Buzzkills release CD, support Obama

The Buzzkills will don their Sgt. Peppers costumes and take the stage tonight at the Bluebird to release their new CD and show support for Barack Obama.

In addition to original music from their first full-length CD, “Which Way is Down,” the show will also include a Beatles tribute set, complete with costumes.

The Buzzkills teamed up with Students for Change, Students for Barack Obama and IU College Democrats to show support for Obama’s campaign. The groups will register voters and pass out information outside the show.

“As a band as a whole we believe Barack Obama is the change our country needs,” said Buzzkills drummer Matt Schory. “We wanted to do something good and draw people into the bar. We can reach this many people just because we’re in a rock band ... we might as well do something good with that.”

The IU College Democrats hope the show will help them reach a different group of students that doesn’t live on campus or frequent the Indiana Memorial Union, said Anna Strand, president of the IU College Democrats.

“Not only is it a fun event, but also we’re hitting older students,” Strand said.
Strand said she had spoken with the band a lot previously about helping out the Obama campaign.

“They had expressed to me last year during the primary that they’re really big supporters and would love to do any show to help us out,” Strand said.

Though the Buzzkills cheered for Obama during the primary season, they were more focused on laying the first musical notes for their CD. They started tracking for the album in late February.

This was the band’s first time recording an album together. Kyle Gilpin, one of the songwriters, described it as a hectic process.

The band wrote “Destined to Lose” two days before they recorded it. Even though they were basically finished with the album, they decided to include the brand new song, Gilpin said.

“It sounds a lot cooler now because we’ve played it more,” he said. “We probably play it better live now than we used to.”

The recording process took a lot longer than the band originally thought it would, Schory said. Because they had already spent so much time on it, they really focused on each section and made sure they didn’t rush the process.

“It definitely got to the point when we’re like, ‘We spent this much time, why rush this part?’” he said.

The band had to collaborate with a lot of outside forces, including the mixing studio, tracking studio, production staff and cover artists.

“The hardest part for us was coordinating everyone involved with it,” Schory said. “There’s so much more involved than just writing songs.”

The band’s sound is rock ’n’ roll with influences from bands such as the Beatles to Rage Against the Machine and everything in between, Gilpin said.

“It’s very hard to classify as an album,” Schory said. “It is a very eclectic collection of songs.”