[Photo courtesy of Ethan Herx]

By Nicholas Kobe, Staff Writer

ACRN Media’s annual Battle of the Bands took place Saturday, Nov. 4 at The Union in Athens, Ohio. Ahead of this year’s Battle of the Bands, I spoke with one of this year’s five competing bands, Cranberry Cascade, about their performance ahead of the show in addition to their beginnings as a band.

[This interview has been edited for length and clarity.]

Nicholas: If you had to sum up Cranberry Cascade in one sentence, what would you say?

Marty: Pure fun constantly.

Nicholas: Where did you come up with the name? 

Marty: We were all at Nelson, and we had about 15 minutes to send in our band name. We had been playing together for a while, but we just couldn’t think of a band name. The name comes from me and Luca’s old band. One of our stage gimmicks was (that) I would chug a whole liter of Ocean Spray Cranberry. 

Nicholas: How’d you guys start playing together? 

KJ: So, back home, which is Cleveland for all of us, I was in a band called On Paper, and Marty and Luca are in a band called Amphibian. We played a couple of shows together, so I already knew them. I’m a sophomore, and they all showed up this year as freshmen. Wes and Steve are both friends of Luca and Marty. We kind of knew before they came here that we were going to start a band, and within the first couple weeks of school, we started playing together.

Nicholas Kobe: What are you feeling going into Battle of the Bands this weekend?

Marty: We think we’re going to win. No disrespect to the other bands. Love them all. 

Nicholas: What makes you think you’re going to take it?

Marty: The pure fun of it all. The audience is just going to catch on those vibes. The raw energy.

Nicholas: Do you mostly play original music, or what kind of set should people going to Battle of the Bands expect from you? 

Wes: We’re doing mostly originals here. We’ve been formatting them, just putting them together over the past couple of weeks. We’ve got, like, three different bands going on here that are coming together into one. We’re pulling from all these different Cleveland high school band scenes, and we’re just putting those together, seeing what comes out of it and finding some sort of sound.

Nicholas: For those of you who have been in bands before, what do you guys find different about the Athens scene than the Cleveland scene that you’re used to?

Luca: I would say one thing that I notice is like, just everybody is fully into it. Like everybody’s just throwing themselves around.

Wes: I think a lot more people are hungry for the live music scene here. People seek it out and it’s kind of encouraging because it seems like a great place to start getting a following.

Marty: It’s also a lot more diverse, I think that’s just coming from the high school scene where everyone is sort of playing Green Day covers. We’ve been trying to be different than that for a while, but then (we) just come here and everyone’s like already there, so it’s like rising tide.

Nicholas: What’s different about playing together as a group that you didn’t expect the first time you got together?

KJ: It’s been surprisingly easy. I didn’t think that it was going to be difficult. I know all these guys are really good musicians, but I was a little bit nervous. I had only ever played with my band back home. It’s been a lot of fun just getting to know each other. Our sounds have been cool to experiment with. 

Nicholas: How do those styles kind of meld, like, all your different music tastes?

Luca: Marty and I played, our band from high school was kind of indie funk, and that’s a lot of what I like to play is like soul, Motown, and funk.

Marty: Me and Steve listen to a lot of Black Midi. I’m sure that’s more prevalent here in Athens than it is back in Cleveland.

Nicholas: Oh yeah, it is.

Marty: We’ve been on that train for a little bit, so we’ve been seeing how it goes. Can we take what we started with, and maybe branch out a little bit more, make some more, the big word, “avant-garde” everyone likes to throw around?

Nicholas: What are your plans for this band going forward from Battle of the Bands?

KJ: We’re hoping that Battle of the Bands is a really good starting point for us, by taking home the dub, and then hopefully, playing more shows around Athens. Hopefully starting out with a decent amount of people who want to come check us out. It’s something we want to continue year-round since we’re all from Cleveland as well. We’ll definitely try to play back in Cleveland, and I think that’ll help us get a wider fan base. 

Luca: We also want to try and record some more songs.

KJ: We have access to the studio, obviously from the production degree and we’ll get into that once we get a little more used to playing songs. 

Nicholas: How many originals do you guys have written? 

KJ: We have a couple that are like, still in the works—not finished—but we are playing three that are completed on Saturday, and one cover. We’ll definitely be writing more soon after, and all the bands, we’ve just kind of been working on refining those ones for the last couple of weeks. 

Nicholas: What would you say to anybody who’s about to check you guys out for the first time for Battle of the Bands?

Luca: Prepare to have your mind blown. We just want to have a lot of fun.