Before Gloriana took the stage as the main opener for Spring Fest Saturday evening, The Spectrum'sJoe Konze Jr sat down with band members Tom Gossin, Mike Gossin and Rachel Reinert to talk about their music career and what it's like playing in Buffalo.
The Spectrum: Is this your first time playing in Buffalo?
Tom Gossin: The weather is a little bit chilly. We've been to Buffalo before. Of course, we are the wrong people to ask about that because we've been on tour for seven years now and we can't really remember yesterday. We have a great relationship with the radio station here. We did the Taste of Country [in Buffalo] and one of the photos taken at that concert is the photo on iTunes for our new single "Best Night Ever."
TS: How did you all meet?
Rachel Reinert: Tom and Mike are brothers, like [Mike] said. I think they met in like their living room. So they had moved from Upstate New York to North Carolina and kind of did the bar scene playing out there for 10 years. And I had moved from - I grew up all over the place, Florida, Georgia, California - and I knew that I wanted to be a country singer and I knew that Nashville was the place to be. So, I was out there doing a solo thing for a number of years and one day I got a message on my music Myspace. I just decided to toss all caution to the wind and we started writing and playing music together and formed a band. And so, that was back in 2007 and we've been together ever since.
TS: When you started playing bigger shows, what was it like? Were you nervous? Are there any stories about playing your first show that you would like to share?
RR: We had some nightmare shows for sure in the very beginning. We didn't have a band name. We were a joke actually. But you know, we just kept doing what we were doing and, finally, I think we figured out who we wanted to be, what we wanted to sound like. And I think we're still learning every single day. I think the most awkward thing for us was kind of the in-between songs and figuring out what to say [to the audience]. We would just kind of start talking about food.
TG: We went from playing in bars, the three of us around Nashville, which was going pretty good. We were playing acoustic most of the time. And then the first tour that we got picked up on was Taylor Swift's tour in 2009. So, we went from playing for like 50 people to playing for like 20,000 the next day, and it was the first time on a big stage.
TS: How difficult is it to become a country music artist?
Mike Gossin: I think it is tough in Nashville. The problem that I see is that there are just so many singers, songwriters, musicians. There's so much talent. You can walk into a bar or even a restaurant and somebody's playing at noon and I've been blown away before and said, "How does that person not have a record deal? They're so good." They have a huge crowd, everybody's listening and paying attention. It's tough; it's really tough to break through. But I think like anything, it's about perseverance and never giving up. And sometimes it just takes being in the right place at the right time, knowing the right people and just getting lucky. It's like rolling the dice."
TS: Where do you draw inspiration for your songs?
RR: For me, it's really just about real-life experiences. I'm a very lyric-driven person. We all have our iPhones and stuff so we've got voice memo and Notepad and stuff like that. I'll work on lyric ideas and melody ideas and [put them on my phone], and [Tom and Mike] are the same way. It's just kind of like on a daily basis sometimes an idea just will strike you in the middle of nowhere. That's how it kind of comes together for us. We love to draw from our own personal experiences.
MG: I pull from real-life experiences and then also, you can create lyrics for something that you haven't experienced, too, which is also kind of fun because there are really no rules in writing. You can make up any story that you want.
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