The Band Feel, with special guests The Ufgoods and Sweet Gypsy, perform at Skully’s Music Diner on Tuesday, March 4. Tickets are $20 in advance, $25 at the door. Doors open at 7pm, music starts at 8pm. The show is all ages.
Sometimes I don’t even need to hear music to know that I should check out a band. While scrolling through Instagram in the summer of 2024, I saw a short video clip by The Band Feel – long-haired rockers who look like they found a time machine from 1975 – and immediately started investigating. Guitarist Tyler Armstrong and drummer TJ Swinehart have been playing together in the St. Louis area for years, kicking around in different iterations of their current band, and added California native Garrett Barcus (vocals) and Indiana native Kaiden Rea (bass) to take things to the next level.
With a killer classic rock sound that falls somewhere between Led Zeppelin and The Black Crowes, The Band Feel started dropping singles on streaming platforms in the summer of 2023 and, by the end of that year, shared a 4-song live EP (Live in St. Petersberg, FL) to hold people over while they worked on their debut, self-titled EP which was released in October 2024. Just a few weeks before the EP was released, The Band Feel played at The Bluestone opening for the like-minded Dirty Honey.
If you’ve been following Columbus Calling for a while, you’ve seen our early interviews with Greta Van Fleet (2017) and Dirty Honey (2019). Who knows, maybe in a few years you’ll give us credit for introducing you a new band before they blew up.
The band hopped on a Zoom call recently to chat about their music, their place in the St. Louis scene, and making photos.
You guys haven’t been around a long time, but you’ve released singles, a live album, and an EP. How did you start getting your music out to people?
Tyler: The releases you’re talking about were done completely by us. It was before we had signed with management or booking or anything like that. We had just been lucky enough to land some really cool opening gigs, regionally and elsewhere. We just put music out there. We’ve been doing the same thing for a really long time and it eventually hit last March or so. Getting music out there now looks a little bit different as we have a bit of a following at this point. But early on, we just kind of threw it out there and tried different things. TJ was trying different Instagram videos with different text, just experimenting and eventually something hit. I wish there was something more elaborate to say but the modern luxury is that anyone can release music.
With your look and sound, I imagine you’re pretty unique in the St. Louis area. Do you feel like St. Louis appreciates you or do you find that more people will come to see you when you’re out on the radio and playing outside of St. Louis?
Tyler: TJ and I live in the area. Kaiden lives in Indiana and Garrett lives in California so anything they’ve done with the band pretty much hasn’t been in St. Louis. We don’t play in town very much because of the nature of oversaturation. I think we’re accepted well by St. Louis, especially by those who would be considered music royalty in St. Louis. On a local level, there’s a radio station here called KSHE that’s been around for eons. I think it’s the oldest FM rock station that’s still active. All those old DJs and the current ones love us. And if they say that they love you, they love you. You end up having a pretty firm fan base, but it’s an interesting thing because we don’t really play here too much. We opened up for ZZ Top here. It was the last date of our tour, and it took a while to get the crowd warmed up to us. That’s just the nature of opening for a classic rock band. I’m mentioning that because it’s not like all of St. Louis knows us.
TJ: We’ve treated it the same as we treat any other market. We’re not plugged into the scene of playing at the bars around here every week or anything like that. We’ve been pretty picky about just taking opening slot gigs or headlining things when they make sense, just like we would do elsewhere. I don’t know that the old model of just playing at your local club and trying to build a following that way can be totally effective. I think everyone needs to cut their teeth one way or another, but people find music through the internet, so I don’t think playing in a club in St. Louis every week is going to get us fans in Columbus. We’ve invested more in trying to be a national/worldwide act rather than a band that everyone sees in St. Louis every week.
I helped out a local band called The Honey’s about 20 years ago. They had the chance to play the side stage at a Poison, Vince Neil, Skid Row amphitheater show. After they were done, people were coming up and buying CDs and asking where they were from. When the band said they were from Columbus, people were shocked because they had never heard of them.
TJ: That’s how the ZZ Top show was. As much as we were gaining traction online and with KSHE playing our music, which is wild because they rarely play anything that’s newer, so many people at the ZZ Top gig were like, “You guys are from here? I’ve never heard of you.”
Tyler: Playing at your local bar, that I did forever, people are like, “You’re from this area. You can’t be that great if you’re still playing here.” Then you go play other places and those people complain and say, “You never play here.” We haven’t exactly experienced that, but there’s definitely a lot of ground to cover in St. Louis yet.
