Spotlight: Gondo

Music Promotion via MusicSubmit.com

Webpage: http://www.reverbnation.com/gondo

Location: Batavia, IL, USA

Description: A fan described Gondo's music as the bastard child of Neil Young and Rush.

Biography: Artist Bio Frank Gondo had it all--great job in the financial services industry, house in suburbia, kids, wife, the American dream. Then 2008 happened. Along with millions of other upwardly mobile professionals, Frank found himself jobless. During the downtime, Frank dusted off his musical chops that had languished since high school and started writing and composing music, with the goal of performing acoustically at local bars and coffeehouses while looking for a job. During the recording process, however Frank started incorporating bass, drum machines, electric guitar, synthesizers, and violins into the music, expanding it beyond its acoustic roots. Frank submitted the recording to I-Tunes as an album "At The Twilight's Last Gleaming," which they accepted, much to his surprise and delight. A following soon started building on MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter. Along with that came requests to play live. Frank knew that he needed some solid players, and knew a couple he had jammed with in the past. Blaine Sinderson, former drummer for Little Blue Taxi and M28 joined him along with Joe Vierthaler on bass (the three had met and played together at church services). The band is currently working on recording additional material and playing live gigs. Sounds like: The bastard child of Neil Young and Rush. More About Gondo BANDMEMBER BIOGRAPHIES: FRANK GONDO (Guitars, Vocals, Songwriting) Mr. Gondo has been involved with music from an early age. He began his musical career as a classically trained violinist, playing in several prestigious youth symphonies in his native Ohio. He began playing guitar in high school, in addition to playing bass in his high school’s Jazz Band. Mr. Gondo also excelled as an athlete, and developed a reputation as one of the top offensive linemen in the Midwest. In 1991, he set off for a major American university on a football scholarship. Mr. Gondo’s musical career languished through his football career, and continued to languish as he started working in the Mortgage Industry in Cleveland, OH. Mr. Gondo continued to nurture his corporate career, earning an MBA and moving to corporate assignments in Kentucky and eventually to Chicago, where he settled in the Western Suburbs. Upon joining a church, Mr. Gondo filled out a “New Member Form” on which he listed that he played guitar. One year later, he received a call from the assistant music director, asking him to audition for the “I-Witness” Contemporary Service band. Mr. Gondo, who hadn’t played guitar seriously for several years, auditioned and began playing with the band in August of 2006. It was then he first met Joe Vierthaler, who was in high school at the time, also a member, and played bass in the I-Witness Band. For one of the services Blaine Sinderson sat in on drums. This marked the first time that Mr. Gondo and Mr. Sinderson played together, which then was repeated as Mr. Gondo sat in on bass for Mr. Sinderson’s band M28 for a couple of shows. In December of 2007, the credit crisis in the United States widened into a full-blown recession, and Mr. Gondo was laid off from his job as a Manager within the global financial firm he had worked for since 2003. During this downtime, Mr. Gondo started fusing literary ideas in his head with musical ideas he had been starting to develop into some songs, initially with the intention of developing acoustic songs to perform at local taverns. He then decided to record a CD of these songs in order to market his music to local bar owners. However, as he states “I soon realized that I have guitars, a bass, and a computer, and I also have a drum pad to record drum parts. So the acoustic album started blooming into a full-blown rock album.” Between April and July of 2008, Mr. Gondo would work at freelance Project Management consulting engagements during the day, and spend his evenings in his basement recording tracks (a couple of times Mr. Gondo was interrupted by Mrs. Gondo advising him to turn down the volume so as not to wake his toddler son). By July of 2008, Mr. Gondo had recorded 8 tracks, and decided on a lark to submit them to I-Tunes “just to see what happened.” Instead of the rejection e-mail he had expected, Mr. Gondo was pleased to receive an e-mail from I-Tunes advising him to submit his music to a separate vendor for processing/uploading to I-Tunes. This resulted in his “Demo” becoming an “Album,” titled At The Twilight’s Last Gleaming, which was then distributed to I-Tunes, Amazonmp3.com, E-Music, and all the other major digital distributors. Mr. Gondo then decided to bring some of his MBA marketing training into play and started a targeted marketing campaign focused on recruiting fans via social networking sites. This resulted in some radio airplay in Europe and the United States, inclusion of his music in several podcasts, and in moving Gondo into the top ten bands on the Reverbnation.com rock charts for Chicago, IL. This then led to several requests to perform live. This, of course, was a minor problem as Mr. Gondo had no band. “It was just me multi-tracking the parts, so I couldn’t of course perform by myself. I mean, I know with computers and sequencers it could be done, but it would be little better than listening to a recording. It would lose the liveness of the music, which I think is really the essence of performance—that interplay between musicians. You need that to have an interesting live show.” Consequently, Mr. Gondo called on Mr. Sinderson and Mr. Vierthaler to see if they would be interested in collaborating. From the initial rehearsal, the trio felt a strong synergy. Mr. Gondo states, “After the first rehearsal, I drive home and walk in my house and tell my wife, ‘Wow, we have lightning in a bottle. We really sound good.’” Mr. Gondo expounds further: “Blaine and Joe just play well together, which really is the hallmark of a great band, when that rhythm section is tight and can improvise off of each other. That makes my job as the guitarist so much easier, seeing that I’m nobody’s Eddie Van Halen, I can just weave blues licks and textural elements in and around what the two of them are playing and it sounds good.” Mr. Gondo’s influences on guitar include Jimi Hendrix, David Gilmour, Alex Lifeson, Pete Townshend, Neil Schon, Steve Hackett, and Stevie Ray Vaughan. His bass influences include Geddy Lee, John Entwistle, Chris Squire, and Mike Rutherford. His lyrical influences include Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Neil Peart, Pete Townsend, and Peter Gabriel. On his lyrical influences, Mr. Gondo says “I’ve always enjoyed ‘thinking man’s rock,’ and I really admire those who try to challenge people through what they’re saying lyrically, whether it’s challenging the individual listener to entertain a different point of view, to taking on the responsibility of speaking truth to power.” On songwriting, Mr. Gondo’s thoughts are that “I don’t have what you would call “chops,” so I try to write music that is challenging in a band context but that still has what some call ‘pop sensibility.’ I’ve always admired bands like Rush and Genesis in their ability to do that. I’m not into showing off my chops for chops sake, because Lord knows I don’t have any! Same thing with the music, I’m not writing to prove anything, I’m writing because I’m trying to say something. The point is to come up with something to connect with the audience. There’s nothing more satisfying than when you’re performing one of your songs, and you look out in the audience, and there’s a person looking back at you and you can tell that they ‘get it.’ That’s the whole point of this.” Among Mr. Gondo’s musical influences are the likes of Rush, Pink Floyd, Genesis, AC/DC, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and a myriad of blues and classical influences (his favorite classical composer is Beethoven, he played the 5th Symphony as a youth symphony violinist his freshman year of high school). Mr. Gondo resides in Batavia, IL with his wife of 7 years and his 4 year old son. BLAINE SINDERSON (Drums and Percussion) Mr. Sinderson been playing the drums for about 10 years in bands reflecting many diverse styles of music. His journey started around 1998 in a power-pop band from Harvard, IL called Spinderson. He played off and on with Spinderson for the better part of the last decade. Usually he was behind the drumset, but occasionally I played the bass. Spinderson played many shows in the Rockford area and developed a reputation as an energetic rock band with a good live show. During one of Spinderson's hiatuses, Mr. Sinderson started a project with three gentlemen from western McHenry county. This band was a “children's metal” band known as Little Blue Taxi. LBT was known throughout the Chicagoland metal scene for its theatrical live shows which often included several props, unusual instruments, and an amount energy that could only be matched by a nuclear power plant. Little Blue Taxi saw some radio play in Toronto with the song Overweight Mailman, and had many other crowd favorites such as Ravioli Smile, The Podium of the Unauthorized Orator, Mr. Decible, and Grandma's Big Hands. After Little Blue Taxi folded, Mr. Sinderson moved on to drum in an award winning Christian Rock band based out of Capron, IL called M28. M28 has played shows all over the Midwest and has toured as far away as Florida. In 2006 and 2007, M28 won consecutive RAMI (Rockford Area Music Industry) awards for being voted the best Christian Rock band in the Rockford Area. M28 was lead by Matthew Johnson, who was later appointed to become the associate pastor at Mr. Gondo’s church. While filling in as drummer for the contemporary I-Witness service, Mr. Johnson met Frank Gondo and asked him to fill in on bass for a show in DeKalb, IL. It was at this show that Mr. Sinderson and Mr. Gondo played together for the first time. After M28, Mr. Sinderson started my own project called Thirtyfour which, according to him, “consisted of little more than myself covering silly rap songs in my own personal style.” As for joining Gondo, Mr. Sinderson states: “One day, I received an email from Frank asking if I wanted to play a show or two. I listened to the music and decided that it would be pretty fun to play, so I agreed. It was at our first rehearsal that I met Joe Vierthaler. After playing with these gents only once, I felt as though we all clicked as musicians.” Some of Mr. Sinderson’s drumming influences are Joel Cohen (the Felix Culpa), Carter Beauford (Dave Matthews Band), Chris Tsagakis (RX Bandits), and Abe Cunningham (Deftones). In addition, three bands/artists who's albums have been in Mr. Sinderson’s car for over a year are Mute Math, Say Anything, and Sufjan Stevens. Mr. Sinderson is endorsed by Hornets Drumsticks out of Portland, Oregon. JOE VIERTHALER (Bass, Acoustic Guitars) Joe Vierthaler (aka Joe v3.0) is Gondo’s bassist and also shares in some backing vocal duties with Blaine Sinderson. Mr. Vierthaler hails from St. Charles, IL, and is a multi-instrumentalist, playing bass, guitar, trombone, tuba, piano, and some percussion. Mr. Vierthaler originally met up with Frank Gondo while playing bass for the I-Witness contemporary service at Mr. Gondo’s church. In addition to playing bass for Gondo, Mr. Vierthaler is one half of the DeKalb-based electronica duo The Boom Boom Bass Kids. Mr. Vierthaler is majoring in mechanical engineering, and states that he “hopes to one day combine engineering and music into one awesome job.” Mr. Vierthaler has a myriad of musical influences, including The Mars Volta, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, A Silver Mount Zion, RX Bandits, Avishai Cohen, Pendulum, Cake, At the Drive In, Rage Against the Machine, System of a Down, The Hatter's Mad, Hella, The Omar Rodriguez Quintet, Sigur Ros, Led Zeppelin, Streetlight Manifesto, Lucky Boys Confusion, Minus the Bear, Dashboard Confessional, Bright Eyes, Tool, Bandits of the Acoustic Revolution, Explosions in the Sky, Radiohead, Russian Circles, Serg Tankian, Heernt, Yes, Sublime, Saves the Day, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Doors, Primus, Pink Floyd, No Doubt, My Chemical Romance, Mad Caddies, Jack Johnson, Incubus, Gogol Bordello, Kaizer's Orchestra, Five Iron Frenzy, Catch 22, Dream Theater, The Decemberists, Daft Punk, Colossal, Circa Survive, Chicago, BATTLES, Audioslave, Arctic Monkeys, The Beatles.

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