jim hankeguitarist/vocals:El Oso guitarist/vocals:The Candliers

Milwaukee's support of El Oso:

We’ve only been together for a year and already the people who have seen us have been more than responsive, so we’re very happy being here. Milwaukee has the amazing benefit of being big enough to attract major touring acts, but small enough so that it’s possible to spark good relationships with other bands and club owners.

Meeting like-minded musicians:

Ringo was right: You can get by with a little help from your friends. Friends in bands will often slip you on a bill for your first show, tell others about you, etc. Luckily, in Milwaukee people seem to be a bit more open minded about sound (or cross-scene pollination, if you will), so if your band sounds like Genre A but all your friends are in bands that are in Genre B, chances are you’ll still hit it off with some of each respective crowd.

As far as meeting or talking to strangers, websites such as PureVolume (www.purevolume.com) and Book Your Own F’ing Life (www.byofl.org) are great resources to use when contacting other like-minded bands. You can search for bands by genre, state, etc, and easily obtain their contact info. You could technically e-mail every band listed that’s from the state you want to play in, but you do want to narrow your scope just a bit to the ones who you believe could really help you. These are bands that you should try to approach:

• Those who update their website fairly regularly – stay clear of most whose last update was 5 months or more. Such lack of action usually translates to the band not currently playing shows or doesn’t show a whole lot of drive as far as letting others know what they’re up to. Even if they didn’t update their site because they’re busy recording, they could at least let fans or others know this. If they are this lazy about updating stuff, they’ll probably be even more so when it comes to helping you out.
• Try to hit up bands on sites like PureVolume that have a lot of “hits”, or total profile views, downloads, etc. This says that even if all the bands’ friends are the only people downloading their music, these are at least some people who would attend a show in that band’s town if you were to score a slot with them.

Knowing when to record in a studio:

When the idea for this band came about in the fall of 2003, the three of us who had hooked-up first wrote four songs and recorded them cheaply with our friend Josh Kristopeit running the controls. The songs acted as a fairly plain demo so that those interested in playing bass or lead guitar in the band could learn the songs, or even just see if it was something they wanted to be involved in, before coming to a practice. Once we had the band complete, we recorded some of those same songs again with Josh in order to pass them around so we could get some shows. Once a lot of shows were played and Contraphonic approached us about releasing any album, we began recording for a third time in June of 2004 or so, again with Josh. Bottom line: If you have ways and means to record cheaply (but relatively professionally), do it every six months or so to keep things fresh. You don’t necessarily need to record the same songs over and over, nor do you need to record every new song you write, but it helps to have a current statement of what you sound like so club owners, other bands or promoters don’t have to hear you say, “We have a demo, but it’s way old and we don’t even sound like that anymore.” Total turn-off.

Getting signed to a label:

In our situation, our friend Michael (who I had performed with in another band previously) had started a new label with his friend Ben in Chicago. Despite casually talking with Michael about our band maybe being on a compilation of theirs sometime down the line, we never really thought of anything more than that. But after about two months of shows, Michael had attended nearly every local one, and he brought up that the label (Contraphonic Music Ltd) might be interested in putting out either an EP or a full-length with us. So we didn’t have to shop around or worry about whether or not we were going to be “signed”. It just was a great situation that fell into our laps. Had the Contraphonic deal not worked out, we may had sent out some early demos to get some response, but we probably ultimately would have released it ourselves I think. So, no, we didn’t try to find a label or distributor first. That kind of thinking will kill you. The one thing to keep in mind always, for bands looking to have labels hear their music, is that a demo alone will not get things in motion. Playing lots of shows and being on top of your stuff, though, will. It’s always great to have some other people (labels, etc) to help you out and do the dirty work of promoting you, sending your CD’s to radio, etc. But in this day and age, when you can basically record a song and have it online for people to hear within minutes, it’s silly to make your goal as a band the almighty “record deal”. It’s way more fun to just go with the flow.

How the individual roles within the band develop:

One thing that really attracts me to performing with the other four gents that I do is the fact that everyone does have roles and comes through when asked to complete a task. With five guys in the band, it’d be silly for one to take on everything, so we did express a need to share the duties when we first got started and it has worked out great. I set up about 98% of the shows that we play and I also write our e-mail newsletters. I check our email daily and answer any booking inquiries. Mark (guitar) usually mans the design duties, whether it comes to our website, T-shirts, album art, etc. Andy (drums) does design as well and also is our “money guy”, l etting us know when money comes in, how much we have currently and keeping track of any payments that must be made. He also has scheduled our sessions for press photos with local photographers. Jeff (keyboards) and Lee (bass) usually do any sort of flyering that has to be done for local shows. In my previous band, it was a complete opposite situation, and I was the one doing everything. I still kind of have my (what the band would call) “dad” tendencies where even though I’m not in charge of something, I still try to oversee how it’s done, but this band is a piece of cake as far as sharing duties goes. It takes the stress out of the times that aren’t spent writing songs.

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