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Meet this year’s Sound and the Jury finalists: Bright Light Social Hour
Jon Salmon/SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Now in its third year, Dell’s the Sound and the Jury contest, an online battle of the bands, offers independent, unsigned bands a shot at performing before thousands during the Austin City Limits Music Festival. An online vote produces 100 finalists, then a panel of judges narrows the field to 20, before online voting reopens and produces the final five, who will perform in front of judges and fans live. To have a chance at winning, bands must be marketing experts, employing tools like Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace — as well as good old-fashioned phone calls and word-of-mouth.
The American-Statesman talked to each of the five finalists for this year’s battle of the bands to hear their stories of struggle for a shot at one of Austin music’s sweetest prizes. We will be running these interviews in advance of the final round, which will take place at 7 p.m. Wednesday (Sept. 30) at Antone’s, 213 W. Fifth St.
The band: A hard, funky rock quartet inspired by ’70s classic rock bands with a dash of soul, represented by guitarist and vocalist Curtis Roush and bassist and vocalist Jack O’Brien.
Point of origin: Austin
American-Statesman: You have a song called ‘Detroit’ that has a really unique sound, much more obviously Stax and Motown-influenced than most indie rock. The song also discusses city’s dire economic straits. What inspired you to do that song?
Curtis Roush: My inspiration initially was about the sad state that Detroit is in economically. So it evolved into a love song about life in Detroit right now, but told through the medium of the Detroit sound in the ’60s and ’70s. You can either interpret the song as about a relationship, or think of it as the city of Detroit shouting out to the rest of the United States — ‘Remember when I built all your tanks in World War II?’ It had been on my mind a lot in terms of keeping as informed as I could about the financial crisis and the larger recession. It was always on my mind and I wanted to find a way to put it into a song. At that time I was thinking about how the recession was affecting people in real ways. Detroit was a nice focus for that feeling.
AS: Your MySpace mentions that you like to sometimes hand out free homemade cookies at your shows — will attendees of the battle of the bands be enjoying those?
CR: We’ve given some thought to that. I would love to bring cookies but I definitely don’t want to be those guys that are like “Hey, judges, we’re bringing you cookies! Vote for us!” For the audience we’ll have some, maybe. But the next night we’re playing at Beauty Bar so we’ll definitely have cookies for that.
Jack O’Brien: Curtis makes totally organic homemade-from-scratch cookies. We like to bring as much as we can. But we’re concerned about making it seem as if we’re trying to suck up to the judges. But, you know, we always do it!
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