Local Venues Quotes

When I was about 12, I had my first paying gig - 8 dollars to play rhythm guitar in a polka band. Pretty soon, I ended up playing in all the bars within driving distance of Abbott, Texas.

I was working at a non-profit for five years. But I could always create music after work. All throughout those years, I was writing songs and recording music and performing around town.

It's nice to go to small places where we had a lot of fans. They followed our career and it's kind of a way to say thank you to them and do it for a good cause.

In 1996, I was in was in an acoustic kind of rock band, we were called Feeble. We were just playing locally.

We're from Athens, Alabama. That's my town. People think it's Muscle Shoals, but they have no idea. It's a quiet, sleepy little town, about 45 minutes from Muscle Shoals. It's really hard to be a band in Athens; there are no venues.

I'm not ruling out music forever. I'd love to do that, but if I ever did, I don't think it would be with a record label or anything like that. It might even look like me finding a band and kind of playing in bars.

For a long time, we just played here - Columbus is a perfect place to work your way up and maybe build a fan base.

Devo and The Cramps didn't get big until they went to New York City. Chrissie Hynde didn't get big until she moved to London. When I was growing up, there wasn't even a place to play - just one little bar. If we wanted to have a gig, then we had to drive 45 minutes up to Cleveland.

When I was 9 years old, I started performing around my hometown of San Antonio, Texas.

When I left school, I went and bought my own sound system, and me and my dad would just go along to all the pubs and clubs around the local area and just sort of do our own little cover shows.

I feel like I just wanna go back to being more underground.

In a way, Jersey really supports rock, maybe more than New York City and Long Island. I know plenty of bands that tour and do much better at Starland or other clubs in New Jersey than others in the tri-state area.

I have a thing for Baltimore: the word itself, the place - I don't know where it comes from; it's just a weird city. I have a song called 'Baltimore,' but I'm not from there. I've driven through there a lot. We've played a couple of shows there, but it's not a big market. Some good bands come from there, though. Animal Collective and Beach House.

It's nice to see bands you could see at a bar finally get a chance.

New York has a deep culture of house and dance music, and to be able to tap into that is my way of shutting off. I go to friends' parties and local spots around the area: places I can go to, have a dance, and forget about being an actor and the attention.

I go to a lot of metal shows when we're home. I don't know why, but it takes me back to when I was 17 and going to the local metal shows in Pennsylvania. I go right back to that mentality.

It's funny how many people will come to Vegas to see your show where they might not come out to see you unless you come to their hometown.

We really earned our keep by going door to door, going to every town, playing in every club.

Anytime we go to a new town I try to book a show. I literally know nothing about the club.

I was seeing kids my age playing shows at their parents' houses or the couple of all-ages venues that existed. I feel like I saw so many different kinds of music that I wouldn't have discovered on my own.

You know, I play in small, intimate venues; I'm not an arena performer.

I come from what we call the pre-'Drag Race' drag world where I didn't start doing this with aspirations of being a reality television star, or this going any further than the small smoky bars of Pittsburgh.

On the weekends, I would go down and play these clubs in Key West or West Palm Beach or surrounding areas of Florida and then I'd go back to school for the week.

It's a crying shame we don't play more parks and fairs. I would love to go right to the Chamber of Commerce or whoever they are, so that we could get involved in a different way.