A new year, a new group of emerging artists to share with you, starting with NYC’s MiniBoone. MiniBoone brings a big sound, punctuated by fuzzy basslines, oddly-harmonized vocals, and fantastic dynamics. Listen to “Summer Jar” and “Devil in your Eyes” to see what I mean. Tracks rise and fall in volume and complexity, keeping the listener engaged. It’s fun to listen to, there’s no higher praise than that!

We’ve got a treat for you, a free download of “Devil in your Eyes”, straight off the new unreleased EP. Look for Big Changes on iTunes and other e-stores on Jan 26th.

Download “Devil in your Eyes” for free here! Listen to it and rate it in the TwoGroove music player below.

Members/Instruments:
Craig Barnes – Vocals, Guitar, Keyboards
Taylor Gabriels – Drums
James Keary – Vocals, Guitar, Keyboards
Sam Rich – Bass
Doug Schrashun – Vocals, Guitar, Keyboards

Year Formed: 2008

1. Past: What is your musical background? What has led you to this point?

All five of us have been playing in rock bands for ten years or so now, but we come from various backgrounds. Doug was a choirboy growing up, Craig made Weird Al style tapes as “Crazy Craig Barnes” on which he sang all of the vocal and instrumental parts into a My First Sony, and Taylor has a background in orchestral percussion. Sam used to play in a psychobilly band, but I doubt you can hear that in our music.

So, where this band’s legacy starts is probably with Hey Hey Bon Bon, a band Craig and Doug played in before starting MiniBoone. When Hey Hey Bon Bon broke up, we just wanted to start a new band, so we did. There was not a whole lot of premeditation going on, in terms of what we wanted to sound like when we formed the band. Craig and Doug recorded a bunch of songs, and gathered together some people to play them, and now we have MiniBoone.

2. Present: Where are you at now in your career? What are you currently working on?

We’re just putting out our first EP, Big Changes, in January 2010. It’s our first real record, other than a self-released thing Craig and Doug did before Taylor, Sam and James joined the band, so we’re frighteningly excited. Still, some of the songs on here have been in existence since the band started, and we’ve playing most of them for a while now, so we’re also starting to think about the next batch of songs. On the shows side of things, we’re trying to get our act together for a tour in the spring that will hopefully end up in Austin for South By Southwest. Of course, we’re still playing around New York quite a bit and getting ideas together for a music video. Not one of those lame music videos, a good one.

3. Future: What’s coming up for you? Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

In the short term, it would be nice to keep up our momentum, put out another EP this year and do a larger tour than we’ve been able to do so far. Maybe get out to the West coast or Europe. We’ve applied for a couple of all-expenses-paid trips to Asia and the UK. Who knows, maybe one of those will work out.

It’s nice to think that the band will still be going strong in five years. It could be that in five years James and Taylor will be lawyers, Craig will own a bakery, Sam will be a graphic designer and Doug will be in jail in Eastern Europe. Or maybe we’ll have reached some level of stability where the band has allowed us to quit our day jobs and happily coast along without having to punch a clock. We’re pretty sure that any band working day jobs that tells you that they wouldn’t rather not be working those day jobs is lying at least a little bit. Except Oneida. They seem serious.

4. Where can people find more of your music?

We have www.miniboone.com, the myspace (www.myspace.com/minibooneband), the facebook (www.facebook.com/miniboone). You’ll be able to buy the Big Changes EP starting January 26, 2010 through Band Camp, iTunes, Amazon, eMusic, wherever you usually do that sort of thing. CDs will be available on our website. Also, if anybody asks us nicely, we may send them our first self-released LP for free.

5. Anything you’d like to plug?

I think we already plugged ourselves enough. We would like to use this opportunity to plug the bands Caddywhompus, Quiet Loudly, and Monster Island (Beau Alessi). (TwoGroove note – this is the exact reason for this question! I love when bands I like turn me on to bands they like.)