Missions

Good ol' Free Week. I didn't want to write a recap, but a lot of people asked me if I was going to. So here I am, but I'll keep this brief.

Here's a quick list of bands I saw during Free Week: The Midgetmen, Franny & Zooey, Tactics, Oh Look Out, The Couch, The Nouns, Hour Band, Technicolor Hearts, Black Books, Marmalakes, Stereo is a Lie, missions, and The Tontons. I also saw Tje Austin, but his show wasn't officially part of Free Week.

Best performance of the week (because everyone kept asking me...): Hmm, that's a tough one. I saw a lot of great shows, but I guess the one that sticks out in my mind is definitely Franny & Zooey. This is Eric Green's (formally of Riverboat Gamblers and I followed him for my We Are The Lottery League story) new band. It's just him on drums and Mrs. Glass (real name: Jordan Webster) on guitar and vocals playing blues. Think The Black Keys but way way WAY better. I caught the end of the set, because set times for Free Week were frustrating, but that's another blog post for another day, but what I did catch was awesome. I will sit down with these guys in the future and tell you more about them. That plan is already in motion.

Honorable Mentions: Marmalakes, Black Books, Equals, Tactics and Sorne

The "It's About Time I Finally Saw This Band" Award: The Nouns. I interviewed them almost a year ago (You can read that article here). Timing just never worked out so I made sure to check them out this week. I wasn't disappointed as I dug their grungy garage rock. Singer/guitar Travis Beall's huge grin on his face just added more to the show. They even threw tamales at the crowd. I'm a fan.

Other bands I caught that I've been meaning to see: Oh Look Out, Hour Band and Zorch

Below you can check out the photos I took during the week, including a stupid amount of Equals. Sheesh. This is becoming a problem. I did take photos of Zorch, but they're on my friend's camera.

I headed to The Independent for the first time on Friday night. SPEAK was releasing their debut EP "Hear Here." Love at 20 was debuting live for the first time ever. This would be my first time seeing Josh Mills' new band Missions. A night of firsts all around.

My overall impression of The Independent is that this is a cute little venue. I love that I don't have to cross I-35 to get to there. It's a quick ride from my house and that equals WIN. The intimate room is perfect for shows like this and the stage lighting gave me some awesome photos.

Love at 20
For this show being this band's debut, they were on top of it. I've heard their album "Time to Begin" many times so I was really familiar with the material and more or less knew what to expect. I chatted with drummer Mark Toohey waiting in line for drinks and he mentioned that the band got together in December and had to learned the entire album. Very impressive first show. The addition of female vocals from Amber Zook gave the songs a nice touch. Frontman Mike Groener had a little trouble with those high notes but I'm sure with more practice and less nerves, he'll be fine at future shows. This is definitely a band to keep an eye on.

Missions
This band was interesting to say the least. Not saying I didn't like it, but after seeing Mills performing in a clap happy dance band in the previous years, this was an unexpected change. Missions still has that dance capability to them but compared to Clap!Clap!, it's like a darker goth-like electronica band. It seemed with the crowd that they either loved them or wanted them to get off the stage so they could get their sugary fill from SPEAK.

SPEAK
What can I say about this band? This is my third time seeing them in the last 3 months. As always, they delivered a fun show. What makes them great in my eyes is that they obviously enjoy performing whether it's their originals or their covers. Guitarist Nick Hurt and bassist Joey Delahoussaye are so enjoyable to watch as they continuously shimmy their glasses off their faces.

By the way, how awesome are those names? These band members have great distinguishable names. Alongside Hurt and Delahoussaye, there is also vocalist Troupe Gammage and drummer Jake Stewart. And I learned that Gammage is a IV which mean there are 3 other people out there rocking that name. Amazing.

Anyway, SPEAK did a two part set which means after they did their first set of originals including songs from the new EP and an awesome rendition of Simple Mind's "Don't You (Forget About Me)," the guys took a short break before coming back with a new wardrobe (most likely as a refreshing change from their sweat drenched clothing) and did an entire set of love-themed cover songs in honor of Valentine's Day.

Unfortunately for me, I have Saturday morning class. (Yes I know and lesson learned: I will never ever schedule a class on Saturdays again.) So that meant I had to leave early and ended up missing the entire covers set. I did catch the first song which was Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" but keeping up with twitter, I learned that I missed Britney Spears' "Toxic" and an amazingly on point cover of "I Will Always Love You." The fact that I didn't witness this is now included on my list of "life's biggest regrets" for sure.

If you live in Austin and didn't know that this week was SPEAK week, you obviously do not engage in Twitter and Facebook. Congratulations. Social media hasn't taken over your life yet. However, for the rest of us, we all probably received one tweet in your alerts that informed us that the band SPEAK is releasing their album tonight. Woo.

Throughout the week the band held little events including an album listening party and a Waterloo in-store performance to promote the album. Unfortunately, since my newspaper had to go to print yesterday, I didn't get to attend either one. However, the paper is done! It's been sent off so I plan on having fun tonight.

