scene in Vet's Halls, backyards and warehouses from Berkeley to Tampa, Boston to Phoenix.

In the spring of 2002 when American Steel's touring duties had been fulfilled, Henderson presented four additional new songs to Kissinger, Massey and Peck; a blueprint of their next step. The unnamed group went back to the small studio to set about recording what would become Communiqué's debut EP, "A Crescent Honeymoon," produced and engineered by the band themselves. The spirit of possibility was fueled by the knowledge that they were not just creating new music, but a new band from the ground up. The music was informed by everything they had experienced collectively and individually up until that point as writers and performers. The studio became a laboratory affording them late nights of experimentation in pursuit of their focusing vision.

The keyboard, in various roles, informs Communiqué's sound. Sometimes taking the lead, other times reinforcing or supporting the guitar or vocals at all times binding the elements of the song together in tight concert. Henderson, Peck and Massey understood that it wouldn't be possible to bring this music to life onstage without the addition of a permanent keyboard player. Enter Cory Gowan who grew up in Vacaville California, a few dozen miles away from San Francisco, and was a veteran of two bands, Streets And Avenues and Amscray. When a friend asked him if he might be interested playing keyboards with a new band made up of the guys from American Steel, he jumped at the opportunity. After one meeting and a handful of rehearsals together, Gowan was asked to join the band as a permanent member.

In late 2003 after a year out on the road, the band locked themselves inside Sharkbite Studios in Oakland California with producer, Mark Keaton, to craft their debut album. Two solid months later they emerged with the finished tracks for "Poison Arrows" set for release on Lookout Records in June 2004. Communiqué's extensive live experience balances the sophisticated artifice of "Poison Arrows" with a ferocity that speaks all the way back to the underground punk that inspired them to pick up instruments in the first place. Communiqué has captured their essence - think equal parts perfumed silk and hot bar-breath kisses - in a way that few others do with their first album.