When/How did you first start playing music together?
Danny Scull [drummer] and Mike Corbett [guitar/lead vocals] first got together on a play date in the 7th grade, picked up an instrument a piece, and quickly banged out a slew of Green Day and Nirvana songs over the next year. They first realized they were on to something when they received a standing ovation at the St. Andrews 8th grade talent show with a no-vocals duet of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. Fast forward to 2007 while living in the drum booth of a Brooklyn music studio they had to vacate nightly for bands coming in to practice they recruited me to play bass and guitarist/vocalist Jim Terranova through a Craigslist posting. Jeremy Cohen [keyboards] was the last to officially join when he moved to Brooklyn, but had been playing shows intermittently with the band while living in Boston.
What's the best gig you ever played?
Playing with Guns N’ Roses at the former CBGB's for a John Varvatos Fashion Week afterparty is easily the craziest gig we've ever played, and our first taste at “rock stardom” in all of its glory. Think free booze, models, all access - the royal treatment. Mike actually recounted the story in a Guitar Hero “Tales from the Warriors of Rock” contest and won second place! Both of our Mercury Lounge sellouts have also been really invigorating gigs. It's such a great venue and our fans have always come out in droves, which is the greatest thrill a band can experience.
You played at CMJ this year! What was your experience like?
CMJ was a blast and also a very exhausting/insane week. We ended up booking four showcases at Arlene's Grocery, the Mercury Lounge, the Alphabet Lounge, and The Delancey so our schedule was quite full from a playing standpoint. It was awesome getting out there and talking to all the music fans and really hitting the streets. We put together flyers advertising our shows and handed out about 800 of them at Madison Square Garden after the Phoenix show before getting kicked out by security. Also, being able to learn from people in the industry who have been around the block a few times is really the value of the CMJ festival. As a self-managed band, we've been learning as we go, so you can imagine what value we get from talking to guys like Matt Shay at Zeitgeist and Larry Webman from Paradigm who basically helped us lay out our plans for 2011 with their advice. As if that wasn't enough to induce sleepless nights, CMJ was also the week that our first music video for “In the Air (Revival)” was airing all week on mtvU's "The Freshmen". Needless to say, we had a blast but were also relieved when it was over since we could sleep again. We also made sure to stop by the tables at the information/check-in area to say “Hi” to our friends Tess and Nikki from Sonicbids too!
How has social media effected the way you market/promote your music?
Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, ReverbNation, Last.fm, Sound Cloud, Sonicbids, etc. There are so many ways out there to connect with your fans that it's almost overwhelming at times. Every time we even update our bio slightly we have to change it on eight different sites! It used to be that promoting your band meant hitting the road and playing shows; now, nearly all of a band's promotion can be done from a laptop. The good part about this is you can reach millions of people within seconds, but the challenge is capturing their attention and converting them to fans. As a result, music videos and blog reviews have dramatically increased in importance. We hadn't even considered doing a music video when we recorded our EP “Through the Mojo Wire,” yet here we are having released two major videos as of this week. Our first, “In the Air (Revival)” was featured on mtvU (as I mentioned before) and also on FUSE TV OnDemand (thanks Sonicbids!), and our second for “Trigger Finger Itch” we just released this month with a blog called Pigeons and Planes. That video we filmed with a team at Comedy Central Studios and we got pretty wild with our costumes. At the end of the day though, nothing substitutes for a kick-ass live show as far as effective marketing is concerned.
What's your prediction for the next big advancement in how we find/listen to/share music?
We think Apple is on to something with Ping, and Grooveshark/other music players offering the buddy element are a great idea for building musical friendships. It'd also be cool to bring back the chat rooms of the 90s and have almost a virtual record store, where people enter in, ask about what music is out that people are listening to, and have actual discussions in real time. It may not be as intimate as face-to-face interaction, but it may be more popular than walking 15 blocks in the snow to the store, because it's all about trying to find new music from sources you trust. The amazing thing about 2011 is that anybody on the planet can get any song with a wave of a phone, so the access is there, but discovery has lagged somewhat. It's like people don't get to know the artist as well as they did back in the 80's and 90's despite the sheer amount of information out there exploding with social networks. Some platform/software facilitating the discovery will be the next major development. Hopefully whoever develops it can also find a way for the artist to finally get paid! That being said, nothing will ever top seeing a band live and having that experience really driving that relationship between the artist and the fan.
What's your next big gig coming up? When/Where?
We're hard at work on our debut full-length album for 2011 so we can get back out on the road again with a whole mess of big gigs.
Check out more on Midnight Spin here.