With Garrett being from California and Kaiden being from Indiana, how did this version of the band come together?
Tyler: The origin of the band starts about ten years ago, but not necessarily this band. I was in a group that TJ eventually joined and then that group turned into something else and then that turned into something else and then it turned into this. This is the first iteration of the band that is touring on the scale that we are and releasing music in the way that we are. That’s the easiest way to say it.
In the old days, you’d put an ad in the paper and say, “Looking for a singer and a bass player who are influenced by these bands” and then list out bands that you wanted to sound like. That’s not the way bands come together anymore so how did you find Garrett and Kaiden?
Tyler: Now you call the local paper Instagram and that’s what happened. Garrett’s friend told us about him, Kaiden was in another band that we were going to do a show with some years ago. That’s as simple as it goes.
You played in Columbus with Dirty Honey. As you get ready to head out on your first headlining tour, is there anything you picked up from Dirty Honey that you’ll carry over into your touring?
Tyler: They know how to work a crowd. They have a great frontman. The show in Columbus was awesome, it was at The Bluestone. The people at that show were so enthusiastic about music. They were a little rowdy. It is awesome.
You mentioned opening for ZZ Top in St. Louis. Do you often get asked to open for classic rock bands or do you get asked to open for a variety of different types of bands?
Tyler: We’re not doing any of our own booking anymore but prior to that, TJ was a typing wizard and was sending out email after email to everybody. That’s how we got a lot of those early regional slots, it wouldn’t all be classic rock. We opened for Rival Sons one time. But that was before this iteration of the group. At this point, we just get a text from management saying, “This is what we’re working on, do you guys want to do it.” We usually say yes. But, when we started, it was a lot of legwork and grinding just to get somebody to freaking respond.
TJ: Honestly, now, I feel like it’s less classic rock geared and more recent artists. We’ve done a decent amount of dates with Blackberry Smoke. I think what’s nice about our genre is that there’s a lot of crossover. We opened for them but then we’re also opening for Better Than Ezra coming up and then also opening for Derek St. Holmes. There’s a lot of different people in the rock world that we’re able to fit in with. The classic rock thing definitely fits but, at this point, I think that management is trying to focus on some more recently active artists. With that said, I wouldn’t be shocked if this year we get some shows with some of the more classic rock artists as well.
Blackberry Smoke was one of my first post-Covid shows. I can see how you’d be a good fit with them even though you don’t sound like them.
Tyler: Their first release was, pretty much at the time, a country record. But, they’re a bonafide rock band with really good songs. Charlie writes great songs.
I grew up during the MTV era. I’d come home from school every day and just sit in front of the TV and watch music videos for hours. MTV doesn’t play music videos anymore, as far as I know, but you’re making videos. Do you consider videos to be good promotional tools to get your music out to people?
Tyler: When I was growing up MTV didn’t really show much music. It was showing Pimp My Ride and Silent Library and Jersey Shore and Rob Dyrdek. I did watch VH1 Top-20 Countdown every morning. The music videos we do is for promotion, but it’s also just an extension of the artistic side of things. Our community is insanely artistic, anything you see that is put out is either done by one of us or one of our friends and that’s really cool. I think it’s pretty necessary to have those kinds of things. It could be as simple as setting up some cameras and lip syncing to the song and performing a performance video. But we’re also into film and things like that, so we try to incorporate that. With our video for “Goodbye, Virginia,” it’s not quite a short film, but it kind of feels indie film-ish.
Garrett: It’s a tour de force in a cinema, some would say. We’re trying to push the boundaries of what people can do with film. (laughs)
The average age of the band is 25. You probably grew up on digital music so perhaps this isn’t important to you but do you hope to release something on vinyl at some point?
Tyler: Yeah. Physical music is important because people still buy the crap out of it. I don’t know if a lot of the younger people who buy listen to it, but that don’t really bug me too much. We’ll be releasing vinyl relatively soon. It’ll definitely be packaged very well. The way that I see it, and these guys tend to agree, vinyl is expensive nowadays and I don’t really have much of an interest in having a plain cover, no liner notes, no nothing, and then giving somebody a piece of wax that sounds like crap for 40 bucks. I’ve seen a lot of modern releases that do this, but we’re going full out with it, so it’s something to look out for. It’ll be a full length; it just may not be from one release.
