Arts & Life, Features

CSULB student Jonny Strang and his band members work to make it in a trying music industry

The likelihood of making a living as a musician if they’re not headlining the Hollywood Bowl or regularly featured on the radio is a virtual impossibility. For a student musician trying to get discovered, life becomes a balancing act.

When Cal State Long Beach senior Jonny Strang and former CSULB student Alex Mendez started New American five years ago they couldn’t have known the priority their band would have for them now.

New American is a local band that brings a classic style back to the stage during a new age of rock that often incorporates keyboard synthesizers and computer samples.  

Although the stage is usually small, New American’s sound is anything but. With loud guitars and overdrive pedals, they offer audiences a full sound of a certain raw quality and talented musicianship reminiscent of a style from a past generation.

“It’s probably a combination of the music I grew up listening to in the ‘90s,” Strang said. “So, very much like the heavy ‘90s rock music just from more of a blues structure.”

Strang heads up the band as frontman and guitar player, backed by Mendez on drums. The two have known each other since elementary school, but for them school began to fade out of focus.

“[I] have an idea of what it takes to do well on a test, how much homework I need to do, you know they tell you ‘C’s get degrees,’” Strang said. “It’s really work, school and band that are the real trouble.”

Strang may be the only one currently in school, but he and the rest of the members each have their respective positions in the workforce that have to be prioritized over the band. You can’t be in a local band without money.

“I don’t feel like school is for me right now, at least in my life, I want to do [New American] more,” Mendez said. “One of our friends hooked us [Mendez and Strang] up with a job at a factory, you know, just something to pay the bills right now.”

Bass guitarist Karim Bedran runs a used car auction lot, and lead guitarist Chris Pleasant works at Guitar Center.

Jobs are important because being in a band can sometimes cost you more than you’ll make, especially with the emerging popularity of free shows

“The idea of the $5 show is probably not going to exist soon,” Strang said. “It’s only going to be free shows or expensive shows.”

Playing venues like the Nugget Grill and Pub doesn’t rake in too much cash. At free shows, audiences pay nothing so bands get paid nothing, though they certainly have their place in a local music scene.

“Free shows are the most beneficial shows to bands honestly,” said Mendez “You got to get your rep up somehow.”

The reason free shows are good for starting bands is because the alternative to that is pay-to-play shows.

“That is that phenomena where they tell a band that actually has no fan base, have never played shows before, ‘Here’s 25 tickets, you have to sell all of them or you can’t play,’” Strang said. “You’re just going to pay out of your pocket every time because you end up having to eat those tickets.”

Unfortunately for them, a lot of bands have to start off this way, because what it comes down to is a numbers game. The more time a band’s name appears on a playbill, the better it is for that band.

“People notice that,” Mendez said. “They see your name over and over again and they start asking, ‘Oh, how is this band?’”

Of course, in today’s day and age, playbills are not tangible pieces of paper, but PDF files spread across Instagram and Facebook.

“[Promotion was] all by word of mouth, but that’s not how it is anymore, and I wish it wasn’t that way because I don’t particularly care for social media,” Strang said. “I’m a romantic, I wish I grew up in Seattle, Washington, in the ‘90s.”

That romanticism is part of what gives New American their sound, but it doesn’t always serve their best interest.

Pulling influence from Josh Homme and Queens of the Stone Age, Them Crooked Vultures, Nirvana, and even Hendrix, New American aims to represent not only a fading genre, but a fading element of the music industry itself.

“If we were some sort of synth, indie, happy band, we’re in the right place. Long Beach is a great place to be one of those bands, L.A. is a great place to be one of those bands,” Strang said. “But we’re not that band. We just tend to have a little more riff-oriented, heavy music, and because of that it does make things a little more difficult.”

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