One day our bassist Sean came to practice with a bunch of gang names he had read in a magazine that he thought might make good band names. We narrowed it down to "Boss Tweed" or " the Draft Riots" and I think it should be obvious which name we chose.

The Draft Riots started out as any band with ambitions to play countless gigs and conquer the music world. Unfortunately, as with many bands this didn't quite work out. We didn't want to let the songs go to waste however, so The Draft Riots became an elaborate recording project that will culminate in the release of our double disc cd.

The internet is an amazing tool for reaching a large audience of people around the world. The exposure is greater than anything I could have managed on my own.

I don't know about a major label, I'm a much bigger fan of the smaller labels that actually care about music above cash. However, I'd never turn down a major label deal if the terms seemed right.

The Draft Riots were formed in August 2001 by Michael Ball, Daniel Yagi, and Sean Swearinger. We recorded a 9 song demo together, and then went in search of a lead guitar player. Scott Coulson soon completed the band lineup, and in the following months great times were had while we developed our songs. In the spring of 2002 Scott had to quit to pursue search and rescue. After a couple more months of polishing our tunes, the Draft Riots ended on May 20, 2002
when Sean had to quit due to the demands of school and soccer. Michael and Daniel continued to practice and jam on a regular basis, revising a few of the tunes. To finish what they had started, Michael and Daniel plan to complete
the new recordings of all the tunes played by the Draft Riots before Sean quit. After the recording sessions are complete, Michael and Daniel will finally retire the Draft Riots name
and pursue other bands(possibly together). It's been great times, but the character of the band was the people involved, and when those people left the Draft Riots were no more. Rock on folks.

We like to spread our sound out as much as possible to make things interesting. We try to range our sound to everything from the harder edge of the pixies, to the lighter spacey sounds of the smashing pumpkins with everything else in between. The most prominent influence on our electric songs is probably weezer, but even that isn't always the case. I can't really say who
influenced alot of the acoustic songs, but there's probably a bit of the rentals (among other bands) floating around in there.

Seattle, where else?