Outside of Alone at 3am’s core fan base, it’s natural to consider the Northern Kentucky quintet as one of the local scene’s newest shining lights. The band’s acclaimed 2008 debut album, City Out of Luck, and the about-to-be-released and even better sophomore disc, Cut Your Gills, suggests a band with just over a couple of years of history.
But day jobs and responsibilities stretched that initial A@3 disc across three years, and recording began five years after the debut. The overnight sensationalism of Alone at 3am goes back to the 1990s, when high school pals Max Fender, Joey Beck and Clay Cason decided to band up.
“We’ve been playing for 10 years, and for nine years had no idea what the hell we were doing,” guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Fender says over beers at the future Dayton, Ky., home of local engineer Mike Montgomery’s Candyland studio. “We played the Warped Tour but we didn’t know who to talk to about it, so we thought, ‘We’ll just Rock out hard; everything will fall into place.’ I thought we should give away our CD in two pieces of bread, like a sandwich, but I got talked down. We had motivation, just not in any direction.”
Alone at 3am hosts a release party for Cut Your Gills Saturday at the Southgate House’s Parlour with guests R. Ring, The Garrison and Frontier Folk Nebraska. Go here to read Brian Baker’s full interview.
This article appears in Nov 3-9, 2010.