Dreams From Gin

    With a unique and fitting name, Rochester alternative rock band, Dreams From Gin, has racked up quite the interesting resume. The band opened for Local H, which happened to be guitarist/vocalist Tyson Prince's childhood rock n'roll band, in Syracuse and opened for Grammy-nominated artist, Chris Trapper in fall 2010. The band was also featured in the PS3 and PC video game, Beat Hazard Ultra.
    The band's home base is Rochester, New York where they are very proud with their local music scene. "Rochester has a popular local music scene lurking beneath the surface. We have two popular radio stations, 90.5 WBER and 89.7 WITR that constantly plays local indie music. We have several clubs, including the BugJar, that constantly books national and local bands of all flavors." Although the band has a hard time fitting into the prominent genres in the area.

    "Instead of being left out, we use it as a strength. Dreams from Gin is flexible and it has allowed us to covertly play what would be considered "scene shows." We are angry enough to play with "hardcore" bands, fun enough to play with the punk bands and our pedal boards are large enough to play with the indie bands. It has allowed us to form a lot of relationships with a lot of different types of bands." Tyson Prince, guitarist/vocalist, and Travis Hafner, drummer, formed the band in October 2008 during college, but before they could start a band, they needed to find a practice space. The band found a legendary practice space, one that could go down in history as the coolest makeshift space.
    "We ended up renting a large abandoned gas station as a practice space. It was a pretty interesting time, we would have these incredible parties with dozens of musicians and spectators, passing around gear. It was a really creative place, we had art drawings on the wall and used the special of the wipe board to write lyrics. Soon enough, our bassist extrodonaire Christian came by and Dreams from Gin was born." Unfortunately, the band's space wouldn't last forever and after both landlords died, the gas station was taken by the bank and the band had to move on. Since forming, the band has replaced Travis with Nick Manka on the drums.

    The band has many influences and they feel that it reflects in their music. The band's tastes are extensive and range from grunge, Mclusky, Nirvana, Modest Mouse, to Folk, Fleet Foxes and Two Gallants, to Instrumental, Explosions in the Sky and Russian Circles, to Pop, Hooverphonic and Red Hot Chili Peppers." The band describes their music as "cynical, sometimes angry depressed, sometimes maybe even happy but mostly tongue in cheek."
    "I think we represent the duality and hypocritical nature of the human experience.  For better or worse we don't stick to a specific formula or genre.  As far as a message, some songs have a specific meaning and others just convey an emotion or feeling, most of the time it's both.  Occasionally, a chorus to a song is completely unrelated to the verse. I think it's like a little snippet of life, it doesn't always come at you in a neat little package with a easy translated message.  Sometimes your witnessing or contemplating something and then another issue or event comes up in the blink of an eye. Sometimes you get a Non-sequitur." Says Tyson.

    Recently, the band released a "hits" compilation album titled Rabbits Run in Prides. "It is free on our website and is a great starter to anyone interested in Dreams from Gin. I think it represents our best material and the diversity of our material. Songs range from the energetic and clever "Typewriter", the thoughtful and lyrical "Stoic" to the slightly strange anthem that is "Stereo Fire!"  It also includes our take on a pop hit "Mad about you."  The album's a strange beast, a duck billed platypus, weird to experience at first. Soon though, your addicted to the strange delicacy, and you just can't get it out of your head."
    The band is currently on a short hiatus, taking time off to work on an album's worth of new material. "We have about half a dozen songs written now.  The song writing process has been a lot of fun and the chemistry is right.  We all tend to be jokesters, laid back and little cynical, so the songs come together very easily.  I intend this album to have a slightly bigger budget than in the past, which means we can finally fit in everything we want.  We will most likely start performing again in December. Also, we really want to push Dreams from Gin to be involved in more media projects, video games, online movies, etc.  I think our music is perfect for it; we have a diverse catalog of songs and generally let anyone use our music for free.  The internet has given us a chance to reach fans all over the country (and world).  I really enjoy all of the fan mail or tributes we receive.  If we managed to scrounge enough funds we'd love to do a cross-country tour.  You never know what's in the card, we've come a long way from our humble beginnings in an abandoned gas station."