Rail Rider Jamboree Musicians Ready to Perform
Rail Rider Jamboree Musicians Ready to Perform
A Conversation with Mike Gantzer of Gantzer & Friends, One of the Performers at This Year’s Festival
Mike Gantzer & Friends are one of the acts set to perform at the 2nd annual Rail Rider Jamboree at Holiday Valley Resort this Saturday, March 18.
Gantzer, who’s best known as a guitarist and vocalist of the band Aqueous, has gathered some of his best musical friends and is ready for the 2023 concert season. “Aqueous is taking a break so that one of our members can fully experience being a new dad,” said the singer/songwriter.
Growing up he was into skateboarding, punk and metal music. As far as his musical influences, the singer said, “Jeff Beck, Jimmy Hendrix and Pink Floyd were big for me… but really there are too many to name.”
His work with Aqueous garnered seven studio albums and a “smattering” of live albums. With the band taking a break, Gantzer has been recording a bunch of new music for his solo career that he is very excited about and will be released soon.
When I talked to him recently, I asked him to describe his music for me to which he replied, “The first thing that comes to mind from my perspective is open-hearted. I’m trying to make music with messages and lyrics that maybe I would’ve needed to hear 10 years ago. Stylistically, I think one of the things I appreciate most about this moment in time is the lines of genre are getting very blurred. Honestly, the fans have to decide what they think it is… if I had a dollar for every time I thought we were making one type of record, and then the fans heard it and had their own interpretation of it, I’d have at least $5.” (laughs)
Looking forward to being part of the Jamboree, I asked if he knew he was playing outdoors and he said, “I did hear that and that’s fine with me… I love playing in the elements so come on out everybody… this is going to be really fun!”
For more information on the event and tickets visit railriderjamboree.com or holidayvalley.com. For more information on Aqueous visit aqueousband.com.
A CONVERSATION WITH MIKE GANTZER
HULICK: You’re playing the Rail Rider Jamboree this Saturday, March 18 listed as Mike Gantzer & Friends… I know you as a member of the band Aqueous.
GANTZER: Yes. I play in several bands and one of those is Aqueous, which is how I’m best known since that is what I’ve been part of for the past 15 years or so, touring and making albums with the band. I’ve got some tour dates this spring with Aqueous then we’re taking time off because one of our members and his wife had a baby and it’s vert difficult sometimes to balance touring life with family life and wanting to prioritize being a new dad. So he asked for some time off and we’re going to give it to him. In the meantime, I’m able to put together a real cool lineup of musicians I’ve met along the way from across the nation.
HULICK: Do you know Jennifer Brazil who started the Jamboree and puts it all together?
GANTZER: We’ve conversed by email, and she’s been great to work with, but I’ve not actually met her and I’m looking forward to meeting her at the event.
HULICK: She’s originally from East Aurora.
GANTZER: Oh cool! I love East Aurora.
HULICK: I had the chance to work with her last year on interviews with a couple of the acts. That was the first year she was presenting it and we were hoping that this would become an annual event. It’s great to have someone that grew up here to be able to bring a festival like this to her own backyard and have it be successful.
GANTZER: For sure!! I wish her much success.
HULICK: When did you guys start the band?
GANTZER: We started when we we all 15 or 16-years-old and we’re all in our early 30’s now. It’s been quite a journey. We all grew up together and started the band right in the middle of high school. Three of the four of us are original members and our drummer is from Cincinnati and he’s been with us for seven or eight years now… but the rest of us are Buffalo kids.
HULICK: The bios of the band members on your website are, well, unusual. Who came up with those?
GANTZER: (laughs) Those were written years and years ago by one of our former drummers, someone that we still work very closely with named Nick Sonricker. He played drums for us many years ago and has also become a producer of content for us like when we do tour announcements, music videos… really any kind of video production stuff and graphic design. He’s done a lot of work for us and he’s a really close friend of the band. We’ve always had a kinda vibe of take the music seriously, don’t take yourself seriously. We like to keep a sense of levelty of the whole thing and we always loved the creativity and the whimsy behind those descriptions.
* NOTE: To read the band’s bios go to: https://aqueousband.com/about
HULICK: They are very creative. I loved reading them. Has Nick been part of the album cover designs as well?
GANTZER: It depends… there were certain eras where he was, and really off and on through our career, like up until one of our most recent releases called “Burn It Down”. He’s actually been involved with several of them, whether he actually designed them or came up with the concept. We had an album in 2012 called “Willy Is 40” and that title is a nod to a bridge in Niagara Falls that has had that spray painted on it for as long as we’ve been alive, and so we made a cool concept up with that... and we had gone to a park in Niagara Wheatfield at one or two in the morning and shot an album cover that had a lamp - a very vintage lamp - that we found at a Salvation Army and we ran an extension cable from our van and lit it up… So he’s basically been involved whether musically or creatively for most of our career.
HULICK: Talking about album covers… were you old enough to remember vinyl albums?
GANTZER: Well I think what’s funny about that is vinyl has had quite a resurgence and I’ve been a part of that. I grew up in the age of CDs, and when I was 11 or 12 I was still getting cassette tapes and that was sorta transitioning over to CDs. I try to look back on the ceremony of the thing… that was my first experience and I remember saving up money to go to a record store and I had just enough money to get like one CD a month, so that CD was important and I’d treat it with great care. I’d go home and open the little pamphlet in there and I’d just sit and read along with what was playing. It’s actually been very nice to reconnect with that feeling a little bit with vinyl. There’s a lovely record store just a few blocks from my house and I’m in there probably more often than I should be. (laughs)
HULICK: (laughs) It’s great that you can make an album in a certain color now… like Elvis’ “Moody Blue” album where the record itself is blue.
GANTZER: I think there’s still magic about unique choices like that. I think anything that’s intentional adds a cool feeling to it when you see that an artist had a vision and they followed through with it. The attention to detail matters I think. That’s probably why vinyl has had a resurgence… the convenience of digital media can’t be understated, I mean it’s amazing, and of course there are pros and cons, but people yearn for that special moment, that connection to the tangible item and so I’m glad it still exists and I love it.
HULICK: What’s a typical tour for you… do you do two weeks at a time or is it different each time?
GANTZER: Basically it kinda depends on the context. In the spring and fall months traditionally with Aqueous we would do longer tours like anywhere from three to five weeks out at a time. We go city to city and make certain routes around the country that make sense. That’s one experience and then another is during the summertime there are more events in the realm of Rail Rider Jamboree where the schedule and logistics for these type of shows can be a little bit different; they’re all over the country, so we might be flying for some of those or it might be a weekend run where we hit a few places… it depends. Over the years our touring schedule and model has changed and adapted as the band grew. It’s kinda come full circle for us with the band taking a little bit of a break. Sometimes I think everything in life is a balance and I’m really proud of what we’ve built and proud that we are able to put each other first and make room for life, because life happens too, of course.
HULICK: Do you write your own music?
GANTZER: Yes. Of course it’s fun to throw in an occasional cover. We’ve always prioritized writing our own music, so everything I’ve done with Aqueous and the solo stuff I’m working on right now are all original.
HULICK: Do you have a favorite place to play?
GANTZER: Town Ballroom in Buffalo is up there for me… at least the top five. I grew up seeing shows there and would be inspired by bands I loved playing there. It was quite an achievement to play there as Aqueous and filling a room like that the past few years.