We’re Crush, and most of our songs are pretty damn depressing my wife says. Women are always leaving us, or we're dieing, or going mad, or missing someone. Well, we do have a couple of happier tunes about love and such stuff. We recorded most of our tunes back in 2000 - 2001. At that time Mp3.com was going strong, and they had a novel idea of paying artists based on number of song plays, and we actually earned over $10K in royalties from plays. Well I say that, but it cost $10K to produce the CD. We had some number 1 genre rankings in alt rock, in particular the song "Rescued" which was for a long time getting over 300 plays a day. Those days are long gone though. We moved to SoundClick when Mp3.com disappeared. If anyone emails me from here, I'll gladly send you a CD. Free! We'll even autograph the CD. It might not have a label, cuz we blew through all the expensive production run, but we can still duplicate the original CD for pennies. So if anyone's willing to listen, we'll foot the bill and get them a CD for free. Hell, maybe this is the way we’ll eventually be discovered. I’m Ken Casper, and I played lead guitar in the band originally, but we've done unplugged gigs where I've played acoustic or bass guitar. On the CD, I play lead electric on all songs except "Storm Front" and Brian Crush played lead on that one. Brian plays acoustic on most songs, with a little electric hear and there. Buzz is our drummer. On the CD I played bass as well, but we've had a bunch of different guys and even a couple of ladies playing bass at various times. Brian and I split lead and background vocal duties. I can't tell ya really where the influences for our music come from. I grew up playing southern rock (Allman Bros, Skynard, Marshall Tucker), and always dug bands like CSN&Y, Styx, Journey, and all those bands with 3 and 4 part harmonies. But I dig the current music scene a lot. I love the local (Louisville) bands Tantric and Days of the New and you might hear that influence in a couple of our acoustic tunes. And I love Three Doors Down, Dave Matthews, Chris Cornell (but the new Audioslave CD sucks - what is that guitar player thinking?), Velvet Revolver, Howie Day, Cold Play. So if ya dig these bands, you're probably gonna dig Crush! And while we don't sound like any of these bands in particular, we do sound unique and different. At least I think, but I've heard our CD at least 1000 times trying to figure it out. Or trying to figure out how to make it something. Or maybe it is something? But I can't tell any more. Every once in a while, somebody emails me about a song they like, and something they dig about it, and I have to go listen to that song, and then I realize, hell, this is the basis of something pretty damn good. So we plod on. Maybe you'll hear a few of the tunes off this first CD on the airwaves some day. Only time will tell. And maybe another $10K - $20K in somebody's palm. It's a tough biz out there, and I certainly know now why there are so damn many one hit wonders. It takes an awful lot of energy just to be a no-hit wonder. We all work for a living doing something else or another. I sell electronic drums and my wife and I own and operate a thoroughbred breeding farm out Bardstown Road. Buzz (Jack Muenz-Winkler) is an artist/inventor/sales guru. And Brian Crush (our namesake) owns a family run business called Industrial Carbide Saw & Tool Co. We tried to come up with a name forever and could never agree on anything, so we thought Brian's name made a good band name. Then we found out that there are about 100 bands with that name all over the country. One band wanted to sue us when they saw us atop the charts on Mp3.com. There used to be a heavy metal band in town called Crush also, but we still couldn't come up with another name. Maybe our listeners can come up with one for us. We ought to have a "Name the Band" contest. Yeah, we'll give away TWO CD's to the winner. We tried the club scene for a couple of years when we first cut the CD. It wasn't too tough getting gigs. We'd just walk into a club, have 'em put the CD on, and usually get a gig. It is actually a pretty impressive sounding CD, if I do say so myself. It's sorta alt rock, but it's got a lot of 80's feel to it in the three-part harmonies and driving electric guitars. We have some acoustic stuff too, and we utilize acoustic and electrics together in a lot of songs. It's got "just enough of an edge to it" one listener emailed me. Whatever that means. The problem with playing live in this town is, the smaller clubs didn't want to pay anything, and the bigger paying clubs like Phoenix Hill, A)didn't want to pay anything, or B) paid the bigger money only to the national acts. So we could play for free or for beer from like 11 - 3 at a bunch of clubs, but they wanted us to bring a crowd, and as a new band playing original material, we couldn't consistently bring a late night crowd. It got old real quick. Oh yeah, I really dig the new concept of where you pay the club to play there. Yeah, that works for me. After opening a concert show for .38 Special, we decided that was so much fun we only wanted to play concerts. Well, that was a bust too. We played one this year as a warm up band (aka guinea pig band who gets to suffer through PA's overheating, feedback, no vocals out the mains, etc). And a couple slightly better experiences last year. So we've gotten a bit frustrated of late and decided to take the summer off. And now the fall too. And probably the winter. Until somebody comes calling and wants us to open for Velvet Revolver or Audioslave or somebody. Yeah, that's the ticket. See ya there. Well, we set our goals high anyway. So that means we don't get to play too often, except in Buzz's basement. Or an occasional recording session. So maybe you can help us out here. I'd love to hear from some of anyone willing to listen. Email me and I’ll send ya a free autographed CD.