| Indie Artist Spotlight - Music Morsels |
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Seven centuries after The Great Crusades swept across the Middle East, a Chicago band sharing the same name is poised to make a sweep of their own. The hard rocking group featuring vocalist/guitarist Brian Krumm, bassist Brian Hunt, keyboardist Brian Leach and drummer Christian Moder already made a name for themselves in Austria and Germany after touring in support of their debut EP "The First Spilled Drink Of The Evening". As a result their recent full length CD "Damaged Goods" was released on the German indie label Glitterhouse. Along with their overseas popularity, folks in the USA are taking notice as well as the band has toured in select markets such as Atlanta, Nashville and St. Louis. Looking to conquer more points of the globe, one of the Brians (Krumm - the vocalist/guitarist) was kind enough to speak with us about the machinery that drives The Great Crusades towards the twenty-first century. MM: What is it that made you want to pursue music? BK: What really made me want to play rock and roll was KISS. They were such a mind-blowing larger-than-life sort of deal. Gene Simmons had this huge ax bass where the body of the bass looked like an ax head, and I thought that was ultra cool. I belonged to the KISS Army, and had positioned myself to where I could actually order one of those basses through their catalogue. And I could just imagine myself playing this in front of thousands of people, wielding that bass around being larger-than-life just like KISS. I played saxophone in grade school, and soon afterwards I switched to guitar. I think I just had a knack for it, and I started writing original songs when I was in seventh grade. The songs weren't as good as they are now (laughs) but that is how it all started. MM: You knew all the members of The Great Crusades for quite awhile? BK: Yeah, the drummer Chris and the bassist Brian Hunt and I started playing in a band together in sixth grade. We actually played our sixth grade graduation party. Went on through high school together and kept in contact throughout going to college. Brian Hunt and I actually played in the band Slave Chain for about six years. And then after a couple of years we hooked up with Brian Leach, who I've known for about ten years. Yeah, we've known each other for a long time, and I think it shows in our live show. We have a great feeling of where the other people are going. It's a connection from playing together for so long. MM: Did you have a certain idea of wanting to do something different with The Great Crusades than what you had done with other bands in the past? BK: I wanted it to be more focused. With the band I was in before, I was a contributor but not the main songwriter. Going into (The Great Crusades) head first has helped the focus when I bring the main idea to the group and we work on it as a group. MM: What are some of the things you have done to build the band's fan base? BK: Well of course you have to get out and play the live gigs. And having a CD or some kind of recording of your material available at your show kind of makes a band look like it is actually a serious band. And since we are self-managed at this point there is booking the gigs, promotion, contacting media to try to get them to come out to the shows...I don't know if people know how hard it is for a band to try to make it somewhat successful. It goes way beyond just playing in bars and practicing. MM: You've already received notice in Germany and Austria. How did that come about? BK: Our first CD was released by Mud Records, a label in Champaign/Urbana, Illinois. They licensed it to a label in Germany called Trocadero, and it just kind of happened that a friend at one of the other labels in Germany heard the album and begged the label to get us a tour. And he did a real good job because we went over there for three weeks mostly in Germany and some in Austria, and that ended up leading to the deal we have now with Glitterhouse Records, who distribute Subpop in Germany and the UK. So definitely, good things happened from that tour. MM: Is your fan base growing over here as well? BK: I think so. The last show we played in Chicago we had a really good crowd. It was a CD completion celebration, and we had about five hundred people. It's funny because I think a lot of it has to do with the amount of people that you know and that you can beg and plead with to come out to your show. You have to be a good band, though, too. (Laughs) MM: How happy are you with "Damaged Goods" compared to the first EP? BK: I'm very happy with it. Took some pretty big steps from the first CD. The songwriting is a lot stronger, a little more upbeat and not so dreary and downward spiraling. Lyrically it was more like a beer buzz, while the first record was like a whiskey buzz, really down and out. This one has some optimism hidden in there. MM: What do you think fans like most about the music? BK: Hopefully it has something to do with that it doesn't sound really like anything that is happening right now. I think a lot of people can link with the lyrics because they are real story-based, whereas a lot of the lyrics today are more abstract and you really have to be with the genre of the song to know what he or she is talking about. A lot of people key into the story line of our lyrics, it's lyrically-based music. The jagged edge that comes from a fascination of listening to bands like Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Tom Waits, The Replacements or Gallon Drunk. MM: What is your personal definition of success and do you feel The Great Crusades are on their way to achieving it? BK: Oh yeah. Success means quitting my day job and making my living off of making music. Playing my own music that I write, that has always been the goal in the back of our heads. If we ever reached that goal, I know it will be a job in itself, but it is everybody's goal, doing something they love for a living and being happy at it. For more info on The Great Crusades, please visit their web site at www.thegreatcrusades.com . more press |
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