 "Photo: Courtesy photo")
When the term indie band is tossed around, one generally thinks of sparse instrumentation, mournful lyrics and moody atmospherics. Crackling guitars, catchy piano licks and rousing gang vocals are now synonymous with the Colorado-based alternative rock band The Heyday. And the amazing part? They are unsigned to any major label yet have slick production values on par with Relient K or The Fray.
“We try to make our songs universal,” said singer and songwriter Randy Ramirez. “We like to think of them as fit for the drive home with your friends on the last night of summer.”
The Heyday’s sound is a unique blend of radio-friendly pop, rock and a dash of southern influence. They have recorded one full-length self-titled album and are working on an EP, set to be released within the year. The Heyday will perform a show in Bryan at the Stafford-Main Street at 7 p.m. Saturday. But before the outfit was recording albums and touring the country, they were a group of high school seniors dealing with the twin desires and pressures to attend college and pursue their dreams, a mere four years ago.
“We all tried college and doing the band at the same time,” Ramirez said. “Then the band really started to take off, and we’ve been doing this ever since.”
The band started in the summer of 2006 within confines of the band’s pianist Jeff Appareti’s parents’ basement. Instead of live shows, the band focused solely on writing music for the remainder of the summer, developing their own soulful take on radio rock. After three months, they gathered up what money they had and traveled to the Blasting Room, a recording studio in Fort Collins, Colo., to record their first demo.
The five-track demo caught the attention of local producer Christopher Jak, who offered the group the chance to record a full length studio album with the help of mixer Jeff Juliano, who has worked with such diverse artists like O.A.R., Jason Mraz and John Mayer.
“So we returned to the Blasting Room and released our full length debut in September of 2007, and we’ve been touring with that for the past year and a half now,” Ramirez said. “We played a few shows in Colorado, and then we got this really great review by a weekly paper that runs a lot of music stories, and that is when we realized that people were already paying attention.”
With the support of fans and locals, the band continued to play two or three shows a weekend around Denver.
On the songwriting process, Ramirez said it is usually a collaborative work between members of the band.
“Usually we start out with a chord progression, and we see if we [the band] are digging it. We know pretty fast what’s going to work and what isn’t. Then we mix the lyrics and layer the melodies and put it all together,” he said.
Saturday won’t mark the first time that The Heyday has visited Aggieland.
“It was our busiest day. We played a show on campus, and then three acoustic sets at sororities, and then a full set at a club. It was the busiest day I think we’ve ever had,” he said.
For the show on Saturday, Ramirez promises a “good time.”
“It is just as much about the audience as it is us,” he said. “We’re going to be playing some cover songs along with our own set and try to get everyone involved — from the front row to the guy in the back of room. It’s going to be a lot of fun.”
“Our music is easy to connect to — it’s about relationships, leaving old friends and meeting new ones, and the journey that we all are on. Anyone our age can easily connect to what we’re going to be singing about.”
Ramirez said the band is in talks with a few major labels, which is no surprise given the optimistic, upbeat music and tight instrumentation. Unlike the clichéd hype that accompanies most independent bands, The Heyday is surely on the fast track to success.
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