Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Recently the local band The Only Children received national recognition for their new album, Keeper of Youth, released in May.
After being reviewed in Rolling Stone magazine and landing spots as artists of the day on spin.com and MySpace.
On their MySpace page, people from Houston, Philadelphia and Chicago have written them to ask if they’ll tour through the cities.
Despite the national recognition, Ryan Benton, the band’s drummer, said that the attention does not necessarily mean people are coming to their concerts in droves.
“I don’t know if people have the attention span to see a review and look for the music,” Benton said. “ I don’t know if people would remember the name of the band for that long.”
During their last tour, The Only Children played to audiences ranging in size from 12 to 150 people.
Josh Berwanger, the frontman who formed the band in 2004, said that even though the band has been featured in national magazines, he doesn’t think the publicity has helped the band bring in more people to concerts. He also said he did not care much for the coverage the band is receiving because, he said, to do the reviews of small bands in big magazines, reviewers only listen to the first three songs in an album.
“I’d much rather be in a magazine like No Depression — a smaller-circulation music magazine than Rolling Stone,” Berwanger said. “Because you know that the people actually listen to the whole music and the whole CD and try to understand it.”
Berwanger started the band after his previous band, The Anniversary, broke up. Before that he was a University student for one semester majoring in film before he decided to drop out to go on tour with The Anniversary.
Ten years after the band broke up, Berwanger said he is at a point in his life when he is enjoying making good music.
“I feel like we are pretty good and everything that we do I totally believe in but I understand that’s not enough to get huge and make money,” Berwanger said. “That is not as important to me as it is to put out a good record and having fun.”
Benton said he has mixed feelings about the national coverage.
“Its kind of cool but I don’t know if it means anything really great is going to happen.” Benton said. “I think it’s cool to have one person in the middle of nowhere or in a big city that is into you.”
Benton describes The Only Children’s music as the type that “feels like it’s the kind of music that was popular 40 years ago.”
Their music sounds like old rock and roll with a hint of something modern, Benton said. With this CD, Benton said he and the band were going for a “dirty sound,” something not overproduced.
“In the shit that is popular today you would never hear some sort of error. Everything is so produced it makes it sounds like a product not music.” Benton said. “People are human, you have to make mistakes.”
The Only Children are scheduled to play at 7 p.m., Sunday at McCoy’s, 4057 Pennsylvania Ave., Kansas City, MO.
—Edited by Ben Smith
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