“Gainesville has a pretty dope music scene.”
Let’s be real, you’ve probably heard this a million times.
Does it, though? Gainesville residents are always hearing about this amazing culture of music that seems to live downtown, but where is it exactly?
Besides a few cover bands at Swamp and solid Gator Growl performances, where is all this musical culture coming from? Oh, and let’s not forget Gainesville’s pride and joy, Sister Hazel and Less Than Jake! Not to knock these bands, but in a college town raging about their stellar musicality, there has to be more.
“There isn’t as much as people think,” Lukas Costas of the band Sidereal, said. “The market in Gainesville is really difficult. College kids would rather do a lot of other things than listen to live music.”
Sidereal is a band based out of Jacksonville that plays regularly at High Dive in downtown Gainesville. Costas, who plays pretty much everything, is a UF student who tours with his band when he’s not working on getting his degree. Though their band formed in 2009, they’ve played with groups like Pepper, The Expendables and Less Than Jake.
Now, I’m not saying Gators don’t like music, because every college kid likes music. Every single Southwest gym junkie has their headphones in, as well as the kids at the library. However, we should acknowledge the music scene isn’t exactly what we’ve claimed it is.
This past weekend, being a music junkie myself, I went to both Zed’s Dead and Less Than Jake featuring Ballyhoo! and Sidereal. While both concerts were amazing and on complete opposite ends of the musical spectrum, I couldn’t help but notice Zed’s Dead had ten times as many people than Less Than Jake did.
The Reggae/Rock scene, consisting of bands such as Slightly Stoopid, Iration, Rebelution and Pepper, seems big, but when you look at artists like Kenny Chesney, he sells out massive arenas. Costas explained, “No band in our genre sells out arenas.”
This might seem discouraging to someone trying to make it in the music world, but Sidereal isn’t discouraged. Their sound is defined by their capacity to take risks in all different types of genres.
“We don’t limit ourselves. As long as we, collectively as a group, think it’s good, we’ll play it.”
Sidereal’s faith in their ability to make it out of a small town and tour across the country shows that we, too, have a part to play in this.
Support our local bands, buy a ticket for a band you may never have heard of playing at High Dive and take in the music culture all around you. Take a night off from watching “Breaking Bad” and do something you’ve never done before; maybe you’ll be surprised what you download off of iTunes that night. Maybe we are the keys to unlocking the music potential of Gainesville.
Check out Sidereal on November 7th at High Dive with Passafire and Ballyhoo!. You can also check out their album On the Rocks on iTunes and Spotify.
Photo courtesy of: InsiteGainesville
