By Amanda Friedt

Staff Reporter

While rising through the ranks of the independent rock scene, The Status have proven that having good connections is just as important as musical talent.

The Status have been a part of the Involuntary Movement Tour this fall, featuring Valencia, The Matches and Bayside.

The Atlanta-based band, including Ben Grant (vocals, guitar), Andy Thompson (guitar, vocals), Danny Grant (bass) and Mike Felker (drums), released its debut album, “So This Is Progress,” on Oct. 7.

The album features guest vocals from both Adam Lazzarra of Taking Back Sunday and Anthony Raneri of Bayside.

“Since we’re touring with Bayside on some of the shows, (Raneri) is going to come out and sing,” Grant said.

Touring is a new experience for the young Atlanta band.

“We’ve been The Status for two years,” Grant said. “For the first year that we were The Status we just did local and regional, but this is the first year we’ve been touring.”

The Status has been moving up in the music world, working with manager Raneri and signing with Doghouse Records last spring.

“Basically, through Anthony we just started to network with people he was already familiar with,” Grant said.

The band finds signing with an indie label to be an advantage for the growing band.

“I think indie labels kind of have an advantage, especially in this scene,” Grant said. “I guess you’d say I feel a lot safer with an indie label because they usually have a smaller amount of bands … They have their attention on all of their bands, rather than a huge label that has hundreds of bands, where if you’re not selling a certain number of records they aren’t going to pay attention to you.

Touring, traveling and establishing their band has been a continuing journey for The Status.

“With being a young band as we are it’s really important in building a home base,” Grant said. “Start local, then nationally.”

Up to now, all the band’s touring has been in North America.

“I’d love to go overseas, but as of now we haven’t done Warped Tour yet. Once we get that opportunity, it’ll be pretty important to us,” Grant said.

Grant considers acoustic guitar to be crucial to the band’s music.

“I wrote all of our songs and I usually write them on acoustic guitar,” Grant said. “We usually do a song called ‘Perfect Day’ and then ‘So This is Progress’ at every acoustic show.”

Grant has contributed to most of the music writing and organization for the band.

“Andy (Thompson) and I usually come up with the melodies and stuff, but then I’ll go home and write lyrics, so I’m the main lyricist but we all contribute,” Grant said.

Grant finds many different inspirations for their lyrics and is constantly looking for the new.

“All of our songs I feel have somewhat of a positive message, but it’s not necessarily about me,” Grant said. “I try to listen to as much (music) as I can. Being a musician, you want different inspirations.”

The reviews of the debut album have provided feedback for The Status.

“Our record just came out, so we’ve been reading some of that stuff,” Grant said. “It’s cool when you get a good review, you get way more excited, but when you get a bad one you try to brush it off.”

lifeline@cm-life.com

E-mail the author: Amanda Friedt