Low Red Land's Midweek Mutiny: Band Intro

Editor's Note: This post was written by San Francisco's Low Red Land. It is part of a series of posts that they will be writing for the site today. At the bottom of the page, you can find the links to the rest.


We are Low Red Land. We are a three piece from San Francisco,CA, comprised of Ben Thorne on bass and vocals, Neil Thompson on guitar and vocals, and Mark DeVito on drums. We all met in college in upstate New York and played a lot of crappy houses in and around Franklin Springs. We moved on to Boston for a few years, and played in a four piece band that had very mild success. The fourth member of the band chose to go back to school, Mark messed up his back shoveling snow, and we decided to move to California. We got here in July of 2005. Since arriving, the city has been very inspirational. Our music has grown at an incredible rate, and we are all much happier with what we are playing. Moving away from our homes, families, and jobs also made us very tight, which has carried over to our music. We couldn't be happier with our music and our decision to pursue rock and roll as a lifestyle.

We get frustrated trying to describe our sound. That is pretty common among bands playing original music. We strive to sound like nothing but Low Red Land, and we think we do a good job of it. Our bio says something about us being an explosive rock trio with heart-felt lyrics and precise dynamic changes. It also says that we don't like band bios, because they're written by people too close to the music. There are too many comparisons made, too many big words used, and too much effort taken to sound unique. Our ideal band bio would read, "Come see us play a show. We are awesome."

We are about to embark on our longest tour to date. We are leaving San Francisco, our jobs, our friends and girlfriends, and our home, to travel the country for seven weeks. We are doing all of this with our good friends Birds & Batteries, an amazing band from San Francisco. The idea behind this trip, was to get back to the east where we used to play and let people see how much we have progressed. It has turned into an experience we are sure will change our lives, consisting of almost forty shows in about fifty days. Plus some time to eat turkey with our families.

We have selected a song that we play sometimes by Steve Earle, called Elijah's Church. We first heard it watching a video called Heartworn Highways, a documentary on the mid-seventies country music scene. The video is also where we found our band name. There is a scene towards the end of the film, that features a young Steve Earle singing a verse of his song. Until recently, there were no recorded versions of the song released. We just found one, and it is kind of hilarious.

We are also all going to write a bit about who knows what later today. And, if you read close, you'll find the best contest opportunity ever.

Please check out our music. If you can make it to a live show you should. We play real hard, and we're all pretty nice guys. Read: Pretty, Nice, Guys. Hopefully we'll see you soon.

Love,
Low Red Land

Low Red Land - Elijah's Church


Read The Rest of This Week's Mutiny:
Joe's Introduction
Band Intro
Ben
Mark
Neil
Contest

Previous Versions of The Midweek Mutiny:
What Is This?
Faster Faster Harder Harder
Saturna