The Ohio Union Ballroom was alive with sounds of emerging musical bands Saturday as Ohio State hosted the New Music Award tour.
This competition, sponsored by Coca-Cola, showcased five bands competing for an award at the American Music Awards. The New Music Award will be given out for the first time at the 2002 American Music Awards, held on Jan. 9.
“I believe they had 600 or 800 bands enter into this competition. Fifty bands won and then they narrowed down to 10, and last Tuesday those 10 bands played and then it was narrowed down to five. The five bands go on a mini-tour of college campuses, and at the final show in Texas A&M it will be narrowed down to three bands,” said Jeff Schunk, production and assistant tour manager.
The five bands include; Yo, Flaco!, Jennifer Marks, Live Honey, Fade and Carbon Leaf. The bands originate anywhere from New York to Long Beach to Denver, Colo.
Even though the band isn’t rewarded with a record contract, Schunk is confident the exposure these bands are getting should take care of itself.
“The awareness and the publicity from this and from the American Music Awards, which is one of the biggest award ceremonies, that is certainly going to bring a lot of attention to the winning band,” Schunk said.
Nilesh Makwana and John Hollweg, members of Long Beach-based Fade said they have to thank Makwana’s mother for being on the tour.
“Actually my mom told us the info about this gig and she said ‘here is the info.’ We saw ‘send in three songs’ and we did the whole thing in a bedroom, so here we are,” Makwana said.
Though each band member have different influences they use all of them to create a, as they describe it, modern easy type rock ‘n’ roll.
“I like Nathan East, Anita Baker. I like contemporary music. I like rock ‘n’ roll, and Led Zeppelin. We are basically your typical rock band,” Hollweg said.
Many bands struggle for years to get an opportunity like the one these five bands are enjoying now, but Saturday night was Fade’s second show ever.
“This is the second stop the first was in Newark, New Jersey at Rutgers University and after this we are on our way to Berkeley (Ca.),” Makwana said. “Actually this is our second show ever, we’ve only been a band for four months.”
Each band is given its own tour bus and the members of Fade described it as a house on wheels, and are enjoying traveling the country.
The bands will next travel to UCLA and North Carolina on the tour.