Joining SPEAK at the Independent is a Clap!Clap! reunion of sorts. For those that don't remember the San Marcos band Clap!Clap!, the name pretty much explains it all. Clap!Clap!'s groovy (yes, I said groovy) electronic dance pop never had a show when the crowd wasn't dancing. How many other bands do you know completely filled the stage with over 10 band members including members that only had one sole purpose, dance and clap. Genius, I must say.

So tonight two other bands, Love at 20 and missions will be opening up for SPEAK. Here's a little preview of what these bands are about.

Not only is tonight's SPEAK's album release show, but also the live show debut of Love at 20. Love at 20 is the brainchild of Mike Groener, who might be a familiar face to fans of Clap!Clap! This band however is also more like an Austin local super group as as part of the line up is bassist Louis Lemur, who's also from Clap!Clap! and The Always Already and drummer Mark Toohey who was in a band a looooong time ago called Slow Motion Picture (bonus points to you if you remember that band).

Mike took time to answer a short email interview in preparation for tonight's show. Stay tuned for an in-depth interview I'll be conducting tonight with him at the show.

How did Love at 20 come about?

As Clap!Clap! achieved its greatest success, I became increasingly dissatisfied with the cathartic aspects of the project. Josh and I were able to write songs together very well, but ultimately, I wasn't able to project my more personal thoughts into the music. I loved writing music that's pure purpose was to make people move. But in my opinion, music lovers can take a one-trick pony for so long. I am always seeking music that both moves me physically and emotionally. In effect, after a good year off from live music, I regrouped and began writing a musical "memoirs" of sorts under the name Love at 20.

With "Time to Begin" available for free download since around October (when I first herad about it), why did it take so long to actually perform your first show?

The strategy for releasing this record has been structured completely different than anything else I've worked on. In most cases, a band plays live shows, builds up a fan base, then finally records a record. However, "Time to Begin" was essentially a bedroom project until it was mastered. I spent April 09-July 09 writing and recording the album without ever really knowing how it was going to turn out. I knew I was shooting for a collection of songs that were incredibly ambitious and varied but had no guarantee that it would be performed live. But after the record was finished, I planned out the marketing, PR, live performance, branding, etc., because I knew that the songs were the best I've written.

Why did you pick tonight's show for your debut?

Jill from Knuckle Rumbler reached out about the Digital Love show a few months ago. I thought it was a great show to debut ourselves and an even friendlier bill due to Missions playing after us. In a sense, it's the "Future of Clap Clap" show we had been talking about for months.

With the show on Friday being your debut show, is there anything attendees have to look forward to?

I think in the current musical climate, especially in Austin, that Love at 20 has a very unique energy and combination of elements. I'm surprised that many bands fail to plan their live show. By this I mean, they don't establish a recognizable visual aesthetic and don't construct what is essentially a "performance". I think that Love at 20 does plan, and will have a visual "brand". I hope that people will be able to find themselves in the songs and share the performance with us. It goes without saying that I'm incredibly excited to finally bring this project to the stage.

By the way, you can download the album "Time to Begin" here.

Here's is a Love at 20 music video to the song, "So Bad."

Love at 20: "So Bad" from benberry media on Vimeo.

Missions was created by Josh Mills, the former vocalist of Clap!Clap!. This band is more like electronica space ride of some sorts. I'm interested to see how this translates live.

Josh also took the time to answer my short email interview about tonight's show. There'll be an in-depth interview with missions tonight as well.

How did Missions come about?

Shortly after Clap!Clap! disbanded, Scott and I started to write songs for a project we were going to call Purple Magick, but as it tends to do, life/work interrupted that dream. We could never meet enough and eventually Scott could no longer continue doing music. I kept writing songs and started to notice that most of them were very dark sounding and reminiscent of a feeling I can only describe as "doomed-to-die-floating-alone-in-space", especially this song I tentatively named "Shuttle". I actually wanted to call the project Shuttle, but the drummer of Passion Pit has that moniker already. I believe it was the day I wrote and completed "Darrk/Blakk" that I decided to put this project into action, bring on my friend Markus and my girlfriend Amber and give the project it's rightful name, Missions. That was April 19th, 2009. Missions, using some of the old material I wrote for Purple Magick and some of the newer, started practicing in August to later have our first show in October opening for Junior Boys.

How would you describe your sound in your own words?

I would describe Missions as dark, spacey, serious and electronic with a slow groove. We keep the tempo pretty slow in most cases, but you can still dance to it. We like that.

What can attendees expect at the show on Friday?

Attendees can expect to feel to the energy of the dance floor and the emotion of the music. They'll hear a lot of the songs we have available online mixed with some newer songs not many have heard. Hopefully they'll be able to hear how our sound is slowly progressing and evolving. Opening the night is a band I did a remix for Love At 20 which includes Mike Groener and Louis Lemuz from Clap!Clap!. Amber from Missions is also performing in Love At 20 and this show is their live debut, so attendees can also expect to see a bit of crossover there.

Here is a free tune from Mission called "Wavelength."

Click here to stream or download the track.

And what about a SPEAK interview? Stay tuned. ;)