Steel City Ruins

Interview with Steel City Ruins

February 28, 2016

Describe your band, telling a little about it.

We're a five piece instrumental band, and we focus our music on emotion.  We do the best we can to make sure everyone listening to our music can feel what we feel, and have new shared experiences at our shows.

What are your names? / Who plays what?

Elijah Jarovich - drums

Buddy Young - guitar 

Luke Nichols - guitar

Ethan Lyons - guitar

Alex Bedford - bass guitar

Have members played with any other bands?

Yes, currently our one guitarist, Ethan, performs with his other band Annajames band.

Do you write your own music or perform covers?  Has it always been this way?

We write our own music, it's been like this since day one.

What year did the band form?   2015

Where is bands home?  Home is kind of hard to explain for us, no one in the band really lives that close to each other.  Though every week we make a road trip up to a cabin in Boyers, PA to practice and that's probably the 

best place we could call home.

What's your style or genre?  

We're a post rock/prog/fusion group. We have heavy roots in the jazz and funk genres and it comes out in our mix of post rock.

What inspires your music?

Life. If we see something that can make us feel strong emotions, we usually put it into music in some way.

How often do you rehearse?  

Every Friday and Saturday.

What gear do you guys use?

Ethan uses a Peavy 212 with a pedalboard and a fender Stratocaster.  Buddy uses a Peavy 412 with a pedalboard and a custom 80's Washburn. Luke uses a fender deluxe reverb with a pedalboard and a fender Stratocaster.  Alex uses a nemesis 320 with an ampeg cab fender bass. And Elijah uses a Gretsch Catalina club kit with a Tama starclassic snare.

Do you utilize a booking agency, and what are your thoughts around that?  

We do all booking ourselves.

Are you looking for a label, and what are your thoughts around that?  Oh man, we would LOVE to be signed. Though if that were to happen we all feel very strongly about our message and our style and we would NOT want any label that would try to change our message or our connection with our fans.

What are your songs about?

Our pieces are about perseverance through pain, the good times and the bad times. We write music about the feelings you can't put into words, but the second the piece is over you're feeling those things and you feel like you have a better understanding of them. 

Who does the composing?

Everyone in the band writes everything. Someone will show up to practice and play the skeleton of something new we're going to do and everyone just writes their parts to that. It's probably one of the more creative ways to write music as a band, but it gives everyone the ability to put their own ideas into the music easily.

Do you compose in a certain enviroment?

We're all very laid back in the band.  Most of the best stuff that has been written has probably either been at home or when we're all together just hanging out.

Have you done any covers live?

We did two at our very first show, one of them was partially a joke and just to show off the fact that our bassist is AMAZING.  Alex played the jazz standard "Donna Lee" at about 210 bpms with our drummer and everyone else just sat down and stared at him as he played away perfectly.  We also decided that we wanted to give a shout out to a friend who plays funk that was at that show and we played "run for cover" It was a fun time!

What are the least and most people to attend one of your gigs?   We played one gig where we had about 4 people watching us. At the most we've probably had 150-200 at our biggest show.

What ages are most of your concert attendants?   There's really not an average. We have a lot of teenagers show up, but we've also had a fair amount of 50+ year olds come to our shows.   We write and play music for any age you don't have to be young or "in the scene" to enjoy a lot of it.

Do you always play the same songs live, or do you vary?  We try to switch it up, but we always play a couple of our biggest hits.

What was your first gig like?  It was really fun. There wasn't a blowout but it wasn't empty and everyone had a good time and we really fell in love with playing live.

What was your latest gig?  We last played as the headliner at Mr. Small's Theater.

Have you had to cancel a gig?  Nope!

Where have you played live this year?

The Rex Theater, Thursdays, Mr. Smalls,  

Long Branch Saloon, 100 Acre Manor

Where do you plan to gig the coming year?

We don't really have any SPECIFIC places that we know for sure we're going to be at. Though we plan on doing a small tri-state tour this summer. And we usually run across some nice gigs throughout the weeks that we pick up and play.

When did you start to sell merchandise, and what do you have for sale?  We started right off the bat.  We sell patches for our DIY fans and currently we're selling stickers to raise money to get our first run of tee-shirts out.

Where can people buy your merchandise?

Any of our shows.

What do you think about people downloading music instead of buying records now a days?

If someone actually pays for the music and doesn't just download it illegally, we don't have an issue with that.

How do you think the music industry has changed because of this?  Music has now become instantly accessible if you have an internet connection, and because of this everyone has a wider range of music they listen to.  Along with this, it creates more competition for bands that are trying to get their name out in the scene.

Do you have any role models or idols?

Bands like, This Will Destroy You, Explosions in the Sky and Coastlands give us ideas for things to do in our post rock realm of playing.  But then you have groups like Chon, Intervals, and Thank You Scientist that give us ideas for some of our crazy riffs and odd time signature changes.  Plus the guitarist Guthrie Govan is the favorite guitarist of everyone in the group.

Oh, and Pink Floyd. There's A LOT of Floyd influence in our music. 

Is it easier to find inspiration from older bands, or bands that are more active today?  It doesn't matter what the era is, talented musicians are talented musicians, when we hear and listen to groups that have the raw talent we aspire to reach we find our inspirations. 

What have been your biggest obstacles?

Honestly, just getting enough money to afford the band.  We all live about an hour to an hour and a half away from each other and making practice happen every week uses a lot of gas. But we've made it work and found our best routine to get practice time, and not break the bank.

What advice would you give other bands or artists?   Practice, practice, practice, and play as many shows as you can.  Make connections with your fans and never stop being grateful for the support you get.

How do you get psyched for a gig?

The second we show up at a venue everyone is pretty much ready to explode with excitement, we don't need to prep up.

Do you have any new material?  

Currently we're writing and have a couple new tunes that will be seen for the first time at our upcoming shows.

How can people reach you?

They can either message us on Facebook or Instagram. We also have a group email address at Steelcityruins@gmail.com.  Also, people can contact our drummer or our guitarist by phone call or text.

Elijah Jarovich

724-544-9775

Buddy Young

724-713-8420

Social media addresses?

Facebook

www.Facebook.com/steelcityruins

Instagram

@steelcityruins

Twitter

@SteelCityRuins

What are your plans for the future?

We plan to release an album before this summer and keep playing and sharing our music for as long as we possibly can.

What do you think of my work?

This is a great interview and there are a lot of great questions on here. Starting a local showcase that interviews local bands and gets who they are and what they're doing out to the public all in one hub is a great thing.

How do you think that this interview could help you in the local music scene and beyond?   It can really help us get our name and message out there and the more people that give us a chance the more fans we will make.  All we want is to reach as many people as we can, we don't need to be famous to be happy.

What is one thing even your biggest fans don't know about the band?  Hmmm, probably that we all have an intense love of pine trees. Like, really intense.  They're just so pretty...