93.9 WABY and Raven Events will be at Septembers Too Tavern in Albany on Saturday June 14 to help out Albany Housing Coalition. You can start helping by buying a ticket from organizer Patrick Follett. Local bands unite for our veterans with live performances by Big Empty, The Grandstand Jockeys, The Devil You Know, On The Edge, Psycho Mutton Chops. We caught up with Patrick Follett of Big Empty and organizer of the event.
Ralph: Let’s talk about Big Empty?
Big Empty: Where to start...Well, I believe at least three of us aren't allowed back in Canada. Nah, I probably shouldn't talk about that. Let's see, Big Empty was really a right place, right time sort of endeavour. Our lead guitarist, Steve Rosado and I were in another project that shall not be named together for around a year or so. I wasn't really happy there, Steve was great but,there were some limitations talentwise, personality clashes and really just a feeling of spinning your wheels without going anywhere, so I left the band. In that same time period, Christian Adamson, our bassist's previous band had a bit of a falling out so I approached him about trying to get something together. It took a little bit of time for Christian to buy into doing covers, but a bar full of dancing women changes a man's thought process. lol. The band I left brought in a new "vocalist", played one show and kind of went nowhere from there, so I reached out and got Steve onboard. At that point, it was off to the dreaded Facebook groups and Craiglist to find a drummer. (shudder). Honestly, the search went pretty quickly. I think we might have tried out one other guy before we brought in Mark Snyder. Mark had been on the shelf for about ten years without playing at all. Coincidentally, he found himself in a different marital situation at the time and wanted to get back out there. As a musician yourself, I'm sure you know how rare it is to find a great drummer who's not in 4 bands already. We hit the jackpot. I should have played the lotto that day. So now we've got a band, let's start practicing!!! Things were rolling along, but the stuff we were covering just sounded a little empty.Christian and I started talking about possibly adding a rhythm player to fill things out. The next step was convincing Steve we weren't looking for his replacement. Guitar players are so sensitive. After running through an assortment of not the right fits and not a f'ing chances, we found Nick Daniels. Three songs into his tryout, the rest of the band is just looking at each other, nodding and smiling. We finished up, went outside to talk to him about things and he turned us down. lol. Nick had just left his previous band days prior and understandably wanted to get right back to the big Saratoga type gigs he was accustomed to playing. We couldn't offer that. So there we are, we all thought we had the perfect fit and he kicked us to the curb. lol. We decided to take a little break from the search. We were kind of burnt out from running so many people through and coming up empty handed. Fast forward a couple of weeks and just as we're ready to start bringing in the next batch, Nick reaches out to me. He had a heart to heart with his father. His dad said to ask himself what was more important, getting right out there in a potential bad situation of finding a group of guys he actually enjoyed playing with and trying to build something. At that point we were off and running and haven't stopped since. At the end of March, Mark told us he had to step away from the band due to some hearing loss issues. We were heartbroken. Trying to replace someone like him as drummer and even more so as a person was going to be next to impossible.We're lucky enough to have some friends who have filled in behind the kit over the past 10 months or so that we've been together, Karl Knapp and Christian's former bandmate Sean Teeter. at various times, they'd both said they'd fill in, but couldn't do the full time thing. So off we were to catch lightning in a bottle twice. I put the ad out. We got a ton of interest to say the least. In the end, two days before we were bringing the first guy in, Sean reached out and said he got the ok from the boss to roll with us. Mark will always be a brother and I'm sure we can twist his arm to fill in if we need him, but we haven't skipped a beat with Sean. The guy's an absolute beast behind the kit and he's already kind of found his role in the band dynamic. He adds some polish and a bit more organization to what we're doing. We're stoked to have him.
Ralph: The band has taken off rather quickly. Is this strictly a cover band or will you guys ever write originals?
