Two Fallbrook High grads make mark on music scene

Eric Mattson and Nick Lanari graduated from Fallbrook High School nearly 16 years apart, but last week the two ended up performing on the same stage about 50 miles away from the place they grew up.

"The whole idea behind this is that it was nice having two Fallbrook grads performing on the same stage, both doing well," Mattson said, who now lives in Huntington Beach.

Mattson started playing in bands back in high school, creating his first band, Makeshift3, with fellow classmates at the time.

"We played the Vans Warped Tour, did four albums and we were very active for like 12 years until we all got married, had kids and families," Mattson said, who graduated from FUHS in 1996. "Any household name band, there is no family life that goes with it. Family life and working bands really do not mix."

So, Mattson continued on with family life for the next few years, until he got the itch that is so familiar to musicians.

"Once I got settled in with my family and the kids got a little bit older, I started started looking for other guys to play with and that's how I found this band," he said.

Mattson joined the Orange County-based pop-punk trio, Good Luck, Ugly! http://www.goodluckugly.com, in February. The band will release its second full-length album, "Side Hugs & Back Stabs," Sept. 28.

"One thing I like is the music, pop punk style," Mattson said. "I like that we are all married with kids, and we found a way to balance being in an active band while being husbands, fathers and having our own careers. We're all on the same page with that, and we all have 20-plus years of experience in music."

Mattson said the band intends on touring this fall up and down the West Coast. He said that he was excited that Lanari's band, Mainsail, is going strong as well.

Lanari said he's been with Mainsail, http://www.mainsailsd.com, ever since he and his best friend decided to jam after work.

"I started my first band when I was 16," Lanari, a 1996 graduate of Fallbrook High said. "We grew up listening to punk, but when I was in high school we always played heavier rock music. This time we decided to jam punk and we just fell in love with it."

Lanari is the primary songwriter for the band based in Oceanside that released its first record, "Photographs," in 2017.

"Right now, we are focusing on making a full-length album," Lanari said. "But then we're going to focus on touring, but first we're going into the studio."

Lanari said the band released a single earlier this year, called "The Silence," and response from listeners has been encouraging.

"I get a lot of feedback, like every week, from people that tell me that this song puts people into better moods or helps them navigate some emotions," Lanari said. "For me, that's what my favorite bands did. To make something and have it impact someone else, there's no better feeling. For all of us, no matter what we do, if we can impact somebody, we can make the world a little different than it was before."

Mainsail has performed more than 30 shows and counting, according to their website, including the 2017 Vans Warped Tour in San Diego.

While making it in the music business is more difficult than it's ever been, Lanari is doing his best to make it happen, he said. In addition to being in the band full time, he teaches guitar lessons on the side.

"I think the only thing that's more difficult than making it in the music business is retaining people's attention and getting people's attention in the first place," he said.

"People don't really want to listen to records anymore. They just listen to like one song. I think that's the difficult thing about the climate of the music business. But I think of a whole record as a cohesive art piece, that's how I interpret music."

Lanari said he's taking his time in developing Mainsail's next release.

"It takes me a while to write a song because I don't want to put anything out there that I don't love," he said. "It is important because my favorite bands are like that. Jimmy Eat World, they can't write a bad song; every song on their albums is great. That's what I am hoping for."

While tempered in his expectations for the future of Mainsail, Lanari said the band has one goal in mind.

"We want to play shows, perform and make a difference," he said. "Our hope is to do this forever and see as much of the world as possible."