Not Just “Another Band”
At first the building appears to be just another back-alley
garage belonging to the house it sits behind. The roof supports the
sagging branches of a nearby tree and layers of dust have tinted
the siding brown.
From the outside the small structure looks like the kind of
place where a high school band would find refuge when they get too
loud to play in the living room, but it’s not.
It’s a recording studio and home to Another Band.
Another Band is composed of three guitar players, Justyn
Hamilton, Dustin Prinz, Dave McNew, a bass player, Kyle McKinney
and a dog, Buddy-Fat-Stynky.
Before Fort Collins, before the recording studio they live in
with no plumbing, before they had to use a nearby gas station
bathroom as their own, before baths in the Poudre River and before
Buddy, Another Band was just three friends trying to be stars of
tomorrow.
The Carey Junior High Stars of Tomorrow talent contest in
Cheyenne, Wyo., was the scene of the band’s first public
performance. During tryouts a teacher asked for the band’s name.
Expecting to announce themselves when they took the stage, McNew
said he replied to the question with, “I don’t know, we’re just
another band.”
The teacher looked at the young McNew for a second, made a note
and said, “That’s clever.”
Their turn came. They were announced as Another Band and the
name stuck.
They didn’t make the cut as one of the stars of tomorrow, but
when Central High in Cheyenne held a school-wide talent show their
senior year, the outcome was different.
They took the stage, accompanied by a bass, cello and violin
player and played a song McNew wrote about a girl, called “So
Fitting are You.”
“When we all hit that last chord (the crowd) was all quiet and
then they went insane,” McNew said. “That’s when I knew what I
wanted to do.”
After high school, McKinney and Hamilton went to University of
Wyoming while McNew traveled to recording school at Northeast
Community College in Norfolk, Neb.
It was there that McNew met Prinz, and a new chapter in the
band’s history began. In Prinz, McNew found the band’s missing link
and the new foursome began playing together and soon relocated.
In August 2003, Hamilton, McNew and Prinz moved into the
25-by-14 recording studio and earnestly began to build a career in
music.
“You have to be willing to live like sh*t,” Hamilton said.
“We’re dedicated to what we do.”
That dedication keeps the foursome together, despite the fact
that McKinney lives in Cheyenne with his fianc� and his
16-month-old daughter Autumn.
“They’ve taken a lot of time to make sure that what they have is
solid,” said Tim Hunt, a local musician and concert promoter.
Hunt booked Another Band’s first Fort Collins performance as a
Diamond’s featured artist nearly a year ago and since then they
have played everywhere from the Soiled Dove in Denver to the square
in Old Town where fan Heather Ryan saw the band for the first
time.
“I was passing out flyers and they were playing in the square,”
said Ryan who has now made it her mission to spread the word about
Another Band. “Every time I go see them, I take new people with me
and every time they want to (see them) again. When I wake up I want
to play some Another Band. It puts me in a good mood.”
OutBox: Another Band will be playing at Diamond’s on Saturday
March 13 and can be seen there nearly every Wednesday.
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