Big Empty: Yeah, it's kind of crazy. It feels like we've been doing this forever but like I said, it's been less than a year. We've been so lucky to have received the support that we have. Let's be real here. How many local cover bands has WABY interviewed? lol. It's things like that. I like to say, it's not who comes out to see your band, it's who comes out to see your band again. We've been extremely fortunate to have developed the following that we have in such a short period of time. I'd like to be able to say that we've done it all on our own, but we've had a lot of help along the way. Our families, Mike and Judy Humphrey from the Kings Inn, Tommy Love. We've had so many people in our corner from day one and nothing we're doing right now would be possible without them. Just a quick story about Tommy Love. He saw us at our second gig ever. He came up to me afterwards and said he was blown away. "Patrick, I'm going to tell everyone about you guys". I'm just thinking to myself, yeah, sure you will. lol. All of a sudden, I've got people coming up to me at gigs saying, "I heard about you guys from Tommy".I'll always respect that dude for doing exactly what he said he would and I feel like a dick for doubting it. But, yeah, we've had a lot of people in our corner. That being said, we entertain the masses. When you come to see us, you're going to see 5 guys who are loving the moment. We take everything we're doing seriously except for ourselves. We're having fun and I think the audience feeds into and off of that. We try to keep things fresh and a lot of the time, we'll put our own twist on the songs. You're never going to see the exact same show twice. As far as originals, I think the band, at least to some degree, is still trying to figure out exactly who we are. The original goal was, let's get enough material down to get out and play. Now it's refining the things we do. Replacing stuff we're not thrilled about. We're always growing, branching out in different directions. Do I have some stuff written down in a word document? Yeah. Will it ever see the light of day? I don't know. I don't really think that we'd be an exclusively original band, but I'd like the challenge of putting out some quality material even if it's a small portion of what we do. Having a couple of guys in Christian and Sean who come from a strong background of making great, original music together increases the chance of it being a route we'd go in the future, I don't want to make promises though. If and when it happens, it'll be a natural progression for us. We're not going to force it.
Ralph: June 14 shaped up to be quite a day. This is a cause that is personal for you and you put a lot of hard work into it. Let’s talk about it.?
Big Empty: June 14th will be the 1st Annual Rock to Remember, September's Salutes. We've got 5 great bands on the card, The Grandstand Jockey's, Psycho Mutton Chops, On the Edge, The Devil You Know and of course, Big Empty. Tickets for the event will be $15 in advance and $20 at the door on the day of the show. All proceeds from direct donations, raffled items and a signature cocktail created especially for this event will go directly to The Albany Housing Authority to help their mission of finding sustainable housing for homeless veterans as well as their long list of 
veteran outreach and support programs.It's a cause that's important to everyone involved. It should be a cause that's important to everyone, period. Everyone in this band has family members who've served in the military. Fathers, uncles, grandfathers, we all know someone dear to us who have put themselves in the line of fire for this country. Our drummer Sean was himself an infantryman who served in Afghanistan in 2012. So yeah, it's personal to all of us. I can't speak for everyone, but I'm sure that same line runs through every band on the lineup. Again, none of this would happen without support from others. When we approached Brandy at September's Too about putting this show together, the first words out of her mouth were Veterans Benefit. She's obviously a huge supporter of this cause and just such a kind, generous person. I really can't praise her enough. To be honest, I didn't know how this would play out. There's always the fear that something like this might be a dud, but the outpouring of support that we've gotten so far has been pretty incredible.From the bands who jumped at the opportunity to be a part of this, all of the people who've offered to donate items to be raffled off, the bar doing everything it can to make this successful, teaming up with WABY. I'm in awe of how many people and organizations have turned out to help us. I honestly never thought it would get to this level. I'd like to personally thank you Ralph for getting WABY to help us out on this. You're an absolute legend man, I'm eternally grateful for you and what you've done here. This was a huge get for this benefit show and a huge reason I think it's going to be successful.
Ralph: Give me three albums you can’t live without
BIg Empty: Guns n' Roses - Appetite for Destruction. An absolute game changer for me as a teenager. That album was like nothing I ever heard before. Just grimy, filthy rock n' roll. To this day, that album holds up. There isn't a bad song on it. Pearl Jam - Ten. I was an almost immediate fan of the whole grunge scene but this was the album that got me hooked. Porch is still probably my favorite Pearl Jam song. Just another incredible album from top to bottom. Not a single album, but The Beatles Anthology series. My mom was a huge Beatles fan and that was a huge part of my childhood. Just to have all of their incredible songs, the outtakes, not to mention the videos was pretty awesome.
Ralph: What does Big Empty have planned after June 14?
Big Empty: Gigging man, gigging. we've got a couple of weeks off after the benefit, then we're back out hard and heavy in July. A couple of private parties, finally breaking the seal in Saratoga at The Caroline St. pub on the 26th. We're booked at Brewery Ommegang for their Fire Pit Fridays music series on August 8th. On and on it goes. We've current got stuff booked into December. We're always looking for more so, if you know anyone looking?
