Valley Vibrations profiles local and regional musical talent found playing frequently throughout the Ohio Valley area – more specifically Evansville, Ind.
(Video coming soon!)
Mitch Angle sings lead vocals and plays guitar for Off the Record, a predominantly pop-punk/alternative band who commonly plays at The Hatch in Evansville, Ind., and Teen Outback in Huntingburg, Ind.
“We usually use Green Day as kind of a template, even Fall Out Boy a lot – old Fall Out Boy, not the new stuff,” the USI junior RTV major said.
Angle said seeing the way girls went crazy for John Mayer in his music video, “Bigger Than My Body,” first interested him in music.
Off the Record has been together over two years and was brought together by their mutual love of the pop-punk bands they listened to in middle school and early high school.
He said his favorite experience so far with Off the Record was their recent gig opening for the Scandelmongers’s CD release party.
“We played some songs we had just written and we had never played before. It all worked out really well,” Angle said. “We have been playing songs over and over again that we wrote when we were 19.”
Sophomore marketing major Chris Dawson is the drummer and junior engineer major Nick Snyder plays bass in the three-man-band.
Snyder played trumpet in middle school and Dawson was hooked into music after seeing Lincoln Park play.
Dawson found the drumming aspect most captivating, he said.
“I feel like we’re pretty energetic because it’s only three of us and, overall, we’re tight as a band because getting three people to play together is pretty simple,” Dawson said.
They used to drink Monsters before the show, but that turned out to be a bad idea, he said.
“We are jumping around and just like having a ball, and afterwards I feel like we always try and talk to people too, and just hang out,” Dawson said. “(We do) more than just play and leave like some people do.”
Off the Record released a CD in 2012 called “The Rookie EP” and passes it out at shows. It is also available for listening to online.
“April 14 we are playing at Wired (in downtown Evansville) and then (April) 18 we are hosting a show in Huntingburg at the Teen Outback at 6 p.m. Evansville time,” Dawson said.
Mitch Angle said he thinks Evansville has a lot of talent.
“There’s just a couple (bands) that I am just like, ‘How are you not bigger than this?’ and it always drives you to write good songs,” he said. “If you want to know how to play guitar and how to sing, it’s so easy to get lazy with it, but there’s a lot of bands out here that really try and put out good music.”
