By Lauren Olson
A band of former Chaska High School students by the name of Colfax will be performing Sunday at the legendary House of Blues auditorium in Chicago.
At this show, which is a part of the Bodog Battle of the Bands competition, they will go head-to-head with 12 other bands, competing for a spot in the final round of the contest. The grand prize is a $1 million recording contract with Bodog.
“It’s a huge accomplishment for us,” said Colfax Drummer Clint Thayer. “Whether we continue onto the next competition or not, just to say we played there - I mean it’s a legendary spot.”
So far, the band has made it through a full five rounds of the competition. The national competition, which started with around 10,000 contestants, has now been narrowed to 51 bands that will perform in four different regional finals.
The regional finals, located in L.A., New York, Atlanta and Chicago, will all take place during the next week. Only one band from each region will move on to the final Bodog Battle.
One other twist to this competition is that it will be made into a reality TV show for network television. The show starts during the regional finals and carries on until the end of the competition. This will be the second year that the program is aired.
Although the band members say that this experience is a great opportunity, they have also said that they are having a lot of success outside of the competition. “The one really nice thing is that, win or lose, when we come back here we headline at the Cabooze for like a pre-St. Patty’s day party,” said percussionist Ryan Lowe. “We keep kicking on regardless.”
“There’s no stopping us,” added guitarist Jeff Porubcan.
If the band moves on to the next round, band members will have to cancel some of their scheduled shows. Promoters and booking agents have actually started to contact band members about doing more shows. “We’ve been on this path for a long time,” said guitarist Matt McAllister. “We just needed people to hear us,” added Thayer.
The band members attribute their newfound success mostly to the kind of music they play. “It’s a different kind of music,” said bass guitarist Kris Siverhus. “I mean we’ve fused together rock, funk, reggae, blues, you know, even country.”
However, according to Thayer, the band also has to be as good at promoting themselves as they are at playing their music. Colfax didn’t even enter the competition until months after it had started. Since the first round was based on how many fans voted for them to go on to the next level, Colfax had to do a lot of self-promotion in order to catch their competition and make the cut.
“There’s a lot of promoting going on,” said lead singer Andrew Eastvold.
The bands newfound success is a far cry from their humble beginnings, according to band members. The band was formed in 2003, and apparently their first show was a huge disaster.
“It was embarrassing,” recalls Porubcan. “I wanted to hide behind my guitar.”
“We were terrible, forever, you know,” said Thayer. “You just have to stick with it. If that’s your dream, if that’s your goal, you’re going to continue to strive to achieve it.”
Most of the band members have known each other since elementary school, and all of them attended Chaska High School. They attribute a lot of there success as a band to the fact that they all grew up together and know each other very well.
“I think that we’re a really good band because we’re all best friends,” said Eastvold.
“It’s like a brotherhood,” added Porubcan.
Some of the boys played together casually during high school, but it wasn’t until after many of them got back from college that they actually started to form their band. They all went off to different colleges, but were able to stay in touch.
Most of the band members have never taken a music lesson. They are largely self-taught musicians, and what little contact they have had with instructors has been largely negative.
“I tried to take lessons, and the guy told me that if I didn’t change my ways that I’d never amount to anything,” said Thayer.
Of course without lessons, the boys had to spend a lot of their time practicing. Band members said that they have received a lot of support and cooperation from the Carver County Sheriff’s Office and from their neighbors, who have allowed them ample time to practice.
For information on the Bodog Battle of the Bands, visit http://battle.bodoglife.net/home/ [1] or Colfax’s myspace page at http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=64955330 [2]