When did you decide to make a career/focus of music?
We all met in college at the University of Oregon in Eugene and when we all graduated about a year ago we decided to make the move up to Portland to focus on our career as musicians. Within the first year we booked and went on several tours spanning over ten states as well as released our second EP "Astral Travel Battles".
What’s the best gig you ever played?
One of the best gigs that we've ever played is this past years Halloween show. We played at one of our favorite local bars in Portland, Eastburn, and had the place packed past capacity with a 20-minute line out the door. We played almost three hours of music to hundreds of people all while dressed as Nuns. It was a great night and one of our best gigs in recent memory.
Back in the day, most people found music on the radio or MTV. Obviously, today there is a plethora of ways to hear about new music. How do you find new bands or artists that you like to listen to?
We find music through blogs these days. We have some of our favorites including Syffal.com and Indie Rock Cafe, but bigger sites like Pitchfork usually have great bands to check out. Also the local papers are always a good source to keep up on the music scene in our area. We think it's important to know what's going on in your local music scene.
What’s the most challenging thing about being an emerging artist personally, for you?
Exposure. Getting your music to the listeners is really hard to do these days. With the emerging digital media platform it's become really easy for artists to submit their music to music reviewing sites and magazines, but the problem with this is that all these outlets are getting hundreds of emails a week, so getting them to actually listen to your music has become a challenge.
What’s your next big gig coming up? When/Where?
We are playing a showcase at NAMM 2012 at the Anaheim Convention Center on January 20th. It's a big opportunity for us to be exposed to industry professionals from all over the world.
Check out more on Rare Monk here.
