A Night in the Box is set to play Gabe's
It's not often a band performs its first real gig without a name. After all, that's one of the initial things people remember; it sets the tone and expectations for the performance, and whether bands like it or not, audiences tend to judge them based on something as simple as their names.
That wasn't an issue for A Night in the Box in the beginning.
Taking the stage at a local café in the band's hometown, Minneapolis, the group made audiences pay attention to its music instead of its name.
"Afterwards, all these people kept coming up and telling us all these places we should play even though they didn't know our name," said Clayton Hagen, the band's vocalist. "But we ended up playing in every single one of those venues."
A Night in the Box will perform at Gabe's, 330 E. Washington St., at 10 p.m. Friday. Admission is $7. Singers Jeremy Bos and Justin Cox, along with the band Nature's Spigot, will open.
"… I love the way that [Box members] harmonize with each other and how their songs are infectious …" Paul Knapp, Gabe's talent booker, wrote in an e-mail to The Daily Iowan.
The band was initially made up of Hagen, guitarist Travis Hetman, and drummer Alex Dalton. The trio met in high school, but after graduation, the three separated for almost four years.
The need for a roommate put the friends back together. First, Hagen and Dalton began living together, and later, Hagen ended up moving in with Hetman. By a month into the living arrangement, they had managed to write several songs together.
Soon, the songwriting evolved into the notion of forming a band, and with Hetman's Minnesota music connections, A Night in the Box was born.
After playing in the Minneapolis area for roughly eight months and cutting its first album in 2006, the band came upon an idea that drastically changed the group's sound and dynamic.
Kailyn Spencer, a violinist who had met Hetman in college, talked to the band members about playing with them.
"[Her violin playing] has got such a sweet sound to it," Hagen said. "We're three guys who sing about really typical blues, which is great. But having that violin and that female voice singing backup harmonies sweetens the sound."
Since then, the band has recorded a second album, and it is on course to make a third, though the band's almost endless string of performances around the Midwest has complicated the process.
However, Hagen thinks that now is the perfect time to go full-out when it comes to the music.
"We've reached this point where we have all the momentum we need to make this what we want it to be," he said. "We're not gonna get catapulted along anymore. It's on our own steam."
Throughout the band's journey, the one thing that has remained constant is the connection its fans have made with the music. Fans often approach the band members to tell them stories about how the music has helped them through tough times.
"A guy one day came up to me who had gone through a rough breakup, and he picked out a part that really affected him," Hagen said. "It's unreal when someone comes up to you and tells you that your song meant more than it might have even meant to you when you wrote it."
comments powered by Disqus
