YouTube recommended listening to Hour 24 of Temperance, Michigan. So now they are one of my favorite bands. YouTube gets its recommendations right sometimes.
Hour 24 has been touring all over America this past summer. If you had a chance to catch their live show, you already know that they rock. If you haven’t seen them or heard of them, then you can still watch their videos on YouTube.
They are also raising funds to pay for their newest album. Hour 24 will be recording the album with producer Dan Korneff, who has worked with Pierce the Veil, Paramore, and Sleeping with Sirens.
The current band roster is Rachel Mayer – vocals; Dan Quigley – guitar; Cody Sizemore – guitar/vocals; Chris Salazar – bass; Mike Neumann – drums.
Rachel Mayer and Dan Quigley talked to me about writing the album in a remote cabin and being in a female-fronted band, among other things.
Interview
- There is a saying “The rooster crows but the hen delivers the goods.” Do you think there’s any truth in that?
Rachel: I don’t know. I think we all equally have our parts in the band. I think being a female front person helps out with our image. It helps when we’re looking for fans. They’re like, “Oh wow! You have a girl singer. That’s not too common.” It definitely helps us get some additional fan interest.
- Why haven’t you signed with a label yet?
Dan: In September, we’re going to record with Dan Korneff. When we record the album with him, we will be shopping around. We’re just kind of waiting for the best moment.
- How did you end up staying at a cabin in the middle of nowhere to work on the album?
Dan: That was our drummer, Mike Neumann’s uncle’s summer cabin. He was nice enough to open it up for us to use in the winter. When we were writing the album, we wanted crack down and to get away from everything.
Rachel: Yeah, most technology, like Facebook and everything else.
Dan: We really wanted to focus on the music. It was a really great experience. I’m happy with what we came up with out there.
Rachel: It was a wonderful experience. It was kind of cold. It was in the negatives. But we definitely managed to work through that. It helped with creativity, I think.
- Do you think it brought you closer?
Rachel: I think it brought us closer. We lived in a really teeny, two-bedroom cabin. Just like getting to write constantly. Even when we weren’t writing, we were playing some kind of music. We all shared food. We watched movies at night together. It was definitely a bonding experience.
- What has been the most difficult thing about being independent band?
Dan: Just like any kind of thing when starts up – the initial getting people to know about you. It’s also part of the fun of it too. We’ve been touring for the last year and a half -just getting more and more people to know about us. It’s hard at first. It’s a huge investment – time and financially. It’s absolutely worth it to us. It’s just such a fun thing. We love what we do.
- What has been the best thing about touring?
Dan: To me at least, playing shows is so fun. It’s the most rewarding thing to -to play music with my four best friends every night.
Rachel: I would say the same thing. Playing shows and audience interaction. We’ve had a lot of great audience interaction. That’s one of the best feelings in the world to have people singing back to you or putting their hands up. It’s a really good time.
Also, we love meeting the other bands. We make friends at every single show with the bands. We’ll make connections with everyone that we can. Sometimes we’ll go hang out with our fans at Denny’s and have food together.
Dan: The band that we’re on tour with now, Racing on the Sun, that’s actually how we met them last June. When we came through Denver, they were one of the local bands on the show. We’ve been talking to them since then.
- What song do you like performing the most?
Rachel: That one is hard too. We all have different ones. My favorite is “Take Me Away.” At the end, there’s an instrumental section where I have a chance to run around and interact with everyone and also jump and do the splits in mid-air.
Dan: “Take me Away” is one for me too. There’s a song on the new album called “Let Your Heart Run Wild” that I really like playing.
Rachel: I love that one too. It’s really inspirational with the meaning and a lot of people get into it. It’s a good song for audience interaction.
- What motivates you?
Dan: I’m a very self-motivated person. I love the feeling of progress and getting work done. The feeling of moving forward is my motivation. Knowing that if I keep going at it, more will keep coming.
Rachel: It’s pretty similar for me. I’ll set little goals. As soon as I accomplish that I’ll make another one. Just trying to continue to make progress. It keeps pushing me forward. It helps with the positive outlook as well if any issues come up.
- Do you remember the first song that you learned to sing/perform?
Rachel: The first song that I performed was “Hit Me with Your Best Shot” by Pat Benatar. I pulled Dan into it to play guitar. We had a bass player that we got into it at the time. That was the first song that I ever performed.
Dan: The first song that I ever learned, like most other guitar players out there was the one guitar riff in “Iron Man” by Black Sabbath.
- Do you have any other goals that you’d like to accomplish this year?
Dan: Pretty much to keep touring. In September, we’re going to record the album. We set up a Indiegogo crowdfunding page. As an independent band, we don’t have a label to front us the money to record, like many other bands do. Our goal with this album is to put out the best-sounding package possible. In total, it’s going to cost us $16,000. So we have the crowdfunding page to help us boost any funds to get it done. So in September and October, we’ll be working on it in New York.
Check out their band page here:
Their crowdfunding page is here:
