For a band with such a wallflower name, they sure stay visible. Melodic rockers Social Ghost have been a sizeable blip on Central Florida’s radar these last few months, spreading the love all over the surrounding counties and contributing some sizeable chops to worthy causes like the Rock for Hunger show last November. Even if you haven’t seen them, you’ve heard them: they had a de facto hit single in “Tomorrow,” an anthem that regularly pounded the crap out of the competition on O-Rock’s late lamented band battles.

Guitarist Neight, bassist / vocalist Van Lugo and drummer Matt Brown are hard at work on their first LP, but we lured them out of the studio with the promise of free beer. Then we skipped out on the tab. We felt bad, but then we thought: screw it. With hooks like theirs, these guys are gonna be in the VIP room before long.

You’ve been out on the road quite a bit, and just got back from touring with Alice in Chains late last year. Does it help heading into the studio after playing live for so long?
Matt Brown: Definitely. We’re updating the four songs from our EP, and then we’re recording new material that we’ve hashed out through the live setting. It’s kind of progressed to the point where we should really capture what we’re doing – not only for our fans, but for our sake, so we can move on and work on the new music.

Neight: One of the reasons we waited so long is because we’re all about the live aspect. We wanted to get that down and be known and established as a live band, and then try to capture it on disc. Hopefully this time we’ll be able to do it.

I’d imagine it’s easier to try the new stuff when you’re on the road and nobody knows you from Adam.
MB: For sure. Especially if they’re a captive crowd. When we were out with Alice in Chains, we premiered a song on that tour that we had never played, ever. We rehearsed it just for that tour.

N: And by the second chorus, I could see people singing the words.

I’d imagine the tight rhythm section helps. It seems like you’ve got that in common with your influences, The Police for one. Do you plan on focusing on your technical chops more for the CD?
MB: Obviously, it’ll be more produced, it’ll be a cleaner presentation …

Van Lugo: Not too clean.

MB: Right. We’re still trying to capture that raw energy. We’re not using the technology to a point where it doesn’t breathe anymore. We’re basically using the computer system as a tape machine. We’ve all gotten to the point where we don’t need that stuff. It takes away from all this effort we’ve put into learning to play together. Why would you want to kill that by putting it into a grid and locking it down?

N: That’s part of the problem with music today. What does your record mean if you can’t perform it? With these beat detectives and the auto-tune, it’s like you can put a donkey up to a microphone and make it sound like Celine Dion.

I think I’d take the donkey.
MB: I’ve been reading a lot of music articles, and it seems like every CD review is, “This is a great band; you can hear their influences, but it doesn’t compare to this record or that record.” And all the records that everybody thinks are so great are before this stuff was around. There was no pitch correction. Nowadays, you listen to most modern records that are put out, at first listen they sound great because they’re perfect. But you listen to them three or four times and you’re annoyed by it. Because they’re perfect. There’s no craziness to it; they’re just screaming at you the whole time.

A little sense of humor about what you do is good, too. A caught a clip of you guys playing “Tommorrow” at the Florida Music Festival, and all of a sudden I started hearing Van sing “Edge of Seventeen.” Was that planned?
VL: We’d done it a couple times. It happened in rehearsal.

MB: I joined the band in March of last year, and FMF was in May. It was very fresh, and we were still feeling each other out musically. That was one of those tunes where we got in the middle of it and I was like, “Man, this really reminds me of Stevie Nicks.”

VL: Yeah, “White-winged dove …” We were just kind of screwing around. We don’t really know when we’re going to do that. The girls seem to love it, though.