Battle of the Bands winner Second String teamed up with the runner-up band, Some Random Band, at Club 156 on Dec. 9.
The concert started at 8 p.m. with Some Random Band opening for Second String.
“We really like Some Random Band. They are quality guys. I feel like we entered and left the competition as friends and also as important industry allies,” said Ryan Ramsay, a sophomore accounting major who also plays guitar and bass for Second String. “They have talent, great arrangements, good song-writing. All in all, Some Random Band is a solid group.”
Some Random Band’s lead singer was comfortable talking to the audience asking, “do you guys like jokes?” The audience replied, “no,” and then the audience broke into a fit of laughter.
Some Random Band mainly played hard-rock songs along with songs about love and girls.
At one point, the instruments cut out and the lead singer of Some Random Band sung accapella, and was later joined by the rest of his band mates as they slowly added instruments to the song.
As Some Random Band left the stage, they said, “I hope we’ve touched everyone of your hearts.”
Ramsay said Second String is different from Some Random band because Some Random Band has a young, pop-rock sound while Second String generally attracts an older audience.
Second String performed several of their own songs along with covers from Damien Rice, Ziggy Marley, James Taylor and the song “Brown Eyed Girl.”
It was evident they didn’t have enough songs yet in their career to fill an hour time slot, hence relying on covers.
“Second String prefers an acoustic-oriented instrumentation, and our music takes root in the influence of contemporary folk, traditional, bluegrass, jazz, blues, early rock and country music – the stuff that isn’t always relevant in pop culture,” Ramsay said.
In some of their songs they included the mandolin and harmonica, which gave the band a more “folkie” sound. Although a lot of people at Battle of the Bands may have thought Second String was really folkie, they didn’t overuse the “folk” instruments and created a sound a lot of people can relate to. When it came to lyrics, many of them related to living in Boulder and snowstorms.
“I think a lot of people perceived us as so different the night of the Battle of the Bands is because of our little ‘hoe down’ with the bluegrass song ‘Duck River’ to start things off,” said Ben Meis, a junior aerospace engineering major who played vocals and harmonica said for Second String. “It immediately seemed to attract peoples’ attention. There were so many harder rock groups with a more similar style than compared to ours that night, and so people saw us as ‘extremely different’ in retrospect.”
Meis said his band isn’t so different from Some Random Band because they essentially started their band as a pop-rock group.
“Our musicianship further developed, to change things up and add some color, we began introducing our new folk style through slightly different lyrical themes, vocal style and different instrumentation,” Meis said.
Marc Laughton, a sophomore music major, on guitar for Second String, recently rejoined the group and added a contribution of complex “licks” on the electric guitar, as Meis said, and added a special demeanor to the group.
Other members include: Ryan O’Grady, a junior open-option major, on bass, guitar and vocals; James Robinson, from San Diego, on percussion; and Kellen Zakula, a junior from the University of Northern Colorado, on the fiddle.
