Backstage Pass

Rise Against is an American punk rock band from Chicago, formed in 1999. The group's current line-up comprises vocalist/rhythm guitarist Tim McIlrath, lead guitarist Zach Blair, bassist Joe Principe and drummer Brandon Barnes. Rooted in hardcore punk and melodic hardcore, Rise Against's music emphasizes melody, catchy hooks, an aggressive sound and playstyle, and rapid tempos. Lyrically, the band is known for their outspoken social commentary, covering a wide range of topics such as political injustice, animal rights, humanitarianism, and environmentalism.

The band spent its first four years signed to the independent record label Fat Wreck Chords, on which they released two studio albums, The Unraveling (2001) and Revolutions per Minute (2003). Both the albums were met with underground success, and in 2003 the band signed with the major label Dreamworks, which was absorbed by Geffen. Rise Against's major label debut Siren Song of the Counter Culture (2004) brought the band mainstream success, largely in part to the popularity of the singles "Give It All" and "Swing Life Away". The band's next album, The Sufferer & the Witness (2006), peaked at number ten on the Billboard 200 in the United States, and was Rise Against's first album to chart in countries outside of North America.

With the release of Appeal to Reason (2008), Rise Against's music shifted toward a more accessible and radio-friendly sound, with greater emphasis on production value. The album's third single, "Savior", broke the record for the most consecutive weeks spent on both the Hot Rock Songs and Alternative Songs charts. Rise Against's popularity grew with the release of Endgame (2011), which peaked at number two on the Billboard 200, and charted highly worldwide. The band's 7th and 8th albums, The Black Market (2014) and Wolves (2017) continued the trend of commercial success, and both peaked with the top ten on the Billboard 200.

Tommy Reynolds is a highly renowned international photographer based near London, specialising in commercial portraits. Tommy’s recent clientelle has included: Syco Entertainment, The National Lottery, Ben Sherman, Eurovision Song Contest, Universal Music, The Metro, Panasonic & Lecia.

Leslie Gaston-Bird (AMPS, M.P.S.E.) is author of the book "Women in Audio", part of the AES Presents series and published by Focal Press (Routledge). She is a voting member of the Recording Academy. Currently, Leslie is a freelance re-recording mixer and sound editor and owner of Mix Messiah Productions.

Dr. Hayleigh Bosher is an internationally published legal academic, speaker and legal consultant specialising in intellectual property, media and entertainment law. She is a Lecturer in Intellectual Property Law at Brunel University London, Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Intellectual Property, Policy and Management, blogger for the specialist IP blog The IPKat, Deputy Editor of the European Trade Mark Reports, and founder of the World IP Women (WIPW) network.

She also holds a PhD in Copyright Law from Bournemouth University, under the Vice Chancellor’s Scholarship Award.

Lenise is a groundbreaker. She has worked as a recording engineer working on many iconic records including “Aja” by Steely Dan, “Breakfast in America” by Supertramp and “Tusk” by Fleetwood Mac. She was also the first woman to receive a platinum album for engineering on Blondie’s AutoAmerican. Since then Lenise has moved into post-production audio, beginning with creating the foreign music and effects tracks for the entire Disney cartoon catalog, and eventually specializing in recording and editing Foley. She has worked on several films and animated series, such as “Robo Cop,” “Street Sharks,” and “Extreme Ghostbusters.” She has traveled the world for Dreamworks supervising and producing the foreign dialogue and vocals for “Shrek,” “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron” and “Shrek 2”. This rekindled her love of recording music, and she is now engineering and producing up and coming musicians as well as seasoned artists. Currently, one of her projects, a blues/rock band called the Primal Kings, is all-analog, recording and mixing to tape and cutting vinyl.

The Vian Izak (Vee-on Isaac) project combines music with comic books.

His first release, Revolver (2016), has accumulated millions of streams. Being originally from South Africa, Izak incorporates international sounds into his music which can be best heard on Brink of Love (2016) with Grammy winning group Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

In 2018 he released his first album Northern Anthems. Nominated for two Independent Music Awards, the album was paired with a 28 page sci-fi comic book.

Vian released his second album, The Navigator, in 2019 with another comic story introducing a giant monster and a star-being. Izak collaborated with Juniper Vale on Call the Nightingale which quickly became the most popular song off of the record. In 2020 Vian announced his third album Flight of the Aeronaut to be released in March of 2021. Singles from the album include Sangre de Cristo, with Grammy winning arranger Davide Rossi (Coldplay) along with others.

Ari Herstand is author of best selling book 'How to Make It in the New Music Business'. Since releasing his previous album, Brave Enough in 2014, he’s released a best-selling book (two editions), appeared on various TV shows as an actor, toured the world as a speaker, launched Ari’s Take Academy online music business school, a throw-back 1970s inspired funk project Brassroots District, ran a pandemic-inspired online music festival (UnCancelled), got a law passed in California (musician amendment to AB5), launched the New Music Business podcast.

International Women's Day is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity. Significant activity is witnessed worldwide as groups come together to celebrate women's achievements or rally for women's equality. International Women’s Day falls on the 8th of March, and it celebrates the achievements of women and women’s equality. This day of celebration was started in 1911 and this year’s theme (110 years later) is ‘choose to challenge’ - the thought behind this is that a challenged world is an alert world.

Rhiannon Mair is a producer, engineer and songwriter championed by Music Tech Magazine as one of the ‘UK’s rising stars of production’. She has worked with artists including Martha Hill, Charlotte Clark, Laura Marling, Bryde, Emma McGrath and LUNA with her work receiving national radio playlisting and multiple Spotify New Music Friday placements. Her own company is called "Palm Bay Music".

Following her nominations for Breakthrough Engineer and Breakthrough Producer of the year at the 2019 MPG Awards, Rhiannon was voted onto the Board of Directors for the Music Producers Guild and currently stands as an Executive director.

Jamie Foxy Blair is working for "Awesome Merch", a company which makes custom merch for all kinds of people, produce everything in-house, and ship all over the world. What started in 2005 as two people and a hand-held button maker, is now a 100+ strong team that creates, produces, and ships custom product all over the world. They shipped over 70 million items worldwide over the last 13 years.