Category: Features

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Treaty Oak Revival: An Alliance Between Punk and Country

December 15, 2022

Treaty Oak Revival didn’t really have a choice but to be a country band. They grew up in West Texas, a market that practically demands bands play country, and, well, it’s also hard to escape your roots. 

“I have an accent,” said Sam Canty, the band’s lead vocalist, in an interview with BandWagon – and for the record, he sure as heck does.

Even so, all that Texas red dirt country the band seemed destined to play couldn’t bury their love of rock and roll, especially in a world of modern crossovers. Canty is unafraid to proclaim his love of big punk acts such as Sum 41 and Blink 182 and Treaty Oak Revival finds themselves with their feet in more than one arena.

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100 to 16, Now Down to 4: BandWagon’s Battle Of The Bands Closes in on Title Bout

December 6, 2022

Eternal Glory, $5,000 and the cover of BandWagon Magazine are grounds for musical fisticuffs in Colorado. Last month, 16 Colorado bands who stood out from 100 submissions slugged it out (yes, metaphorically) at 4 of the state’s most worthy music venues: Oskar Blues Colorado Springs, The Moxi Theater in Greeley, The Coast in Fort Collins and The Black Buzzard in Denver.
The four finalists rocked hard to surpass their contenders and secure their spot in the final round on December 10 at The Moxi Theater. In the initial rounds, each act was assessed by a panel of celebrity judges on a combination of talent, skill, stye and conduct (along with an element of fan voting) to determine the finalists. Here’s what the original sweet sixteen brought to the battlefield in the first round.

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Langhorne Slim: A Semblance of Stillness

November 3, 2022

Langhorne Slim’s “Strawberry Mansion” was the result of a burst of creativity that emerged from the pandemic and after winning a battle with clinical anxiety and prescription drug abuse. He’s still happy to talk about that time and his never-ending struggles, and he remains honored to share his experience with mental health organizations. But sometimes he has to remind people that those are things he’s dealt with his whole life. They do not necessarily define him.

“I’m also having fun too,” Slim said with a laugh in a phone interview with BandWagon. “It’s not beating me every day. For the first time ever, I was finding some semblance of stillness. I wasn’t running from myself because I wasn’t able to.”

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Nothing to Hide Behind: Wheelwright’s Jared Kolesar After The Mill

October 10, 2022

“I think there’s an element of a lonely cowboy out on the trail,” Jared Kolesar of Wheelwright tells BandWagon. “There’s many songs now with a story that is best told while I’m alone with my guitar.”

The reworked songs give his Jared & The Mill fans a chance to preview his new sound, one he calls more sonically interesting, with more synth and more effects to his vocals to go with some new hip-hop vibes. He calls the sound Neo-Western and compares it to a mix of 80’s futurism and Americana. Or, in his own words, “like Blade Runner with more cowboy vibes.” 

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Finding Herself: Briana Harris Steps Up as Band Leader on Debut Album When We’re Found

October 5, 2022

On a whim, Briana Harris submitted a grant proposal along with a demo of her soulful song “Ground Up” which she had performed for The Burroughs’ Virtual Telethon in 2020. That June, Harris received a message that she was awarded the funding to record an album.

“I wanted to make the most volume of work I could, and see where that would take me,” Harris said. “I want to really present what I feel is the fullest version of myself. Just the process of doing that for me has been important and empowering.”

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Birth, Death and Time In The Sun: SUSTO’s Justin Osborne Finds new Dimesion

September 12, 2022

“There were ravines growing between me and people in my life,” Justin Osborne tells BandWagon. “And with COVID, everybody got pushed back together. Some of those changes had to be faced head on.”

Osborne is the commandant of North Carolina’s Susto and he’s just gone through some of the most intense years of his life.

“If humans are dimensional,” he says, “there’s a whole new dimension of myself that was awakened.”

Susto’s sound sits between Americana, psych-pop and the indie-rock church of rootsy folk. A mix of satire and earnestness adds a roughness; a raised eyebrow setting it apart from rural radio. Its dark, drug-influenced sentimentality and staunch idealism is, at its heart, just barefaced American songwriting.

“There were a lot of attempts at reconciliation – my own beliefs with how I was raised,” he says. “I’m trying not to disrespect,” he says, “but to participate in these big life events.”

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Permission to Shine: Shinyribs’ Kevin Russell Goes Big

August 24, 2022

Kevin Russell was nearing age 40, and given the upheavals in his career, should have been facing the clichéd mid-life crisis. Instead, he gave himself permission to be himself.

He left a band he’d played with for nearly 20 years, to focus on Shinyribs.

“The odds were against me for sure,” Russell said in a phone interview with BandWagon, “But I felt like I had to do it. It was a now-or-never kind of feeling. It was a gamble. But it was so great. We are now an instant party – wherever we go.” 

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Play it For Your Mates: Tones And I Rises Up Solo; Puts the “I” in Team-Macklemore

August 11, 2022

You’ve heard it.

It was written by a busker, in a closet, for a few friends at a youth hostel but somewhere on Planet Earth in the last three years, you’ve heard it.

The song is “Dance Monkey” and the number of times it has been streamed online is literally incalculable.

“I didn’t write that song to release at all,” Toni Watson aka Tones And I tells BandWagon. “I lived at a hostel. Like – I’d parked my van there, I used the showers. I played that song for a year on the street before I decided to release it.”

Now, for the first time, the one woman wonder is ready to collaborate – with her musical hero Macklemore, of course. “It’s just the most perfect track for both of us,” Watson says.

And she will finally release her first song ever about love. “I don’t mean to, but I’ve actually never written a love song,” Watson says. “I just don’t feel like I’d ever really known what it is.”

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